tibratip of t:he 't:hcolo0ical ^cminarip PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY ,vvv AfJf PRESENTED BY Frederick P. Henderson LC 'E-ioQ ■I f V \ i ‘ f . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/educationformoraOOneum EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH w I I 4 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH v/ BY HENRY NEUMANN, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN ETHICS AND EDUCATION IN THE ETHICAL CULTURE SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY; LEADER OF THE BROOKLYN SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE; AUTHOR OF “TEACHING AMERI¬ CAN IDEALS THROUGH LITERATURE” AND “mOBAL VALUES IN SECONDARY EDUCATION” D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK 1928 LONDON Copyright, 1923, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY / PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO J. W. N. r: 1 •* / 1 \ f VJ 1 .] 1 I 'A I ' < V 1 f i\ J •'< PREFACE In many circles, education is supposed to be a matter which is best left to the exclusive care of teachers and school boards. The assumption is that while parents and other folk are of course concerned in a general way about better life for our youth, in the main it is the professional people who should do all the necessary thinking and plan¬ ning to this end. This book is addressed, however, to all who appreciate what a real influence on educational procedure is exerted by people outside the schools and colleges and how essential it is that they interest themselves in all the big, underlying problems; for it is they who, by their indifference as well as by their active concern, decide in the long run what the young shall be taught, with what ultimate objects in view, and by what methods. In no field of human activity is there a greater and more permanent need of what Matthew Arnold called “a current of fresh ideas”; and if more of such streams are to invigorate the life of school and society, the efforts of forward-looking educators within the schools must receive all possible encouragement from the liberal-minded outside. It is in the hope of suggesting trains of thought upon this need that the following chapters are written. They invite teachers and parents to consider how many oppor¬ tunities to promote a better life for our world lie at hand in the moral resources of the school. The subjects studied, the methods employed, the examples of fellow pupils and teachers, the daily practices of one sort and another, the • • Vll PREFACE • • • Vlll attitudes which young people are encouraged to take toward life in all their contacts with school, home, vocation, com¬ munity — all these constitute occasions to develop ideals, out¬ looks, habits, of a kind sorely needed in the world and of a better kind than are likely where attention is not focused upon them. These opportunities are given specific treat¬ ment in these pages. But if these moral resources are to be used to the best advantage, it is essential that all care be given to thinking out what we are to understand by ‘ * better life. ’ ’ Some traits of character are more worth developing than others. Some ideals^ — for example, those of liberty and democracy — ^may be interpreted in all sorts of beneficent or hurtful ways. Moreover, avowals of moral purpose tend to become mere lip-service unless their implications are constantly sub¬ jected to fresh examination and the vision of their high demands thus clarified. Ever-renewed understanding of the direction in which educational efforts should aim is a prime requisite. A few suggestions on this head are offered in the chapters which examine the ethical meanings in democracy and the ethical values and limitations in the leading ideas which have shaped American education thus far. The word suggestions^^ should be repeated; for on a subject so vast as the relation of education to life, complete agreement on all points can scarcely be expected. The certitude attained in the physical sciences is still far from being the rule in ethics and education. The best that any person can do is to set down the things which seem true and important to him. That every reader should be fully in accord with any writer on ethics is of immensely less consequence than that each should be moved to think out his convictions for himself. For similar reasons, no expectation is entertained that any one ethical philosophy must become the object of study PREFACE IX in elementary and secondary schools. Indeed, it is no more necessary for pupils in these years to take a course in any system of first principles whatever than it is for the teacher to discuss the philosophy of aesthetics with them in order to win a love of things beautiful. Never¬ theless, even before our youth are able to grasp the con¬ ceptions which appeal to more mature minds, it means much for the interpreter to have his own ideas properly orientated. Those who teach even the youngest need a plan of life far more than the single stage with which they deal; and though the pupil is unconscious of these distant goals, he will be the better prepared to see them later for himself if their inspiration shines *at all times through the efforts of his teachers. It is for this reason that, before considering details of ways and means, so much of the book is given to examining fundamental principles. The views here offered are the outcome of experience in school, college and settlement, and especially in the Ethical Culture School of New York and in other activities conducted by the Societies for Ethical Culture of New York and Brooklyn. To Prof. Felix Adler the debt is more than I can adequately acknowledge. The illustrations are drawn from many different types of public and private schools. Though many of them come from the practice of the Ethical Culture School, the book is in no sense an official publication. No authorization has been given to speak for the School as a whole, and no such commitment is here implied. In this connection I wish to express to the School and particularly to its Superin¬ tendent, Franklin C. Lewis, a grateful appreciation of its support of the principle of academic freedom during the tense years of the war and its aftermath. For criticisms and for other help I owe thanks to my wife and to these friends and co-workers: Miss Mabel T. Burnham, Dr. John L. Elliott, Leo Jacobs, Clarence D. X PREFACE Kingsley, Moritz Kirehberger, Charles H. Lawson, Robert S. Lynd, Prof. David S. Muzzey, Mrs. Miriam S. Price, Herbert W. Smith, Vivian T. Thayer, Mrs. Agnes D. Warbasse. Acknowledgment is also tendered to the editors of the American Review, the Educational Review, the International Journal of Ethics, the Journal of the National Education Association, and the bulletins of the U. S. Bureau of Education, for permission to reprint matter which has appeared in their publications. H. N. CONTENTS PAGE Preface . . vii CHAPTER I. Introduction . 1 PART I THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY II. Ethical Uses of Freedom . 15 III. The Meaning of Equality . 32 IV. The Spiritual Ideal . 47 PART II CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICA’S IDEALS V. The Puritan Offering . 67 VI. The Spirit of Nationalism . 85 VII. The Tradition of Classical Culture .... 106 VIII. The Contribution of Modern Science . . . 120 IX. The Demand for Vocational Fitness . . . 137 X. The Pragmatist Criticism . 166 PART III THE RESOURCES OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW XI. Moral Activities . 191 XII. Direct Moral Instruction . 213 XIII. Moral Values in the Various Studies ... 247 xi Xll CONTENTS CHAPTER PAG- XrV. Native and Acquired Promptings .... 29H XV. The Power op the Feelings . . . . . . 318 XVI. Religious Education . 331 XVII. The Teacher . 351 Index . 375 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A GROUP of young people were discussing current topics. Someone called into question the propriety of the conduct of a Cabinet officer who had resigned his portfolio for a commercial position at a salary ten times larger. A minority agreed that although the act was not particularly reprehen¬ sible — most men would have done as he did — nevertheless there was about it something not altogether praiseworthy. In this view, when a man accepted a public office so impor¬ tant, a claim could very well be made in favor of his dis¬ missing any thought of higher financial rewards. Most of the group, however, were of opinion that there was nothing in the act in the least questionable, and, indeed, that to suggest any doubts upon the matter was perilously close to impertinence. ‘‘He had a perfect right to take the better job.’^ In a later discussion, the conduct of another official came under review. This was a legislator who had been instru¬ mental in obtaining the passage of a law to benefit a body of public servants. To show their gratitude these benefici¬ aries had presented the man’s wife with a costly set of 1 2 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH silver. Was it right to accept the gift? Again opinion was divided. A few held that even though the present had come affer the man’s act, and though there was no reason to suppose his vote had been influenced by expectation of the gift, nevertheless a stricter scruple would have for¬ bidden its acceptance. Presents to lawmakers and judges for past services, they thought, might exercise an unde¬ served influence upon future decisions involving the inter¬ ests of the givers. Not all concurred in this view, and, characteristically enough, most of those who dissented had held in the earlier discussion that the resignation of the Cabinet officer was above question. Standards differ, and the lower standard is not neces¬ sarily a sign of wickedness. But these young people, from good homes, with reputable, more or less cultivated parents, had all applauded and practiced the war-time injunctions of service to the flag ; and now, when the idea of disinter¬ ested public service was brought into a discussion of current events, some were bewildered, and some were even resentful. “Why drag in the war?” It is curious how often such reference to the war excites displeasure. In many a circle, when mention is made of the fact that to keep up the price of certain foodstuffs, whole carloads are dumped into the ocean or permitted to rot, nothing is more irritating than a reminder of the war-time appeals to conserve food and subordinate the thought of profit. How far these attitudes are typical not all observers would agree. But they are common enough to raise dis¬ quieting questions about the kind of ideals taught in homes, schools, colleges, and churches. If these young people were not wicked, neither were they at all unintelligent. They were simply unawakened upon one side of their natures. But this happens to be precisely the side where awakening is most urgently needed. The problem is more than a ques¬ tion of right thinking about public service or of codes for INTRODUCTION , 3 lawmakers or business men. It is a problem of thorough¬ going ethical ideals for the whole of life, and it is here that we fall lamentably short. The gravest 'problem for school, home, and communit'y to-day is not raised by the relatively small number of crimiimls. It is raised by the moral unenlightenment of the much larger number of quite respectable persons. These have no philosophy of life to point to higher levels of conduct for all — not one or two — of lifers relationships. They have one set of standards for home affairs, another for business; one for duty toward the nation, another for obligation toward the home town; one for war days, another for peace. The marriage prob¬ lem, the labor problem, the international situation, the ques¬ tions thrust upon us in America and elsewhere by the con¬ tacts of the racially or otherwise unlike, these are thought of by only the few in the light of high, comprehensive ideals for the destiny of all human life. “Be assured,” said* Gladstone, “that life is a great and noble calling, not a mean or groveling thing through which we are to shuffle as we can, but a lofty and elevated destiny.” Can we say that any such conviction supplies to most of our college graduates a focalizing direction for their home life, their business, their politics, their entire dealings ? The lives of those who cannot afford to go to college reflect the same lack. For most of the working classes there is very little in their occupations as now conducted to call out any love of their work or any capacity for high, disin¬ terested endeavor. And because they have no sense that their work is contributing to anything great, they do it sul¬ lenly or apathetically; or they break out into sporadic revolt; or they find compensation and release by imitating in their own way the upper-class pursuit of senseless luxu¬ ries. Far more lives to-day are left empty by the lack of high ideals than are ruined by the downright criminality over which it is easy enough to arouse alarm. 4 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH For remedy we must look to changes in our social mechanism, but the fundamental resource must be, in the largest sense, educational. The word is in some respects unfortunate. Like ‘‘democracy’’ or “progress,” “educa¬ tion” has come for many minds to lose all sparkle and freshness. Its repetition suggests, in thought, the most wearisome of stale generalities, and, in practice, routine exhortations from an army of tired teachers and professors. And yet these three words can speak, if we will let them, of realities close to our hearts — living hopes, faith in men, vis¬ ions, perennially creative, of men’s power to shape for them¬ selves immensely nobler lives than earth has yet been for¬ tunate enough to greet. It is with these that this book is concerned, and with the things their inspiration can bring to pass wherever young lives are touched by older for better or for worse. A centralizing motive to excellent life will be supplied when our cultural agencies hold up as their justifi¬ cation the progressive remaking of democratic society. The crying need is for ideals, spiritual ideals, which will put the breath of life into our professions of faith in democracy and progress and bring all our behaviors, public and pri¬ vate, into living, creative interaction. In a society whose ideals of democracy were spiritualized, the distinctive best in every person would be set free in seeking to release it in others. The same would be true of the relations of indi¬ viduals with groups and of groups with one another. There could be no compartmenting of conduct into public and private. Each activity would call forth higher activity in everv other. The content of such an ideal and its demands will be developed in the chapters which follow. Two reflections, however, are essential at the outset : How far are we genu¬ inely committed to our professions of faith in progress? What vital meanings do we attach to the “democracy” which we make our leading watchword? INTKODUCTION 5 If we really believe that the one most important task for an older generation is to help future generations to be better and wiser than itself, to what sort of betterment and wisdom 4 are we pledged! tell you seriously,’^ said Secretary Franklin K. Lane, “we are not a serious people except when we are scared.’^ He was referring to two equally distress¬ ing facts: first, that a quarter of our population were unable to read and write, and, second, that he found it exceedingly hard to move the nation to get rid of the dis¬ grace. Illiteracy will undoubtedly be wiped out. But the fundamental problem will still be with us. What are the best uses to which the lettered can put their acquisition? “If the majority of infiuential persons held the opinions and occupied the point of view that a few rather uninflu- ential people now do, there would, for instance, be no likeli¬ hood of another great war ; the whole problem of ‘ labor and capital^ would be transformed and attenuated; national arrogance, race animosity, political corruption and ineffi¬ ciency would all be reduced below the danger point.’’ ^ And the expulsion of these obvious evils would be only a first step, no more. True, there was a great outpouring of forward-looking devotion during the war. In the hope of promoting a better life for the race, heroic young souls shrank from no hardship and no danger. In many lives a new sense of international kinship was born and a new vision of world- fraternity. But the uglier revelations also have come — ^the orgies of profiteering, the aggravated jingoisms, the sharp¬ ened bigotries, the freshened race dislikes and labor strife (mocking the war-time protestations of unity and brother¬ hood), the general relapse into old apathies once the victory was attained. It is relatively a small number who have been impelled by the experiences of the war and its aftermath to look deep into the human mind and soul and ask what 1 J. H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making, p. 1. 6 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH changes must take place there to make this a really* better world. Think only how many college graduates would be ashamed to be seen driving 1920 models of automobiles in 1923 but are quite willing to live on the political and social outlooks of 1820 and earlier. There has been progress, of course. Our schools are much better than they were fifty years ago ; our political methods are improving; our interest in beauty, in social justice, is wider-spread. But a community of rogues might make these external improvements for its own purposes. The great need is a change for the better within the sanctuary, in the souls of men and women. One looks out upon a world where, for four years, millions of beings poured their mightiest energies into war ’s work of destruction ; and then one pictures a globe where people would put even a fraction of that zeal into tasks more constructive. A radical trans¬ formation, no doubt! But when our educational institu¬ tions say that their aim is to promote progress by building up character, do they mean that they are thinking of change in terms at all so thoroughgoing ? Let us from first to last set our moral standards high. Perhaps our trouble is that we shrink from a word with some of the unlovely connotations which have gathered around that term, ‘ ‘ moral. Or else we do not examine the richer, finer meanings it may embrace. In some circles, the word is in ill repute because it betokens, and needlessly, a dismal suppression. To others, morality means merely not to lie, not to steal, to be ‘ Wirtuous, ^ ^ to obey the conven¬ tional precepts: you can lead a ^‘good’’ life if you keep 'within the bounds of your community's standards with respect to falsehood, unchastity, and the like. Whether then you carry such morality over into business or politics, or in any. way interest yourself in a better social ethics, is quite unimportant. The educational ambition of more respectable families than we can begin to count is that their INTRODUCTION 7 young people grow up into law-abiding, undisgraced, com¬ fortable citizens who will play the game of life no worse than their quite like-minded neighbors. To be sure, they desire them to be charitable, too, and progressive in a way ; but they scarcely want them to consecrate their lives to high causes with anything like the energy spent, let us say, in winning prosperity. To some, on the other hand, the good life means plunging into social reforms or more radical enterprises and suppos¬ ing that concern for an improved inner life (whether in oneseK or in the people one is to help) can be postponed until the external changes have all been instituted. Fair¬ ness, modesty, integrity, unselfishness, fine ethical insights, to such a view are either negligible or are sure to be the product of material betterment. But important as it is to satisfy the hunger of men for bread and for freedom from needless anxiety, their deepest need always is to become the right kinds of person. Men go without food, if necessary, in order to serve great causes ; they go poor for the sake of science, art, country, or the truth as they see it ; and in so doing they tell us that there are more grievous deprivations than to be poorly fed and badly housed. The worst poverty in the world is to be of poor soul-fiber. There must indeed be far-reaching changes in our social structures ; but first of all the plans require high, living ideals of the better beings for whose sake the better home is to be erected. It is because these larger meanings of the ethical life are slighted that so much of our ordinary discussion of ‘ ‘ educa¬ tion” and ‘‘character-building” sounds hollow. The first essential is ever new height, breadth, depth of vision. Our second reflection leads to much the same thought. When we say that our culture should make for a better democracy, what does “democracy” mean to us, and what does it demand? Obviously it should signify much more 8 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH than the meager affair it is to so many of us, a convenient political device, a system of external arrangements, equal freedom before the law, equal chances for prosperity, pop¬ ular elections, majority rule The need of better personal quality is, of course, assumed, but not as the prime essential. Democracy is thought of as the aim, and character as a means or safeguard. Unless, for instance, the future citizen is taught to be honest, our elections and other public busi¬ ness will be corrupt. Quite the reverse, however, should be emphasized in the relationship : not that character is to be a safeguard to democracy, but that democracy itself is worth while only as it encourages the growth of the highest in human personality. To this, when it is pressed, all thoughtful persons will no doubt agree. We have no lack of native idealism in America and no lack of faith in our power to make things better if we will. But we sh*all never make the most of our ideals of democracy until we devote far more thinking than is now the rule to the increasingly nobler directions which these ideals should indicate. The duty of improving upon even our best achievement has never before been so exigent. In these years when humanity is loaded with burdens of unprecedented seriousness, democracy cannot take its supe¬ riority for granted. It must make good, and with a more considered outreaching toward the objects of supreme importance for the race. It must prove itself able not only to repair the moral ravages of the latest world catastrophe and to prevent another, but especially to supply a new con¬ structive pattern for human intercourse. To point the way to more excellent life for the entire race is democracy’s leading obligation and privilege; and it should be, not a secondary, but the paramount concern of the agencies for the training of youth. Our schools have been in the main content to follow other makers of public opinion rather than to lead vigorously. They have been too often willing INTRODUCTION 9 to accept prevailing standards instead of courageously inspiring the new generation to wiser standards. They have not sufficiently bred the spirit that would push the idealistic motives implicit in democracy to expressions con¬ stantly more admirable. Here it is that we shall find the needed direction for our educational efforts. The meaning of democracy must be examined and reexamined. In the ultimate implications upon which we shall thus come, we shall see a wealth of ethical ideals eminently fitted to give our culture the focaliz¬ ing force it requires. Tedious and academic as the task may seem at the outset, the clearest understanding of these conceptions is imperative. Their essentially ethical quality needs to be kept in the foreground. ‘ ‘ Citizenship, ” “ social efficiency, ’ ’ and similar terms in the pedagogy of to-day fail to give due prominence to our highest need — democratic personality conceived not as a means to other things but as itself the world’s sublimest hope. Not prosperity nor freedom from overt offending, not the identification of ‘‘better” with “better off” nor efficiency in civic business, nor even multiplied happiness is to be democracy’s pride and the guiding light of her schooling, but the fullest and deepest excellence of soul in all her sons and daughters. Her jewels, like the Roman matron’s, are to be her noble children. How necessary it is to keep these spiritual objectives foremost we shall see further if we turn now to examine first the underlying assumptions in such watchwords as freedom and equality. We shall find that the terms involve a regard for certain fundamental human excellences. The better modes of life suggested by these ethical implications of democracy will give our culture its worthiest aim. 10 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Questions and Problems 1. Discuss the statement of Emerson : “We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning. In our barbarous society, the influence of character is in its infancy.” 2. Give instances which show to-day^s advance over earlier times in moral practice. In what directions must advance still be made? 3. Refer to the quotation from The Mind in the Making on page 5 of this chapter. Mention some of the opinions that would produce the effects which Professor Robinson con¬ templates. 4. Explain : “To be as good as our fathers, we must be better.’^ 5. Comment on this utterance of General Wood: “Do not talk of this as the last great war. God will have to change human nature before we can discuss such a thing.” 6. Why is it that the idealisms of war time fail to carry over into peace? Compare the present period with that immedi¬ ately following the Civil War. 7. Examine for a week the most popular newspaper in your community. What light does its selection of news throw upon the interests of its readers? 8. Do you think that the college graduates of your acquaintance are more influenced by the higher motives than other people? 9. Illustrate how proficiency in school studies does not in itself, ■ guarantee a high level of character. ' 10. A picture showing the crowds at the Thanksgiving Day football game was labeled, “The Biggest Educational Event in America.” What criticism was implied? 11. Explain why the “don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t gamble” type of exhortation to pupils at graduation still lingers in some quarters. 12. Is it a sufficient statement to say that “the heart of reform is the reform of the heart”? 13. To what extent should you say that schools of your acquaint¬ ance keep the highest aim foremost? Are courses in ethics all that is needed? What are the obstacles with which the ethical teaching of youth must contend? INTRODUCTION 11 REaPEEENCES See, besides references quoted in text: Addams, Jane, Newer Ideals of Teace. Adler, Felix, The World Crisis and Its Meaning. Cope, H. F., Education for Democracy. CuBBERLEY, E. P., Changing Conceptions of Education. Emerson, R. W., ^‘Education” (in Lectures and Biographical Sketches) ; ^‘The American Scholar’^ (in Nature, Addresses and Lectures) *, “The Fortunes of the Republic” (in Mis¬ cellanies). Erskine, John, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, Henderson, C. H., The Children of Good Fortune. Hudson, J. W., The College and the New America, Martin, E. D,, The Behavior of Crowds. Sisson, E. 0., The Essentials of Character. 1 PART I THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF DEMOCRACY CHAPTER II ETHICAL USES OP FREEDOM In the days of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke declared that he could no more congratulate the people of France on possessing liberty than he could felicitate them on having a government; but that just as he must know what sort of government they had, so he would have to be informed of what nature was the liberty they enjoyed. His demand is stiU in order. It is certainly unwise to stop at telling our future citizens that we are free because we make our own laws through elected representatives. Everything depends upon the uses to which freedom is put. A people may be politically free in the sense of having no other nationality rule them, or free in having democratic institutions, and yet be sadly unfree. They may be chained, for instance, by their own ignorance, as the negroes were when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. They may be the victims of poor leadership or of unin¬ formed, hysterical public opinion; they may be the dupes of their own lazy substitutes for thinking. Injustice, caprice, untidy mental processes are by no means bound to go when democracy enters. Nor is there any ethical finality about that industrial democracy to which many persons urge that our political freedom be extended. People may be quite free from economic bondage and still remain little better off in the thing of ultimate value, a nobler quality of life. Let us, therefore, examine the ethical meanings which alone justify the honor in which freedom is rightly regarded. 15 16 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH We surely do not want our youth to believe that conduct is made holy by being “the will of the people.” No will is entitled to respect merely for being a will, even when it is the will of a group. Indeed, one of the commonest moral failures throughout all history is recorded in the frequency with which groups or persons whose will to freedom was strong became oppressors themselves. The Hungarians under Kossuth asked the world’s support in their fight for liberty some seventy-odd years ago. But they forced their yoke on the people of Transylvania, a population two-thirds of whom were Rumanian with no love for the alien civiliza¬ tion they were obliged to accept. Rumania on her side had fought for liberty against the Turks, but she was not above exercising her dominion over Bulgarians in the Dobrudja. Bulgaria likewise had fought for liberty, but she imposed a hated rule upon Serbians and Greeks in Macedonia. The Poles, who had been persecuted by the Greek Catholics of Russia, responded, not, as one would expect, by casting the spirit of unfairness out of their own lives, but by bit¬ terly persecuting the Greek Catholic Ruthenians and the Jews. In the seventeenth century, the English Church, freed from Rome, oppressed the Puritans, and the Puritans in their turn harried the Quakers. Evidently there is a world of difference between wanting “liberty” and “ liberty-f or-myself , ” the latter too often becoming a liberty to oppress others. The poorer concep¬ tion is notoriously common in our business life. The small merchant, embittered by the trusts, wants freedom to com¬ pete when he himself is the victim of monopoly. But let him acquire anything like the same power in his turn, and unless he is most unusual, what becomes of his former pleas for liberty ? Often the hardest and meanest of slave drivers in factories are the very men who have fought their way up to positions of authority from the workbenches where they used to talk freedom. ETHICAL USES OP FREEDOM 17 Shall we, then, teach that liberty means, “Go your own gait, but do not infringe upon the rights of others ? ’ ^ This has been the leading maxim of American life, and the harm accompanying the good it has wrought should warn us. It puts the emphasis upon self-assertion and adds the merely negative “without infringement” as at best an after¬ thought. On this principle, the oppressed group is to seek liberty for itself as the first concern ; but since the freedom sought is thus exclusive, it is no wonder that the restrain¬ ing clause is so ineffective in comparison. “A nation is to assert itself and expand hut ... which proposition is more likely to be heeded ? ‘ ‘ Make your fortune hut . . . which half of the advice is the more appealing, the one that limits the satisfaction or the one that excites the desire? This laissez-faire philosophy of ours has always laid the heavier stress upon satisfying the natural thirst, and it has not seen how relatively feeble the “don’t-infringe” qualification becomes in practice. Small wonder that American individualism has either chafed at ethical restrictions or ignored them as it did in the slave holding, the child labor, the political corruption for the benefit of business interests, which have so stained our history. In the second place, we cannot continue to teach the ‘ ‘ let- things-alone ” conception of freedom, because it has encouraged social irresponsibility. Accepted in its extreme form, it led Herbert Spencer to object that it was a down¬ right violation of individual freedom for the state to tax citizens for schools, libraries, museums, parks, etc. Observe the importance with which the non-infringement half of the formula is thus clothed. The function of the state is assumed to be only that of protecting one individual against another's unwarranted use of his liberty. Any positive claim of the child upon the community is ruled out. For example, no right of the child is denied, says Spencer, when 18 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH the state declines to provide schools. Fortunately, we think better to-day. There are many persons in our country, however, who still hold in the main to Spencer’s view, even though they admit the need of the state to provide schools as a police function, a kind of added safeguard to life and property. It never seems to occur to such persons that ‘‘freedom within the limits of non-infringement ’ ’ can become in prac¬ tice the most pitifully empty affair. Without the means essential to the proper employment of one’s freedom, the liberty itself has little or no value. We might as well tell a crippled child that he is free because the law allows him to walk as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with others. Legal freedom to use his legs will not make him walk. Our twenty-five per cent of illiterates are free under the Constitution to buy books and read them. Is this to be the last word on their freedom? Only in comparatively recent years have we waked up to the handicaps under which huge numbers of our popula¬ tion live.^ They never will be free, in the better sense of the word, until we teach sounder conceptions of freedom than our “every man for himself within the limits of the law.” i“Many diseases are actually gaining against us. . . . Seventy per cent or more of any typical population group is in need of dental and medical attention for minor or serious ills. How many are ever brought into contact with corrective medical advice ? How many are advised or treated while the affection is in its incipiency ? How many, even when brought under medical surveillance, receive competent and thoroughgoing advice or treatment? . . . Recent surveys have shown that there exists in normal communities three times as much active tuberculosis as is usually under observation. Why is it that in most communities twenty or thirty per cent of the tuberculosis cases first come to the knowledge of the health authorities when reported at death? . . . How many adults or children in the typical urban popu¬ lation ever receive an annual medical inspection — admittedly essen¬ tial to the detection of early disease and to the victory for health?’* Survey^ August 16, 1920, p. 632. See also Survey^ September 16, 1920, p. 707. ETHICAL USES OP FREEDOM 19 The highest kind of freedom, to anticipate the argument of this chapter, is freedom to do one’s duties. Positive freedom requires every possible help toward the adequate perform¬ ance of this function. It is in the interests of the better personality shaped by the effort to do one’s duties that children of school age must not be allowed to work for a ‘ living, that women must not be overworked, that people must not be herded in insanitary, vice-breeding slums, and that education, in the best sense of the word, is their positive need. The father who wishes to bring up his children to an excellent manhood and womanhood is not free to do so as long as he is obliged to rear them amid physical and moral defilement. The conditions under which he works and resides must favor, not hinder, the performing of his full duty to his family and his country. All this is overlooked in the non-infringement tradition which many schools and colleges unfortunately continue to hand on to the young as all that needs to be said on free¬ dom. Its entire bearing is individualistic. It assumes that self-interest clbecked by the police power of the state will bring about all necessary better life. We have learned that it does not. Evils occur which it is impossible to ascribe to individual bad wills and which, therefore, little or no effort is made to prevent. It certainly is not wickedness or a stony heart that makes a man keep children in his employ. If he engages adults at the higher wage, he cannot compete with his rivals in states where the employment of children is legal. There are many such ills in our world which a sense of collective responsibility would wipe out or prevent. One of the gravest indictments of modern civilization is the manner in which the Industrial Revolution was per¬ mitted, on the whole, to work itself out under conceptions of liberty which encouraged gross irresponsibility. All of the mighty transformations wrought by the use of steam 20 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH and electricity, many undoubtedly beneficial, were allowed to come without the least collective effort to forestall their worse by-products. No communities said: “These and these tremendous changes are coming. Let us do our utmost to prevent the human hurt which they will bring. The things just happened without plan and with no sense of personal or collective obligation for the effect on person¬ ality. A recent tragedy is a striking illustration. Since 1914 the demand for workers drew so many negroes into the Northern industrial cities that in Chicago, for example, the colored population was doubled; in that period it rose to 125,000. Nobody, however, took the trouble to provide adequate housing for this increased tenantry. It spread over into the white neighborhoods, and the bad blood which usually follows upon such frictions led to riot and slaughter.^ It was nobody ^s concern to forestall this con¬ gestion. The private initiative to which most of such affairs are still entrusted was quite content to let things alone in view of the higher rentals it was able to wring from the overcrowding. The incident is typical. Our slums, our constant strikes, our passing of protective laws only after the mischief already done has become too glaring, are by¬ products of our “good-enough,’^ “let-us-alone” policies. It took the recent war to shake many a community into the barest realization that neither “enlightened self-interest” nor “self-interest without infringement” could be trusted to handle problems which call for a more pointedly cooper¬ ative formula. All in all, no conception of freedom will carry the new generation very far, if we teach it tO'Hhink of freedom as merely something which must not be misused. A more affirmative content is required. This is offered in the ethical definition of freedom: “such * The 'Negro in Chicago, A Study of Race Relatione cwd a Rao4 Riot (University of Chicago Press). ETHICAL USES OF FREEDOM 21 a release of the best in others as releases the best in our¬ selves.’^ Our crying need to-day is to recognize explicitly that no souls are saved alone but that we rise or fall as moral personalities with the help or the hindrance we offer to the upward climb of others. Better, therefore, than letting people alone is the ideal which looks upon them as fellow-pilgrims requiring from us the utmost help we can give toward playing their part in the one great task of the human race — to get ahead of itself as a whole and to pass on to endlessly fairer forms of human excellence. With a picture before our eyes of the persons that men and women might be in a society truly civilized, we should ask, ‘ ‘ How can we make our contacts aid one another to develop these worthier types?” Under the guidance of such an ideal, the content of our present liberties, political, civil, religious, would be greatly enriched. For one thing, the accent would be shifted from the desire to enjoy privileges to the desire to fulfil duties more ably. Political liberty is to be cherished for the chance it affords the common man to share, to the full extent of his special powers, the task of improving the relationships in which he lives. Under the regime of the Czar, when talented patriotic persons wished to offer their gifts to the Russian people, they were silenced or packed off to Siberia. A true democracy welcomes the offerings of the least of its sons and daughters, and especially does it wel¬ come their contributions to the deciding of what the collec¬ tive purposes shall be. The object of greatest value in the process is the stimulus it offers to spiritual growth. A benevolent despot can give his people everything but the one thing of chief importance — the chance for mental and spiritual enlargement, for developing the best in mind and heart by voluntary efforts to bring about right relations. 22 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Such a conception puts where it belongs the supreme im¬ portance of training in character. It requires, of course, a training in self-restraint. Instead of opposing self-control to self-expression, it makes the former an indispensable means to the latter. In these days of intellectual unrest, grave mischief is being done by those catchwords which exalt ‘ ' self-expression ’ ^ over self-discipline as if the two were antagonistic and the former alone were worth cultivating. The attraction of such appeals for our youth lies in their protest against the many cruelties and tyrannies inflicted by the restraints of former days. But these teachings encourage evil also — ^slavery to caprice and passion, the tyranny of the animal in man over the essentially human. Is it self-expression to yield to the insistence of the mementos desire, or is it self-expression to resist that tyranny in the interests of the self which can look before and after? Perhaps the mistake has been that we have preached self-restraint as somehow desirable for its own sake, which it certainly is not. A sounder teaching would put forward as a motive the expression of personality (as distinguished from the egotism intent on its own ^ ^individ¬ uality”)^ and show how personality is as little possible without self-discipline as the proficiency of the musician or athlete without severe courses in training. In an ideal democracy, this development of personality in each is encouraged by the free cooperation of all. The penal law, however, is still required at our present stage of evolution to remind all the community, and especially the weaker persons in it, that we live in societies. There are those who need little, if any, of such assistance from the laws, and there are those whom no laws, howsoever strict, deter. In between, however, are multitudes whom the exist¬ ence of the laws helps, at least in part, to impose upon themselves restraints which they might otherwise be less 3 See pp. 40, 45, 68. ETHICAL USES OF FREEDOM 23 ready to practice. Obedience to the law is thus a prime requisite in ethical training. In this connection, we must acknowledge to ourselves and to our students that we can be a more genuinely law-abid¬ ing people than we like to fancy we are. This refers not so much to the light-hearted way in which we pass laws and then flout them, nor yet to the fact that in the world’s record for homicides and robberies, we hold the dubious honor of showing the largest percentage, but to the fact that so much of our law-breaking is done by persons who are held to be quite respectable. In 1913 and 1914, for example, there was a labor outbreak in Colorado in the course of which shots were exchanged on both sides, homes were burned, and even women and children were killed. It was only after blood had been spilled that a dazed public opinion learned that for years the mine-owners had openly violated state laws forbidding the very practices against which the workers had risen Our lynchings and other resorts to mob violence are another national disgrace. The evil would be easier to cope with if it were the conduct only of the disreputable. But in most of our expressions of mob spirit, whether directed against negroes or against whites holding unpopular opin¬ ions on economics or politics, the sad fact is that these violators of the law are counted ‘‘good” citizens. As Pro¬ fessor Commons put it, “By a queer inversion of thought, a crime committed jointly by many is [deemed] not a crime but a vindication of justice, just as a crime committed by authority of a nation is not a crime but a virtue. ’ ’ ® The 4 See ‘‘Report of Commission on Industrial Relations” ( Government Printing Office, 1916), Vols. VII and VIII. 8 John R. Commons, Immigrants and Races in America, p. 174. See pp. 174-176 for list of these violations prior to 1907, when the book was written. Since then the clash of conservative and radical opinions has increased the occasions for such outrages. For more recent in¬ stances, see Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Freedom of Speech. 24 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH passing of more drastic laws will not help us much. Our chief weapon must be the creation of a new spirit. Schools, churches, papers everywhere must teach that lawlessness is not at all disinfected by being collective or by proclaiming itself an agency of justice. The self-restraint essential to genuine freedom is particularly needed at those times when it is easiest to assert some “ moral’ ^ sanction for letting one’s self go. Free institutions require also an unflagging public spirit, and, at the same time, they can do much to promote it. It is commonly assumed that free citizens will be more keenly concerned in the understanding of public affairs and in taking an active part in shaping them than the subjects of autocrats. Such an interest is apt to be true, however, only where the freedom is relatively new. Carl Schurz tells in his Reminiscences how he noticed in farmers who had emi¬ grated to America from Germany in the ’fifties and ’six¬ ties, a decided broadening of mental horizon due to the wish to make the best use of their new freedom. But men ’s interest in public affairs tends rather to diminish as they grow accustomed to their liberties and as the contrast with the former subjection fades. This is one of the outstanding facts which Viscount Bryce is compelled to note many times in his survey of modern democracies.® Over and again he points out how people seem to choose to be ‘^well- governed rather than self -governed. ” That is, so long as their immediate liberties are not too palpably infringed upon, they seem inclined to be quite satisfied to leave public affairs entirely in the hands of the few. The mischief lies less in the harm which a governing oligarchy can do than in the deplorable wasting of the great opportunity offered by self-government, the moral value in the practice of civic responsibility. Political freedom is precious for the chance it offers to learn by such practice James Bryce, Modern Democracies, Vol. II, pp. 341, 546 ETHICAL USES OP FREEDOM 25 the meaning of ethical interdependence. It is a pity that so many fail to nse the opportunity and let their freedom mean no more than the hasty casting of a ballot once a year, when the issue is sufficiently exciting ! What education can do to lay the foundations of public spirit is indicated in succeeding chapters. One special task it can certainly set itself : It can try to teach our future citizens the duty of forming intelligent judgments and — it is no anti-climax — the obligation to read newspapers sensibly. Almost a century ago, De Tocqueville wondered how a voting public was ever going to get the inform mation needed to reach correct judgments: ^‘Long and patient observation ... is required to form a just esti¬ mate of the character of a single individual ; and can it be supposed that the vulgar have the power of succeeding in an inquiry which misleads the penetration of genius itself ? ’ ^ To-day the task of the voter is harder than it was then. Not only must he pass judgment on men and measures within our own borders, but he also must know what is going on in that outside world from which America has now ceased to be isolated. Public spirit to-day includes the duty of understanding international problems. Behind the jest of the public official who said, ‘‘A year ago I did not know whether the Ukraine was a country or a musical instrument,^’ lies a truth of exceedingly sober import for millions of us. A country is not free when its judgments are recorded in ignorance. It is not self-governing when it is misled by newspapers which either deliberately suppress or distort news, or else innocently convey misleading impressions by the undue prominence given to news of scandals, murders, athletic contests and the trivialities of ward politics and high ‘ ‘ society. ’ ’ ® 7 Democracy in America, Vol. I, p. 215. 8 See Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, p. 174: “[Our] troubles go back ... to the failure of self-governing people to transcend their 26 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Not the least essential is the self-discipline needed to be fair to views or personalities uncongenial to our own in a country where, for instance, the race problem is so grave, and where new cleavages of opinion are creating new dis¬ turbances. Toleration and the more admirable virtue of positive appreciation are not gifts with which we are born. They must be acquired in the sweat of constant effort inces¬ santly renewed. On the side of prejudice and intolerance fight many an animal instinct and many an unworthy acquisition in our social heritage. On the other side, aU the harder battle must be waged by the relatively newer forces of moral insight, respect for differences, and disin¬ terested love of truth and fair play.® That our country is capable of summoning the moral resources we need in order rightly to govern ourselves few will deny. Our educational institutions must lead by a casual experience and their prejudice by inventing, creating, and organizing a machinery of knowledge. . . . Governments, schools, newspapers, churches make . . . small headway against . . . violent prejudice, apathy, preference for the curious trivial as against the dull important, and the hunger for sideshows and three-legged calves.” 9 In the case of the negro, to mention but one instance, all help should be offered to those public-spirited whites and blacks in the South who are trying to establish right relations between the two races. These words by a negro poet put a question which no citizen anywhere dares ignore; “How would you like to have us, as we are? Or sinking ’neath the load we bear? Our eyes fixed forward on a star Or gazing empty in despair? Rising or falling? Men or things? With dragging pace or footsteps fleet? Strong, willing sinews in your wings? Or tightening chains about your feet?” “A Negro to America,” from Fifty Tears and Other Poems, by J, W. Johnson. ETHICAL USES OP FREEDOM 27 better teaching of freedom than heretofore. They can give practice in self-government. They can teach in other ways right attitudes toward those who differ. History, geography, civics, literature, ethics, can all be drawn upon to show how freedom requires respect for both majority and minority. The impatient need to be warned against dis- heartenment at the slowness or the rejection with which ideas radiantly clear to themselves are greeted by their fellow men. What a madhouse the world would be if every¬ one who has a plan of reform had the power to carry out his scheme as quickly as he wished! The only justifica¬ tion for giving your plan the right of way over the hundred others proposed by their own equally ardent advocates is that yours is better. But we cannot discover this fact if each of the hundred conflicting schemes receives the instant enactment that its champions desire. Those who are impa¬ tient at the slowness required to sift proposals and to per¬ suade a sufficient number to that genuine conviction without which laws can never be executed, must name a better way, if they can, to make freedom bear fruit of justice. At the same time, there is a need to which our country is by no means fully awake, the need of that respect for minorities to which reference has already been made. There never yet was a single worth-while achievement of the human race which did not begin with some minority person or group. The very freedom on which we pride ourselves to-day goes back to the work of minority dissenters whose courage and persistence we are all more prone to praise than to imitate. When we ourselves are comfortable, it is hard to see why others should not be equally contented with things as they are. Like the A ^henians whom Socrates sought to prod into an open-eyed understanding of the ‘‘justice’^ they so easily talked about, we fail many times to appreciate the worth in critics whose frankness hurts our mental ease or our pride. ‘ ‘ Somebody to ask disagree- 28 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH able questions and to utter uncomfortable truths,*^ as Lowell put it, is always needed to make us all reexamine and thereby improve our heritage of freedom. Perhaps no community to-day will allow its Socrates to tell it that he deserves to be rewarded by maintenance at public expense, but our schools and colleges can do vastly more than they have done to place the function of the social gadfly in its true light. It is only as men learn to respect those who differ from themselves that they can prove them¬ selves worthy of democratic citizenship. The ideal of free¬ dom is the fullest interplay of excellences, and especially be it remembered, of excellences which are distinctive. \ These are some of the ethical implications of freedom which a democratic education should continually seek to clarify. The finer the types of human relationship we see that freedom can encourage, the more highly shall we prize the gift and want to improve it. In the strictest sense, no person, no group, is ever free. The absolutely unfettered expression of one^s unique per¬ sonality is impossible to creatures of flesh and blood. We are limited by our temperament, physique, age, sex, race, by all sorts of biological traits and environing conditions. Why then speak of freedom at all? For the same reason that we speak of other ideals. Impossible as it is to reach them, the grandeur of a life lies in the measure to which their light gleams through it. Under their leading we see where it is best that our faces be turned. The better the use we make of our various freedoms, the better we learn the nature of that highest type of give and take in which each life encourages every other to express its most dis¬ tinctive powers. The freedom which is most worth prizing I and which dignifies the struggles of men to achieve and to improve political liberty or civil or religious liberty, is this ever finer process of reciprocal release. ETHICAL USES OF FREEDOM 29 These spiritual claims are denied to-day by those who insist upon the likeness of man to the rest of creation and who often, without seeming to be aware of the fact, con¬ demn man to fatalism, ruling out the creative possibil¬ ities without which a real progress can never exist. The truth is forgotten that only on one side of his being is man ^s life shaped by the forces affecting all natural things. He is also capable of asserting citizenship in a world where another rule obtains. In the one realm, we are indeed fellow members with trees and stones and stars. In that world, the law is that a given set of causes can always be counted upon to produce a given set of consequences. If a tree falls to the ground, we can trace the act back to its causes in the loosening of the ground by rain, the velocity of winds, due, in turn, to such and such other natural antecedents. Human conduct can be explained in the same way, but with the all-important difference that the explanation is radically incomplete. It is only on one side of his make-up that man comes under the rule of the natural order. Although his mis¬ deeds can be traced back to his physical constitution, the nerves which he has inherited, his schooling, and other influences in his environment, this application of the law which holds for natural objects does not explain him as fully as it can explain the happenings in things. He is capable of responding to a law of a wholly different kind, the law, namely, of being governed, not by what has gone before, but by what he knows ought to he. A man can frame an image of what he never was but knows he should become, and, under the prompting of that ideal, he can hold himself to account for better conduct than he has yet dis¬ played. He is capable of being ruled, not only by causes, but by ends, and by ends that are better than the projec¬ tion of such desires as he shares with the animal world. Whether, in particular instances, he will respond to the 30 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH call of such ends, he can tell only after he has tried. The way to prove the capacity for such freedom is to try to exercise it, and then to try again without cease. Witness to the reality of this higher nature is home every day. Condorcet in the shadow of the guillotine busying himself on a sketch of the future progress of the human race; Spinoza putting by the offer of the prince in order to preserve his intellectual freedom ; Robert Louis Stevenson, racked by tuberculosis, yet send¬ ing out his brave words to weaker fellow mortals; Louis Pasteur, stricken with paralysis, but forcing himself to dictate notes on his scientific findings — these, and all others who rise above the impulses natural enough to beings of clay, in order to assert the worthier human promptings, illustrate, if only in limited measure, what freedom at its best can mean. To help all men release in themselves that which liberates the highest life in their fellow beings is the aim that makes our external freedoms worth devel¬ oping. Questions and Problems 1. It has been said that most men dread freedom because it implies responsibility. What is the good in shouldering responsibility? 2. Read Wordsworth^s ‘^Ode to Duty” and his “Character of the Happy Warrior.” Comment on the ideal of freedom. 3. Would you consider a happy hermit as necessarily more “free” than a citizen in an American community? 4. Explain Goethe^s sentence, “He alone is worthy of freedom, as of life, who wins it for himself each day.” 5. Show the relation of freedom and law in the rejoicing of the Psalmist: “Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.” 6. Can you explain why America is more given to lynch law and to suppression of minority opinion than Europe? 7. Give instances where men and women have benefited mankind by their ideas but were intensely disliked by contemporaries. 8. Read H. H. Goddard^s Juvenile Delinquency and show how ETHICAL USES OF FREEDOM 31 the cases there listed can be traced back to social negligence. Report on conditions in your own community and also on the forces at work in behalf of better conditions. 9. What can the schools do to carry out such recommendations as those in the report of the Chicago Commission on Race Relations? (See “References.”) 10. “Food, clothing, shelter are but a scaffolding on which the nobler house of the soul is to bQ> reared.” Show why it is necessary for social reform to keep this fact in the fore¬ ground. References See, besides references quoted in text: Adams, Henry, The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. Bryce, James, American Commonwealth. Lippman, Walter, Drift or Mastery. Lowell, J. R., Democracy. Mangold, G. B., Problems of Child Welfare. Mecklin, J. M.,* Introduction to Social Ethics, Part I. “The Negro in Chicago : A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot,” Chicago Commission on Race Relations. “Public Opinion and the Steel Strike,” Report of Interchurch Commission. “Report of Commission on Industrial Relations” (Government Printing Office, 1916), Vol. I, pp. 92-100. Shafer, Robert, Progress and Science, Ch. VI. Smith, J. A., The Spirit of American Government, Ch. XI, XII. Tufts, J. H., Our Democracy : Its Origins and Its Tasks. Turner, F. J., The Frontier in American History. CHAPTER Iir THE MEANING OP EQUALITY In what sense can people be said to be equal? Like ‘‘freedom/’ the word “equality” also requires an under¬ standing of its ethical presuppositions. The negative meanings of the term are usually understood with greater clearness than the affirmative. The reason is that in the beginnings of our national history, ‘ ‘ equality ’ ’ provided an object on which men could unite against something wrong. The idea, however, has been less useful and, in some respects, even harmful, as an affirmative principle. Citizens of a democracy, to-day’s and to-morrow’s, have every need to understand both these consequences of a cherished doc¬ trine. Its practical importance arose from its utility as a rally¬ ing cry against the aristocratic idea of a divine right to rule. Thus it summoned the French in 1789 against oppression from the nobility. It served a similar purpose in America where relief was sought from the unjust impo¬ sitions of the ruling classes in England. The idea is true enough when it means that no class is entitled to exploit other men or even to rule unwilling subjects for their own good. “No man is good enough to rule another man with¬ out that man’s consent.” In this sense of protest against exploitation, the ideals of equality have found a deserved place in the tradition of modern civilized society. But our democracy has by no means cared to examine what the doctrine means on its positive side. Once an unjust domin¬ ion has been removed, are the former victims still equal? 32 THE MEANING OF EQUALITY 33 If so, in what sense? Imagine a train to he held up by highwaymen. Some of the passengers are highly intelli¬ gent, others are stupid ; some are old, some are young ; some are business men, some artists, some scientists, some swindlers, and a few, let us permit ourselves to fancy, are saints. Nobody would deny that these diverse types are for the time being all alike in their just desire' to escape robbery. Suppose, however, the highwaymen are beaten off. Will it do to continue thinking of the passengers as equals ? If so, in what does this positive equality consist ? The loose, uncritical acceptance of equality as an affirm¬ ative principle works harm enough. It is inconsistent with the idea of liberty unless there is some guarantee that no one will use his freedom and his equality to work hurt. Where all start alike and unfettered, the stronger come to dominate. They may overrule and even crush the weaker. They may reach a position of privilege which obstructs the efforts of other groups to rise. This is what has happened in our economic life. We began as a nation of small farmers, small merchants, more or less on an equal footing. It was taken for granted that if all men began equal in the race for prosperity, with no artificial privileges, only natural fitness would assure final success. If a man found conditions undesirable, there was plenty of free land to which he could move. The theory reflecting this state of affairs still rules the thinking of the majority to-day and is still taught to the young, even though in practice it has resulted in perpetuating grave inequality. The free lands have been taken up. No emi¬ grant from the East to an unoccupied domain in the West can count himself the equal of a lumber king or of the rail¬ road owning many square miles of territory. Nor can the individual coal miner, one in thousands employed by an operating company, bargain on equal terms with the oper¬ ators, The failure to grasp this point has made America 34 EDUCATION FOE. MORAL GROWTH much slower to recognize the labor union than Europe has been. In Europe the fiction of equality has played no such disturbing part. Over here, it has embittered our indus¬ trial quarrels and put huge obstacles in the way of progress to better relations.^ We are learning to-day that the doctrine of equality as a protection in the law court is likewise untrue to the facts. We have acted on the assumption that the one who suffers a grievance could stand on equal terms in court with the one who had done him wrong. But a bulletin entitled “Justice to the Poor,” issued in 1919 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, declares: “The traditional method of providing justice has operated to close the doors of the courts to the poor and has caused a gross denial of justice ... to millions of persons. For instance, many thousands of men have been unable to col¬ lect their wages honestly earned.” The existence of char¬ itable legal-aid societies is cited as evidence that outside help has been required to obtain just administration of the law. No such charity would be needed if the equality were a fact. If one party to a suit is poorer, he is less able to wait during the long delays so frequent in our court pro¬ cedures or to print appeals or engage more expert counsel. The new generation must not be brought up on concep¬ tions which no longer fit the facts. Our failure to ask precisely what equality should mean has already left too 1 We hear it said sometimes, for example, that equality requires that if a workingman is to be free to quit work whenever he thinks best, his employer, therefore, possesses the unrestricted right to dis¬ charge him at pleasure. This might have been true in the days when the individual worker and the individual employer stood on relatively much the same footing. Is it true, however, to-day? When the head of the Steel Trust, for example, discharges a worker, does the master face anything like the hardship encountered by the man? Do the stockholders have to forego a meal a day, or move into cheaper resi¬ dences, or cut short the schooling of their children, as the worker often must, when he is out of a job? THE MEANING OF EQUALITY 35 many a hurtful impress. Consider how our very schooling has been harmed. The idea of equal opportunity for every¬ body was taken to mean that all the pupils must be treated alike. In every school, in a given city, every boy and girl must have the same subjects to learn, with exactly the same time allotted to each and in general the same method of instruction. Equality of opportunity was interpreted to mean absolute sameness. And the results seemed at first to warrant this interpretation as sound. All the boys and girls enjoyed an identical chance. If anyone failed to put it to its best use, whose was the fault but his own? The system was justified by the thousands of graduates who had won respect as lawyers, merchants, or statesmen. Gradually, however, disturbing questions came to be framed: ^‘Is this precious privilege, which we assume to be coming to all, really entering their lives ? Our President Garfields were indeed notable witnesses to the excellence of our democratic system. But what about these and these thousands who failed to be benefited by the chance?” We assume ordinarily that of one hundred pupils who enter the lowest elementary grade, one hundred or a slightly smaller number will be graduated. The fact is, however, that when the sixth grade is reached, only fifty pupils remain, and that of these, only twenty-five or less enter the graduating class. Many pupils drop school at fourteen, even though they have reached only the sixth grade, because they are now old enough to work for needed wages. Leaving these aside, we must stiU take into account those who may con¬ tinue their education if they wish, but who hate the schools too heartily to remain. For these there is none of the vital significance in education felt by those who elect to continue. Evidently the schooling upon which the few suc- c^ful survivors thrive, the mere ten or fifteen per cent, must be especially adapted to them alone. Our conception of democratic opportunity would be 36 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH truer to the facts if the uniqueness of each pupil were taken into account, and if unlike capacities were given their own chance to prove themselves. Unfortunately, the costly educational machinery which we must still use for many years to come operates upon the idea of sameness. In the cities, our elementary school buildings are designed to house 3,000 pupils. The principal is often no more than a business administrator who signs reports, inspects records, pays flying visits to classrooms, and checks up his teachers to see whether they have covered the required number of items in the syllabus of studies. The teacher is in charge of forty or fifty pupils and sometimes more. She is given a definite number of facts to teach in a given time. She knows that she will be rated for her work, not as she brings to blossom the special aptitudes of each child or touches each soul with the inspiration needed for its peculiar diffi¬ culties, but according as she finishes a scheduled require¬ ment in a given number of weeks. In time, therefore, she ceases to regard the forty or fifty young people before her as so many personalities, each with its special possibilities of excellent life, but looks on them as a single body of per¬ forming manikins to be rushed at the one pace through the same exercises and then judged worthy or unworthy accord¬ ing as they meet a single test for all. A democratic educa¬ tion cannot aim at subjecting the many to a uniform selec¬ tive process in which only a few will survive. Rather, it must work unceasingly to provide genuine opportunities for all the many diverse types. The aristocratic analogy that it takes a ton of pitchblende to produce a grain of radium does not apply here. Human souls are not pitchblende. Not only our schooling but our political life has suffered from loose conceptions of equality. It is undoubtedly better than hereditary rule that everybody should have the same chance as everybody else to become mayor, governor, presi¬ dent. But this has led to one of our outstanding defects, 37 THE MEANING OF EQUALITY a rather general unwillingness to elect officials whose attain¬ ments are above the average. This mistrust is due in part, no doubt, to certain weaknesses in the more expert. Some¬ times they lay themselves open to the suspicion of being unwarrantably taken with their own importance, or else, because specialists are exacting persons, they fail to make the ‘‘human,” personal accommodations for which most voters still look. On the other hand, however, our failure to draw into our political life more of the men and women we need is also due to the “ I ’m-as-good-as-you-are ” habit of mind which our equality catchwords encourage. A true product of the modes of pioneer life when everybody was much the same kind of jack-of -all-trades as his neighbor, this mental trait has been reinforced by another for which there can be less excuse — a cheap sense of uneasiness in the presence of unlike and superior ability. As De Tocqueville observed : ^ There is a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. But there exists also in the human heart the depraved taste for equality which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality in freedom. Students of negro life in America have observed how the colored man who tries to lift himself above the prevailing level of his fellow blacks has to encounter their envy, sus¬ picion and small-mindedness. But in white societies, too, the equality principle often works out in the same down- 2 A. C. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I, p. 55. This testimony has recently come from Russia: “Everybody wears th« garb of the poor. College professors and bricklayers look alike. A factory-hand in the role of a Commissar may be even better dressed than the former manager of the concern. This may not add to the happiness of the professor or the engineer, but it certainly thrills the man of the rank and file.” Moissaye Olgin, Republic, June 15, 1921. 38 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH ward-levelling fashion. It impels voters to shun the candi¬ date of superior talents and to elect the mediocrity whom they recognize as one of themselves. In general, harm has come from the tendency to make the desire for equality mean that passion for sameness and external conformity by which, as Mill says, public senti¬ ment can sometimes suppress freedom far more effectively than laws can. Just as our modem machinery turns out “standardized” goods in huge quantities, so we have been rather inclined in America to want the thoughts and the habits of people to conform to a few standardized patterns. All must wear the same kind of straw hat and accept the standard preferences in books, in art, and in political and philosophical outlook. Instead of welcoming the play of color introduced for a brief moment by our immigrants, we seek to “Americanize” them into a drab uniformity.® We are improving in this respect, no doubt, every year, but there is still occasion for such a criticism as the following comparison by an English observer, even though the stand¬ ard set by business aspirations is not necessarily due to mer¬ cenary motives ; * * » The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to enter business. . . . Public life and the Church offer honorable careers ; and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. One may even be a don or a schoolmaster without serious discredit. Under these conditions a young man can escape from the stifling pressure of the business point of view. . . . He can choose to be poor without feeling that he will therefore become despicable. The attitude of the business classes in England, no doubt, is much the same as that of the business classes in America. But in England there are other classes and other traditions, havens of 3 For the better way, see Americanization Studies (Harper & Bros. ) . *G. Lowes Dickinson, Appearances, p. 199. THE MEANING OF EQUALITY 39 refuge from the prevalent commercialism. In America, the trade wind blows broad, steady, universal, over the length and breadth of the continent. . . . [And its results are] monotony of talk, monotony of ideas, monotony of aim, monotony of outlook on the world. This mistaken tendency some quarters of our country have begun to outgrow, and the process will continue as we increase our contacts with Europe, especially with such lands as France. In no country in the world is it easier for men to vary in their preferences without fear of being regarded as mild lunatics. To be different from one's neighbor does not in France invite such more or less overt objection as it draws among us. On the contrary, the dif¬ ferences stimulate precisely the qualities which have made France par excellence the land of taste, the center attract¬ ing creative minds from every corner of the globe. ^ ‘ To us art is an addition to life, a luxury; to the French it is a way of living ... a quality of everyday existence without which life is not considered worth while. ’ ' ® Give us time, we say, and we, too, will give the world a great cultural con¬ tribution. Many signs of hope in this direction have already begun to appear. But in the meanwhile let us not blink the fact that most of our product in hooks and news¬ papers, in magazines, in song and drama, and not least, in our political and ethical opinions, bears the mark of being turned out ready-made to meet a uniform and not over- critical demand. We have not yet learned the important truth that equality must not imply sameness in thinking, acting and feeling. As against the uniformity idea, we need the reminder that culture is best in the measure that it diversifies the minds which it touches. The cultivated man becomes the more genuinely educated the more true he is to himself instead 5 John Erskine, Democracy and Ideals, p. 83. 40 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH of duplicating other minds. He is saved from isolation and eccentricity by the circumstance that the truest living is a matter of right relationship with other and diverse per¬ sonalities. A nature which is genuinely original, like Michelangelo ^8 or Beethoven’s, proves its vast difference from mere freakishness by its gift of provoking productive originality in other men. America’s culture will come to grander fruitage when originality is encouraged, not solely or chiefly in business, but in all fields of endeavor. These instances have been adduced to point the need of examining what equality means on its positive side. The “nature” which the French Revolutionists invoked cer¬ tainly did not create all men equal, except in the brute fact that all alike are bom and then die. The Declaration of Independence called all men equal in the right to life, lib¬ erty, and the pursuit of happiness. But we have already seen that nothing so surely accentuates inequality as the almost boundless liberty which our nation so long glorified and which we have been more and more obliged to restrict by law. And the “pursuit of happiness” has been inter¬ preted chiefly in terms of comfort and economic prosperity. To the majority of our fellow citizens, equality has meant something quite like the thought of the old woman, the cher¬ ry-seller, who, when the revolutionary mob stormed the Tuil- eries, plumped herself on the queen’s bed with the remark, “It is now time for the nation to be comfortable.” We shall never rise to any notable excellence if we con¬ tinue to teach young people that the equality to be most prized is equality in the pursuit of comfort or prosperity, or even of happiness. It is the duty of a democratic society to equalize as far as possible the initial opportunities only in so far as there are worthy ends to which these opportu¬ nities minister. The things that look good to men are good only to the extent that they promote men ’s spiritual growth. 41 THE MEANING OF EQUALITY It is in the need for such growth that we find the truest equality. Men are equal in the sense that potentially they are all spiritual beings. At the least, this requires that they must not be used as tools for the purposes of others. In feudal times no such principle was accepted. Men did not count at all for what they were in themselves. They were rated not on the ground of an intrinsic worth, but on their value to those above them. Each level of society found its reason for existence in the fact that the grade above had some use for it. In the lowest grade, men and women were treated little better than the cattle or the implements on a farm. The doctrine of equality, however, says in effect that every person possesses worth, not value to some superior, but intrinsic preciousness. ^ This fact of an inherent, absolute worth, a dignity about man as such, is of the utmost importance. It is a claim to which democratic culture should pay chief honors; and it must rest upon firmer grounds than those usually asserted. The usual plea is the one popularized in the eighteenth cen¬ tury by such poets as Thomas Gray. In his ^ ^ Elegy, ’ ’ Gray is thinking of the people who are too poor to be buried within the church. He contrasts the monuments inside with the uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculptures in the yard without. He notes the many differences in order to empha¬ size the human qualities which rich and poor share alike. Both love their homes, both regret to leave their loved ones behind, both desire to be remembered after death. And even in these obscure folk there are all sorts of undeveloped gifts, talents which, given their chance, make statesmen, singers, writers ; Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 42 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Now it would be easy to treat all people with the respect required by the affirmation of equality, if it were true that all were alike in possessing great but undeveloped talents. The stubborn fact remains, however, that with every opportunity in the world, many persons cannot reach distinguished excellence simply because they have not the gifts. It is said that there are just about a dozen mathe¬ maticians in the world capable of really following Einstein. It does no good to dodge the fact of great inequalities of natural endowment. It is hardly likely that all the folk in the churchyard could have done the things that Thomas Gray did with his special powers. Nor is their love of kin and their unwillingness to die the greatest fact about them. These traits they share with animals, concerning whom we not predicate the equality asserted of men. Human beings, however, we do right in declaring equal in spite of the obvious inequalities. The reason is that all are spiritual beings and, as such, in duplicable and irreplace¬ able. This idea will be developed in the chapter that fol¬ lows. In practice it means that all persons are alike in having something of that higher nature which shows itself chiefly in the will to do right. Not all can compose poetry, but all can try to live right lives. Here was the level on which the unlettered peasant might indeed stand as the equal of Thomas Gray — the plane where, by trying to do his duties as he understood them, each showed himself most truly the man. Here, in the capacity for moral growth, and in the duty to achieve such growth, all persons must be counted alike. Irresponsible as some people, no doubt, prove themselves, even these are not to be treated as of no worth. If they are ever to manifest but the slightest sign of moral responsibility, these, too, must be regarded as per¬ sons, not things. This- is a basic assumption for the teaching of ethics in a democracy. Political equality says in effect that to all THE MEANING OP EQUALITY 43 rational beings is paid the great honor of assuming that they are capable of appreciating their responsibilities and of trying to live up to them. A tribute to an essential dignity in man is implied, even though his achievements are often so lamentable. No groups are to be permanently debarred from offering their services to the community or from a share in deciding the objects of the services. On the con¬ trary, every encouragement is to be given, because the hope of democracy lies in the fact that by trying to measure up to these responsibilities, each citizen can make himself the better being. That the practice is often a deplorable caricature of the ideal must be admitted. All the more reason, therefore, for trying to understand how excellent is the instrument whose value we so frequently fail to prize. Such a conception not only recognizes the inequalities on which the aristocratic foes of democracy in the nine¬ teenth century, from Carlyle to Nietzsche, have never tired of harping, but it insists upon political equality in order that the valuable inequalities may be freer to enter into more fruitful interplay. Its hope is that men thus will learn to see which inequalities are really the most deserving. The time may yet come, undemocratic as it now sounds to say so, when, every man having received the utmost oppor¬ tunity to educate himself, our franchise may be so graded as to give the abler minds a voting power in excess of that allowed to the majority.® Meanwhile our present equality is justified by the fact that in the long run people are more likely to profit from their own errors than from the guid¬ ance of the wisest and most benevolent of despots, if such can anywhere be found. The point to impress is that all men are equal in the obligation to give their best and that they need every help they can offer one another to make this best still better. 0 See Mark Twain, The Curious RepuhUc of Gondour. 44 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH For this reason, necessary as it is under present conditions to keep our equality in voting power, our education should do more than it does now to remind us that democracy calls for an ethics aware not only of the likenesses but of the unlikenesses. Both facts are essential. All men are equal in being needed to perform their services, but neither the services nor the capacities to render them are alike. But all people are equal in that each is expected to do his special best. Each owes it to all the others to do his work in such a way that they will be able to do theirs better. In other words, our culture should tell us that there is a great fund of human experience linking the ages past, present, and to come, a treasury of right practice and insight to which all must contribute their choicest. Some have already made such excellent contributions that we look up to them with special reverence, ‘‘the noble living and , the noble dead.’^ There are others who, each in his own way, are engaged with us now in increasing the fund. Then there are those less developed to whom we transmit the fund and whom we try to teach to put forth their unique offerings. Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow are alike in being needed to enrich the fund, equal in the fact of par¬ ticipating in this overarching responsibility. Such a placing of the accent upon duty escapes the evil done when all the emphasis is put upon rights. In our own country, the latter stress has led all too frequently to the “I’m-as-good-as-you-are” attitude and the levelling downward which we have seen to be so common and so hurtful. The dog-in-the-manger attitude is another such expression. Once, however, the rule for life is expressed in terms not of demand for rights but of performance of duties, we accept in better part the fact that not all can offer the same gifts. My vote does not voice the wisdom of the specialist in civic affairs ; but it should speak the same desire as his to do what is best for the country. The THE MEANING OF EQUALITY 45 equality lies neither in the magnitude of the offering nor in its specific nature but in the fact that it is a needed offering and is given in the right spirit. This view further saves us from glorifying the * ‘ individ¬ uality’^ which is mainly selfishness or may often be a love of novelty for its own sake. A genuine personality, as already stated, is marked by its creative influence upon other personalities, an effect impossible for the individual¬ ist who chafes at the fact of interdependence. On the other hand, conformity can by no means be the master-word for a progressive civilization as complex as our own. The clue to right relationship is to keep in sight the thought that there is in everyone something found only in him and that each is to treat his fellow men in such ways that this dis¬ tinctive power in the one shall call out into more effective interaction the distinctive nature in all the others. *‘No head,” said Walt Whitman, “is without its nimbus of gold-colored light.” In a society shaped on ethical lines, each life — single or group — ^would make its own objects so worthy that instead of thwarting the development of the self symbolized by that nimbus, each would encourage every other. Positive equality means, then, that in the work of bring¬ ing to light the hidden promise in men, all are needed. A democratic education will make a point of clarifying end¬ lessly the splendid prospects opened up by this truth. In the process of contributing their gifts to the collective task thus indicated, men will be able to feel a new sense of some¬ thing in themselves inalienably great. Questions and Problems 1. Read the description of frontier life in Hamlin Garland’s Son of the Middle Border. Show how these conditions encouraged the traditional conception of freedom and equality. 46 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 2. Contrast these conditions with the life of to-day. 3. What kind of superiority do you think is most honored by the majority of people in America? 4. Should natural ability be rewarded in proportion to its ^ superiority? For example, should a man ten times abler than another receive ten times as much? 5. What other appeals than greater material payment may be used to induce men to perform public services? 6. What danger is there in to-day’s swing toward the assertion of natural inequality? What advantages may it have? 7. If civilization needs leaders, how should we go about get¬ ting them? 8. Discuss the thought of Robert Burns in ‘‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That.” 9. Comment on the statement: ^‘Thou canst not choose thy task, perhaps, but thou canst choose to do it well.” What kind of equality would you define as best? References See, besides references quoted in text: Adler, Felix, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, Book IV, Ch. L Arnold, Matthew, Discourses in America. Bryce, James, Modern Democracies, Ch. VII. Carlyle, Thomas, Past and Present. MacCunn, John, The Ethics of Citizenship, Ch. 1. Tufts, J. H., Our Democracy: Its Origins and Its Tasks, Ch. XXVI, XXVII. Turner, F. J., The Frontier in American History, CHAPTER IV THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL Our examination thus far has shown us that such favor¬ ite doctrines as freedom and equality rest on certain funda¬ mentally ethical assumptions and that a democratic life must try to know more and more about these ideals. But the term “ethical’^ has a variety of meanings, and we shall now attempt to define it as it is used in these pages. It is not expected that only as here understood should the word apply. All who are concerned about ethical progress will no more agree upon the first principles here sketched than they will belong to the same church, and readers who are not interested in philosophy may, indeed, skip this chap¬ ter. But just as it helps us to understand the new “learn¬ ing-by-doing” if we know its relation to the Pragmatist philosophy of Professor Dewey, so will the ideals suggested in this book be better understood if their background is pointed out. They are indebted in largest measure to the teachings offered for many years to philosophy classes ^t Columbia University by Dr. Felix Adler and recently brought together in his Ethical Philosophy of Life. The starting point is an outstanding fact of moral expe¬ rience. We are somehow impelled to regard every human being as worth while on his own account, at the very least as entitled to protection against outrage. We have no compunctions, for instance, against using a horse as a beast of burden and then selling him. We may not so treat a man. We eat animal food, but even the starving may not 47 48 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH practice cannibalism. We protest against child labor, against slavery, against the degradation of women to men’s appetites, against tyranny, against injustice of what¬ ever kind, on the ground that such conduct sins against an essential sacredness in people. The experience is familiar enough. Every outcry against the oppression of man by man, or against whatever is morally hideous, is but the affirmation of the cardinal principle that a human being, as such, is not to be violated, is not to be handled like a tool, but is to be respected and revered as an end per ^ This fact of human worth, which the best of human practice by implication honors, is of prime importance even though ethics is usually spoken of as a theory of “values.” But the oonception of value is decidedly less fundamental than that of worth. Observe the difference between the two : ^ Value is subjective. The worth notion is the most objective conceivable. . . . We possess value for one another for the reason that each of us has wants which the others alone are capable of satisfying. . . . But value ceases when the want or need is grati¬ fied. The value which one human being has for another is tran¬ sient. There are in the strict sense no permanent values. The value which the majority have for the more advanced and developed members of a community is small ; from the standpoint of value, most persons are duplicable and dispensable. Consider only the ease with which factory labor is replaced, in consequence of the prolific fertility of the human race. The relationships of men cannot but be influenced in one way or another by convictions, or the lack of them, on these fundamental matters: When we review our life, how little as a rule have we occasion to be content with ourselves! How many wayside flowers, per¬ haps, have we trampled upon! If we have not oppressed others, 1 Felix Adler, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, p. 103. 2 76id., p. 117. THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 49 yet how often have we suppressed in others powers and capabili¬ ties simply because we had no use for them, because they did not fit into the hard and fast frame of our own Opinions and predilec¬ tions which tyrannously we impose on others as a law ! * It makes a difference whether human life is invested with the supreme dignity of worth, not merely that of value. This idea of man as an end in itself received its first phil¬ osophic formulation from Immanuel Kant. But important as it was to say that no man should ever be treated as a mere means to the ends of other men, Kant failed to supply a solid justification for the statement. It is not easy to explain just why human beings should be regarded as intrinsically worth while, but in the interests of a better grasp upon the principles of a democracy which implicitly requires such an attitude toward people, it is essential to get all possible light upon a conception so basic. There are leaders of public opinion to-day who roundly deny any sacredness to the life of man, biologists who insist that the differences between human and animal existence are of slight account, if indeed such differences there are at all, fatalists who rule out of reckoning the power of so-called ideals, scorners of democracy who can see in the great swarms of men nothing in the least deserving of respect. But democracy insists that such respect be shown. The claim is too important to be left to the mercy of chance winds of doctrine. It cannot be based on the fact implied in some of to-day’s social philosophies: “Don’t tread on the man below — he has the power to strike back.” This is a philosophy of strife. Its results throughout the world have been devastating enough. Its pitting of power against power shows the need for a philosophy of justice. Why labor for social reform? Is a man entitled to more human living conditions for no better reason than the fact that 3 Adler, Ethical Addresses, 1903, p. 28. 50 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH otherwise he will do mischief 1 Or even because he is simply to be pitied for to-day’s inequities? Animals, too, can be pitied, but persons merit something better than the com¬ miseration we feel for suffering beasts. Moreover, our ethical convictions must be able to meet the disillusioning experiences which very few of us can ever avoid. Even where our philosophy of life is not pessimistic, a dispassionate survey of human conduct inclines us often to doubt whether there is anything about men so very worth respecting at all. The writer was once asked, “Why do you speak of the spiritual nature as the ‘real’ self? Is it not a fact that the real self in many people is their selfish¬ ness, their conceit, their spitefulness, their cruelty ? ’ ’ The existence of such qualities does indeed give frequent pause to people’s ethical enthusiasms. So does the fact that what we are pleased to call virtues are often qualities of surface attractiveness or else disguised vices. There was once a professor of Greek at Harvard who used to tell his classes that the 300 Spartans died at Thermopylae, because if they had gone home, their own countrymen would have slain them. Often it is extremely hard to say how far the acts we admire as superbly “moral” may not have their baser admixture. Besides, the commonplaceness of the lives led by enormous multitudes, the bovine placidity with which they do little more than tread the usual round of work and pleasure, would scarcely seem to warrant a philosophy of life based upon an inherent greatness in men as such. It would be folly to ignore these facts. To frame a world view without them simply increases the hold which the pessimists obtain by playing up, as they do, the ugly facts to the full. It is here that the spiritual philosophy of Dr. Adler offers us the needed light. In spite of the things that otherwise shake our faith in men, it insists upon our remembering the basic fact that men possess not mere value THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 51 but worth. This means that a man must somehow he unique, not a duplicate. If he is a duplicate, he can be spared. If, however, he has worth, he cannot be replaced but is indispensable. - Worth signifies indispensableness in a perfect whole. No detached thing has worth. No part of an incomplete system has worth. Worth belongs to those to whom it is attributed in so far as they are conceived of as not to be spared, as representing a distinctive, indispensable preciousness, a mode of being without which perfection would be less than perfect. To rate anyone as an end per se means that in a world regarded as perfect his exist¬ ence would be indispensable. The world we know may not be perfect, is not perfect; but we do conceive of an ideal world that is. And to ascribe to anyone the quality of worth ... is to place him into that world, to regard him as potentially a member of it.^ What is the scheme of this perfect order ? In a perfect work of art, nothing is missing and nothing is superfluous, not a word in the poem, or a note in the symphony, or a color or line in the painting. So in the world of perfect moral being, all who are there are necessary, and all who are necessary are there. This is the first reason for calling it perfect. In the second place, this ideal is qualitatively perfect because the relation of its members cannot be improved upon ; that is, each life is so related to every other that the unique excellence of each is the very condition which guarantees the excellence in all the others. Again the illustration from art may offer an analogy. In the perfect painting, each touch of color is made more beautiful by the fact that it stands not alone but in a totality where every other color is precisely of the tone to bring out each at its best. We call the painting perfect when each color ioes its part to help all the others reveal their utmost beauty. If there were a single color that failed to contribute to this effect, the whole would be spoiled. * Ibid., pp. 99, 101. 1 52 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Such a relation on a far more sublime scale is true of that perfect commonwealth in which the worth of every human soul is validated. The something essentially constituting your personality is the very condition that makes it pos¬ sible for me to be myself, and the same holds true in return. In other words, there is in every man something distinc¬ tively his own which all his fellow men need in order that what is distinctively theirs may shine forth the better. Looked at in the mass, all of us are in the main quite alike. We have about the same kinds of body; we eat much the same foods; we have the same need to sleep and to ward off illness ; all alike must some day die. In America alone, there are over 100,000,000 of us. As things of flesh and blood, we exhibit differences which are relatively slight, so slight that we can very easily be spared. But something in us protests against this avoirdupois estimate of human existence. Deep down at our best, we are conscious of that in us which aspires to be a creature of a rarer order than a mere consumer of food and drink. At our highest, we do differ from one another, and, in the perfect relationship, this very difference in each encourages the uniqueness in every other. Each is both giver and recipient of jets of influence whereby each is the better able to be his essential self. The practical outcome of this view will perhaps command assent from even those who do not accept the philosophic premises. The leading thought is summed up in Dr. Adler ’s maxim: *‘So act as to elicit in others their distinctive characteristics as fellow members of the infinite whole, or “ So act as to bring out in others what is genuinely worth while and thereby call it forth in ourselves. ’ * To an age like ours, whose interest in change is largely in external reforms, this may seem a strange enough leading principle to suggest for a better democracy. But some such THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 53 spiritual ideal is a pressing need. The improvements, for example, which to-day’s social justice is rightly urging^ — better houses, playgrounds, the banishing of poverty — are only tools, as much so as fountain pens are tools, capable of being used indifferently to write lies or truth, nonsense or wisdom. These tangible goods are necessary because they minister to the growth of personality; and a person¬ ality immensely finer and loftier than to-day’s must arise. The services owed to our fellow men are, in reality, acts of deference to this potential higher nature. They are not deserved by what human beings exhibit in point of fact. Men who waste the gifts that are sometimes bought with the heart’s blood of others certainly do not merit the sacrifices. These offerings are tributes to a latent excellence infinitely fairer. The reality of this higher nature nothing should allow us to forget. To keep our efforts at educational or other service from growing mechanical — as in time all such efforts become when the highest inspirations are absent — we need a vivid sense of the supreme need : there must grow in the souls of men a greatness utterly surpassing what exists now. This is what we mean by speaking of spiritual aims. The word spiritual, like so many in the moral vocabulary, has been degraded. To some people it has come to stand for a kind of sentimental hunger, a species of emotionalism which professes to scorn the things of earth or a sort of religiosity which feeds on sheer feeling as a girl might feed on a box of candy. To others the word speaks of ghosts, table-tapping, and other messages from beyond the grave. But even though the term has been misused, there is no other that so suggests the personal depths which need to be touched in our best individual and collective dealings. ‘‘There is a loftier righteousness over and beyond the right¬ eousness of the day, of which the human race has as yet caught only the sublime outline.” In another passage, the 54 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH nobler personality to be aimed at is referred to by Dr. Adler in these words ; ® The spiritual nature is like a rich mine only the upper layers of which have been grazed. Below, in the dark, in the region of the unexplored, lie the brightest jewels, the most precious gold. And the distinctions between one individual and another are like the boundaries that mark off field from field above on the surface. Beneath, regardless of the external demarcations, lies the mine. To bring to light that hidden worth, not to develop self as a thing apart, nor to help others as if they were separable from ourselves, but to develop the mine, the spiritual nature which is common to our fellow beings and ourselves, that is the aim. Let us now imagine such a relationship extended ad infin¬ itum and elevated to its utmost purity so that back and forth from each to every other in the infinite host of being, the play of stimulation works endlessly and on the loftiest of levels. In the actual life we see around us, no such spectacle is possible or ever can be. What happens even when we try our best falls pitifully short of this complete, perfect relationship we behold with the inner eye. But, in spite of our failures, this perfect life is no mere cry of the heart. It is as real as any society we call real.® And the practical counsel we draw from the vision of the perfect order is: Treat fellow beings in such ways that recognition of this spiritual society and of our membership in it becomes for them and us more compelling. People shy off sometimes at the thought of thus delib¬ erately influencing the lives of others. Is it not enough to live and let live ? But, as a matter of fact, whether we wiU or not, we are at every moment of our lives affecting others for good or ill, and, little as we may be inclined to ® Ihid., p. 26. 6 For an outline of the argument for the reality of the spiritual universe, see footnote on pages 61 and 62. The full argument is given in An Ethipal Philosophy of Life, Book II. THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 55 welcome the obligation, the duty remains of trying to make these effects good and right. For instance, if we are parents or teachers, both our knowledge and our ignorance cannot help but produce in our children consequences of one sort or another. As citizens, we affect other lives by our votes, by the public sentiment we help to strengthen, or create, or change, nay, by the very silences that shape opinion as truly as our speech. As consumers, we help to decide by the quantity and kind of goods we buy how multitudes of people are to earn their livings; by the prices we pay, the demands we make, we influence their wages, and so on in countless ways. Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor’s creed hath lent. We have no choice as to whether our conduct shall touch the lives of others or not. Our only choice is how far we will try to make those effects beneficial. Where the better possibility is open to our sight, there always the line of moral obligation is marked out for us. Here the spiritual view of life provides this guidance: We are to see in our fellow men that which the universe cannot spare; we are to help their actual humanity live up to this, and, in the process, we shall be putting fresh life into our own higher being. “Survey your many rela¬ tionships and seek to ethicize them by the conduct which calls out the consciousness of spiritual linkage.” What does this require? We are linked to our fellow beings in endless ways. For example, we are born in families and so related, albeit through no choice of our own, to parents and to brothers and sisters. The ethical relation seeks to turn this accidental bond into the means of learning the better how to get on with other people, and learning also what the best way of life is. The home is our first training ground in ethical citizenship and spiritual perception. 56 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH The school is another. So is our vocational life, and so is our life as neighbors in the community, in the nation, in the world family, in the religious fellowship. In all these relationships, there is already some tie binding us to other people, and ethical living is the attempt to spiritualize this tie by making it the means to progressive understand¬ ing of the perfect relationship. Certain hints, foregleams, suggestions of the ideal life already exist in the fact that we live even now in these various groups. In each of these, there are already at work motives which can be utilized in the interest of the spiritual relation. Thus, in the family, the members are united by a natural affection out of which is to be developed a right attitude toward those more numerous beings who are not of our kin. In the same way, we belong to vocational groups where, in the more fortunate circles, the motive is to express a talent or special gift. This vocational motive is ethicized when it becomes the desire so to use one’s gifts that fellow workers, pro¬ ducers, consumers, all in any way affected, are better enabled to give the world their best.'^ In the national life, the bond is patriotism, and this is spiritualized when it seeks to have the groups within one’s country so stimulate one another that one’s country and all the other lands may call out in one another their distinctive excellences. “The highest life in each is that which penetrates creatively into the life of the groups whereof the individual is a member. ’ ’ In each of the social institutions, or, as we may now call them, the phases of life-experience through which the individual must pass on the way toward personality, the winning of the ethical result depends on observance of the threefold reverence.^ . . . Mankind as a whole, the generations past, present, and to come, have a certain work to do. . . . The spiritual conception of this collective task is the basis of the threefold reverence. . . . Man- 7 See Chapters VI and IX in this book. 8 Based not, like Goethe’s, on pantheism, but on ethical realism. THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 57 kind partially reproduces in the present the mental and moral acquisition of ancestors, partially increases the heritage and passes it on to the newcomers. I, as an individual, am also inextricably linked up backward, and forward with those who come before and those who are to come after. . . . The task laid upon human society as a whole is also laid upon me. But much is preserved from the past that ought to be cast aside. A mixed stream, compounded of good and evil, passes through our veins into our successors\ . . . The ethical conception of progress depends on the view that there is an ideal pattern of the spiritual relation in the mind of man, destined to become more explicit as it is tested out, and that the present generation ought to appraise the heritage of the past according to this pattern, preserving and rejecting and adding its own quota in such a way as to enable the succeeding generations to sift the worthful from the worthless more successfully, and to see the ideal pattern more explicitly. The threefold reverence has been described as reverence toward superiors, equals, and inferiors. For this inadequate description I would substitute the following: In place of reverence toward superiors, reverence for the valid work of ethicizing human rela¬ tions already accomplished in the past, reverence for the precious permanent achievements and for those who achieved them. The second kind of reverence is directed toward those who are, in respect of their gifts and opportunities, approximately on the same level with us, but whose gifts differ from and are supple¬ mentary to ours. In our relation to them we may learn the great lesson of appreciating unlikeness, and working out our own correlative unlikeness by way of reaction. The third kind of reverence is directed toward the undeveloped, among whom I include the young, the backward groups among civilized peoples, and the uncivilized peoples. We are to reverence that which is potential in all these groups, and we do so by fitting ourselves to help them actualize their spiritual possibilities. Rev¬ erence of the third kind takes the highest rank among the three. . . . The unrealized possibilities of mankind are the chief asset. But in order to effectuate our purpose with respect to the undeveloped, we must have reverence toward the great Old Masters, to gain a certain standard of excellence; and reverence toward unlikeness in others to become ourselves differentiated individualities, and in order to respect the unlikeness which we shall presently likewise find in the backward and the young. So 58 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH that the three reverences play into one another and are insepa¬ rable . . . the first two being indispensable to the third.® A view of this sort, it is evident, avoids both the selfish individualism preached as democracy in so many rebellious quarters to-day and likewise the social submergence against which such individualism protests. There is a task for all mankind to perform together. * In seeking for the highest good, I cannot separate my quest so far as it concerns myself from the same quest so far as it con¬ cerns others. On the way to the highest goal, I must take my fellow beings with me. For the higher life — ^the germ of which exists in every man — is adequately represented by no man. The one represents more adequately some particular aspect of it, another a different aspect. It follows, therefore, that no one can love the higher life unless he seeks to promote it in others as well as in himself. All the so-called duties flow from the principle of the unity and interdependence of humanity in their effort toward the attainment of their goal.^® Finally, it is well to know how this philosophy enables us to meet the setbacks which life brings and of which many popular ethical teachings take but little account. The matter is important in view of the ease with which, for example, the experience of disillusion about people turns certain types of enthusiasts into pessimists. It is essential for a democracy to be progressive. But nothing is more common in the history of progress than the contrast between the achievements and the eager promises in which every forward step for mankind decked its appeals. Every reform was to usher in the millennium. Now it was popular education that was to make the earth a paradise; now it was the invention of steam by releasing men from exces¬ sive toil and allowing them to improve their minds; now it was science and modern hygiene; now it was manhood suffrage; now it was votes for women.^^ And always the » Adler, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, pp. 243 -ff. 10 Adler, Life and Destiny, p. 82. 11 See J. G. Brooks, American Syndicalism, Ch. V. THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 59 world found itself, while better off in some respects, still face to face with the old problem, ^^What are men profited if all these goods are added unto themT’ Sometimes the results of enormous effort to get a single needed reform are so slight that many people find themselves asking whether the trouble is ever worth while. How frequently have young reformers turned cynical or indifferently con¬ servative ! Here the spiritual philosophy offers an eminently prac¬ tical counsel: ^‘Convert the very frustrations into the means of quickening your spiritual insights. Let the reality of the perfect life be borne in upon you the more effectively for the very failure to find your ideals attained in the world of space and time. ’ ’ This experience is illus¬ trated every day in the lives of parents. The right sort of mother does not give up her ambitions for her children when her trust in them is disappointed. On the contrary, the failure spurs her to new effort because it raises before her mind ’s eye more piercingly the picture of her children at the ideal best which she has at heart for them. She is the victim of illusion if she imagines that these ideal qual¬ ities are already present in her boys and girls. But her ideal is no such illusion. She is aware that it is not yet fully embodied. Such is always the nature of an ideal, and besides, where an illusion would be discarded the moment we recognize it to be such, an ideal, on the other hand, is clung to with a more passionate attachment and a more penetrating sight of it as the very consequence of the failure to find it completely incarnated. The difference needs to be repeatedly stressed. Many of the new democratic watchwords make a mistake in assuming that the collective labors of men to-day and to¬ morrow will more or less rapidly usher in a reign of com¬ plete felicity. Countless young people are fascinated by such pictures as Mr. Wells draws of an earthly paradise 60 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH constructed in a century or two. But perfect life, in any true meaning of the word, can never be attained. ‘‘The perfect society is an apparition of light and beauty rising in the infinite. ’ ^ The further we climb, the more distant the perfect goal will ever be seen to be. Why then keep on ? Because, in general, it is enough to know that the perfect life is indeed perfect. This is suf¬ ficient to claim our allegiance. The rightness of the moral imperative needs no further warrant. But there are two special consequences which reward us howsoever our best endeavors fall short. One is that those who come after us will be better fitted to do their share of mankind’s unend¬ ing task. These children of ours will have their own imper¬ fections, the thwartings of their place and time, the problems of their special age to work out, the frustrations of their particular finitude. But if we pass on to them the best work we have been able to achieve and the loftiest visions we have been privileged to behold as a result of our strivings, we shall make it possible for them to do their work better, to behold visions still grander than ours and with a clearness outshining our own. And the other consequence is that out of our very thwart¬ ings, we learn to recognize anew how true is the reality of that perfect life, which, though we never reach it, we know should set the master light of our seeing. As we gain the loftier eminences, we see the snowy summits before us, touched by the light of the moral ideal, transforming themselves before our eyes into what appear to be the ramparts and the spires of the Golden City. We climb still higher, and the vision travels with us, lighting on the next succeeding range. And so on and on, as we ascend.^® Such is the ethical ideal of progress — endless effort crowned by the ever truer sight of new and more superb 12 Adler, Life and Destiny^ p. 7. 13 i&id., p. 99. THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 61 outlooks, and more insistent recognition that the perfect life is real and commanding. So far as the forward movement of the human race is con¬ cerned, it is the effort that counts, and not the attainment; the realm of space and time can never be the scene of complete real¬ ization. The reward is the wider outlook upon the ultimate aim, the truer estimate of its character as infinite, and, along with this, the recognition of that infinitude of our own nature which enables us to conceive of and to aspire to such an aim.^^ Ihid., p. 11. “Is this conception of the perfect or ethical universe anything more than a picture, a dream product, an imaginative pro¬ jection of desire ? Is it real in the sense that we know other societies or collectivities — a church congregation. New York, America — to be real?” Readers who are interested in philosophic argument we refer for answer to the detailed exposition offered by Dr. Adler in the sec¬ ond part of An Ethical Philosophy of Life. The argument in brief is that a thing is real in the degree to which our minds bring it into unity with everything else in our experience, and the perfect moral universe is the product of these reality-producing functions carried out to their ideal completeness. Things are real to us according as we are able to convert their otherwise separate elements into unities and make them hang together with all else we know. A tree is real, we say, because our minds not only grasp the separate elements, trunk, branches, leaves, etc., as a unity, and not only synthesize the sight perceptions with the touch perceptions, but because these two unifications are themselves brought into harmony with further syn¬ theses. That is, the mind relates the tree in place to other things; it says that the tree exists here next to other trees in this park, in this city, in this country; my perception of it at such and such a time can be unified with my other perceptions before and after. I recognize it as a dream tree when I cannot bring all these different elements into this coherence, this rationality, this consistency with everything else. Whenever we so synthesize differences as to reach some underlying unity, our minds tell us that we are dealing with reality. The completeness with which this synthetic, or “reality- producing,” function works gives us the degree of the reality. Now, startling as it may seem to advance from this simple experi¬ ence to the idea of the perfect universe, it must be said that the reality of the latter is deduced from precisely the same operations that convince us of the reality of the former. Our minds are so con¬ stituted that what they synthesize they acknowledge as real. The ethical universe is real because its components are synthesized to perfection. Indeed, of what other synthesis can we say that its 62 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH The bearing upon “democracy^’ of these introductory chapters is simply that when we think out the implications of the term, we find it full of ethical meanings and end¬ lessly rich in suggestions for ethical progress. In the minds of our youth, the word should come to stand for a mode of life in which self-direction as against autocracy is but one of many means to a far-visioned individual and collective righteousness. It should betoken a continued faith in the common man but in man lifted above himself, as Emerson put it, by the power of principles. In these transforming principles a democratic culture will find the aims it needs. They should be understood with a clearness endlessly growing. If members of a democratic civilization are to make the most of their contacts, they must know as a matter of living conviction the best of reasons for prizing freedom, equality, cooperation. The highest service, there¬ fore, that homes, schools and all the other cultural agencies elements are related to one another in a perfection which is both quantitative (that is, nothing essential is missing) and qualitative (that is, the relation of each to each is such that the activity of each supports and enhances the activity of all the others) ? In science we synthesize phenomena in such a way as to say that cause A will always produce effect B. In ethics, we synthesize human wills and interrelate them perfectly. The world of ideal relationships is the outcome. Its reality is guaranteed by the fact that the reality- producing functions by which the mind operates in every sphere of its activity are here carried out beyond the world of space and time to their utmost conceivable completeness. Unlike art, instead of synthe¬ sizing but a few elements and creating only an apparent totality, and unlike science whose work is limited to the phenomena of space and time — with what lies beyond, science does not attempt to deal — the ethical ideal synthesizes the complete total of human existences; and the relationship in which it unites these has the quality of perfect give and take described earlier. We are dealing with a truth which it is possible to demonstrate by extended argument. But the most fruitful conviction is born of the effort to test it in practice. By seeking to raise up in others the sense of their worth, we become conscious of the worth in ourselves and of the reality of the perfect life in which we are kin. THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 63 can render is twofold. They can give the chance to under¬ stand democratic fellowship by providing opportunities to practice it. They can interpret and reinterpret the sig¬ nificance of such living together and win attention to constantly wider and finer prospects of the latent excel¬ lences which democracy should release. The object which such a civilization is to serve is the spiritual nature in man. For a task so exalted, nothing short of the highest ministra¬ tions within our powers can ever be good enough. Questions and Problems 1. What tendencies in present life encourage a slackening of the moral fiber? How are these related to respect, or lack of respect, for human worth? 2. A sailor who stuck to his sinking ship said to his comrade, *‘You get into the lifeboat. You have parents that need you.” How does this illustrate the point that service is a tribute to the ideal nature in the person who receives the service ? What justifies a parent’s sacrifice for a wayward child? Show the differences between actual America and the America for which sacrifices are asked. Define service in terms of the object which merits it. 3. Explain the differences between remorse and the feeling of regret for a blunder (see, for example, Rossetti’s sonnet, ^‘The Lost Days of My Life”). What does remorse tell as to the existence of a higher nature? 4. Show from the life of your community that some people are more cultivated ethically than others. Do these differences of degree contradict the view of this chapter? What answer is there to those who hold that these differences will always exist ? 5. In which of the reverences herein mentioned, are democracies most likely to fall short? 6. How can we teach that the life of duty is a noble opportunity? Why is it so often regarded as repression ? Does the emphasis on reverence necessarily make for undue strictness ? 7. Show how the motives which lead people to tell the truth or to serve their country may be of many kinds. Which are the higher and why? 64 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH f 8. Illustrate and discuss: “Only he who realizes that there is a portion of his being which differs from and even opposes itself to his mortal constitution and its surrounding world . . . has become in the full sense of the word human and has freed his whole nature for the tasks and problems of life.” References See, besides references quoted in text: Adams, G. P., Idealism and the Modern Age. Adler, Felix, Essentials of Spirituality ; The World Crisis and its Meaning, Ch. IV, V, VII, VIII ; The Religion of Duty. Cope, H. F., Education in a Democracy, Ch. Ill, VII. Salter, W. M., Ethical Religion. PART II CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICA’S EDUCATIONAL IDEALS CHAPTER V THE PUBITAN OFFERING To see what ideals for our future culture should be, let us look first at the contributions already offered. Religion had something to give. Especially in Calvinism, it left a decided impress upon the schooling and character of large areas of the nation. The classical tradition of the English colleges also played its part. So did the sense of nationality in the nineteenth century and the contribution of modern science, followed by the demand for vocational efficiency and by the Pragmatist educational philosophy. All of these influences have brought not only something of value for the spiritual life but also results less worthy of encouragement. Let us examine both in the light of the principles sketched in the preceding chapters. A glance at the Puritan contribution, for instance, will show why so many people who recognize the need, among other things, of a new social ethics to deal with the new problems of group relationship find themselves obliged to look else¬ where than to the Puritan ideals. No one group has left a stronger mark upon the national life than the Calvinists represented by the New England Puritans and by the Scotch-Irish settlers in the other Atlan¬ tic colonies and the West. Asked to name the most striking traits that have entered into the making of the republic, we should no doubt answer at once, ‘‘Energy, grit, indi¬ vidualistic self-reliance.’^ Surely there are no folk in whom these qualities appeared more saliently than in the 67 68 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH settlers of New England and their descendants. “I early resolved,” said Jonathan Edwards, ‘‘that while I lived, I would live with all my might. ’ ’ This remark by one of the leading figures in the spiritual history of America is typical. The Puritans lived with all their might. But it is not for this fact alone that our country is in their debt. Mere energy, howsoever intense, is never entitled to honor. Where the example of the Puritans has been salutary, it has been because the aims to which their energy was turned had so much of an enduring sublimity. These purposes, it is true, were often allied with rigors which other outlooks would have avoided. But in the main something vital to America would be missing if the rugged might of the Puri¬ tans had never contributed its portion. The honor merited by their splendid struggle, as by the struggle of men everywhere for religious freedom, is the honor due to the demand for liberty as a means to moral personality. They wanted to be free in order to become certain types of right-acting men. The point is capital. Men do not risk their lives or transport their families to the wilderness in order to follow the desire just to do as they please. There must enter into the desire something sacred. To the Puritans the sacredness was altogether real. They refused to be driven from an ideal of the kind of living they held men were imperatively bound to follow. All the grandeur in the tradition which they bequeathed springs from the difference between such a purpose and the liberty which means the mere gratification of any preference what¬ ever. It is one thing to say, ‘ ‘ I choose to live as I please, ’ * and quite another to declare with William Bradford, the first Pilgrim governor, “To keep a good conscience and walk in such a way as God has prescribed is a thing which I must prefer before you all and above life itself.” One need not be of Governor Bradford ^s religious persuasion to appreciate the grandeur in a demand for liberty to do the THE PURITAN OFFERING 69 very highest which men think themselves called to per¬ form. It is not fair to overemphasize the repressive tendencies in Puritanism. Real as they were, we miss the point if we dwell exclusively upon the suppressions. These people had their constructive aspirations, or they would never have undergone their iron self-discipline. After that first winter whose rigors carried off half their number. Elder Brewster made the comment : “ It is not with us as with men whom small things can discourage or small discontents make them wish themselves home again.” They had their stock of the usual human desires, but they believed rightly that some desires rank higher than others. Out of this spirit came the best in the Puritans’ con¬ tribution to American life and especially to education. Because life was to them a grimly serious business, they set the greatest store upon improving the mind. Every man was to be able at least to read his Bible. The first Governor of Plymouth studied Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Winslow, his successor, was the same type of man. He tells us in his diary that he carefully divided his day’s work in order always to have time for study. The Massachusetts colony had been established in the wilderness but six years when it founded Harvard Col¬ lege. It is a signal fact that wherever Calvinism has been strong, whether in Switzerland or Holland or Scotland or New England, it has usually insisted upon compulsory schooling. The law of 1647 establishing tax-supported ele¬ mentary schools in Massachusetts marks an important point in the history of American education. Aptly has it been said of the Puritans that “where the land was too stony to raise corn, they planted schoolhouses to raise men.” But the book of knowledge is ampler to-day than it was when the Puritans recorded their reading of life ’s meaning, 70 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH and, as we read it now, we notice the need for ideals of a somewhat different sort from theirs. We can see to-daj where these have left upon American life a harmful influ¬ ence no less real than the beneficial. To appreciate both influences, let us look further at the religious beliefs from which they issued. John Calvin’s theology stressed the deity’s unrestrained, utterly absolute power : in electing men for salvation, God ’s choice was not even conditioned by their merits. He designated whom he pleased. Man was born bad, and the best of men were so far from the perfect life that their merits were negligible. Hence the sending of grace depended entirely upon God. Now the sign of its presence was the turning of the heart to such righteousness as God enjoined, and here it was that the native fighting grit in the Puritans received its encouragement. It was easy for them to identify the influx of power welling up in them, when their belligerent energies were aroused, with the pres¬ ence of God’s grace. They were acutely aware of an inner power which seemed to them to be sent out of the celestial depths, and, what is most to the point, it expressed itself in the will that loved nothing so much as battle. ‘‘Resistance to something,” says Henry Adams, “was the law of New England nature. ’ ’ This belief of the Puritan in the divine origin of his pugnacious impulses strengthened them. When he felt the mysterious power surging within him, he was convinced that he w^as approved by God and fought the harder. When he had his doubts of being among the elect, instead of letting his conduct grow lax, he held it more strictly in hand in order to be refortified in the conviction that he was to be saved. Admirably indeed did these beliefs enable the Puritans to stand up against hardships. Other fruits there were, however, which our age can scarcely welcome. Puritan teachers had no monopoly of the gift of “making every duty THE PURITAN OFFERING 71 dismal,’’ but the austerity of their religious beliefs undoubtedly aggravated this professional tendency. There was that constant dread of death and hell-fire which cast its horror over too many lives among the young. Perhaps our fiber has grown too soft, yet few parents in these years could write such a letter as Jonathan Edwards addressed to his little girl, half of it describing the kind of death for which be would have her prepare. Nathaniel Mather records the fact that of manifold sins, ‘‘none so sticks upon me as that, being young, I was whittling upon the Sabbath day, and for fear of being seen, I did it behind the door. ’ ’ ^ If we were restricted to a choice between the New England conscience and moral laxity, we should undoubtedly do better to choose the former. But our choices are not thus limited, and the Puritan methods are not the best. They went to unwarranted extremes. They frowned upon utterly innocent pleasures. They looked upon the love of beauty, for instance, as altogether too close in kind to wickedness to be encouraged. They were often led to a censoriousness which treated trifles as if they were deadly sins.^ The favorite method of training children was to look upon their wills as essentially depraved and in need of breaking: “There is in all children (though not alike) a stubbornness and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down so that the foundation of their education being laid 1 Quoted in E. D. Hanscom, The Heart of the Puritan. 2 The effect of the Puritan tradition is seen in the incident recorded in Paine’s biography of Mark Twain, the attempted banning of Huckleberry Finn from a few public libraries as an “immoral book.” The librarians were overconscious of the fact that Huck’s conduct showed too plainly the lack of proper breeding, but were quite unaware that few books have so admirably set forth a cardinal prin¬ ciple of American life, “Judge people on their merits, not their birth.” Huckleberry Finn is the son of a vagabond and has all the marks of a neglected childhood, but in the essentials, he rings true. 72 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH in humility and tractableness, other virtues may in their turn be built thereon. ’ ’ ® It is true that the child is not the angel which Rousseau, who swung to the opposite extreme from Calvinism, would make him. Nor must he be beaten into ‘ ‘ tractableness. ^ ^ A better view is to regard the child as born with aptitudes which are neither good nor bad in themselves, but which are only the raw material for such shaping as their elders can sometimes give. One of the most helpful tendencies in modern education has been to look upon the impulses that olden days called depraved as opportunities for the development of positive excel¬ lences. We no longer think, for instance, that the child’s desire to handle things is wicked. On the contrary, we make an educational use of this desire in order to train the child into a necessary acquaintance with the tools that he will always employ. We have learned also that in the long run it is best for teacher and parent to try rather to encourage children by praising them for their better achievements than to put the emphasis upon blaming them when they fail. People always respond more willingly when they are praised for performance. The Calvinist ideals were more inclined to upbraid the child for error than to give credit for success. They made the old-fashioned school and home overempha¬ size the educational value of sheer drudgery. To be sure, if we must cultivate either the spirit that can do hard, dis¬ tasteful work or the spirit that wants everything made easy, the Calvinist ideal would once more be preferable, but its mistake lay in regarding the issue as confined to these alter¬ natives. It forgot that some natures were congenial to the old severe discipline and were thereby made stronger, but that the training which toughens the stronger fiber does not necessarily strengthen the weaker. The diet of the 3 Pastor Robinson, Children and Their Education. THE PURITAN OFFERING 73 laborer in the ditch is not always the best for the child or the invalid. There is no need to level down. The real need is to recognize the existence of inequality. The Puritan did not. He forgot that his own temperament was ~ of the sort which rejoiced in the exercise of power. Those who survived the discipline fitted for such types were as genuinely interested’^ in it as Professor Dewey wants the child to be in its tasks to-day. Because the Puritan was that sort of person, he got from the overcoming of resist¬ ance a satisfaction and a training which we must recognize to-day as unfitted for all alike. The fact is that Calvinism was essentially a religion for people who felt a sense of fighting power. Other Protes¬ tants likewise believed in direct and individual salvation. But temperamentally different, the Puritan gave his own interpretation to the meaning of grace. The dominant force in himself being a consciousness of will-power, it was this that he interpreted as the mark of God’s favor. In other types, such as the Quaker, the inner light pointed the way to peace. In the Calvinist the inner command was a call to battle and conquest. His very conception of God was marked chiefly by the fact that the deity himself was sheer will, arbitrary, absolute. Now wherever the will to power and conquest is so strong, men accept as their leading maxim the rule of strife that only the fittest should survive. This the Puritans did. They believed that some were born to survive, others to succumb, and they fought for a place among the former. They fought the Indians in New England and the uninvit¬ ing climate. And when there was no fight left in the physi¬ cal environment, an apt field for the will-to-power was found in the world of business. The hard ruthlessness which has gone hand in hand with so many praiseworthy achievements in American business did not spring chiefly from a desire for the luxuries or the ease which money 74 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH might buy. Unlike the European who amasses a fortune in order to retire as early as possible, the American has usually continued in business out of love for the sheer exercise of power. He is proud of the money he makes because it is the token of success. Business is a game, or rather a combat calling for ceaseless answer to challenges to the will. Awe for the power of wall lies at the base of the Calvinist beliefs. So does the intense individualism and the joy of battle which modern business so notably reflects. All start equal, every man for himself. ‘ ‘ The dog that snaps the quickest,’^ says Daniel Drew, as he reviews his business career, ^^gets the bone.’^ Let the weaker give way, and the better man win the heaven of success without accepting favors or granting them. This congeniality between Calvinism and the spirit of modern business, noted in other lands by scholars, has been particularly close in a country which has so given its major energies to commerce as our own."^ Where else have the traits of thrift, abstemiousness, persistent toil, and com¬ bativeness been so conspicuous and so rewarded as in America’s business men? Nor is it an accident that their business ethics has lagged behind their ethical views on other matters. The Calvinist ethics prescribed the most intense absorption upon one department of conduct, the inner life. It cared less about the other departments. A man could play the game of business in the severest of fashion and be of clear conscience. Because he bore no ill- « will toward competitors and customers, and, with the rise of the factory system, toward his employees, he could be as hard with them as the game allowed. His only attitude toward them was that all were struggling to survive and 4 See H. G. Wood, “The Influence of the Reformation on Ideas Con¬ cerning Wealth and Property” in Property, Its Duties and Rights (Macmillan Co., 1922). See also J. A. Hobson, Evolution of CapitaU ism, Ch. I, II. THE PURITAN OFFERING 75 needed no better treatment than each knew the other would give if he had the chance. He could even regard the competitive principle as essentially righteous: ability to survive was the proof of God ’s favor. Again, because Calvinism is intensely individualistic, we see why it has lent itself to the tendencies that have so marked the economic and political life of America. The Puritan wanted to stand alone and go his own self-reliant way. Where things were not to his liking, he was quite prepared to move on. Inevitably such people founded small and dispersed communi¬ ties. The Pilgrims first went to Holland, but when they could not be sufficiently separated there . . . they settled at Plymouth, a tiny little community that maintained its separate government for eighty years. They preferred not to unite with the Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay, although the difference between the Puritans and the Separatists seems to the modern mind very slight. The Puritans themselves were no sooner established at Boston, than they began to quarrel over the precise nature of . . . the government . . . which they came to America to establish; and some of them, being expelled, went off with Roger Williams to found another tiny commonwealth at Providence, while others followed Thomas Hooker into a new wilderness and founded the colony of Connecticut. ... In origin and in their ideas of religion and government, all of these people were very much alike. Had they chosen to live together under one state, that state, seventy years after the first settlement, would have had a population of less than eighty thousand. But in spite of the extreme hardships of the wilderness, in spite of the danger from the Indians, these eighty thousand . . . could not possibly subordinate themselves to a single government. They preferred to live separate accord¬ ing ^‘to the strong bent of their spirits,^^ and in five distinct and independent states, each one an ideal commonwealth.® This trait has left its impress npon American life as a whole. America puts a premium upon shifting for your- 5 Carl Becker, The United States, an Experiment in Democracy, p. 69. 76 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH self. Go your own gait always, and if you do not like what you find, go elsewhere. Mind your own business, and do not let anybody else tell you how to mind it. For per¬ haps the majority of our citizens the rule of life is still summed up in the belligerently individualistic and negative motto of Andrew Jackson: ^^Ask nothing but what is right; submit to nothing wrong. It was not only the presence of frontier conditions that made the American so intensely self-reliant and so content to case himself in this honest but ungenial insulation. Nor was it solely his expe¬ rience with kings that made him so mistrust interference by the state. The Calvinist belief enhanced this disposition by giving it a religious sanction. It exalted the individuaL Souls were saved singly. Grace came to men one by one, and they could neither help nor hinder one another in the process of election. We know better to-day. If salvation means becoming the persons we ought to be, it is obvious that we can indeed make that task harder or easier for one another. The father who desires to do his full duty by his children cannot do so as long as he is overworked in the mills and comes home too fatigued to interest himself in his children ’s lives. He cannot be to them all that a father should, if he is com¬ pelled to bring them up amid the temptations of the slums. If he works twelve hours a day in the steel mills, he carries home a brain too exhausted to be used as a man ^s, a father ^s, a citizen’s, should be used. In endless ways we can thwart or promote one another’s proper performance of function. The old individualism does not satisfy the conscience of to-day, because it so ignores the realities of social responsi¬ bility. The Puritan’s individualism manifested itseK in another tendency which still does its harm. Because he was so conscious of his own belligerent will, he was quick to ascribe evil to the bad will of other individuals. He made the big THE PURITAN OFFERING 77 mistake of dividing men sharply into the elect and the damned, heroes and deliberate villains. And what an important part was played in his life by his intense con¬ viction that the devil was a person, as actual a foe to be fought as the Indian lurking in the forest! When his cattle sickened and died, he saw in this calamity the work of the devil housed in a witch, and he thereupon killed the witch. We have already seen what this meant in the education of children. If they misbehaved, it was because there was a devil in them. Hence, employ the rod to beat the devil out. It did not occur to ask whether a child 's misbehavior could be due to other causes than sheer badness of will. The old-fashioned disciplinarian, therefore, never tried to find other school activities for the child than those that had been passed on as the traditional material for education. The resulting waste of effort was enormous. We think of the successes fostered by the old type of training but forget how large was the number of those whom it drove out of school at too early an age and in whom it engendered a life¬ long distaste for books. The mischief in imputing malad¬ justments to individual wickedness is that one feels thereby exempted from any further study of causes. If, for exam¬ ple, you could ascribe a child’s nervousness, as they did in Salem, to the malign influence of a witch, what need was there to seek truer methods of correction ? This all-too-easy method of putting the blame upon bad persons is responsible for many and many a lingering evil in the life of to-day.® In our politics we are still prone to denounce the ‘‘wicked” boss as the cause of our political disorders, instead of trying to see whether the boss himself is not symptomatic of an ill rooted more deeply and widely 6 “We curse the obstacles of life as though they were devils. But they are not devils. They are obstacles.” John Erskine, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, p. 26. 78 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH than in his own wicked disposition. In the same way, we raise the hue and cry against the “wicked’^ profiteer and ignore the fact that under our present economic system, nobody has succeeded in drawing the line between just and unjust profits. We castigate the ‘‘greedy’’ employer or the “wicked” labor leader who orders a strike, but we do not seek to get at the reasons why so many employers and so many labor leaders respond in the one repeated way to certain situations in our collective life. For a time, most of America was only too ready to heap the blame for all the upheaval in Russia upon the wickedness of Lenin and one or two others, quite regardless of the fact that the situation which led to the Russian revolution was altogether too complex to be ascribed to the bad purposes of one or two supposed scoundrels. Billy Sunday attributes the decline in church attendance to the work of the “wicked” higher critics. These Puritanical explanations are altogether inadequate, nay, they are wholly misleading in such perplexed times of social transition as the present. They blind us to the need of probing to the real roots of our disorders just as truly as the belief in witchcraft kept people from finding the expla¬ nations for illness now known to the men of science. And not least of all in the mischief done by thus putting the blame on “bad” individuals, we close our eyes to the cir¬ cumstance that in many a situation where blame is so easy, we are ourselves implicated. No truth needs more frequent utterance to-day than that many of our ills are social in origin and that all of us, good and respectable citizens no less than those whom we reprobate, are involved in the ulti¬ mate responsibility. Puritanism is unfriendly to this social point of view. Its whole stress is individualistic. It fails therefore to provide a morality for the dealings of group with group. It envisages problems of conduct as essentially problems in the relation of the individual to THE PURITAN OFFERING 79 God and of one individual to anothero Certainly the duty to improve man-to-man relationships is by no means out¬ grown, hut we need to-day to he specially reminded how grave are the problems that are not merely affairs of man to man, but questions of the dealing of group with group. We cannot straighten the labor tangle by blaming the head of the Steel Trust or the leader of the workers. Both are spokesmen for classes or groups. And the great need is to find ways by which these varying group interests may be brought into fruitful relation. In the dealing of nation with nation, we are still far behind the morality we have already accepted for the relations of man to man. It is no longer considered reputable for men to settle their con¬ troversies by appeal to violence. But violent settlements Are still accepted as reputable for nations. The governors of a nation commit acts in their capacity of trustees which they would not commit as individuals. As individuals the British Cabinet would, no doubt, be willing to let every native of India choose his own way of living. But because they are charged with the trusteeship of an empire, they employ methods of coercion which, as private persons, they might abhor. The point is simply that the world has not yet worked out an ethics for the dealing of group with group. Puritanism is notably deficient here because its outlook is individualistic. Finally, it must be said that Calvinist ethics has no place for right relations among the unequals. Democracy may no longer be regarded as the association of equals, because we know now how exceedingly unlike are the members. Calvinism was democratic enough in its attitude toward those who were equal in holding the same Calvinistic faith. It failed notoriously in dealing with the unlike. It restricted the vote in the colonies to church members and limited church membership to those whose orthodoxy was certified by the clergy. By this method an actual majority were 80 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH entirely disfranchised. All were compelled by law to attend the one and only type of worship.^ Preachers of heterodox opinions were imprisoned, branded with hot irons, mutilated, whipped, and, like the Quakers, banished, hanged, and sold as slaves. It is sometimes said in explana¬ tion of this attitude that men must first get their liberty secure for themselves before they can think of sharing it. Just as a child must learn to swim for itself before it can rescue others from drowning, so people who have won liberty for themselves, the argument runs, had first to make certain that the new state which they founded was unified and secure. Note in this defense how the Puritan is made to repeat in his own case the very plea which had been advanced against himself. When he said that the Massachusetts churches were obliged to present a solid front against Epis- copalianism abroad and heathenism and heresy around, he was reiterating what the Established Church had said regarding him : ‘ ‘ We must persecute these Puritans because we need a united front in defense of the liberties we have won against Rome.’* In each instance — the history of religion is full of further illustrations — unity was sought by repressing differences. It took long for the world to learn a better kind, the unity won by voluntary affiliation. The colony founded by Roger Williams learned it and welcomed the diversities rejected elsewhere. Besought by Massachusetts to join in persecuting the Quakers, the Rhode Island Assembly replied in words forever memorable: “We have no law among us whereby to punish any . . . for declaring their minds con¬ cerning things eternal.” Rhode Island thus enjoys the distinction of being the first place to break the chain of a deplorable precedent and to establish in America a better 7 Only in 1833 did Massachusetts pass a law to end taxation for the Congregational Church. THE PURITAN OFFERING 81 tradition of religious freedom. There is indeed a vast difference between wanting liberty for oneself alone and wanting it to include the liberties of others. The main current in the Puritan tradition of freedom was too aggres¬ sively individualistic to seek the latter kind. For the American life of to-day, it is plain, therefore, that the ethical ideals transmitted in the Calvinist tradi¬ tion fail to meet many essential needs. There is no doubt that Puritan individualism is better than clinging, weak dependence. But in rejecting the former, we are not neces¬ sarily driven into accepting the latter. Our need is an ethics that recognizes complexities with which the Puritans were not obliged to deal or which they handled wrongly. Our continent is no longer the virgin wilderness it was in their day; the frontier has disappeared; the free lands have gone, owned often by railroads and other trusts. The log hut on the wide prairie has given way to the steel sky¬ scraper in the congested city. Time was when a man dissatisfied at home could go out beyond the frontier and occupy as much land as he chose to clear for himself. That day has passed. Our life is now much more compact, and we must learn to live together on a better plan than the sharply separatist scheme of Puritanism. This is the significance of the state regulations. Federal bureaus, public service commissions, etc., which were scarcely dreamed of even as late as half a century ago, and which still do little more than touch the surface of to-day problems. It explains the various collectivist philosophies which are claiming a hearing now and which must fight against a tradition of individualism bred in the bone by three centuries of pioneering. America has still to learn that the masterful type of self-assertion so necessary in earlier days has become a positive hindrance in the mora settled and congested life of to-day. 82 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH The task, therefore, confronting onr schools and colleges would seem to be fairly obvious. To expect American cul¬ ture to ignore its debt to the Puritan tradition would be folly. But respect for the men and women of the past, if it is to be of any vital service, must discriminate. The best tribute that to-day can pay to the high moral earnest¬ ness of the Puritans is to apply that spirit, but under the leading of ethical concepts different from theirs, to the new problems put to us by the changed circumstances of present life. In recent years our schools and our pulpits have been rather inclined to forget that, aside from the pioneering spirit in the original colonists, not all of even the later Puritan tradition is conservative. The names of such reformers as Franklin, Webster, Garrison, Phillips, Sum¬ ner, Mann, Howe, not to omit the name of the best-known descendant of a certain Massachusetts Lincoln, remind us that Puritans have not been found wanting when lances had to be broken in behalf of progress. “New occasions teach new duties’’ was the word of a Puritan who gave himself to the anti-slavery cause in a day when it was most unpopular. We can do far worse than to lead a new gen¬ eration to attack the problems of to-day with the courage to which the Puritan Emerson appealed in the young men of his time : You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will be told that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. What is this Truth you seek? what is this Beauty? men will ask with derision. If nevertheless God has called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say: ‘As others do, so will I; I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expeditions go until a more con¬ venient season,’^ then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art and poetry and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history. THE PURITAN OFFERING 83 It yet remains for America to demonstrate how far this type of Puritanism is representative. Questions and Problems 1. Our age is charged with lacking the old sense of sin. Explain reasons for the charge and discuss it. 2. “The Puritan often believed that the fate of the Universe hung on his opinion.’^ Point out the good and the evil likely to result from such a belief. 3. Can one be strict in matters of personal habit, for example, smoking, card-playing, and be unconcerned about larger ethi¬ cal matters, for example, the new social conscience? Is the reverse possible? Illustrate both facts. 4. How do you account for the fact that people capable of engineering the Puritan Revolution could also be greatly concerned over the “wickedness,’^ for example, in trifles of dress ? 5. Explain why Puritanism has so often been charged with encouraging hypocrites. Does an austere morality necessarily make for hypocrisy? 6. Give all the reasons you can for the fact that many respect¬ able citizens are more shocked by the sight of a drunkard or of Sunday baseball than by the failure of a railroad or a factory to install safety devices. 7. Should people attempt to reform others by legislation? 8. Read Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall.” Show how the viewpoint there illustrated works out in American life. 9. In view of the belief in purely individual salvation, how can the Puritan missionary spirit and reforming spirit be explained ? 10. Milton says in his Areopagitica, a plea for the freedom of the press, “God intended to prove me, whether I durst take up alone a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst.” Discuss the Puritan characteristics indicated in this utterance. References See, besides references quoted in text: Bradford, William, History of Plymouth Plantation. Channing, Edward, History of the United States, Vol. I, Ch. Xjf. 84 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Fiske, John, The Beginnings of New England. Lowell, J. R., New England Two Centuries Ago. Macaulay, T. B., Essay on Milton. Mecklin, J. M., Introduction to Social Ethics, Ch. II, III. Ross, E. A., Sin and Society. Small, W. H., Early New England Schools. WiNTHEOP, R. C., Life and Letters of John Winthrop. CHAPTER VI THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM Few forces in men ’s group-life are more potent than the love of country. To multitudes, their real religion is their patriotism. Like many a religious worship, the love of country has its passionate attachments, its ritual, its hymns, its symbols, its sacrifices, its martyrs, and its intol¬ erant zealots. No religion is more sedulously cultivated in the churches of our country than patriotism is cultivated in our schools. A force so powerful can, as it has already done, contribute elements of inestimable value to the mak¬ ing of great souls, but it needs to be spiritualized; and, therefore, both its wholesome and its hurtful influences require careful study. The feeling for America as a single nation was not always so strong and common as it is to-day. In the period imme¬ diately after the Revolution, people thought of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers, and Washington was often obliged to plead with them to think in terms of the entire country. But the national spirit emerged at last. It was hastened by the growth of the new states in the West where people came together from so many different neigh¬ borhoods on the seaboard that it was no longer possible for the feeling of attachment to a single home to dominate. The Civil War aided mightily in the same direction. So did the immigration which in some quarters to-day is looked upon as a disintegrating rather than as a unifying force. The fact is, as Professor Becker points out, that the immi- 85 86 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH grant helped to strengthen the sense of national oneness because by being accepted in his adopted community, he called attention to the circumstance that there was a deeper bond uniting old and new than that which linked the single oldest stock.^ The original settlers in each colony had been united by a common ancestry and geographic origin. By becoming a good citizen, the immigrant showed how Amer¬ icanism consists less in the distinctive characteristics of the original stock than in attachment to the common hopes and ideals binding old and new. The point is worth noting in view of the cry so frequently raised that our foreign- born are a menace. The fear becomes less disturbing when we reflect that whatever momentary trouble some of the discontented immigrants in our industrial centers may occasion, nothing is more evident than the eagerness with which their children desire to become good Americans. Nay, it frequently happens that the very attachment to their old home which some of the immigrants retain makes the young people all the more desirous of taking on the modes of life of the new.^ The national sense is now firmly rooted. To-day, therefore, the school needs less to teach patriotism than to clarify, to cleanse, and to refine the patriotic im¬ pulses. These are natural enough. What they require is purification from their unworthier ingredients, and the way to do this is to set their positive uses high. They should be put to strengthening and improving what is best in American life with an eye to better world relationships. Thus it is important, in the first place, to get clearly in mind the difference between love of country as an ethical 1 Carl Becker, The United States, an Experiment in Democracy, Ch. VII. 2 On various phases of the immigration problem, see Americanizar tion Studies (Harper & Bros.), edited by Allen T. Bums, and E. A. Steiner, On the Trail of the Immigrant. THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 87 motive and as a mere herd impulse. The two are alike in the naturalness of the sentiment for home and for kind. In ancient society, to this feeling was added the pride that made every people exalt its own tribal deity above all others. There is a Japanese myth that after God had made Japan, he made the rest of the world out of the leavings. Something of this spirit still clings to the patriotism of great multitudes everywhere. But attachment to country is ethically motivated only when one feels gratitude and knows why there is reason to be grateful ; when one is proud and yet discriminates between the things of which he may justly be proud and those of which he may not, and, above all, when one feels a responsibility for the right direction of the national genius. At its best, patriotism is the enlightened sense that one’s nation is the custodian of something unique and precious. But other nations, too, have their gifts, and patriotism is rightly directed when the give and take among the nations is such that what is best in each is encouraged and elevated by the best in all the others. America has much in which it may well rejoice. Its experiment in federalism offers a certain promise to the world that divergent groups can indeed form a union where each, instead of being overborne by the others, is made the better for their active affiliation. The thirteen colonies, jealous and watchful of one another, learned that it was possible to federate into the United States and profit from the coming together. America has also sponsored the important truth that people should be rated upon their merits, not upon their birth. Here again is a principle by which the world may benefit. America has shown how difference in origin need be no hindrance to citizenship with full rights of participa¬ tion in the country’s decisions. It has stood nobly for the idea that people should count for what they are and not 88 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH at all for antecedents for which they are not responsible. Hence it is that in America the bond uniting its various peoples has proved itself so firm. It is a bond based rather upon a common hope than upon a common past. To empha¬ size origins in America is to bring up disruptive memories. To emphasize the hope of the future is to keep in mind that in which all can share.^ Much there is indeed that we may count a precious trust in our keeping as a nation. But it is necessary to remember that often there is nothing so dangerous as a people’s ideal¬ isms. Sheer wickedness can do its harm; yet how fre¬ quently can mistaken or perverted idealisms do a harm still greater ! The idea of being custodians of a glorious national heritage may foster a conceit leading all too easily to the spirit which breeds wars. The very honesty of the pride in one’s custodianship makes it sometimes the more peril¬ ous. When the Mohammedans swept over Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe in the Middle Ages, with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other, they were the more dangerous because they believed so genuinely in the supe¬ riority of their civilization. A professor of international law in the University of Munich replied in 1916 to a letter of inquiry from the Dutch Pacifist League : 3 Long ago, a French immigrant noted this fact about his adopted land. Crevecoeur, the author of The Letters of an American Farmer, wrote in 1782: “He is an American who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.” In a later passage, Crevecoeur recalls how intense in that age were some of the national antipathies on the part of the various stocks in the new land. Hence, he feels obliged to add, “I do not mean to insinuate any national reflections. It ill-becomes any man and much less an American.” THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 89 The whole course of the war up to the present has shown that we Germans have been chosen by Providence from among all the other peoples to march at the head of all civilized nations and lead them under our protection toward assured peace. For we not only have the power and force necessary for this mission, but we also possess all the spiritual gifts to the highest degree; and in all creation it is we who constitute the crown of civilization. We, however, have our own jingoes who desire to see the American flag carried beyond our borders and whose rea¬ sons are as honest as those in this man^s statement. They object to his declaration, because they think that, if any nation is entitled to rule others, it is America. They see nothing wrong in the general spirit of such conceit, but regard it as bad only when it is adopted by other people. No beliefs are easier or more fraught with menace. Lord Curzon dedicates his book, Problems of the Far East, ^^to those who believe that the British Empire is under Provi¬ dence the greatest instrument for good the world has ever seen^^ — a view to which the peoples of India, Egypt, Ire¬ land, not to mention France, Italy, and other lands, will hardly subscribe. Such sentiments are loaded with deadly explosives. They lend themselves to the ambitions of those who want the flag of their country to protect profitable investments in so-called backward lands, and they are the more perilous because they are allied with those honest feelings of gratitude and pride on which the war appeals must always depend for answer. There are those who see the harm done by such patriotism and who therefore want people to hold all mankind alike in equal affection. But the fact that patriotism is so often the conceit of the jingo, or the cloak for unworthy objects, is an argument, not for eradicating it, but for refining it. Other excellent things may be used in the same way to conceal or condone what is wrong. Religion, duty, family, honor, friendship — every concept in the ethical vocabu- 90 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH lary — lends itself to misuse. Cosmopolitanism attacks the problem from the wrong angle. The best way to learn to love outsiders is to begin by learning to live aright with the neighbor at home. It is possible to be a very eloquent brother to the whole human race and yet be a mighty poor brother to your father ^s other sons. True as it is that patriotism is so often an enlarged egotism, cosmopolitanism can be just as bad and worse. Rousseau weeps over the sorrows of mankind, but in a heart as large as his for the world in general, there was no place for concern for his own illegitimate children, each of whom was promptly dis¬ patched at birth to the foundling asylum. Better than cosmopolitanism is the internationalism which, instead of slighting the special obligations to' one’s own land, wants them raised to finer quality. A perfect world order does not demand the disappearance of distinct groups. It requires their perfect interaction. Under such an ideal, every group in which we live would do its part to make us better able to realize what the most sublime, most perfect of all group relationships is like. Because, for example, we live in families, family life should be the begin¬ ning of our spiritual education. By learning how to get on with brothers and sisters, with father and mother, with kinsfolk, whom we may either like or dislike, we are pre¬ pared to get on better with outsiders. And we learn chiefly out of love for father and mother. This natural affection for our parents carries us on as children into right behavior toward brothers and sisters and then toward those outside our home. It is the root out of which spreads the larger growth. Shall we cease to cultivate the home feelings in order to get children at once to learn to love all fathers and mothers? The same reasoning applies to the cultivation of patriotism. One’s country bears the same relation to mankind that a home does to an entire city. “My country is my home in humanity. ’ ’ The natural love we feel for it THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 91 is to be the beginning of an education which extends that feeling beyond the bounds of our own land, but we cannot extend what we do not possess. We must make the most of love for country first before we can love outsiders with any sincerity. But there are duties even where there is little affection or none. Hence, it is necessary to add that sound internation¬ alism is rooted, not only in fondness for one ’s own country, but in the sense of obligation to it. A man ’s first duty is to the land in which he casts his vote. He is not asked to love it because it is perfect, for no land is. But he has a cit¬ izen’s vote, and he has gifts of his own by which to help make his country less imperfect ; and he will not use these instruments properly unless he counts himself closer to his fellow citizens than to those who are like him abroad. Here is where his first responsibilities come. Here is the land whose policies he helps, or ought to help, decide directly. Here is where he must first work, even with those for whom he cares less than for others elsewhere who are more con¬ genial. Thus we see again the mistake in emphasizing the mere fact of likeness. If similarity were the basis of obligation, a man would be entirely justified in casting off his respon¬ sibilities to those unlike him at home in order to become one with his fellows abroad. Moreover, the stress upon like¬ ness leads to ignoring the importance of differences. Instead of minimizing the divergences between land and land, let us employ them for their rich ethical possibilities. Make the very sense of difference contribute to a new and better kind of world thinking. All important is this need to get used to the idea of respect for qualities unlike our own. Is the Anglo-Saxon type better than the French, the German, the Italian, the Slavic ? As well ask, ‘ ‘ Is air better than water ? Is a table better than a stool? Is a steamship superior to a railway 92 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH train ? ’ ’ There comes a time in a boy ’s life when he under¬ stands how absurd it is to put questions like these. He knows that if the world were all land and no water, we should rightly never build a single ship, and that the only reason why the locomotive is so useful on land constitutes the best of reasons for having something different on the ocean. Ship and train are needed for their very unlike¬ ness. Yet how many lads who have grown to be grand¬ fathers still think about varieties of national culture as if their own peculiarities were superiorities ! At bottom, this is merely a sort of expanded egotism. Our own pride is flattered by the thought that *‘our crowd overtops the others.* No fuel for the war-makers is more inflammable. If this is admitted, we can lead our young people to better ideas of the function of the state than are commonly accepted. There is nothing sacrosanct about a government. It is merely the instrument through which a people admin¬ isters the collective business. What then is its function in the dealing with other nations? The old view was very simple. Fifty years ago, if the question was asked, ^‘What dealings can your country as a whole have with other coun¬ tries as wholes ? ’ ’ ninety-nine out of a hundred would have answered, ‘‘War or alliance for possible war. Private indi¬ viduals in France, let us say, may trade with private individuals in England ; but if all France is to act as a unit toward all England as a unit, the only contact can be mil¬ itary. ’ ’ Such is the old conception, and we must not forget that millions everywhere, even in our land, still have noth¬ ing better. Think of those who wake up to the fact that they are members of a nation only when they see their gov¬ ernment directing a war: ‘‘What have we got a govern¬ ment for if not to fight some other There are still vast 4 “The idealism of selfishness must keep itself drunk with a con¬ tinual dose of self-laudation.’^ Rabindranath Tagore, “Nationalism in the West,” Atlantic Monthly, March, 1917. THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 93 numbers to whom the sight of the flag suggests only this. Fortunately the number is growing of those who are asking themselves, ‘^What is wrong with the world if this is all that the flag means for so many ? ’ ’ Among other reasons is the fact that the ordinary ideals of peace are too negative to be appealing. The world has never had a genuine peace, but only armed truce mas¬ querading under the name, because peace to the great majority still means a string of donuts, ‘‘don’t fight, don’t destroy property, don’t take life.” To appreciate how meager is such an ideal, imagine individuals making it an aim for private life. Think of getting no more out of living with one another than the fact that nobody is hurt. Imagine calling an evening at the theater a success because nobody stoned the actors. Men justify wars on the ground that the wars are essential to the attaining of certain pos¬ itive benefits. But they do not think of peace as a similar means to specific goods. If peace is at all worth while, it is for the sake of certain ends which war imperils. Does the race, however, really cherish these ends sufficiently? If we prize a bit of precious statuary, we take care to place it where it cannot be destroyed or marred. So with the aims of peace. If men loved these as much as they love the kind of national honor which urges them so readily to war, they would make the effort to turn the world into a peaceful world. Peace, in other words, is a mere instrument, a way to obtain certain good things. What things? If they are sufficiently desired, we can be sure that methods will be found by which to get them. Such an ideal is the concep¬ tion that each nation should develop its own special type of civilization in and through the process of helping other nations 'to be their best. The surest test of a good life is the way it helps others to live theirs. There are men who live at the expense of other lives. The best live not by 94 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH exploiting other life but by promoting it, just as a parent or teacher develops the best in himself in and through the act of calling out the excellence in the child. The more he helps the child to be really itself, the more does his own truer personality emerge. The positive ideal for nations is no different from that for individuals. Each collectivity as a whole is to further the distinctive excellence in each and all the others. This does not mean that the nations need one another for busi¬ ness, England needing our wheat and beef, and we her Sheffield knives and scissors. Nor does it mean need in the sense of aesthetic gratification. G. L. Dickinson, for example, in his Appearances, speaks of the bad effect of western commercialism on the art of Burma, India, and China, and wants the East protected so that the West can enjoy the native Oriental products. This is indeed desir¬ able. But the ethical need is greater and deeper and more comprehensive. Humanity needs all its children at their highest ; for the very life of the ethical ideal requires for the perfect society the two attributes mentioned in an earlier chapter, quantitative perfection (no life missing) and qualitative (each contributing by its own excellence to the different excellence of the others). One way to appreciate an ideal of this kind is to try to see what effects our various national lives have already exercised upon one another. A frank facing of these influ¬ ences would tell us volumes about what is genuinely worthy in our own lives and what is unsound. England, for exam¬ ple, has stood among the nations for parliamentary govern¬ ment. Our own system of two legislative houses is borrowed from hers. Well may she pride herself on the fact that in 1848 and the years after, when constitutional governments were set up on the continent, they took as their model Eng¬ land’s, “The Mother of Parliaments.” But England has produced other effects. Why, for instance, have such num- THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 95 bers of the Irish people regarded her with dislike? If I were an Englishman, I should want to know what was lacking about my country, with all its magnificent tradi¬ tions, that it deserved, in Gladstone’s words, ‘‘the reproach of total incapacity to assimilate to ourselves an island within three hours of our shores that had been under our dominating influence for six centuries. ’ ’ ® The best service that Englishmen can do for their country is to help it more and more to rid itself of what has produced this by no means creditable effect. Let us look at Germany from the same point of view. Let us call up the Germany that was respected throughout the world before A.ugust, 1914, the Germany from which England learned the social insurance measures which she adopted twelve years ago, the land to whose universities students. resorted from all over the globe. It was a country to which other people undoubtedly looked for inspiration in music. The leaders of our greatest orchestras in America, the men who popularized good music over here, came chiefly from the land of Goethe and Beethoven. But Germany ’s influence upon the world has assuredly not been entirely beneficent. The task of the new German nation is to develop those gifts which will bless the world as truly as the work of Beethoven has done. What of our own country? We have been trying the boldest and widest experiment in political democracy our earth has ever beheld. Never before was the attempt made on so large a scale by a people of diverse stocks to govern themselves without a hereditary privileged class. We are proud of the fact that political and religious refugees from other lands fled here to give their boys and girls the chance to stand erect in the dignity of free manhood and woman¬ hood. We have reason to feel gratified at the fact that the 6 Quoted in John Morley, Gladstone j Vol. II, p. 243. 96 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Chinese Republic asked for Americans to help draft her constitution and administer the new government. It is a fact not so generally known as it should be that our coun¬ try played a leading part in the establishment of the Jap¬ anese public-school system. Nor is it widely known that Mexican teachers have been sent here to study our schools. Yet honesty compels us to ask ourselves why our democ¬ racy has not won the full respect which we might suppose the peoples of Europe ought to feel for anything so benefi¬ cent.® Intelligent men on the other side, who cherish free¬ dom as ardently as we, fail somehow to see the great thing about the land we ourselves love. Why ? Carlyle was not alone in his criticism of our vainglory and our apparent fondness for boastful mediocrities as office-holders. We can still read the same criticism from intelligent students every¬ where. A Danish student insisted, a few years ago, that in every one of the European countries, where the American idea entered, it debauched the public life instead of better¬ ing it, by introducing what Emil Faguet called ‘Hhe Cult of Incompetence. ’ ’ ^ Now we may, if we will, simply let these criticisms anger us; we may reject them as due to prejudice, conceit or envy. If we are sensible, we shall ask ourselves instead, ‘‘Why is it that the thing which we ourselves so rightly love is not visible to these others? What must we still do to make the influence of American democracy as welcome elsewhere as, for example, Italian art is throughout the whole world If we are to be of greater service to man¬ kind, we must labor unceasingly to make our type of civili¬ zation far better than it is. Our schools, for instance, can 6 Charles A. Beard’s Cross-Currents in Europe To-Day contains a chapter on the new democracies set up in the Old World. America will profit from studying what these new countries took over from our experience and what they decided to reject. See also H. L. McBain and Lindsay Rogers, The New Constitutions of Europe. ^ Jensen, Politics and Crowd Morals. THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 97 certainly be improved greatly. Surely we do not want Japan and Mexico to imitate our large classes and the machine-like methods which these big classes require. A few of our states demand that before a child leaves school to go to work, he shall have completed eight grades, but most require only six grades or even less. Do we wish to stand among the nations as a land of sixth-graders, with the stamp of only a six-years’ schooling upon our news¬ papers, our theaters, our politics, our international deal¬ ings? For the sake of a better contribution to the world order, we must make stiU better what is good in our gift. We have already set one example by our beginnings in pupil self-government. The writer recalls the delight with which he read in a book by a German educator some dozen years ago, a strong endorsement of the American system of pupil self-government and a plea to the German school author¬ ities to substitute this method for the militaristic methods then in vogue.® We have not yet realized how essential it is to make the most of our own special gifts. A glance at the influences shaping educational practice in our country will show, for example, how little thought we have given to making our culture as distinctive of our own democratic life as, let us say, French civilization is of France. We borrowed our kindergartens from Germany, but, though their principle of self -directed activity would seem to be quite the kind which a self-governing republic would apply in all the grades through which future citizens pass, it is only in exceptional schools that the self-government idea has been extended beyond the initial year. It takes more trouble to run a school on democratic lines than on the pattern of a military camp. But our interest in a better thing is always measured by the price we are willing to pay. We borrowed 8 F. W. Foerster, Schule und Charakter. 98 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH aims and methods from Pestalozzi and Herbart until a relatively recent criticism by the Pragmatists forced some schools — by no means all — to make place for the child ’s own initiative. Our secondary schools became our “poor boys^ colleges/’ but until comparatively few years ago, instead of setting themselves to prepare youth better for the needs of their own American life, they allowed themselves too often to adopt curricula and methods designed to prepare for college. And the colleges, as we shall see in the next chapter, were largely under the spell of the English ideal of culture for the ‘ ‘ gentleman. ’ ’ To-day, from many influ¬ ential quarters the demand is going up to train the “masses” into a narrow vocational efficiency, as if the supplying of hordes of skilled factory hands and clerks were the chief need in a democratic schooling. American culture is still far from clear with regard to the opportunities implied in its own democratic ideals. We have borrowed from Europe, sometimes wisely, sometimes less so. Accustomed more or less to look across the Atlantic for our cultural inspirations, we have forgotten that though we have much to learn from other lands, they also have much to learn from us, if we only are bold enough to use the greater freedom there is in our greater youthfulness. Some of our practices have been quite distinctive, for exam¬ ple, our own experiments in pupil self-government, our coeducation, the growth of our public high schools and state universities, especially in the West. Where we have made beginnings so valuable, we can hardly do more wisely than to improve upon them. Sup¬ pose our candidates for office came before us and said: “We do not promise to reduce taxes. On the contrary, if you elect us, we will increase the taxes, because we need more money for our public schools. We will eliminate waste, but we need more money to reduce the size of our altogether too large classes, to engage more teachers, to pay THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 99 larger salaries, to provide more playgrounds, libraries, and the like.’’ The response to appeals of this kind would measure the strength of our desire to be worthy guardians of our precious gift. We shall need higher conceptions of the function of the state. Hitherto the chief idea of the American state has been that it must prevent domestic crime and foreign ag¬ gression. Only slowly has the idea grown that its business is also to prevent sickness, ignorance and inefficiency. We have been too used to thinking of it as merely an umpire charged with seeing that the more able emerge prosperous from the struggle for existence. We need to make its functions much more positive and constructive along the lines mentioned elsewhere in these pages. At bottom, everything depends on what our future cit¬ izens are taught as to the ultimate uses people can make of their being united into nations at all. One such use is indi¬ cated in these resolutions adopted by the National Educa¬ tion Association at its 1915 session : We have made great progress in industry and scientific work, but little as yet in establishing justice, good will, and the reign of law among nations. . , . The heroes of each nation’s history have been those who have done the greatest injury to other nations and who have killed the greatest number of foreigners rather than these who have conferred the greatest benefits on mankind. The people of each and every nation need to sink their nationalism in a larger internationalism and to learn and teach the true place of their country among the nations of the earth. The task would not be so difficult if once it were resolutely undertaken. The people of different nationalities do not by nature hate one another, and many illustrations of international friendliness manifest themselves at any opportunity. The masses of the people do not want war, but peace. . . . In particular the teaching in history and geography needs to be entirely redirected. The emphasis now placed on the deeds of soldiers should be shifted to those who have created the best of our civilization and rendered the most lasting benefits to man- 100 EDUCATION FOB MORAL GROWTH kind. The emphasis now placed on wars should be shifted to the gains to civilization made in the intervals between wars, and war should be shown in its true light as a destroyer of what civil¬ ization creates. The fact that war is the breakdown of law and order and civilized society should be made clear. The shaping of a new international policy looking ultimately toward international peace and good will and the preservation of the slow gains of civilization calls for educational statesmanship of a high order and will require time . . . but it represents the greater con¬ structive task now before those who direct instruction in every nation.® Not the least important task should be a more pointed teaching of the need of constructive service in peace times. The idealisms of war are inherently spectacular and require less interpretation and encouragement than the quieter, undramatic types whose excellence is not so immediately apparent. It is a mistake to say that the idea of service was brought into being by the war. Devoted offerings to America had been made long before the war brought the occasion for the more dramatic types of display. At Wash¬ ington and elsewhere scientists, for example, were giving up chances of higher salaries in order to work for public health, improved agriculture, conservation of our forests, and other natural riches. In our factory cities, men and women worked in the settlements; doctors gave freely of their skill to the handicapped; men of civic zeal fought inefficiency and crookedness in public officers. We have long had our teachers to whom their daily work was emi¬ nently a patriotic service, our various missionaries and advocates of necessary but as yet unpopular causes. Chances for the exercise of public spirit were simply multi¬ plied and made more striking when the war came. Let us see to-day that our young people know how rich are the opportunities for the services of peace. They will ® See also H. E. Barnes, “History and International Good Will,*' }Iation, March 1, 1922, p. 251. THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 101 be better for acquaintance with the work of pioneers in science, the bravery of explorers, the courage of men like Dr. Lazear and Dr. Reed in stamping out yellow fever, the work of crusaders in philanthropy like Samuel Gridley Howe, of educators like General Armstrong in Hampton Institute. It reflects no credit upon us that young people are graduated from American schools without the slightest acquaintance with even the names, much less the labors to build up our public-school system, of men like Horace Mann. Nor do they know that Thomas Jefferson thought so highly of education as a public service that among the three benefactions which he desired to have recorded on his tomb¬ stone, he mentioned his founding of the University of Virginia. He did not include his having been President or his consummation of the Louisiana Purchase. Is there not something significant in this reminder to his country¬ men of the honor due to those who work for better minds ? Especially should the spirit of service be linked to the performance of the vocational tasks. Our youth were taught during the war that in war time people must farm, must mine, must build, and do other work not primarily for personal profit but for the good of the country. This idea we must not permit to be stored away until the next war. More insistently than ever we must associate the idea of patriotism with the thought of serving the country through one’s daily work. It need not sound so very strange to be told that when you are young, you can render distinctly patriotic service by fitting yourself to do with the highest skill the most useful work which your talents can perform. Put this ethical consecration of vocational aims in the foreground and keep it there. Encourage every possible practice in cooperation for worthy objects, in order that, from earliest childhood, young people may learn by experience what splendid things can be done by working together for upbuilding aims. Make the most of the whole- 102 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH some delight in team-work. Professor James’ idea of the “Moral Equivalent of War” is a challenge which waits for skillful teachers and far-visioned school boards to help give it practical eifect.^® That we must teach our students to admire the achieve¬ ments of other lands than our own goes without saying. How little do they know, for instance, that ours was not the only country which fought for its liberty, but that the Dutch, the Italians, the Germans, and the Swiss also had their wars of liberation ! And how much less do they know of the distinctive contributions to civilization made by each people and of the fact that in modern life each has become heir to a fund enriched by all! Every teacher should have learned at least this much from the study of the history of education, for there is scarcely a single people that has not made some offering to the educational ideals accepted to-day. The hope of a better world order lies in our pupils’ taking to heart the lesson of all these interde¬ pendences. The cooperation of Pasteur, the French dis¬ coverer of the germ origin of diseases, of Dr. Koch of Berlin, and of the American, Dr. Trudeau, in combating tuberculosis is but a single instance of the fact that the progress of mankind requires the constant interchange of gifts among all the nations. Most of all is this true in matters of the spirit. Bertrand Russell makes the suggestion on this head that the history textbooks of the future should be edited by international commissions to correct the tendency to over¬ prize the achievements of one’s own country and to ignore or to slight those of other lands.^^ In America we can perhaps take a step in this direction by inviting representa- 10 William James, Memories and Studies. “The Moral Equivalent of War” is also published separately by the Association for Inter¬ national Conciliation, 407 West 117th Street, New York. 11 Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight, p. 162. THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 103 tives of OTir various immigrant stocks to cooperate with native writers of our histories. Specific opportunities for the teachers of literature, foreign languages, and the social studies are mentioned in a later chapter. This at least all schools can do : remembering that a true pride will be benefited by knowing what other people think^about us and that just because America has so much to give mankind, we must know how the gift can be improved, we shall do well to recommend to our boys and girls books on America by foreign observers. Bryce’s American Commonwealth has justly won a place for itself. The introductory word breathes a specially admirable spirit. The comparisons in his Modern Democracies should also be known. Letters from America, by Rupert Brooke, the poet, who died in the Gallipoli campaign, criticizes some of our shortcomings, but always with kindly appreciation. So does the genial America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplo¬ matist, by Wu Ting Fang. Other useful criticisms will be found in G. Lowes Dickinson’s Appearances, and John G. Brooks’ As Others See Us. It is always to be understood, of course, that any adverse criticism of our national life must never, and assuredly least of all in the presence of the young, be made in a spirit of mere fault-finding. The leading thought should always be that America’s contribution to world civilization ought and can be made vastly better. Perhaps the most hopeful feature of our life is that our national traits are still so markedly the traits characterizing youth. Our country is still young in its zest for freedom as release from overt control, in its resentment at assumptions of intellectual superiority in others, in its impulsive generosity (and its equally impulsive outbursts of unfairness toward objects of dislike), its abundant good humor, its enthusiastic direct¬ ness and heartiness. Its failings, like its resources, are those of a great boy. We still have worlds to learn, but it m EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH is our good fortune to possess a native idealism and a vigor which will attack the giant tasks of the days ahead, we may be sure, with the daring, the persistence, and the good sense for which they call. # Questions and Problems 1. How do you account for the fact that morality as between individuals is more honored than as between nations? 2. Show how religious loyalty and love of family may impel to both worthy and unworthy types of conduct. What do both types tell about the underlying ideal? 3. Discuss the case for non-resistance as presented in J. H. Holmes^ New Wars for Old and Bertrand RusselFs Justice in War Time. 4. What would be the effect of such unified world teaching as H. G. Wells proposes in The Salvaging of Civilization^ Is emphasis upon unity the chief essential? 5. If it is true that people prefer peace to war, how do you account for the frequency of wars ? Are national antipathies inborn ? 6. Discuss the statement that wars have a permanently ennobling effect. 7. In the Middle Ages, Genoa, Florence, and other Italian cities were separate states and often warred upon one another. Wbat can be learned from their union in a single nation? 8. Read the account of General Armstrong's work for negro education in F. G. Peabody’s Education for Life. Why do many people fail to regard such endeavors as patriotic service ? 9. Describe peace-time opportunities for the spirit of courage, adventure, and team-work displayed in war. 10. Make a study of national expenditures for war. Wbat is being done to promote peace? References See, besides references quoted in text: Adler, Felix, The World Crisis and its Meaning. Angell, Norman, The Fruits of Victory. Bagley, W. C., “Education : The National Problem,” New Eepub^ lie, December, 1917. THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM 105 Burns, C. D., The Morality of Nations. Gibbons, H. A., Introduction to World Politics. Irwin, Will, The Next War. Krebhiel, Edward, Nationalism, War and Society. Libby, F. J., ‘‘War on War,” pamphlet published by the National Council for Prevention of War, Washington, D. C. Marvin, F. S., The Century of Hope, Ch. VII, XIII. Palmer, Frederick, The Folly of Nations. Tagore, Rabindranath, “East and West” and “The Nation,” in Creative Unity. CHAPTER VII THE TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE The “cultured person’^ in America has usually meant the college graduate, and, until comparatively recent years, there were few who were bold enough to question the time- honored ruling of the colleges on what the conception of culture should include. The chief instrument must be the study of Latin and Greek. This idea still obtains in many quarters, and it has exercised no slight influence upon the aims which even elementary and secondary schools have come to adopt. There is much to be said in its favor. To banish all study of the classics would be an offense against the idea of respect for diverse cultures. But there are also important reasons for breaking new paths. Both reasons will perhaps be clearer if we look first at a few facts of history and at the claims asserted for the classical training by its friends. Our classical curriculum came to America from England. The first American school for which the public was taxed was the grammar school started at Dorchester in 1639, to prepare for entrance to Harvard.^ The first public primary schools in Massachusetts came eight years later by a law which also prescribed the setting up of a “grammar school ... to instruct youth, so far as they may be fitted, for the university. ^ ^ It was upon this Massachusetts model that most of our public-school system was patterned. 1 The Boston Latin School was begun in 1635 or 1636. 106 TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 107 Now the early American “grammar” school was a trans¬ planted English “public” school. So was the college imported from England. In that country its purpose was the training of gentlemen and clergymen, and to this end the classical curriculum worked admirably. It fitted the clergymen to read the New Testament and the Fathers in the original tongue. It acquainted them with approved models of exact reasoning and stately discourse. It intro¬ duced them to an important part of the historic background out of which their religion had risen. For the gentleman this curriculum provided the means for cultivating his mind on the large sentiments proper to his station. ^ ‘ That life has not been spent idly,” says Landor,^ “which has been mainly spent in conciliating the generous affections by such pursuits and studies as best furnish the mind for their reception. ’ ’ For this task the classics were well fitted. They held up long-tested models of decorum, correctness, restraint, and taste. They were valued for their usefulness in curbing the tendency of the young to go their own gait regardless of the experience of the past. They served as correctives against mere freakishness and the folly of regarding every¬ thing old as outworn and everything novel as necessarily best. The need to remember this debt to the past is con¬ stantly uttered by the classicists. “If we owe all to those who begot and brought us forth,” says Petrarch,^ “what shall we say of our debt to the parents and fashioners of our minds?” Sir Gilbert Murray puts the case for the classics in these striking words : ^ 2 “Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney/’ in Imaginary Conversa¬ tions. « Quoted in J. H. Robinson, Petrarch^ p. 206. 4 Gilbert Murray, Religio Orammatici, pp. 7, 20, 48. See also A. F. West, The Value of the Classics, and Paul Shorey, “The Assault on Humanism,” Atlantic Monthly, June, July, 1917. 108 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH The scholar secures his freedom by keeping hold always of the past, and treasuring up the best out of the past so that in a present that may be angry or sordid, he may call back memories of calm or of high passion; in a present that requires resignation or courage, he can call back the spirit with which brave men long ago faced the same evils. He draws out of the past high thoughts and great emotions; he also draws the strength that comes from communion or brotherhood. . . . The chains of the mind are not broken by any form of ignorance; the chains of the mind are broken by understanding. So far as men are unduly enslaved by the past, it is by understanding the past that they may hope to be freed. But it is never really the past — the true past — ^that enslaves us ; it is always the present. . . . The Philistine, the vulgarian, the great sophist, the passer of base coin for true, he is all about us and always he has his out¬ posts inside of us, prosecuting our peace, spoiling our sight, confusing our values, making a man’s self seem greater than the race and the present thing more important than the eternal. Prom him and his influence we And our escape by means of the grammata into that calm world of theirs, where stridency and clamour are forgotten in the ancient stillness, where the strong iron is long since rusted and the rocks of granite broken into dust, but the great things of the human spirit still shine like the stars pointing man’s way onward to the great triumph or the great tragedy; and even the little things, the beloved and tender and funny and familiar things, beckon across gulfs of death with a magic poignancy, the old things that our dead leaders and forefathers loved, viva adhuc et desiderio pulcriora. There is no denying the weight of such considerations as these. They have been reinforced, however, by other more or less conscious reasons not quite so deserving of per¬ manent regard. In the land from which America ^s classical training was imported, the public schools and colleges were intended chiefly for the upper classes. As the British Empire grew, the classical training operated beautifully to prepare members of these circles for service in colonial administration. The administrator had to be a gentleman either by birth or breeding. He was obliged to be magnani- TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 109 mously free from mercenary concern. Training in the classics helped him. It undoubtedly played its part, along with other causes, in building up the British tradition of a civil service uncorrupted by money. But its function as an instrument of caste is only too apparent. It is evi¬ denced in these remarks by an Englishman on the objects of the public preparatory schools, and the point applies just as well to the institutions for which these schools prepare : ® The growth of imperial responsibility demanded a constant succession of men . . . quick to undertake and execute affairs of Government, with the instincts of a ruling caste; and here were a group of schools nursing the stock whence such men could be selected. I think it may be claimed without undue con¬ ceit that this great task has been worthily performed. . . . The specific social training of the public schools . . . provided the specific qualities in habit and moral character which have enabled the Englishmen to rule inferior races both with firmness and with sympathy. . . . It was the curriculum which was later to prove itself so happily adapted to the needs of the gentlemen adminis¬ trators of the British Empire that was carried over to America. It played no slight part in shaping the practices of our colleges, high schools, and elementary grade schools, or ‘‘grammar” schools, as they were long called. That it performed an excellent service in American life it would be unfair to deny. In many graduates it helped to breed the magnanimity and disinterested preferences on which Aristotle insists as the marks of gentlemanly distinction. Their lives as well as their speech — to paraphrase Lowell — 5 J. J. Findlay, “The English Public School,” in Types of Schools for Boys, p. 293. Huxley gave these schools a much less deferen¬ tial characterization. He said in his Liberal Education: “The richest of our public schools supply gentlemanly habits, a strong class-feeling and eminent proficiency in cricket.” H. G. Wells’ criti¬ cism in Joan and Peter is a piece of spicy journalism, but with enough truth to warrant attention. 110 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH were nobler for having lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato. As against the narrow vocational training, a preparation for a specialized skill, undoubtedly it was bet¬ ter to prepare for the art of living itself. Except the smaller size, no lives are round. These hurry to a sphere, and show, and end. The larger slower grow, and later hang — The Summers of Hesperides are long. Why not, therefore, retain the study of the classics as our chief cultural agency ? Even though it was originally meant for only the upper classes of society, would not democracy profit by extending to all classes a privilege so valuable? To level upward is certainly better than the opposite course. There are important reasons, however, for removing the classical training from its old dominance and for keeping it for only the few who know why they elect it. That the classics furnish the best educational material for all minds, or for all good minds, has by no means been proved; the old callings for which they trained are no longer the only leading careers; and the effect of the classical culture has been in the main too conservative. All minds are not alike, and it is unwarranted to say that those that excel in the classics are the best minds. Such a belief arises from thinking only of the successes and ignoring the failures. May not the successes attributed to classical training be due to the fact that the students were a select class, possessed of the special gift required for this particular proficiency ? ® It is possible that Lincoln might have been greater if he had been bred upon the classics, but it is just as likely that he might not, or even that he might have been less the Lincoln whom we honor. Nor has the case for general mental discipline been proved. It still 6 “We prefer as students those who have included Latin and Greek among preparatory studies.” Statement signed by fifty professors in the various studies. A. F. West, The Value of the Classics, p. 172. TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 111 remains to be demonstrated that the general discipline acquired in the study of Latin and Greek, if any, is unat¬ tainable through other studies/ In the second place, law, medicine, the ministry, politics, are no longer the few leading careers in our country.® Science has opened up a number of new callings for trained minds. So has modern business. Journalism, teaching by the laity, industry, agriculture, all otfer to-day vocational prospects of a new kind. Compare our modern scientific agriculture, for example, with the methods employed in the colonial days by the gentlemen farmers of the South. More careers than those for which the classics gave specific preparation are possible to-day, and, for the masses, our high schools, once designed to prepare for college, are them¬ selves taking the place of that institution. Hence, the old culture no longer preeminently meets, as it originally did, the leading special needs of educated men. It was an education, too, that only the few had the time to acquire. The sheer preliminary work requisite to the reading of Latin and Greek as literature takes more years than the majority of our students can afford. Unless they can learn the classics as a literature to be loved, the time spent on preparation might well be put to other uses.® 7 Prof. Paul Shorey summarizes the disciplinary values as “ration¬ ality, precision, urbanity, humanized and humanizing emancipation from primitive foolishness, parochialism, and fanaticism.” Atlantic Monthly, June, 1917. He insists that upon this point the consensus of educated opinion must be taken as final. Is it, however, so indis¬ putable that all or most students of the classics are conspicuously rational, precise, urbane, etc.? 8 Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, president of Amherst College, objects to the statement that the chief function of the early American college was to train for the ministry. See The Liberal College, p. 17 See, however, W. H. Small, Early New England Schools, pp. 87, 88. 9 “In an age when the world needs the sustaining energies of all the resources of humanism, it is a little bit unhumanistic for the classical materials to hold themselves apart from the world, demand¬ ing a special recognition for their superior values.” J. K. Hart, Democracy in Education, p. 269. 112 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH But the chief count against the classical training is that in the main it has helped to keep the ‘‘cultured’’ classes, even though they have not always been the wealthy classes, too closely wedded to the side of the existing order. That we need intelligently conservative influences in modern society may readily be taken for granted. If ever we doubted the usefulness of minds exercised in habits of sobriety, careful, deliberate judgment, calm, unbiased scru¬ tiny of the facts, we need only picture the riotous confusion that would follow if every scheme of social reform were carried out as quickly as every advocate of it desires. And yet, even when all weight has been given to the value of the conservative influence, is it an overstatement to say that too many college graduates, as a result of the dignified aloofness fostered by their culture, have kept out of pro¬ gressive undertakings in which they were needed ? Surely no one would say that clergymen, for instance, are apt to be as a class notably openminded, liberal, forward- looking. They are brought up on a schooling like that of the gentleman, designed, that is, to lift their minds above the ordinary cares of common men. Their studies, as a rule, deal with the Kingdom of Heaven and with the golden past, not at all with the changing, troublesome, often sordid present all about them. Superior minds are not bred by ignoring current problems. In this aloofness from current concerns the studies of the classical students were like those of the clergy. Run over the leading reforms of the nineteenth century. Review the history of the scientific movement and the democratic move¬ ment and note the indifference or the hostility with which, save for a few illustrious exceptions, the college graduates responded. Most of the members of the educated classes in America and Great Britain proved themselves on the side of things as they were. Although a minority of their number did valiant service in the championship of causes TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 113 now recognized as just, their followers did not come either from the colleges or the pulpits in anything like the num¬ bers that a less conservative training might conceivably have furnished. The clash between modern ideals of democratic progress and the type of thinking encouraged by the traditional schooling was referred to in a recent address by Lord Haldane : The problem raised for Oxford and Cambridge, especially, by the admission of the whole nation to political power is stiffer than many of us like to think. The essence of the intention of those universities for the two centuries before the twentieth was to equip the young men of the class then ruling for “service in Church and State.” Until fifty years ago almost every Cabinet Minister, like almost every Bishop, had been at Oxford or Cam¬ bridge. Thanks to the inherent independence and generosity of the human mind, they also reared involuntarily many of the most ardent and successful leaders of democratic revolt against that class rule. When the democratic fiood began to rise, the older universities, by the aid of some pressure from the State, made terms with it by abating certain abuses and by making it more easy for a few quick-witted, resolute, and adaptable youths of no fortune to make their way into these fastnesses of Con¬ servatism, become sharers in the opportunities to be found there, and so, as a rule, to detach themselves from their own class and be naturalized in the class previously ruling. Why is it that to-day so much of the business of advo- '^0 Manchester Guardian 'Weekly, July 8, 1921. It is true that many an illustrious innovator has been brought up on the classical training. The revival of learning was itself an innovation, a weapon against medievalism. Petrarch assailed the reputation of Aristotle. Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Milton, the thinkers of the En¬ lightenment, were trained in classical studies and advocated con¬ tinuing them. Perhaps the explanation is that these men had minds of “the inherent independence” mentioned by Lord Haldane; and because the classical arsenal contains weapons for both the conservator and the innovator, very probably they were more drawn by the latter. The challenge to classical educators to-day is to teach their subjects in such a way that their liberali2ing possibilities become realities. 114 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH eating needed changes is left to the nnscholarly agitator, the fellow with a grievance whose views are but too likely to be distorted by the sense of personal wrong ? Often on® hears things which are true misstated or exaggerated out of all proportion by soap-box orators. But when one is about to turn with repugnance from the street agitator, it would be well to ask why so much of the task of quick¬ ening the public conscience is left to his type. Where are the men and women who have had the advantages of a college training, who have had the opportunity to weigh the facts, not as participants in the struggle themselves, but as persons qualified to speak just because they are not tempted to be partisans? Why are they not taking the lead? If the work of helping our stricken world to better human relationships needs, as it does under democracy, the cooperation of all, let us ask ourselves what is lacking in our conception of culture — our humanizing’’ culture — that, with only few exceptions, this tale of aloofness on the part of the cultivated can be told of needed new causes everywhere in our country. Bertrand Russell throws an interesting sidelight on this question in his book. Why Men Fight, He criticizes the education of the gentleman on the ground that it produces a worship of “good form.” Now, good form, he says, is the behavior which minimizes friction among one’s peers. It seeks to avoid the disharmonies in behavior among the equals in the upper classes. It is perhaps unfair to add, as he does, that it “delicately impresses inferiors with a con¬ viction of their own crudity ’ ’ ; but there is ample testimony that the type of culture designed to minimize the friction at the top has failed to produce right attitudes toward those below, toward the working classes, toward the Hin¬ doos, toward the Mohammedans, toward the other pagans over whom the Oxford gentleman is called to rule. It is impossible to get the right attitudes toward inferiors with- TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 115 out disturbing that harmony which the ordinary type of culture seeks to preserve in the circles at the top.^^ The appeal which that harmony made at its best we can quite understand. It went with a way of life in whose favor there was much to be said. But the shock of the recent world tragedy and the shadows cast by the possibil¬ ity of further catastrophe are stirring many consciences to-day with a new uneasiness. It does, indeed, seem a pity that the serenities loved by the older generations have to be interrupted by the clamor of immediate world problems. The atmosphere of quiet study remote from the disturbing passions of the market place and the council chamber, the opportunity to ponder tranquilly the thoughts of ^^the best and wisest minds at their best and wisest moments,’^ the chance to reflect upon things of eternal value through long days and nights of calm communion with the nobility enshrined in beloved writings, explain the wistful desire of many a scholarly mind to see the tradition of classical culture perpetuated. Moreover, the old and established ways acquire a grace of their own, a harmony and dignity to which the newer modes cannot so soon attain and in con¬ trast with which the blundering awkwardness of the new becomes painfully apparent. But what if the price of devotion to an established beauty be the withdrawal of our educated classes from an intelligent understanding of disturbing problems which cry with peculiar urgency to-day for well-informed minds? 11 Recall the remarks on page 109 about the ‘instincts of a ruling class,” “ruling inferior races,” etc. The same writer tells more than he supposes in these further words about the schools for English gentlemen: “A medical man who practises in high social circles finds it to his advantage to have been educated in the exclusive social atmosphere of these schools.” “The Church of England, the historic Established communion, has recruited a large number of clergy from this quarter, while the non-conformist communities, Methodist, Congregational, and the like, have only small connection with this grade of society.” J. J. Findlay, i&id., pp. 289, 288. 116 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH This peril is inherent in the gentlemanly culture.’^ There is a danger in America of being so captivated by the graces which the gentleman’s education throws over the life of those in the chosen circles that we may forget how little it accords with the needs of the truly best minds of to-day. We want the generous detachment from mercenary aims ; we want the sobriety, the calmness, and the caution ; but what is the gain if, as a result, our educated classes fail to reflect upon essential problems at all? What if, as so often happens, they do not see the problems, or, if they do, dismiss them as merely wicked or foolish unrest? Here is one instance. It is selected from the labor sit¬ uation, because that problem bulks so huge in our thinking at this time, even though it is not at all our only problem. A few years ago, in a course of lectures delivered in the Sheffield Scientiflc School at Yale University, the head of a large engineering house told the young men that after the labor troubles in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a number of manufacturers in another part of the country cooperated to send an investigator to that city in order to report to them on possible lessons they might learn. The man came back with the rather disconcerting item in his report that though the men in the offices in Lawrence knew how to buy and make and sell, they knew less about their own labor problem than did the unspeakable labor leaders who had conducted the strike.^^ The men at the bottom knew, for example, how the increase in the cost of living affected the quantity of milk and eggs that the worker was able to buy for his children, and they knew the result upon the mind which the weaver brought to his loom every morning. These men at the bottom knew at least this item about the civilization, the factory civilization, in which we happen to be living : they knew that, in spite of the violence, the break- 12 H. L. Gantt, Industrial Leadership. TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 117 ing of contracts, and the other discreditable facts in the history of trade-unionism, the union had in its favor the highly important fact that it had prevented the creation of a permanently servile class. The men in the offices did not know this consequential bit of modern history. Some were cultured gentlemen; some, perhaps, were not. It is also possible that in some lives no liberalizing culture can quite overcome the prejudices of the home and the tug of self-interest. But the lack of understanding upon vital problems, and especially upon unpleasant problems, is far more common among college graduates than a genuine cul¬ ture would permit. The average college man ascribes our recurrent strikes to the diabolic work of ^‘agitators,’’ chiefly ‘‘damned foreigners.’’ He knows nothing of the fact that the labor unrest is worldwide, that it long ante¬ dates the Russian Revolution, and that in opposing the labor movement, America to-day is repeating the old blunders of Great Britain and other European countries as if nothing had been learned from their experience. He has had his courses in history. He has studied about the Peloponnesian Wars and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. He has even heard something about Servile Wars. Of the Industrial Revo¬ lution, however, and its effect upon the destinies of enor¬ mous populations to-day, he is often as uninformed as if he were wholly illiterate. His culture gives him far too little power to interpret the life of his own age. What is the way out ? Must we drop the study of Latin and Greek and specialize on the labor problem? Not at all. These things, however, we can do: we can keep the classics as “vocational” subjects, that is, for students whose minds turn toward writing, language or literature teaching, history or philosophy. In the second place, even for those who do not intend to enter these callings, a certain acquaintance with classical literature should be provided 118 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH through translations.^^ For instance, our youth would profit from reading many of J owett ’s translations of Plato. One wishes that in these days of swift change, students in our high schools and colleges could know something of the changing circumstances of Greek life which brought about the Sophist movement. America to-day needs the spirit of Socrates, for it suffers acutely from that unexamined life ’ ’ which he found so distasteful. The large outlook which the cultural studies of the past afforded can be supplied by making cultural the studies that prepare for the vocations. This problem will be dis¬ cussed in the special chapter on this topic. Here it may be remarked in passing, that ethics, history, literature, science, sociology, all the social studies, possess a content which, rightly interpreted, can help to give the mind some¬ thing of that generous outlook over human affairs which was the true glory of the old disciplines. When the voca¬ tion, as we shall attempt to show in Chapter IX, is con¬ ceived in no such narrow sense as the mere earning of bread but is understood as the making of a life through right relations with fellow men, the necessary studies in prepara¬ tion will surely be in the best sense cultural.^^ Questions and Problems 1. Why did the early Humanists turn so eagerly to the Latin and Greek classics'? Do their reasons hold good to-day? 13 “To say that the Psalms and the Gospels have no value . . . apart from the original form . . . would be absurd. Is it any less absurd to say that the study of (Greek works) would have little value . . . unless ... in the original?” W. K. Prentice, professor of Greek, Princeton, in Klapper, College Teaching, p. 417. See ibid., p. 407, for list of colleges offering Latin and Greek in translations. 14(7/. John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 269: “Knowledge is humanistic in quality not because it is about human products in the past, but because of what it does in liberating human intel¬ ligence and human sympathy. . . . Any subject matter which accomplishes this result is humane; any subject matter which does not accomplish it is not even educational.” TRADITION OF CLASSICAL CULTURE 119 2. When it is said that a knowledge of the Bible in the original tongue is not needed, the answer is made that such knowl¬ edge is eminently essential to better understanding of that book. Would you therefore recommend Hebrew and New Testament Greek for all graduates? 3. In view of the “lofty calm and clear outlook’^ ascribed to the study of the classics, why have theologians and professors sometimes been the bitterest of disputants, often over trifles? 4. If all classical literature were lost, how much of its contribu¬ tion do you think could be obtained from the literature of America and Great Britain? 5. Do you think that your classical training has cost you more in denied opportunities than it has proflted you? 6. Speaking of the debate over the living languages and the classics three centuries ago, Lowell said, in his Study of Modern Languages: “As the knowledge of Greek and Latin was the exclusive privilege of a class, that class naturally made an obstinate defence of its vested rights.^^ Mention other instances of such a tendency in the history of education. References See, besides references quoted in text: Arnold, Matthew, “Literature and Science, in Discourses in America. Bennett, C. E., and Bristol, G. P., Teaching of Latin and Greek in the Secondary School. Bryce, James, The Worth of Ancient Literature to the Modern World. Cooper, Lane, Two Views of Education. Eliot, C. W., Changes Needed in American Secondary Education; “The Case Against Compulsory Latin,” Atlantic Monthly, March, 1917. Flexner, Abraham, A Modern School. Inglis, a. J., Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. VIII. Lowell, J. R., The Study of Modern Languages. Monroe, Paul, Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. 11. Munroe, j. P., New Demands in Education, Ch. X. Parker, S. C., Methods of Teaching in High School, Ch. II. “Symposium on Value of Humanistic Studies,” School and Society, Vol. 28. Yocum, A. D., Culture, Discipline and Democracy, Ch. I, IV, V. CHAPTER VIII THE CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE Like the other influences we have been considering, mod¬ ern science has brought to education certain offerings which are of high ethical value but which, at the same time, have their serious limitations. Let us examine both facts about this mixed contribution. That science should occupy an important place in our scheme of culture few people will now question. Even so severe a critic as Mr. Balfour has this to say in his latest book : ^ If in the last hundred years the whole material setting of civilized life has altered, we owe it neither to politicians nor to political institutions. We owe it to the combined efforts of those who have advanced science and applied it. If our outlook upon the Universe has suffered modifications in detail so great and numerous that they amount collectively to a revolution, it is to men of science that we owe it, not to theologians or philosophers. On these, indeed, new and mighty responsibilities are being cast. They have to harmonize and coordinate, to prevent the new from being narrow, to preserve unharmed the valuable essence of what is old. But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge; and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolu¬ tions which have marked the development of modern civilization. Strangely enough this revolution was less the outcome of tiew aims for human life than the result of more or less KJ ■ ■ . . . ■ ■ ■ — . . 1 A. J. Balfour, Essays Speculative and Political, p. 46. 120 CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 121 accidental discovery of a new method. The requirements of this method are summarized by Karl Pearson as ‘ ‘ reason¬ ing about facts . . . from their accurate classification to the appreciation of their relation and sequence”; “dis¬ covery of a formula by the aid of the disciplined imagina¬ tion ’ ’ ; testing by the touchstone of ‘ ‘ universal validity for all normally constituted and duly instructed minds. ’ ^ * Fortunately these have become, in our best schools, an indispensable part of our cultural ideals. To democratic life in particular these attitudes are inval¬ uable. For one thing, science works in the open. The scientist, as opposed to the quack, is against secrecy and exclusiveness. He invites all men to share his methods and the results. His procedure is also marked by modesty and by willingness to delay judgment until the necessary facts are known and to change cherished judgments when the facts command. These attitudes are never easy, whether for youth or for age, but none are more needed where majority opinion must decide the gravest of public ques¬ tions. The scientific method sets another useful standard: it has no place for the rancor, the odium theologicumy which so often characterizes disputations over other problems. Where the point at issue is a matter of fact which can be settled by observation and experiment, people are less likely to lose their tempers than where they resort to dialectics, and where conviction is largely a matter of personal opinion. The story is related that a pious father once took his boy past the home of Huxley in order to impress on the lad the fact that this was the dwelling place of a man so wicked as to declare that he did not believe the story of Noah and the flood. It is no longer polite to regard people as wicked because their views differ from your own. The growth of 2 Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science, pp. 24, 77. 122 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH science and the obvious advantages of according a fair hearing to opposing convictions upon scientific problems have, no doubt, done much to bring about this change. The scientific method can also be of special benefit to democracy because it so encourages the spirit of curiosity. In earlier days, curiosity was in bad odor. The Greek legend ascribes the miseries of the world to the fact that Pandora was curious. The modern world smiles at such an estimate. It has learned, for example, what gain hsis come from the Pandora spirit which made it possible for Madame Curie to assist her husband in the discovery of radium. A democracy needs the spirit which constant¬ ly puts questions without fear. Progress requires the will to doubt and to challenge sanctified assumptions bravely. The labors of the evolutionists have been particularly useful to the democratic temper because they have brought home and familiarized the truth that customs, institutions, need no longer be regarded as handed down forever perfect and therefore beyond the reach of improvement. Evolu¬ tion, by insisting upon the fact that everything, from the solar system down to the merest blade of grass, has had its history, has encouraged people to interpret things his¬ torically. It has declared that man, instead of falling from an earlier perfection, has, on the contrary, ascended from the life of the beast. Hence, the suggestion has dawned upon the modern world as never before, ‘^What if develop¬ ment is still possible?’’ Earlier ages, too, saw men bring forth plans for Utopias. But the striking fact about pres¬ ent-day hopes for better life is that modern science has encouraged man to see that the nobler commonwealth, if ever it comes, is something that must be evolved, not be produced in a single stroke of creation. Furthermore, whereas the old conceptions of the perfect commonwealth made everything the work of a single inspired lawgiver, the CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 123 modern viewpoint is more democratic in declaring that the work must be the result of the cooperation of all men and women. ‘‘What the best human nature is capable of, is within the reach of human nature at large,” said Herbert Spencer, and hopes of this kind are playing their big part to-day. The two terms, science and progress, have become so closely related that we can scarcely think of the one without the other as its instrument. For many a forward step of to-day and to-morrow credit must go to a department of science later in origin than the others, namely that of social investigation. Experts employed by life-insurance companies or consumers* leagues study the connection between health and work, and, as a result, we learn to guard better against occupational diseases. To breed healthier new generations, we have the eugenists to supply us with a wealth of biologic and socio¬ logic facts. When employers and their striking miners issue conflicting statements about the causes of the trouble, a corps of specialists marshals the necessary data, and the relation of wages to the cost of production and the cost of living need no longer be in dispute. The researches of the psychologists are proving a help to teachers, parents, social workers, law-makers, reformers of every kind. See, for illustration, the brief prepared in defense of the first woman ’s labor law before the United States Supreme Court.® The psychologists had amassed a fund of informa¬ tion on the subject of fatigue. These facts and others were brought together in a notable application to a vital problem of modern industry. There seems to be no limit to the achievements which the human race can reach by applying to all fields of behavior the methods of precise investiga¬ tion and formulation which have accomplished so much in the physical sciences. 3 Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency (Russell Sage Foundation, 1912). 124 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH But the findings of the sciences, even of the social sciences, we must never permit ourselves to forget, constitute only a partial need in our culture. Their usefulness is limited to supplying knowledge about instruments. They do not give us ultimate ideals ; they cannot provide a pattern for the whole of life but only the means to follow the pattern, if we will. The '‘if” is all important. The statisticians may, for instance, gather all the facts they will about the wastefulness of war; they may shout from the housetops that we spend dollars on armies and navies, and dimes on schools; but what if people are still wedded to the ideas which make fleets and armies the only protection they can understand or desire ? Important as it is to know the facts about economy or safety or health, it is even more impor¬ tant to know what part these objects of desire should play in the entire scheme of our lives. This scheme is not sup¬ plied to us by the sciences. It is given by our general convictions about the worth of life, by our religion, by our ethical ideals. On this head science cannot speak. Its function is to find the ways by which our ideals can be effectively served. We must differentiate, that is, two kinds of rightness. There is first the provisional rightness which is the concern of science and which tells us what we must do if we want our plans to succeed. Then there is the other kind of right¬ ness which asks whether the success itself is worth striving for. If I want to go to Europe, I must take such and such steps. But ought I to go at all ? If I own slaves and want to get more labor out of them, I must feed them better ; but ought I to be a slaveholder? Science tells us that if we want to wage war effectively, we must use these and these tactics, sacrifice these lives, pay this and that other cost. It says nothing of the fundamental rightness or wrongness of war as a mode, let us say, of “vindicating national honor.” These questions illustrate the difference which CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 125 Kant, antiquated though it sounds to mention him to-day, pointed out when he distinguished the two kinds of impera¬ tive, the ‘ ‘ ought-with-an-if ’ ’ and the ‘ ^ moral ought, ’ ’ which may not be heeded or ignored according to our choice of something else, but which must he followed because of its intrinsic rightness. Now the man of science, as long as he confines himself to the gathering of facts, is a specialist in the demands of the former kind of rightness, the provisional type. We go to him to learn what must be done if we are to travel faster, make our factories safer, our children healthier, our government more efficient. But no amount of statistics or other scientific information can tell us ultimately what all these improvements are good for, why, for instance, we should labor for posterity at all, why it is better to be defeated in a righteous cause than to triumph in a wrong one, or why, in general, those things of inestimable precious¬ ness which constitute our holiest ideals should be for us so sovereign. These reflections are far from academic. Prog¬ ress is not simply an affair of discovering facts. A right attitude toward the findings is still more fundamental. Such facts as are coming to light about the disordered social life of to-day are useless if men have not the moral courage to act upon them whatever the cost to vested comfort. Science is ennobled to the extent that every better possi¬ bility which it can suggest is accepted as a moral responsi¬ bility. Every such help is to be welcomed. The way to salva¬ tion is through intelligence. But the greatest service any study can offer, we repeat, is its light upon ultimate ideals for the whole of our relationships. These goals are not revealed by even the most accurate study of things as they are. The ideal pattern for life is found neither in Nature nor in human societies as these are viewed by the scientists. In so far as men of science are entitled to the name, they 126 EDUCATION POK MORAL GROWTH tell us only about .what exists, not what life at its highest ought to mean. The difference is strikingly illustrated in a fallacy of Herbert Spencer’s in his useful Essay on Education. He repeats Rousseau’s injunction to let all necessary punish¬ ments come, if they must, from Nature and not from man. These natural penalties, he says, are constant, direct, impartial, inevitable ; they do not threaten but work silently and inexorably where parental indulgence does the oppo¬ site. But, before he concludes, Spencer is obliged to warn us against an exclusive following of Nature for the reason that some of her inflictions may be altogether too cruel. Exposure to cold may bring pneumonia and death. Hence, “the moral reactions called forth from you by your child’s actions you should as much as possible assimilate to those which you conceive would be called forth from a parent of perfect nature.'^ How signiflcantly is the point of view here shifted! We are‘told repeatedly to follow Nature, and then, when we consider the dire possibilities, we must turn from Nature and take as our guide the perfect parent — a being nowhere to be found in the natural order. Some fathers and mothers are assuredly wiser than others, but none are perfect. When Spencer, therefore, directs us to the standard set by the perfect parent, he leaves behind him the realm open to investigation by the methods of science and calls upon a being from the world of ideals. No other course is open. Nature cannot supply us with ideals because Nature is morally indifferent. When her laws are violated, she does not act as the parents would who desire to see the law-breaker taught to be better. She may go to the extreme of entirely killing him off. This is but a single instance of her unconcern. In all her domain, there 4 Herbert Spencer, Essay on Education^ p. 217 (italics ours). CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 127 is no question of what ought to be. A given volume of hydrogen weighs less than the same volume of oxygen at the same pressure and temperature, and that is all there is to the matter ; it is neither right nor wrong that this should be the case. The world might indeed have been diiferent if hydrogen were heavier than it is, but nobody ever thinks of saying it ought to be heavier, as we say that men ought, for instance, restrain the natural impulse to kill one another. This might have been a very different world if the axis of the earth were perpendicular to the plane of its orbit instead of being inclined as it is. Who will say that it should have been perpendicular ? The fact itself speaks the last word ; the thing exists, and that ends it. But in human conduct, it is of the utmost importance that what does indeed exist should be judged in the light of what ought to exist. To find the highest aims for the conduct of men, we must, therefore, look not to Nature nor to people as they are, but to human behavior raised to perfection. Nature’s use¬ fulness to man begins and ends with her supplying instru¬ ments, not supreme purposes. Here lies the reason for one of the outstanding tragedies of our age. Modern society has been so absorbed in shaping instruments that it has for¬ gotten to ask the best uses to which these can be put or, indeed, in such instances as poison gas, whether it is ever right to fashion some instruments at all. This eager absorp¬ tion in the devising of tools has allowed modern science to increase the possibilities of human hurt at the same time that, through surgery and other ways, it has tried to minimize them. The diseases and deaths from phos¬ phorus in match factories until recent years are but a single example of health perils which the growth of science has actually multiplied. The deadening effect of modern machinery in stunting the mentality of the mechanized 128 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH workers who operate them is another kind of hurt.® Every¬ thing depends upon the purposes which people are taught to keep at all times steadily in view. The wireless telegraph lends itself as readily to signaling the position of a pros¬ pective victim to a submarine as it does to appealing for help for a vessel afire. Nature’s indifference to the ends to which her gifts are put is notorious. These considerations men are only too likely to forget under the thrilling sense of expanding power which mod¬ ern science gives them. Who knows to what fearful shrinkage the spirit of man may come if we continue to improve upon our machines without due thought of the ideal good to which they should minister f It stands to our disgrace that a world which could master natural forces, as it has done, has not yet been able to master its own moral anarchies. The least we can do is to try to have our young people reflect upon these matters in the days when their minds are relatively open. We adults have so many immediate tasks to perform that we usually think our¬ selves constrained to shelve utterly the problem of ultimate purposes and plunge into finding means for the very near ends of business, housekeeping, or social reform. Hence the passion for science. The methods of science open imme¬ diate ways to construct machines for war and industry. They indicate immediate steps to end disease and to rid the race of present evils. So it is that, just as Herbert Spencer did in his generation, to-day men like Dr. Flexner turn to science as the great lever by which to lift the enor¬ mous weight of woe and maladjustment. But scientific knowledge and skill, essential as they are, do not constitute the chief needs of youth. The greatest need of the young is vision. Youth is not yet obliged to concentrate its energies upon finding tools. It is still free to look out over life at 5 See Arthur Pound, The Iron Man in Industry, and Josephino Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency. CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 129 long range. It is still free to dream dreams and to shape ideals. This would no doubt be admitted by the advocates of education in science. Spencer, for example, was a pro¬ nounced anti-militarist and anti-imperialist. His Essay on Educationy like others of his books, was designed to help train better parents and better citizens. In our own day an ideal purpose lies behind the work of the Modern School founded by Francisco Ferrer in Spain and imitated by disciples elsewhere, and surely it is a meliorative purpose that prompted Dr. Flexner’s founding of the Lincoln School. But because the science which forms the core of study in such schools is essentially concerned with means and not with ultimate ends, its votaries may very easily become so enamored of mastering these means as to treat the question of ends with but scant regard. The end com¬ monly accepted in these Modern Schools is hedonistic; science is to promote human happiness. But we need ethical ideals more deserving of the name.® These considerations, let it be reiterated, are not intended to minimize the highly important function that science per¬ forms within its own sphere as provider of instruments. And let all credit be given to its pedagogical contributions. As against the dreary futilities of so much academic teach¬ ing and the failure to use the most elementary results of modern investigation, the offerings of the scientists are of immense value to educators. But the warning of Bacon is still timely : ^ ‘ There is a superstition in avoiding super¬ stition, when men think to do best if they go furthest from the superstition formerly received.^’ To-day’s super¬ stition is the undue worship of natural science. It shows itself particularly in the eagerness with which many edu¬ cators look to biology for chief guidance in the affairs of human beings. « See p. 177. 130 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Such guidance is woefully inadequate. Much as we can learn from biology, we go amiss when we forget — or deny, as many eager spirits do — the all-important differences from plant and animal that make man human. Again we see the need for ideals drawn from a better source than that of morally indifferent nature. In the biological world, there is struggle for existence, there is survival of the fit¬ test, but without regard to moral fitness to survive.^ The world of business and of international relations shows plainly enough the mischief wrought by accepting this doctrine. A merchant may put his competitor out of busi¬ ness by employing methods which a man of greater self- respect would not lower himself to use. The stronger nation may crush a weaker — because it is better fitted to survive ? Biologic fitness bears no relation to moral merit. Sur¬ vival in one environment may be due to circumstances which make survival impossible where the environment itself is on a higher ethical level. The Arctic fur of the polar bear would unfit him to survive in the heart of Africa. Because Oliver Twist could not steal so well as the Artful Dodger, he was less able to survive in the pickpocket society. Every great martyr bears witness to this impor¬ tant truth. The very societies that condemn the martyr condemn themselves rather than him as the more truly unfit. Socrates might have avoided death if he had 7 Here is a sample of this misleading philosophy : “Nature is ruled by the law of the struggle for existence and of the survival of the fittest and strongest. States, like trees and animals, are engaged in a never-ending struggle for room, food, light, and air, and that struggle is a blessing in disguise, for it is the cause of all progress. . . . The abolition of war would be a misfortune to man¬ kind. It would lead not to the survival of the fittest and strong¬ est . . . but of the sluggard and the unfit.” J. E. Barker, Great and Greater Britain. For reply, consult D. S. Jordan, War and the Breed; F. G. Nicolai, Biology of War; G. Nasmyth, Social Progress and Dartcdnian Theory, CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 131 descended to the level of his fellow Athenians. The better way would have been for Athens to have risen. Survival of the fittest in the natural world also means keeping others from surviving. When the stock of acorns is limited, the squirrel must look out strictly for itself and thus keep other squirrels from protecting themselves against hunger. In a world thoroughly humanized, men survive in the process of helping others to survive. Man^s life at its best is guided by an ideal not found in the dealings of natural beings : he feels the obligation to elevate and refine the standards of fitness and to work for fitness in all his fellows. It will not do to cite the many instances of mutual aid found in the subhuman world. These may be expres¬ sions of mere herd instinct, as often misleading for man as useful; or else they may signify cooperation within the group for more effective combat with other groups. Man, however, is most himself when he differs from the animal even in his cooperation. Everything depends upon the conscious purpose.® Contrast further the bonds between the generations of natural beings with those best of human ties which we here call spiritual. In the natural world, the child outgrows the parent more or less quickly. Indeed, when the parent plant has performed its function of creating fiower and fruit, it may fade and perish. In the human relationship, the 8 Whenever man and Nature are treated as alike, the tendency is to level downward. Note, without anticlimax, the current habit of speech which, instead of asking, “What do you think?” asks, “What is your reaction?”, as if you were a piece of litmus paper or a tadpole in a laboratory. It will be said that such Darwinism as we have here been discussing is no longer regarded as scientific. But whatever may be the latest word in biology, the relation of man to his environment cannot find its highest pattern in the example of plants and animals. Even if, for example, in spite of the behaviorists, it should ever be the ac¬ cepted scientific belief that animals can reason and will, something more and other will still be required of the human creature. 132 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH tie between the parent and child is prolonged, and, when the relationship is spiritualized, the bond is never broken. Youth can never outgrow the wisdom of age. When the aged themselves cease to grow and when they become bur¬ dens, there is always the duty of tender care. Human offspring can never reach the point where further quicken¬ ing from the old is impossible. How often does it happen that precisely at the period when the young have passed out of their legal infancy, that is, when they are old enough to make homes of their own, they begin for the first time to understand their parents and want the benefit of their experience ! The yearning desire of parents to be of such continued service is unknown to beast and plant. Wherever the child thus turns toward father or mother, what is best in the latter is reanimated; the parent soul is stirred to better life, as it certainly is not in the world where the elders, having performed their physical functions, are no longer needed and may pass away at once. Or it may be that after the parents are helpless or deceased, the example of their lives continues to touch the lives of the children. And even more precious are those influences that we cannot quite call by the name of example. There is something about people that is better than anything they actually say or do, and the life of many a parent reveals to the children glimpses of this nobler existence, insights into a world where people greet one another, not as creatures of flesh and blood, but as spirits. “We get our lives from our mothers not once but a thousand times, * ’ says the Norwegian dramatist; and we might add, “from our fathers, too.*^ These are ties of which the biologic world knows nothing. The man whose chief training has been in science is apt to dismiss these considerations lightly, because he has been accustomed to but one method of verification, which he mis¬ takenly applies to any and every type of experience. He accepts as true what can be mathematically verified or CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 133 what can be repeated everywhere in purely external fash¬ ion. Everybody can make the same tests for oxygen or carbon dioxide by following a few definite mechanical for¬ mulas. But when it comes to proving, for example, how he that loseth his life shall save it, or that the best life for any one of us lies in evoking it in others, something other is required than the mathematical demonstration or the mechanical repetition found adequate in the laboratory. Here the deepest intimacies of a man’s own life are involved. All that one is, or tries to be, at the innermost core of his being must be drawn upon. A moral truth must become a genuine force in one ’s life before its validity can be recognized. Language being at best so inadequate here, we are obliged, in order to suggest the peculiarly inti¬ mate persuasion required for ethical conviction, to say that the heart” must assent. The mother who sees the ideal self in a wayward child because of her love for it, nay, sometimes because of her very disappointment in it, illustrates the point. Some truths cannot be perceived as a matter of bare, cold-blooded cognition. Everyone who has ever tried to quicken an unresponsive nature to a love of beauty or to an appreciation of some fine shade of human excellence knows how much harder it is to teach this than the chemical analysis of protoplasm or differences in reac¬ tion time. Not everything can be taught with the aid of test tubes and microscopes and slide rules. Perhaps this is the reason why those whose training has been mostly in science are sometimes slower about showing sensitiveness to realities which lovers of beauty and the spiritually^ minded are often quicker to recognize. Here lies the strength of the plea for the special kind of training in imagination offered by literary study. Sir Gilbert Murray says that we can use the telephone and get the most that it is intended to offer without living over the mental activity of the inventor j it is not necessary 134 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH to ^‘recapture the moment of glory which came to him, but it is impossible to get the best out of a great literary work without ‘ ‘ definite effort of imaginative understanding so as to relive the experience of the creator of it. ” ^ Such experiences are indispensable if our youth are to feel any sense of ultimate consecrations for their lives. They do indeed get such convictions from teachers of sci¬ ence, but only when these teachers are more than “men of science,’’ that is, when they are men of ethical enthusiasm. Again we are brought back to the need of ideals, great compelling visions of life as it ought to be. To correct the arresting tendency of occupation with things as they are, we must call upon the teachings of literature, philosophy, ethics. The limitation of science-teaching in this respect is evident in this statement by Dr. Flexner : “ The man educated in the modern sense will be trained to know and to care about and to understand the world he lives in, both the physical world and the social world. ... A firm grasp of the social world means an appreciation of, and a sympathy with, current industry, current science, and current politics.” Important as it undoubtedly is to under¬ stand the physical world and the social world, does this not ignore the supreme importance of understanding that there is such a thing as an ideal world? The danger is that where science is made ‘ ‘ the central and dominating feature of the school,” acquaintance with ultimate ideals will be assumed to be something that the child can pick up as he goes along without any necessity for specific attention to them. Indeed, it is characteristic that in Dr. Flexner ’s plan for the modern school, he speaks of the aim of litera- 9 Gilbert Murray, Religio Grammatici, p. 31. See also J. R. Lowell’s “Dante” in Essays, Vol. IV, p. 255. On verification in ethics, see Felix Adler, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, pp. 112, 116, 135. 10 Abraham Flexner, The Modern School (General Education Board, New York). CONTRIBUTION OF MODERN SCIENCE 135 ture as being ‘‘the cultivation of taste and appreciation,” but says nothing of its paramount importance as a means of cultivating and elevating ideals of living. In the same way, the tendency in many a school is to teach vocational guidance, that is, to acquaint young people with “current practices, ’ ’ but to say little or nothing about better ethical standards for those practices. The need for such standards is fundamental. In a mem¬ orable passage, Plato answers the contention that children should be taught things as they are with the rejoinder to teach them ideals, because, if you instruct them in things as they are, they will have no measures of value. Dr. Flexner would agree with the wisdom of this re¬ minder in so far as it applies to the necessity of teaching scientific standards. He would have young people taught the indispensable norms of modern inquiry, regard for facts, sound hygiene, economic efficiency. But a spiritual culture will keep the scientific standards in their proper place and labor unceasingly to educate our youth to appre¬ ciate the highest standards possible, those ideals which give us our vision of a perfect society beyond the best that experience has yet encountered. Questions and Problems 1. Pasteur said: “The greatest distortion of the intellect is to believe things because one wishes them to exist.^^ Illustrate from discussions of to-day^s public questions. 2. Show how classroom methods have benefited from the at¬ tempt to study educational problems scientifically. Are there any suggestions here for the study of other problems, for example, political and industrial? 3. Why was it necessary for Spencer in 1859 to write his plea for science? To what extent has his plea been heeded and why? 4. Can you think of any other reasons, besides those in this chapter, why the morality enforced by Nature, the best according to Spencer, is inadequate? 136 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 5. Contrast the progress resulting from the study of external nature with the smaller accomplishment from the study of man himself. Can you explain the reasons for the difference? 6. Read A. R. Bond^s Inventions of the Great War, Classify these inventions in the order of their benefit to mankind. 7. Read Johan Bojer^s novel The Great Hunger. What light does it throw on “conquering the world of matter’^ as an ideal for life? 8. Read the concluding sketch in Georges DuhamePs Civilization and define the ethical function of science. References See, besides references quoted in text: Bury, J. B., The Idea of Progress, Ch. II, XIX. Conklin, E. G., Heredity and Environment, The Direction of Human Evolution. Huxley, T. H., Science and Culture, A Liberal Education, Science and Art in Relation to Education. Judd, C. H., The Psychology of High School Subjects, Ch. XIV Marvin, F. S., The Century of Hope, Ch. V, VI. Perry, R. B., The Present Philosophical Tendencies, Ch. Ill; The Present Conflict of Ideals, Ch. V. SoDDY, Frederick, Science and Life. Shafer, Robert, Progress and Science. Thomson, J. A., An Introduction to Science. Veblen, Thorstein, The Place of Science in Modern Civilization. Wallace, A. R., The Wonderful Century. Wallas, Graham, The Great Society, Ch. I. CHAPTER IX THE DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS “I HEAR America singing, ” says Walt Whitman ; and the music is the song of men and women engaged in their everyday tasks But America will have better reason for singing when the work of hand and brain is done better than it is now. The sharp demands of modern life have been forcing us to realize that our standards of work have been too easy-going. Hence the insistence upon vocational training, and, hence also, the grave danger of our being tempted now into overprizing specialized efficiency. To avoid such an extreme, our schools must offer vocational preparation, but this preparation should, at the same time, introduce each worker to the liberal outlook of the cultured. Evidently we shall have to change our conceptions both of work and culture. We have already seen how limited as a preparation for modern life is the culture originally designed for the select social classes. Still less does the classical tradition meet the educational needs of women. When ^‘the female semi¬ naries” were opened in this country less than a century ago, they simply took over, in the main, the kind of learn¬ ing provided in the colleges for males. The choice was not unwise. The seminary was meant for ladies who must no more be occupied with the concerns of the life about them than the gentleman should work for his bread. This idea of culture for women, however, will no longer serve. Many girls who must earn their living now go to high school and 137 138 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH college. All women are now voters. They require some¬ thing better than the education described by Mr. Wells as furnished by a kind of “mental maid who did the young ladies’ minds as the maid did their hair for the dinner table.” Moreover, most girls expect some day to be wives and mothers directing their own households. For this home¬ making, education patterned upon the classical tradition can hardly be the fittest preparation. The moment this topic of women’s vocation is broached, deep-seated preju¬ dices arise, and yet no subject stands more in need of dis¬ passionate survey ; for while we think it necessary for girls to take special training to become bookkeepers, teachers, nurses — careers in which they do not stay all their lives — we have hardly begun to realize how great is the need of sound preparation for the permanent calling, which most young women may be expected to pursue, the making of homes.^ Where shall the future mother learn, for example, sound principles of child training ? In the simpler homes of older days, the education of children was in some respects easier for the mother than it is now. Young people did a certain amount of work in the household and were taught impor¬ tant lessons by actually partaking in the dairying and other tasks done by the parents. Pleasures were less exciting, outside distractions were fewer, home and school and church were in closer accord and worked together toward simpler ends. But to-day the situation is immensely more complex and calls for a better preparation than a girl can get by merely following, as of old, the household principles of her grandmother. Her home-making is now closely linked to her responsibilities as a citizen. Women are less apt to be, 1 See E. J. Putnam, The Lady. See also ‘^Reorganization of Home Economies in Secondary Schools” (Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.). DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 139 as men are, specialists in commerce and industry. Through their home interests, their closer relation to the welfare of the children, they are brought into an intimate personal contact with community problems which the overspecialized men-folk are not so likely to deem important. Take, for a single illustration, the problem of supplying a modern city with pure milk. More and more our schools must now pre¬ pare for the broad-visioned citizenship which is becoming an essential part of the mother’s calling. When we turn to the life of our boys in industrial and commercial occupations, we find a tragic lack of prepara¬ tion. It is estimated that about three-quarters of the boys who leave school enter employments which require little or no skill, and which, therefore, allow them little or no men¬ tal or civic growth. As to the skilled trades and profes¬ sions, few persons will question that their work needs to be done far better than at present. Now, in sketching thus briefiy the need of preparing for the callings, we have presented only one side of a bafflingly many-sided problem. On the one hand, there is urgent need for vocational training. Neither home nor guild now teaches trades. But one institution does reach every boy and girl and is avowedly dedicated to raising the level of national and individual life. And so the school must de¬ vote more energies than at present to this important function. On the other hand, we must face this important counter¬ consideration : How can we tell early enough just what vocations our students are going to pursue? May we not run here into premature specialization, a danger that the old culture, for all its shortcomings, was less likely to meet 1 This is no slight difficulty. Perhaps at no time more than in our speedy America of to-day has there been greater peril of forgetting the claims of a noble outlook upon life in the eagerness to lay hold upon a few immediately useful 140 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH facts and skills. Other conditions being equal, the boy who can stay at college until he is twenty, devoting his chief energies to acquaintance with the best that has been known and thought, is surely more likely to look at life with broader vision than the boy obliged at thirteen to begin concentrating upon electricity or plumbing or commercial subjects. But to urge this counter-claim by no means closes the case against vocational preparation. The need for it can¬ not be denied, especially when we bear in mind how vast is the number of those now unfitted for any life work. Is it not possible, therefore, to devise a vocational training that shall at the same time be free from the narrowness of early specialization? Can we not, in preparing boys and girls to earn a living, bring them to that ampler outlook which makes earning a living only an incident in making a life ? Our current vocational training does unfortunately tend to be too specialized and technical. Courses in household management, for instance, as ordinarily given fail to appeal to many young women. “We go to college,” they say, get ^ ideas, ^ not to acquire this or that domestic skill.” Their dissatisfaction is justified. They want the intellec¬ tual stimulation which they receive from literature and his¬ tory and philosophy, but which they do not get from the usual courses in textiles and food values. The professional schools for men are open to a similar charge, for they are likewise too prone to ignore the claims of culture. Year after year the average law-school graduates its scores of expert crammers, but not enough students of law and public-minded lawyers. The medical schools turn out suc¬ cessful candidates for licenses, but not enough doctors and public-spirited scientists. The engineering schools graduate their draughtsmen and mechanicians, but not a sufficient number of engineering scientists and artists. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 141 The remedy lies in ventures comparatively new.^ But some day young men and women will begin to prepare themselves at college or high school for their vocations and out of this very study get the mental enlargement, the sense of broad, cultivated interest, which they now acquire from a proper study of history and literature and biology, for they will be taught to see how their life work is related to the main currents of the world’s spiritual activity. Girls, for example, in preparing to make homes, will learn how the home shapes public taste according as it creates a de¬ mand for honest, artistic products or poorer ones, how it can profit from the sciences and, in turn, set them to formu¬ late and solve new problems, how it influences the course of man’s moral evolution by nurturing the qualities that elevate the life of society or debase it.® Objection to the idea of education for leisure does not err in turning to the vocational aim. The error lies rather in the barrenness of the vocational aim as ordinarily under¬ stood. In too many circles to-day, vocational education means training a ‘‘hand,” a productive unit which some¬ one can quite respectably exploit if only he pays it the market wage. Instead, the aim should be to train persons who are to see their work in its relations to the world’s essential needs and whose performance of their function is to help them, and all others influenced by their work, be¬ come better persons. This is the central thought of this chapter. We are not thinking here of vocational education 2 It will be interesting to watch the development of the plan, initiated at Antioch College, to combine the processes of culture and vocational training. There is hope in a plan of which its sponsors say, “The best cultural values are gained, not when we escape from industry, but when we make it express our highest purposes.” Everything, of course, depends on how those “highest purposes” are conceived. 3 See A. G. Spencer, Woman’s Share in Social Culture, Ch. VI, yii. 142 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH as a mere means for turning out hordes of workers who will fit in a bit more efficiently with the demands of to-day ^s economic order. We are thinking of workers, in the broad¬ est sense of the term, who will make a beginning even to¬ day toward regarding work as an ethical civilization worthy of the name would regard it — as a leading opportunity to develop human souls. That this conception will require fundamental changes in our economic system goes without saying. There must be a shift from work for profit to work for service. How this will eventually be effected is not our concern here. Our interest is in the need for a changed point of view. The idea to be kept always in the foreground is, “How can work contribute to the making of better per¬ sonality ? ’ ^ When the vocational life is once regarded in this fashion, preparation for it will lack none of the large and generous outlook fostered by the classical training at its best. As an example of what is already being done, see the oppor¬ tunities in the preparation for the teacher ^s profession. Here the student, while getting ready for his vocation, is introduced to a rich variety of cultural interests, psychol¬ ogy, biology, anthropology. He is brought into touch with big social problems such as the influence of the various educative agencies outside the classroom like play, news¬ papers, libraries, settlement houses, the industrial situation. When he studies the history of education, he broadens his outlook by trying to understand what men considered most worth striving for in Greece and Rome, in that Orient which is fast becoming close neighbor to the West, in mediaeval and modern Europe. Every calling has its own cultural background, in its science, its history, and its ethics. In all vocational preparation, the clue to the cultural values is to study the ethical import of the world ^s work: what at its highest should the work of the world set itself DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 143 to accomplisli ? Let us, for purposes of contrast and in illustration of the mistaken emphasis still current, look at the following program for vocational study in a large Western high school. Observe how the major stress is laid upon externals and incidentals. The students are asked: ‘ ‘ How great is the demand for this occupation ? How many are engaged in it? Where is it most successful? What rewards does it offer ? What talents does it require ? What training ? ” At the end comes a moral tag : be honest, per¬ severing, industrious; and whether, as a result, the young man only adds one more to the list of profiteers or hard employers seems to be of slight consequence. The one ex¬ ternal result of success in the shape of money or position or fame, is the thought put in the foreground. The essen¬ tial thing to teach, however, is that the first and last of all worthy successes is success in the making of lives, and that this is the object to which everything else must minister. Nothing should be permitted to obscure the fact that the worth of one’s work is measured ultimately by the type of life encouraged in all who take part in it, and that, for the individual worker, the greatest return is the finer life he himself lives in the attempt to promote finer life in all affected by his endeavors. « What, concretely, does this ideal require? The World War made some people more familiar than before with the thought that the aim of one ’s work should be service.^ But if this term is to be something better than cant, its specific demands need constantly to be reinterpreted. Let us ex¬ amine in detail, therefore, the difference between making a living and making a life and the concrete requirements of ■*Not all of us caught this idea. There was the teacher who, when the War came, is reported to have said: “I have been teaching twenty years; and I guess now I’ll go to Washington and do some patriotic work.” 144 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH that service in the rendering of which the personality of all affected is made better. There are those who are so impressed with the devastat¬ ing effects of modern machinery that they see little hope in work as a means of improving personality. They would have the main effort in social reform go to reducing the hours of labor and getting mankind to improve itself in the hours of leisure. Against this conception we need the idea that it is chiefly through one\s work that one’s life should be shaped for the better. We need not minimize in the least the importance of a right use of leisure. Even when work is carried on under the best of conditions, the leisure hours afford their special opportunity for self-improvement through the very fact that the mind is refreshed by occupation with something new. But the circumstance that much of to-day’s work mocks our hopes for betterment is no warrant for aiming at culture chiefly through a better leisure. The wiser way would seem to be to fix clearly in mind our ultimate goals and then to press steadily toward them, no matter how huge the obstacles. In being contented with a temporary sub¬ stitute, there is every danger of losing sight of the worthier object. It is possible, for example, to find the occupations of one’s leisure so captivating as to forget the crying need to improve those conditions of work from which our leisure affords but a happy escape. If the world is sick, its great¬ est need is not for anodynes but for cures. Unless this fact is faced resolutely, we shall be only too likely to leave in their present state conditions which call loudly for regen¬ eration. Thus, a New York business man, testifying to the value of an education in the classics, says I believe that the slow processes of translation of the classics (which in my opinion should be compulsory in the academic 5 William Sloane in A. F. West, The Value of the Classics, p. 152. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 145 course for a B. A. degree) make good training for the boy who has chosen a business career. The business man^s day is prosaic, the men he meets are as a rule men of little or no schooling. The business principles he finds are not always in accord with his preconceived ideas of honesty; there isn’t much art or poetry in it all; and unless he has something to fall back upon, some background to his life and thought, some such continual source of quiet comfort and pleasure as a classical education will afford, his life will be a very empty thing. What a light this throws upon current standards: per¬ sonality developed in leisure, not through, and because of, one ’s daily tasks, but either in escape from them or in spite of them ! It is akin to the code that permits a man to play the business game on more or less questionable lines and recover his self-respect by devoting his leisure and his profits to philanthropy. The world is badly sick for lack of higher codes. Culture must not be a narcotic. It should help us to get rid of to-day’s sickness, the wrong distinction between mak¬ ing a living and making a life. The difference comes home acutely when we think of the reasons why many a father, in spite of his material success, prefers not to have his sons continue his career. A well-reputed business man was ap¬ proached by a friend for advice to a young man who contemplated entering the same calling. The friend was startled at the earnestness with which the business man said, ‘ ' Tell him to keep out of it. When you take it all in all, it is just a refined skin game. ' ’ The man would hardly have spoken so openly if he had not been asked to start a young life on the right road. Not at all that moral injury is the only, or even the chief, consequence of most callings. There are men who can look back upon their careers and say that their work has made them more intelligent, more broad-minded, better capable of understanding life, better able to get on with people, more convinced that rectitude pays, not in the narrow 146 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH sense alone but in the deeper satisfaction born of life-long fidelity to high principle. They have learned this much about life and learned it in the only genuine way — by having practiced it. All the more pity then that a life work does not bring such returns to every man and that even in those whom it does make better in some directions, there are other effects less wholesome. How many have had their outlook cramped by the constant struggle to keep their heads above water! In many, a certain sharp ruth¬ lessness has been encouraged. Many have had their boy¬ hood enthusiasms battered out of shape by grasping em¬ ployers or rascally competitors, or by unfair dealing on the part of labor unions. In some the edge of their civic sense has been dulled. They count it unpatriotic for a man to consult his own concerns first in refusing to enlist in the army in time of peril; but, to judge from their own expe¬ rience, it is not unpatriotic at election time to look out for number one and east a vote solely to benefit their special business interest.® Students of hygiene have become interested to-day in ‘^occupational diseases.” An equally careful study might well be given to the occupational diseases of the spirit. Business is far from being the only calling which is subject to this harmful influence. The teacher, for example, whom others envy for not being tempted, has his peculiar perils. Pedantry and censoriousness are familiar illustrations. On the other hand, there are the splendid opportunities which 6 When the War was over, we heard -of the great need to increase production. This cry was usually directed against the working¬ men. But there were few who would have directed it against the possessors of money, for example, who refused to put their money into badly needed housing projects, because they could get a higher return by investing it somewhere else. And yet there was no graver need throughout the land than the need for increased housing facilities. It is very easy to let the struggle for an income blunt the finer perceptions of public spirit. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 147 make Professor Palmer say, ‘ ‘ Harvard University pays me for doing what I would gladly pay Harvard for the privi¬ lege of letting me do.” Such a spirit wards off the occu¬ pational perils. These effects upon the worker himself must be kept in the foreground. Each calling has its perils and oppor¬ tunities. To be a lawyer, for example, and be obliged to look at both sides of a question ought to make a man espe¬ cially large-minded. The fact that he is presumed to see that justice is done and that he is the one who watches the actual workings of the law, should mark him out particu¬ larly as the man to be interested in obtaining better laws and a more complete justice, and in making a constant effort to banish the distinction between what is legal and what is right. This is what their work has done for the world ^s noblest lawyers. Although it has made some ex¬ ceedingly conservative, it has spurred others to seek ways of establishing better relations. Hugo Grotius, pioneer in the field of international law, was a corporation lawyer. Abraham Lincoln received his training in the law, and it made him a better, not a worse, public servant. Sir Thomas More, the author of Utopia ^ stands out as one of the great¬ est figures of the Renaissance for the martyrdom he under¬ went in defense of what he conceived to be legal right. Neither the bribes nor the threats of King Henry could move him to say that the illegal decision desired by the king was lawful. Contributions of this sort to a man’s life we should ex¬ pect from the fact that the lawyer is the agent of justice; but the expectation is not always fulfilled. One would hardly like to count the number of those of whom the cynical remark made by Samuel Butler long ago is still true that ^‘the lawyer’s opinion is one thing while it is his own and another when it is paid for. ” It is quite true that the lawyer is not alone in this occupational evil. The min- 148 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH ister, the public speaker, the editor, are likewise tempted to such sin against the chastity of the intellect. There are, however, other and subtler reactions for the lawyer to guard against. He is likely to take a severe legalistic view of human failure at points where more liberal estimates would be more just. His training inclines him to ignore, or, at least, to minimize, motives and to consider only the overt act. Hence, he is apt to be unduly hard on those who offend his sense of correctness wh^re gentler judgments may often be more genuinely just than the strict literalness that his training encourages.”^ For the great mass of industrial workers, the occupational perils are coming to be better recognized. A sound voca¬ tional training would make our young people aware of both the benefits and the perils due to modern machinery. It is a fact, for example, that machines have helped the workers by encouraging the demand for popular education. In the days of handicraft, the worker could be quite skilled even though he was illiterate. This is impossible in an age of machinery; and it is significant that the movement for popular education on the broader scale was most encour¬ aged where modern machinery was most employed. On the other hand, there are the obvious injuries to personality that have come from the overspecialization of modern work, the monotony, which have been too often dwelt upon to be rehearsed here.® Perhaps the chief complaint against mod¬ em machinery in a democracy is that it gives the worker 7 Mr. Justice Brandeis says : “The law has always been a narrow", conservatizing profession. In England it was always easy for a Tory government to find great lawyers for judicial officers, but for a Liberal government it is hard. And so it has been throughout his¬ tory. Nearly all of England’s great lawyers were Tories.” { Business a Profession.) See also Chapters V and VI, “Professional Con¬ servatism,” in Graham Wallas’ Our Social Heritage. 8 See Arthur Pound, The Iron Man in Industry, Ordway Tead, Instincts in Industry H. M. Marot, The Creative Impulse in Industry. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 149 no chance to use his brain on anything more than a dull, deadening repetition of some slight portion of an entire task for whose inception he is in nowise responsible and in whose execution he plays only a mechanical part. The managers and the heads are educated by their work be¬ cause they do have to meet these larger problems. The operative has no share and is stunted mentally. In every vocation, absorption in the means is likely to obscure the vision of ultimate ends and is therefore likely to defeat those ends. The mother engrossed in making a home may become so absorbed in house-cleaning, cooking, mending, as to have neither time nor energy to interest her¬ self in the best justification of these endeavors, the better inner life in her children. Overconfinement to household details too often unfits her to take the necessary interest in the school work of her boys and girls, in their fun, their comradeship, their reading, their special talents, their se¬ cret ambitions and the other occasions for that full confi¬ dence which only the mother, and not the overburdened housekeeper, can enjoy. The way out of these occupational perils is a positive ideal, high and broad enough to include as essential this need to keep foremost the infiuence upon the human spirit. Such an ideal, we have said, is that of service. But the highest service any calling may render is to raise the qual¬ ity of life in all the persons whom it brings into relation with one another. First is the need of right relations with the public which is served or disserved by the vocational products. It is possible to make things that are utterly bad. There are men who are not above earning a living, for instance, by making fraudulent patent medicines. Others are willing to supply newspapers that offer gross perversions or suppres¬ sions of fact, downright mendacity. All honor should be paid to men like Jacob Riis who used his calling as a re- 150 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH porter to stir the conscience of New York City into sadly needed social reform. When one considers how easy it is to make a rather despicable use of the journalist’s calling, one feels the more how necessary it is to offer our youth the stimulus of every better example we can find. The con¬ duct of the Associated Advertising Clubs some years ago in pledging themselves not to handle what had hitherto been a lucrative business, the advertising of fraudulent medicines, is the sort of thing of which our students should be told. There was a time when the only attitude toward practices now considered questionable or disreputable was that of old Falstaff who, on being twitted for stealing purses, made answer, “Why Hal, it is my vocation; it is not sin for a man to labor in his vocation.” When the advertising men came to think of their vocation as a chance to render service to society, Falstaff’s answer no longer saved them from self-reproach. The value of some commodities and “services” is more open to debate than it is in other instances, but the school must not evade the issues. It is well, for example, to con¬ sider with young people the ethical problems involved in the manufacture of luxuries. On the one hand, we must bear in mind the importance of producing things of beauty, whose value lies in something other than their ministry to the gross physical necessities. It is also essential to civil¬ ized life that those things be made that minimize the drudgeries and the frictions of life, thereby releasing en¬ ergies, in those who wish so to use them, for better pur¬ poses. On the other hand, we must guard against the fallacies so often urged when the problem of luxuries is brought up, for example, that the making of luxuries gives employment, ignoring the fact that such employment might better go to the making of products more essential to man ’s well-being. For a time we saw this truth during the War. Men are not at all ashamed to make ten per cent or more DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 151 on the manufacture of utterly useless or possibly harmful things when the need is ever pressing for increasing the production, improving the quality, and lowering the cost of vital necessities. A sound public opinion, such as we have the right to expect schools and colleges to generate, would keep us from paying the honors now offered to com¬ mercial success regardless of whether the service rendered in the amassing of the fortune was not really a public dis¬ service. Especially would young men, before they are already committed to given business careers, be advised in choosing between two types of business, to select the one which offers the better chance to serve the public. Their first question should be, not ‘‘What can I do?’’ but “What, of the things I can do, does the world need most ? ’ ’ In these discussions, there need, of course, be no asper¬ sions cast upon those already engaged in careers that the class deems less beneficial. It should be told how people often drift into certain callings because they have no real chance to choose and that the object of discussing these questions is to help young people, who still have the oppor¬ tunity to select, to make the wisest use of their freedom. Not only must the relationship to the public be improved through the quality of the product. Vocational service must, in the second place, be extended to groups now de¬ prived of it. In an earlier chapter mention was made of the numbers whose need of the services of lawyers and physi¬ cians is not met under prevailing practices.® Specialists, as a rule, tend to sell their gifts to the highest bidders, regard¬ less of whether others equally deserving of their ministra¬ tions must thereby go without. Only ten per cent of our population, it has been estimated, get sufficient dental care. The best of our practitioners in law and medicine are slowly beginning to take these facts to heart. When we think of 9 See p. 18. 152 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH the work done by men like Dr. Walter Reed in stamping out yellow fever, we see how the conception of medical science as a public service has grown. Among opportuni¬ ties besides those in preventive medicine might be men¬ tioned the study of occupational hygiene, a closer relation between science and psychology to forestall the absurdities and quackeries perpetrated in the name of psychology, and especially the chance to reach those now outside the care of medical men through such social efforts as are now familiar to European practitioners. Thus the Survey, speaking of the fact that, in spite of modern science, many diseases are actually gaining upon us, says : The present method of unorganized private medical practice, devoted and conscientious as are the rank and file of the profes¬ sion, has been tried and found wanting. Real progress in all allied fields has resulted largely from organized research, from the use of social devices, such as health departments, sanitary commissions, etc. Can private practice, through socialization, win the battles it is losing now? Like medicine and law, the artistic vocations also have a great work to do in extending their services to bodies of the community as yet unreached. Architect, painter, sculp¬ tor, musician, dramatist, all have ample work cut out for them in this respect. So has the teacher. There is an im¬ portant challenge to every educator in the fact that every¬ where throughout the country there are springing up work¬ ingmen ’s colleges.^^ These institutions have come into being because the workers are convinced that the traditional insti¬ tutions of learning cannot, or will not, supply the teaching needed in these changing times. It is to be regretted that in all the present-day discussion of preparation for the calling, practically no attention has been given outside of 10 Survey, Aug. 16, 1920, p. 632. 11 See A. H. Gleason, Workers' Education (Bureau of Industrial Research, 289 Fourth Avenue, New York). DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 153 these workingmen ’s colleges to training for one of the most important of modern vocations, namely, that of the labor leader. Surely few vocations call for sounder judgment, more informed intelligence, broader public spirit than this. Yet, where are the schools and colleges that keep in mind the necessity for right training in this field? All these considerations are quite germane to the con¬ ception of the vocation as a public service. Attention should also be called to the fact that every calling radiates some influence upon other callings. Modern business, for example, has given a certain impetus to art in opening up a new field through the demand for better advertising. Fortunately, men no longer think that the best advertising is the noisiest. There is excellent chance for commerce and art to influence each other helpfully. In the same way business and science have stimulated each other.^^ Busi¬ ness has set new problems and opened up dozens of new careers for men of science. It has set new problems in psychology, for example, the study of vocational aptitudes. The general problem of industrial psychology is being ex¬ plored to-day in ways that will be fruitful, not only for industry, but for psychology itself. The work of men like Professor Parker in studying the psychic roots of industrial unrest will surely be productive beyond its own sphere.^^ 12 The initial impulse to Pasteur’s epoch-making researches in fermentation came from the fact that he was called to be dean of a college in Lille. As one of the leading industries of the neighbor¬ hood was the manufacture of wines and vinegars, he thought that part of the work of the institution should concern itself with the problems of fermentation. Before he studied rabies, the needs of commerce had sent him to his researches in the diseases of silk¬ worms, cattle, and poultry. 13 See C. S. Parker, An American Idyll, also C. Parker, The Casual Laborer and Other Essays. Indeed, it is possible that these pioneer efforts may yet be found as helpful as the work of Rousseau for “natural” education, with all its shortcomings, was found to be for the schools. 154 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH To lift these broad effects of the occupational life into clearer relief, and to get from the vocational studies the rich liberalizing influence which they are eminently capable of yielding, the historian should be called upon for the history of vocational contributions to human progress. Consider, for example, some of the better effects that have resulted from the extension of commerce. It is no accident that so many of the leading cities in the ancient world were commercial. Athens, the glory of the scholar, engaged in world trade. So did Rome, Carthage, Tyre, and Alexan¬ dria. The city of Venice, begun as a group of huts on a heap of mud-flats as a refuge from Attila, was transformed by commerce into the proud queen of the Adriatic. It was the search for trade routes that led to the discovery of America. The Hanseatic League built roads, bridges, canals and turned thousands of acres of barren wastes into fields of flax, wheat, and hemp. American merchants were responsible for the laying of the Atlantic cable. Justice should be done to the work of the trader in spreading a knowledge of life’s beauties and refinements. Many of our common flowers to-day like the tulip are na¬ tives of the Orient brought to Europe by the Dutch mer¬ chant. It was the trader who introduced to the Western world such elementary requisites as soap and napkins, used by the Arabs, but unknown to Christendom. High-born folk employed their fingers at the meal table in England until merchants brought the fork from Italy. Commerce made accessible innumerable new articles of diet. Coffee brought from Arabia by the Venetians, tea from China by the Dutch, cocoa from Mexico by the Spaniards, have meant much to a world dependent chiefly upon alcoholic liquors for stimulants. But the transmission of commodities is not the most im¬ portant part of the story. Justice should also be accorded to the service of business in the interchange of ideas. It DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 155 was in commerce that the Dutch learned the use of the windmill. It is characteristic that the methods of sanita¬ tion found so successful in Cuba and Panama are being extended to the tropical cities in South America with which trade is now increasing. Such has always been the result of the closer acquaintance fostered by commerce. The mer¬ chant is not a mere seller and buyer. He is a person with human interests and a brain open to ideas. He has there¬ fore played no little part in breaking down the barriers of misunderstanding. In the old days, when the church taught that infidels like the Saracens were utter barbarians to be completely shunned, the merchant learned better. With his own eyes he saw their stately temples and their schools thronged with students, he beheld tlieir scientific apparatus, and he brought back more than their spices and fine rai¬ ment ; he brought back at least one man ’s previous mis¬ conceptions greatly lessened.^'^ 14 Few studies can be made more liberalizing than an understand¬ ing of the part played by merchants in the Renaissance, when the superstitions, the brutalities, and the cramping provincialisms of the feudal system gave way to modern ideals in government, religion, and ethics. The Rennaissance marks the emergence of modern nationalities with single administrations for whole countries. In this work, the kings were obliged to consolidate their power against the multitudes of squabbling barons who kept the country in turmoil and levied all sorts of restrictive tolls. The merchants were on the side of the kings. They aided, likewise, in breaking the power of the church. It was no accident that Martin Luther had the backing of the business men in Germany, or that cities like Antwerp, Ghent, Amsterdam, and Brussels furnished the money for the struggle of the Netherlands against Spain. The church persecuted; business, by and large, was tolerant. Amsterdam profited by admitting the Jews driven out of Spain just as England did later by admitting the Huguenots. The history of modern times might have been different if Spain had succeeded in conquering commercial England and the commercial Netherlands. The merchant is not necessarily a finer being than the knight, but in one respect he excelled the feudal baron whom he gradually displaced. The latter won his power by slaughtering other people and annexing their lands. The merchant rose to power by the exchange of goods. The baron trusted to force, 156 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH But there is an uglier side to the story of influence of commerce upon civilization. Gladly would we omit such items as England’s war with China in the last century, the Opium War, or the outrages attendant upon the ex¬ ploitation of the rubber districts of the Congo and the Amazon, not to mention the many wars for exclusive rights to trade and investment. The Industrial Revolution brought child labor, the reckless wasting of natural re¬ sources, the excessive draining off of the rural population to the towns, and dozens of other effects which a less indif¬ ferent attitude would perhaps have forestalled. The reason for these worse products is that like the gains to civiliza¬ tion, they were mere incidents to business activities in which the ethical goals were never thought of. Because there was no idea of business as essentially a mode of per¬ forming a public service, there came from it terrific evil no less real than the good. The purpose of all this cultural study in connection with the vocations is to supply the background against which the student may see the need for making whatever public service the vocation has rendered a still better service. The point should be impressed^ that not only in the professions should there be so-called professional standards, and that even where such codes exist in the professions and trades, the task of the ethically minded is to elevate the standards they prescribe. To-day, for example, the next big step in ethical progress for the business man is to bring about better relations between the heads of industry and the laboring classes. To or to luck like a gambler. The merchant relied upon intelligence, foresight, and thrift. It was once thought that only the man of noble blood was a fit person to govern society. Contrast the part played in government to-day by chambers of commerce, by taxpayers' associations, and labor unions. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 157 many business men, fair play to the worker means, at most, granting him the market wage and keeping contracts with him. But the more sensitive types are learning that the wage which the worker is forced to accept under fear of losing his job hardly forms the basis for the fairest kind of contract. And even more important than the question of wages is the matter of admitting the worker to participation in the management of industry. Just as it is definitely a point of honor now to give honest service, the next task of the business man is to make it a point of honor to bring the conditions of modern labor more and more into line with the demands of ethical democracy. At its very lowest this means that the human quality in the workers can no longer be counted a negligible or second¬ ary affair. One enters the show-room of a factory and sees the splendid fabrics, the result of painstaking effort to get the best of texture, the most artistic of color effects. Every night the stock is put away carefully and guarded against dust or dampness or anything that may in the least injure it. But there is much less care taken of the other products of our factories, the men, the women, the youths, who pour out upon the sidewalk when the whistle blows. Their deep¬ est needs cannot be met off-hand by denouncing our present economic system or by waiting for blind evolution to bring changes. They should bring home to us the special chal¬ lenge of to-day. Men who want their experience in business to count for something permanent in the world’s progress will find here their chief task. They apply their gifts of organization usually to the task of managing production, distribution, financing. But this work cannot begin to com¬ pare in importance with the need to which only a few have as yet been willing to apply themselves, the task of blazing the trail to democratic relationship among men in their work hours. There are indeed business men who realize the mockery 158 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH inherent in our efforts to get international peace while we have no peace as yet within our own cities. Witness, for example, the declaration made in 1919 by a group of twenty British Quaker employers, who met for four days to discuss how they could give their religious faith fuller expression in their business life and especially in the relations between employers and employed. They concluded that the sup¬ posed right of employers to dictate to workers the condi¬ tions under which labor power should be sold could no longer be maintained, that a new day had come whose watchword was cooperation, and that in practice this meant the frank avowal that all matters affecting the workers should be decided, not, as heretofore, by the orders of the masters, but by masters and men both. ‘‘Pioneers and explorers and road-makers are needed just as urgently in the industrial sphere as in the opening up of new tracts of fertile country, ’ ’ said these British employers ; and with an initiative not lacking, we may be sure, in our own ener¬ getic country, they have taken it upon themselves as a re¬ ligious obligation to begin building these sorely needed roads.^® Such pioneering is already under way in America. Far¬ sighted business men are recognizing that times have changed for the whole globe and that we can no more expect to deal without the new self-consciousness on the part of the working classes than a man can expect his boy of sixteen to go back and be as implicitly obedient as he was at six. The business men who see furthest ahead admit this. They know that they can give their men gymnasiums, rest rooms, insurance policies, and other forms of welfare work, but that this benevolent paternalism will not settle the problem. To recognize that the workers require, not gifts from above, but the right to share in the ordering of 16 See Survey, May, 1919. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 159 their lives, is the next step forward to a better indus¬ trial day. This recognition of the right of the man to participate in the control of his work is a point one would suppose likely to carry home with special force in a republic based on the faith that men grow great to the extent that they themselves carrj^ the responsibility for their collective life. Democracy means sharing in an effective way the respon¬ sibility and the initiative of the group in which we live. Whether our group is the home, or the city, or the factory where we work, or the school where we teach, our life in it is democratic to the extent that we share in deciding what the life of that group is going to be and what are the aims toward which that life shall be directed. Two statements on this head deserve quotation. They are copied from an ethical code drawn up by the Business Men’s Group of the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1921 : All commercial and industrial activity should be regarded as having for one of its nobler ends the retroactive influence exerted, in the stimulation of the superior faculties in human beings, and the promotion of civilization in its disinterested aspects. Man is a spiritual being who is bound down to physical conditions. The satisfaction of his physical wants is necessary per se, but should at the same time be availed of as an opportunity for the development of his spiritual part. ... At present what may be called the scientific capital of industry, like the money capital, is possessed by a few. In a great chemical plant, for instance, a hundred or more chemists may be engaged in laboratory re¬ search. Thousands of workers in the plant are left destitute of even the faintest glimmering of the mentality that impregnates the processes with which they deal. The same is true of the machinery which the operatives tend. Of the mind that is enshrined in these machines they have no inkling, and still less do they grasp the business in its economic, its national, and 16 Copies of this “Ethical Programme for Business Men” can be obtained by addressing 2 West 64th Street, New York. 160 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH international relations. A system of adult education along broad lines therefore is needed ... a system of education which will make the worker a partner in the science of the business, give him at least an elementary grasp of the mechanical principles that are embodied in the machinery, and afford him mental con¬ tact with the countries and the peoples from which the raw material handled by him is derived. The highest service which commerce and industry can render is that of promoting the moral development of the persons engaged in them, and to this end industrial democracy is a potent in¬ strumentality. Industrial democracy, indeed, is commonly advocated on other lower grounds, for instance, as a means of protecting manual workers against oppressive action by em¬ ployers, and as a means of maintaining better standards of living, and of securing a voice and vote in all matters that directly affect the workers. But in this list the chief value of industrial representation is left out. This consists in promoting the moral development of all the workers, inclusive of the lowest as well as the highest functionaries. By progressive development of a moral being is meant progressive ability to follow disinterested aims, increasing capacity to identify oneself with the interests of the larger group to which one belongs, such an expansion of one’s nature as enables one to further the complex and diverse ends of the society of which one is a member, not as if they were one’s own, but as being actually, in the true sense, one’s own. Now industry, when arranged on the functional plan, and it should be so arranged, offers the golden opportunity of moral expansion to all who are in it. A share in the control and government of industry according to the function which one fills is the most effective education in ethics conceivable. Ideal government is not government with the mere consent of the governed, but government as the expression of a deliberate group reason and of an enlightened group will to which each one con¬ tributes in his degree. Ethical study of the vocations will, of course, try to create sound thinking on the problem of rewards. Our present method is to leave rewards entirely to the mercy of chance. The average person says that a man is entitled to all he can get and ignores the fact that back of the superior ability of the captain of industry lies the work of the DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 161 thousands in the mills and of the thousands who have gone before, the teachers, the men of science, the statesmen, the untold multitude in the past whose labors played no little part in making the modern business successes possible. There is no way of estimating just what amount consti¬ tutes the fair reward that should come to each man. One thing is certain : all who serve are entitled to the means that enable them to perform still better service.^^ Why have we not held before our young people the idea that, after all, the truest reward is that one has had the chance to do one’s work? It is often said that the time has come when the human factor in industry must receive greater consideration. By this is generally meant that the wage-earner ought to be treated as a human being, and not as a mere factor in the production of wealth. But the same applies to the employer. It is of utmost importance that he, too, should regard himself, not merely as a factor in the acquisition of wealth, but as human in the fullest sense of the word. Many men act humanly outside of business. Almost all business men are even, to a certain extent, idealists, namely, in their relations to the members of their family, in their friendships, in their philanthropies, but, strange to say, in their daily business they consent to be ranked as material¬ ists. ... Nobody to-day is so near the brute as to be willing to acknowl¬ edge that he subordinates the highest purposes of life to the lowest physical satisfactions, for instance, that he lives in order to eat. The time may be expected to come when those who say that they serve in order to make money will be subject to a similar imputation, different in degree no doubt, but not in kind, and avarice will be ranked with gluttony.^ The best reward for possessing ability is the chance to use that ability fruitfully. The best type of worker will be thankful that he has the opportunity to express himself 17 Something other of course than “subsistence wages” or “living wages” or the “saving wages” now advocated by some. 18 “Ethical Programme for Business Men,” dt. 162 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH in a public service and will not ask for an additional return in the shape of money reward. In one of our Western cities there was a manufacturer who was indicted for grossly brutal methods of ousting his competitors. He was about to be brought to trial, when his city was flooded by the overflowing of a river. In the work of saving the city, this man was the guiding genius. The instance is symbolic. We should want our young people to have before their minds the ideal of a society in which organizing gifts are directed solely to the pursuits that raise, instead of lower, the quality of human relationships. The best reward for one^s work is the thought that, because one has done his work well, all the world has been helped to do its work better. All these considerations indicate how the vocational preparation can be quite as truly cultural as the old studies of the gentleman. Against a background of such studies in ethics, history, and science, the student is better pre¬ pared to understand what is usually taken up in courses of vocational guidance, namely, the qualities needed for success and the ways of preparing for that success. Everything depends upon the aim. If the aim is simply to earn a good living, then undoubtedly the qualities and the preparation needed will be different from' those required where the aim kept foremost is the making of a life through service. Let us not be afraid that considerations of this kind are im¬ practical. In the long run nothing is more practical than to train our youth early in life to reflect upon the very highest ideals we can put before them. If we fail to do this when they are young and their minds are as yet un¬ spoiled by the compromises that men make later in life, when may we expect them to get the better ideas for lack of which our world is suffering now? Experience will teach them how much of what they learn in their earlier DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 163 years can be put into practice at any given moment. But can we expect with the same confidence that their experi¬ ence in the world outside will kindle the visions? Sailing in these waters is by no means smooth. Among the many trials by which it is beset, there is the single difficulty that a scheme like this requires more time than most boys and girls at present are able to afford. But the obstacle is not final. Even after we have eliminated from our curricula what is no longer deserving of the time which it consumes, the state must lengthen the period of compul¬ sory schooling, paternalistic and un-American as it sounds to some to say so now. When the first child-labor law was passed, it appeared revolutionary for the state to fix at all the age at which children should be free to develop as children before they became wage-earners. Perhaps some day the age will everywhere be sixteen or even eighteen years. Once let us be convinced that every boy and girl is entitled to the preparation which makes for better serv¬ ice, and that time is needed to prevent the narrowness attendant on premature specialization, the hindrances will cease to look like finalities. If the task is so difficult, this means simply that we cannot leave it to the school alone. Nicholas Murray Butler, thinking of the need of an edu¬ cated citizenship to preserve our free institutions, recently repeated a statement which he had made in 1896: ‘‘The difficulties of democracy constitute the opportunities of education.’’ Without minimizing the truth of this sound proposition, may we submit as an equally essential state¬ ment of present-day needs that the difficulties of education constitute the opportunities of democracy? Questions and Problems 1. Why do people distinguish trades from the professions? What are the difficulties in the way of “professionalizing’^ the trades ? 164 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 2. Consult Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, ^‘The Ethics of the Professions and of Business,” May, 1922, for light on ethical standards in some one occupation. What can you add? 3. Discuss the statement that there must always be people who are fitted for nothing better than the menial occupations. 4. Sum up the pros and cons on the problem of the labor unions. What problems are set by these facts for modern society? 5. How, aside from the introduction of machinery, do you account for the passing of the eraftsmanlike attitude of the Middle Ages? Is it possible to restore this attitude under modern conditions? 6. In the recent War, the soldiers received instruction on the aims and objects of the war. Is there any suggestion here for the problem of the specialized worker? 7. Show how agriculture to-day has become a “cultural” study. 8. Report on schools established by working people (see A. H. Gleason, Worker^ Education), Study also the views of labor unions on vocational training in public schools. 9. Is the problem raised in this chapter likely to be met by requiring all freshmen in engineering schools, for example, to take a course in literature or history? References See, besides references quoted in text: Adler, Felix, The World Crisis and Its Meaning, Ch. VI, Vil; An Ethical Philosophy of Life, Book IV, Ch. III-VI. ‘Agriculture in Secondary Schools” (Government Printing Office). Betts, G. H., New Ideals in Rural Schools. Bloomfield, Meyer, The Vocational Guidance of Youth, Brandeis, Louis, Business a Profession. Briggs, T. H., The Junior High School, Ch. X. Brooks, J. G., Labor’s Challenge to the Social Order. “Business Education in Secondary Schools” (Government Print¬ ing Office). Carlton, F. T., Education and Industrial Evolution, Carlyle, Thomas, Past and Present. Davis, J. B., Vocational and Moral Guidance. Foght, H. W., The American Rural Schools. Hart, J. K., “Why Men Work,” Survey, Feb. 1, 1923. DEMAND FOR VOCATIONAL FITNESS 165 Habt, J. K., Educational Resources of Villages and Rural Com¬ munities. Henderson, E. N., Principles of Education, Ch. XVIII. Mecklin, J. M., Introduction to Social Ethics, Ch. XVII-XX. Rathenau, Walter, The New Society. Ruskin, John, Crown of Wild Olive; Unto This Last, Snedden, David, Vocational Education. Tannenbaum, Frank, The Labor Movement. Tawney, R. H., The Acquisitive Society. ^Vocational Guidance in Secondary Education” (Government Printing Office). Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, The Decay of Capitalist Civilization, Withers, Hartley, The Case for Capitalism, CHAPTER X THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM Anyone above the age of thirty who visits a progressive school to-day cannot help being struck with marked dif¬ ferences from the things familiar to his own boyhood. It is not so much that the buildings are larger, more airy, and more beautiful. Nor is it that the teachers and pupils are so unlike what they were a generation ago. The change is in the school atmosphere. The place is more like a home in a certain air of freedom. Everybody seems to be moving about a good deal more than teachers and pupils did for¬ merly. There is much less sitting still at desks. Indeed, in many rooms, there are no longer any desks at all. A considerably diminished portion of the day is given to re¬ citing lessons. More time is spent in apparently informal conversation between pupils and teacher or among one another. The children are sewing, weaving, cooking, work¬ ing with wood, iron, clay, leather, or cultivating gardens, running stores, debating, acting plays. Here again is an important offering whose ethical value needs to be ex¬ amined. Behind this transformed life of the school lies the work of a band of pioneers inspired in part by Proebel and moved to extend beyond the kindergarten the principles found so useful there. In more recent years, the chief inspiration has come from the more distinctively American teachings of a group among whom Prof. John Dnwey is leader. 166 THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 167 Their philosophy, popularized by William James under the name Pragmatism, regards people as essentially doers, rather than knowers or thinkers. It considers intellect as only the instrument employed by the will to get what the will desires. It denies the existence of ultimate truths which cannot be verified in human experience. Truth is that which is found to work in practice. This is a philosophy that accords neatly with the spirit of an age as energetic as our own, and as successful in the attempt to harness natural forces to the ear of human wants. Man has been learning at an unprecedented rate how to use the powers of Nature. In the process, he has opened up wide areas of new science and found a convincing method of testing truth — ^by “try¬ ing out’^ his theories in practice. “Ideas (which them¬ selves are but parts of our experiences) become truth just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience,’’ says James.^ Hence the name Instrumentalism, also used for this philosophy, to indicate that knowledge is both a product of man’s attempts to control his environment and a means to more effective control. On its educational side. Pragmatism comes forward to attack and to rebuild. It accuses the traditional schooling of forgetting that knowledge is practical both in origins and purposes and of making it an end in itself. It reminds us that there would be, for example, no textbooks in history to-day if the men whose deeds are there recorded had been merely academic students and not doers. History, there¬ fore, is to be treated as a practical study. It should be a means whereby the understanding of the past contributes to better experiences for to-day. “To isolate the past,” says Professor Dewey “dwelling upon it for its own sake 1 William James, Pragmatism, p. 58. 2 John Dewey, Creative Intelligence, p. 14. 168 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH and giving it the eulogistic name of knowledge, is to sub¬ stitute the reminiscences of old age for effective intelli¬ gence. ’ ’ Such isolation of the school from the activities of the life around it is for Pragmatism the cardinal sin. These activities should set the general aim for the school, that is, the school is to see that they are performed more efficiently ; and they point the way to the best educational material on w’hich the child can be busied. Learning must consist chiefly of occupations reproducing the activities by which society keeps itself going. It must be incidental to doing things. In former days children got this educational opportunity from the occupations of their home life. They were obliged to take part in the work of the household, and, as a result, they learned much w^hich the child of to-day does not learn. Every member of the home had tasks to perform that both trained him in habits of order, industry, responsibility, teamwork, and gave him first-hand contact ‘‘with real things and materials, with the actual processes of their manipulation and the knowledge of their social necessities and uses. ’ ’ ® These days have disappeared. More children now dwell in towns, in a world of convenient electric push¬ buttons, janitors, and easily accessible stores. The child is not required to make the things needed by his home, nor does he see his parent make them. Hence the danger of bringing up a race cut off from an understanding of those practical utilities on which its daily life depends. Hence also the more important danger of the child ^s ceasing to learn in the only genuine way — ^by experience — the meaning of industry, cooperation, and other essentials. Professor Dewey warns us advisedly against a morality nourished on book precepts but without roots in habit generated by I ■—«■■■■ I I I i— ————I— —————— —i—— 8 John Dewey, School and Society, p. 24. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 169 living experience. Adequate preparation for a real life cannot be obtained from the habits acquired by application to books. Vital learning is won only by practice. These are truths of capital importance for ethical train¬ ing. It is one thing to know about the better modes of life by hearsay and quite another to know them from one ’s own experience. Words like justice, responsibility, group spirit, remain idle verbalisms until the child has performed just acts of its own, held itself responsible for specific and self- chosen obligations, and cooperated willingly. The best preparation for citizenship is never the formal lesson in civics but continued practice in democratic conduct. Here especially the Pragmatic criticism has done notable service. The old-fashioned school gave little chance to practice such needs of a democracy as initiative and teamwork. The vir¬ tues it encouraged were individualistic, that is, “get a good mark, ’ ^ “ beat the other fellow, ’ ^ and negative, that is, ‘ * do not break the school rules.” Character, even in childhood, should certainly be more than winning the teachers’ ap¬ proval for proficiency in recitations. Success in this pur¬ suit may easily be accomplished by the fostering of traits either useless to a democratic society or harmful. The policy of “everyone for himself” is one such undesirable procedure. Unthinking obedience and unquestioning de¬ pendence upon the teacher’s say-so for information is another. In contrast with these attitudes are the practices required by a forward-looking democracy. The central relation of the school is no longer to be that of child to teacher or child to book. Instead, it is to be the eminently more fruit¬ ful relation of child to child and of child to community. The teacher, under the new doctrine, is not to be the su¬ preme authority but the introducer to the true educator, the child’s own activities. In this way, democracy will be furthered by children trained’ to become not passive 170 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH recipients but ‘^robust trustees of its resources and ideals. ’ ’ * Further special gain will come in children’s bringing to such schooling a whole-hearted attention. Where this is absent, they are trained to more or less conscious habits of deceit. They pretend to be following the teacher while in the back of their minds they are engaged in pursuits more absorbing. These favorite interests are not to be deemed, as in former days, the marks of depravity. On the contrary, they are the raw materials which skilful teachers will lead the child to work up into lasting values. And in the long run no training of will endures unless it is self-imposed. The best way to obtain the cooperation of the child in his own character-building is to have him give himself to tasks — real tasks, not play — which interest him enough to call forth undivided and prolonged effort. The alternative is to use either coercion or bribery and then to see the child ’s will collapse as soon as these extraneous devices are removed. Such have been the educational services of the Prag¬ matist philosophy. Their work is by no means ended. Thousands of schoolhouses, unawakened to the new democ¬ racy or the new psychology, still put children through the old lifeless routine. Would it not, therefore, be the better part for all to join whole-heartedly in the quickening efforts begun by the Pragmatists ? But, valuable as their offerings are, it must still be said in all friendliness that their educa¬ tional philosophy is open to serious criticism and precisely at those points that are usually regarded as its greatest ethical contribution. Its definition of aims is inadequate. The essence of education, we are told, is “vital energy seeking oppor- 4 Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 12. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 171 tuuity for effective exercise. ^ ^ ® This conception, as opposed to the traditional emphasis upon intellect, calls attention to an important fact of psychology ignored by the older philosophies. But, in turn, it too is one-sided. Why select the impulses to activity as the point of chief importance for educational aims? Could not any rampant egotist justify his will to power on the ground that his impulses were ‘Wital” and desirous of “effective exercise’’? Professor Dewey guards against encouraging anarchic individualism by repeatedly saying that his conception is social. But what does “social” mean? “Not only is social life identical with communication hut all communication (and hence all social life) is educative. . . . The very process of living together educates. It enlarges and enlightens experience ; it stimulates and enriches imagination ; it cre¬ ates responsibility for accuracy and vividness of statement and thought. ’ ’ ® Undoubtedly there is no genuine educa¬ tion without living together. But as long as we are defin¬ ing aims at all, we must ask, “What is the best education such life can give ? ’ ’ Experience can be enlarged, enlight¬ ened, etc., without necessarily shaping the worthiest types of character. For instance, a novelist or reporter in search of material for a story might, under this formula, ‘ ‘ enlarge and enlighten his experience ’ ’ by an association with other • people which simply used them for his own ends. It is quite possible to exploit the lives of other people in order to gratify selfish aesthetic cravings. Goethe did so. But the enlarged experience which thus results is very different from the experience to be cultivated by an ethical training, namely, a deepened sense of ethical relation.'^ In the latter case, our contacts with other lives raise up in us the sense of absolute worth in those lives. The more we try to do 6 Hid., p. 84. 6 Ihid.y pp. 6, 7. 7 Recall Chapter IV, “The Spiritual Ideal.” 172 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH deference to that worth, the more we become aware of some¬ thing too sacred to be used only for our own gratification. And this quickened understanding of 'the best there is in other people calls out in us a freshened sense of our own truest nature, because we are made aware of our kinship with them in this highest, or spiritual, order of being. To bring home this important meaning we need ideals that are not covered 'by such inadequate terms as ‘‘enlarged social sense. Professor Dewey says that a man must “so live as a social member that what he gets from living with others balances what he contributes” ... in the form of a “widening and deepening of conscious life,” “a more intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of meanings.”® Yes indeed; but precisely in what direction is such increase best? The road is perhaps left open to the implication that the best outcome of attempts to live aright with one’s fellows is a deeper and broader insight into the meaning of perfect, ethical relationships. This, however, is by no means de¬ clared. There is a difference, we repeat, between enlarged consciousness and increased consciousness of spiritual link¬ age. The best kind of consciousness is that which accom¬ panies the effort to call out in people a realization of their spiritual nature. It is hard to see how a philosophy of ethical education can dispense with the idea of our connection with one another in some such ties of absolute obligation. But Prag¬ matism will have nothing to do with a perfect order of being and with the unconditioned obligations of this spiritual kinship. Its interest is less ethical in the strict sense than social and psychologic. A social philosophy is more occu¬ pied with the fact that people live together and with meth¬ ods of bringing them to more harmonious life than in seek- « Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 417, I THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 173 ing out the highest of patterns, the best ways in which people ought to live together. It is apt to fix its eye more upon the fact of togetherness than upon the ultimate goals which social beings must seek in order to become ethical beings. Note in the following passages how interest is centered on the perception of mere interrelation : ® ‘‘Travel, economic tendencies, have at present gone far ... to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible con¬ nection with one another. It remains for the most part to secure the intellectual and emotional significance of this physical annihilation of space. The ideal society is declared to be one “in which every person shall be occu¬ pied in something which makes the lives of others better worth living, and which accordingly makes the ties which bind closely together more perceptible, which breaks down the barriers of distance between them. ’ ^ An essentially ethical aim, however, would insist, not only on the percep¬ tion of the ties which do indeed bind persons, but especially upon the ties which ought to bind them. It would want the ties to be, not merely more perceptible, but full of nobler understanding, bonds in which each recognizes his kinship with all others in a society of beings at their ideal best. Moral growth is a matter of deepened insight into the real¬ ity and the nature of such perfect associations. This insistence upon the need for a sense of the highest best is not so captious as it may seem. How can there be any “betterment’^ without unremitting effort to reach the clearest understanding of the best ? Note in the following paragraph how these ultimate standards are declared unnec- ^ Ibid., p. 100 (italics ours). 10 “The facts that fill the imagination of pragmatists are psychical facts: where others think of the starry heaven, pragmatists think of the perception of the starry heavens; where others think of God, pragmatists think of the belief in God and so on.” Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays, p. 100. Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 369. 174 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH essary but nevertheless are implied in the phrases which we have italicized. What is the test by which “desirable^* traits, etc. are judged deserving of the name! We cannot set up out of our heads something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of form of community life which actually exist and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. Now in any social group whatever, even in a gang of thieves, we find some interest held in common, and . . . a certain amount of interaction and cooperative intercourse with other groups. From these two traits we derive our standard. How numerous and how varied are the interests which are con¬ sciously shared? How full and free is the interplay with other forms of association.^ 2 perfection as a final goal but the ever enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining, is the aim in living. . . . Growth itself is the only moral end ! ” All this is assuredly useful as compared with the aristo¬ cratic and retrospective educational philosophies, but in his anxiety that social aims be not too far above our heads. Professor Dewey is obliged to ignore the fact that even into his empirical construction, ideal, transcendental no¬ tions are introduced. The interplay of association can never be ‘‘full and free’’ in any actual groups. In the world of experience, we may try to make our associations right, but we are ignorant of one another ’s real needs ; we get in one another’s way; consciously or otherwise we exploit one another; our best efforts to do justice often bring increased trouble instead of the benefit we intended. Freedom and fullness, that is, are ideal conceptions in the truest sense. Professor Dewey will have no traffic with such ultimates, and yet they creep into his own standards. 12 Ibid., p. 96. 18 Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 177. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 175 How can there be a ^‘process of perfecting^’ without the ‘ * perfection ’ ’ rejected as final goal ? Would it not be better to avow the transcendence, to say that there is a perfect association beyond the best encountered in experience and that education is to be a process of so living together that the sense of this ideal best becomes more and more a transforming power! Pragmatist principles have a way of coming close to such essentially ethical conclusions and then shying off at the points where the spiritual connotations need explicit stress. Chapter VII in Democracy and Education, for example, pleads for a society in which the gifts of all the members shall enjoy creative interplay. It wants to see isolation, rigidity, ‘‘static and selfish ideals within the group” give way to progress through wider relations, through “full interaction with other groups.”^* But one cannot help wishing here that it were recognized how far beyond the power of men to achieve is such interplay at its highest. An essential sublimity is taken from moral aspiration when all effort is fixed on reaching the next prac¬ ticable step. There is need of a sense of ultimate goals which, though “ideal,” are nevertheless objective and com¬ manding. The life which is “better worth living” recog¬ nizes that absolute perfection for human societies is indeed beyond men’s reach, and it is all the more earnest because of that fact. Spiritual growth consists in so touching other lives that these two results follow: all who are affected attain to a deepened insight into the reality and the nature of perfect life, and this, in turn, becomes a fresh incentive to the conduct which brings still further insight. The goal is made clearer by every genuine effort to move toward it. Professor Dewey ’s educational philosophy wiU not reckon with such ethical ultimates. It is too interested in facts 1* Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 99. 176 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH of practical psychology. This psychologic preoccupation is stamped all over the educational prescriptions. It is well, let it be repeated, that teachers remember how little effective an ideal of life is when it is left unconnected with our native urges. It is good to be told, in opposition to the older pedagogics, that the mind is neither a blank paper on which adults can write anything they choose, nor a series of more or less mechanical apperceptive masses. But in the eagerness to see that ideals work out into practice. Pragmatists fall into the error of singling out this fact of acceptability and making it the chief fact about life ’s aims. Although Professor Dewey insists that children’s desires are in no wise final and must be worked over into results which are socially useful, in the end socially useful” comes to mean productive of happiness, ‘‘freer and fuller of interest,” “more abounding in experience,” always, that is, good ultimately because it satisfies desire or affords an outlet for “vital energies” or “increases the experienced content of life itself.”^® A single instance of the mischief wrought by this central concern for joy in activity is the conduct of many a college lad who gives to athletics an. undue share of “vital energies seeking effective exercise.” The bookworm, led by his interest in books to shirk the obligations of class-spirit, is likewise a victim of unor¬ ganized desires. An ethical ideal of education would encourage the interest in both athletics and books, but it would keep these affections in their proper place by remem¬ bering the main objective: the lad has a work in life to perform which his college pursuits will help him to do better. At every point we meet this need of a highest principle around which desires ought to be organized. This leading motive in Professor Dewey’s philosophy is “growth” but 15 Ihid., p. 285. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 177 always, at bottom, growth in happiness. Not that he iden¬ tifies happiness with selfish delight ; but the growth that most deserves to set the aims for man’s life needs a direc¬ tion which “happiness” is unfitted to suggest. The trouble with the word is that it diverts attention from the point of first importance. Happiness is at best only a by-product. Sometimes it may come as the reward of right behaviors, sometimes not. To think of it as a leading object is too much as if a physician should keep foremost in his mind the thought of his fee rather than of his patient’s need. Besides, the sense of performing a duty is sometimes so interfused with pain that it can hardly be characterized by a word with such connotations as happiness. Lincoln’s days and sleepless nights in the White House could scarcely be called happy. And the more thoughtful any reformer is, the more he realizes that happiness as his aim even for other people cannot set the highest of ends. He knows that, howsoever he does his utmost, there are worlds upon worlds of better things still needing to be done. In many a life the disappearance of poverty, for example, opens the door to new wants unnoticed before. Happiness is but a passing state of consciousness that our desires are succeed¬ ing. It is a feeling accompanying successful energizing.^® If a machine could feel and speak, as the parts of the steamer did in The Ship That Found Itself, it would say that its happiness consisted in doing its work well. Organ¬ isms are happy to the extent that they perform their func¬ tions. Of human beings it may be said that, even though happiness is not the same as pleasure in the cruder sense, they are happy when the things they want to do are going well. Therefore, in defining ends for human conduct, we do 16 “Happiness consists in the agreement, whether anticipated or realized, of the objective conditions brought about by our endeavors, with our desires and purposes.” Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, p. 281. 178 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH something less than justice to man’s highest capacities if we single out this by-product of feeling. Attention should rather go not to the incidental, and often absent, reward but to the performance of the function itself. Giordano Bruno, no doubt, would have been happy if, instead of going to the stake, he had succeeded in persuading men to the truth he was trying to teach. But it was not the likelihood of such happiness that dignified his endeavors. It was Bruno’s sense of objective tasks which it was right to attempt. Everything depends on what we are taught — ^by practice, example, suggestion, precept — every means — to regard as the best among human functions. Spiritual growth is some¬ thing other than growth as such ; creative consciousness of the perfect life is better than enlarged consciousness in general. Doing tasks that are morally necessary is not the same thing as giving outlet to desire, even to altruistic desire. ‘‘Moral experience . . . may be described as a series of subjections to imperious impulses which urge our finite natures toward infinite issues ; a sense of propulsions which we can resist but may not disown; a sense of a power greater than ourselves, with which, nevertheless, in essence we are one, ... a sense of the complicity of our life with the life of others, of living in them in no merely meta¬ phorical signification, ... of unity with all spiritual being whatsoever. ’ ’ 1 Pragmatist educational writings do not recognize these facts. Accordingly they fall short when it comes to formu¬ lating principles of choice among the many claimants to attention. Indeed the conception of higher and lower among values is ruled out in such statements as this : We cannot establish a hierarchy of values among studies. In so far as any study has a unique and irreplaceable function in Adler, Life and Destiny, p. 26. 1* Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 81. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 179 experience, in so far as it marks a characteristic enrichment of life, its worth is intrinsic or incomparable. Since education is not a means to living, but is identical with living a life which is fruitful and inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself. And this is not the end to which studies and activities are subordinate means ; it is the whole of which they are ingredients. The reason for making thus inclusive ‘Hhe process of living itself” is that Pragmatism is subjective to the core. If anything is given first place, it is desire. Hence the great and at times excessive stress upon following the child’s instincts. Not that the child’s impulses are to run wild. They must indeed be guided. But this thought never takes any but second place. First place is given to the injunc¬ tion to follow the tug of the natural leadings. See what this requires in practice : The period of elementary education evidently requires that the child shall be taken up mainly with direct, outgoing, and positive activity, in which his impulses find fulfilment and are, thereby brought to conscious value. In the . . . time of second¬ ary education there is basis for reflection, for conscious formu¬ lation and generalization . . . which defines and relates the ele¬ ments ... of experience. Is this not rather long to wait ? Must we wait until the secondary school before looking on the child as little more than a bundle of impulses? Professor Dewey is so fearful that the ends set up by adults may not be acceptable to the child that he overemphasizes the importance of this one concern : ‘ ‘ To-day ’s experiences are to be significant to the child. He is to live in the present.” Granted. But will not even the experiences of the child to-day be more ethic¬ ally significant the sooner we can get him to cooperate consciously in high aims for his life? The distinction be- 10 Dewey, Interest as Related to Will, p. 31, 180 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH tween desires and responsibilities, interests and obligations, assuredly does not always appeal to young minds, or to old ones. But is this piece of psychology the truth of chief importance ? On the choice of vocation. Professor Dewey says: ‘‘To find out what one is fitted to do and to secure an oppor¬ tunity to do it is the key to happiness. ’ ’ Again the accent on happiness. It is true that in the long run a man will do better service if he is fitted for his lifework and is therefore more likely to be happy in it. But a spiritual approach to the problem of a career would try to keep fore¬ most the thought of the service needed. It would ask, “What kinds of work need to be done?^^, and then would come the question, “Which of these services am I able to render?’^ It makes a difference which of these lines of approach is taken. The world has voices enough urging the young to seek happiness. It needs the tonic influence of putting first the thought of duty. To keep in the foreground the fact that there is such a reality as a moral universe, sometimes coincident with a world of desires and sometimes not, does not have to lead us, as Professor Dewey fears, to subscribe to the ideals of the Prussian drill-master. The reality of absolutes is not at all disproved by the egregious conceit of some Germans in identifying the absolute with the will of the Prussian state. Subjectivism is every whit as likely to lead to grave abuses. As Bertrand Russell remarks, if truth exists over and beyond our thoughts about it, then, in case we disagree, we can at least have some assurance that our dispute can be brought for pacific settlement to an absolutely just tri¬ bunal. The right will decide. But if there is no such reality, the appeal to “satisfaction’’ and “successful work¬ ing” may very easily lead to justifying success on the 10 Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 360. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 181 ground that it is success, that is, might makes right.^^ If it is indeed a fact that our ideals represent chiefly, if not entirely, the rationalizing of our desires, we might as well give up the attempt to understand one another. If Kant, for example, is talking not truth but only Kantianism, how can we be so sure that Pragmatists are talking not truth but only Pragmatist prejudice? If there are no absolute standards, opponents may never hope to come to the accord of reason. But if absolute rightness exists, we know that there is a ground on which we can unite. And it certainly does not follow that the assertion of absolutes and the quest for such places of agreement need be any more conducive to brute strife than the pitting of one desire against another. Democracy need have no fear of the idea of unconditioned obligation. It cannot afford to have young people grow up unaware that the difference between right and wrong is not a matter of preference but the most objective of realities. Grant that the laws of human society are framed in response to nothing more sacred than a desire to escape trouble and that the rules of to-day should be superseded when to-morrow brings new needs. Grant also that man errs tragically in formulating at any given time the rules he thinks necessary to prevent disorder. But, for all our blunders, rightness remains something other than desir¬ ability ; a real moral order exists over and beyond the hap¬ piest of social arrangements men ever work out; and, at the very least, the life of a democracy will be no less livable, we may be sure, when its children are reared in an earnest appreciation of this basic fact. Does this imply that children are to be treated as candi¬ dates for degrees in rigorist ethics? No such folly is here 21 Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays, p. 124. 182 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH entertained. But the note of religious consecration now * markedly absent from educational practice, as from life elseisrhere, will be struck more effectively, we venture to think, if, in the first place, our teachers themselves are inspired with the idea of a supreme task laid upon the race of man. Not that they are to preach it at their pupils. But, as has been said, the teacher of even the youngest child will quicken in the child a better love of the stars, when he himself is astronomer enough to appreciate the wonders of the skies. Nor need it follow that the sense of ethical reality will chill the creative impulse in teacher or student. It certainly did not make Beethoven any less productive to remember, as he said, that ‘ ‘ the true artist . sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal.’’ The teacher who has a sense of infinite horizons for the development of noble personality will make his own work more genuinely creative. One who recognizes the sublimities of the perfect life and their com¬ pelling claims will be more alert to find opportunities for young people to share with him as far as possible his sense of the vast reaches to be kept in view. And the life of youth need be no less joyous than it is now in progressive schools when the atmosphere is one of high moral seriousness. In the second place, the school will see the importance of cultivating habits of ethical reflection. Most Prag¬ matists are against courses in moral instruction. The objection is justified when such courses become substitutes for experience and when the child who repeats moral pre¬ cepts at second-hand imagines it is expressing moral con¬ victions. But it is a mistake to judge from this wrong procedure or to dismiss the need for ethical instruction on the ground that ^‘experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. ” Does this mean 22 Dewey, Democracy and Education^ p. 164 THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 183 anything more than that attempts to enlighten the moral judgments by formal instruction are not the whole of moral education? The plea for moral teaching does not ask that the need for all the other agencies be slighted thereby. It asks only that it be recognized as one essential. After the warning that experience is not primarily cogni¬ tive, Professor Dewey adds : But the measure of the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads up. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative or leads to something or has meaning. . . . No experience having a meaning is possible without some element of thought. If the thought element is thus admitted to be important, why not set a chair for it? The need of experience is certainly not greater than the need of the constant thinking indispensable to still better experience. This matter we shall discuss in detail later.^'^ Here we must content ourselves with remarking that unless teachers and pupils meet for the specific purpose of elevat¬ ing their standards, the tendency becomes to accept judg¬ ments which do no more than refiect the prevailing level of the society around us. A glance at the activities listed in such a book as Schools of To-morrow reveals the fact that these undertakings, useful as they undoubtedly are, in the main lead to little more than learning what things are done by society now and how they are done, whereas the crying need is for the school to lead society to the doing of things which are better than those done now. To learn by experience how a house is built, how a bank is run, how a lunch room is conducted, how school supplies are made and bought, is good as far as it goes. It is indeed better than hearsay; and it is true that, before we can 23 Ihid., p. 169. 24 Chapter XII, “Direct Moral Instruction.” 184 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH improve upon prevailing aims and practices, we must first understand them as they are now. But, unless it is kept clearly in sight that the ultimate object of learning how things are done now is that the human race shall become a better race than to-day’s by doing better things, there is every danger of contentment with things as they are, done efficiently, of course, but for no higher reasons than before. Skilled in the understanding of things as they are, how will young people learn to understand things as they ought to be ? Where will they get the standards by which to dis¬ criminate between good and bad, and — of cardinal impor¬ tance to a progressive democracy — between good and better ? This is the reason for setting time aside for studying ideals. It is a leading justification for teaching literature and the other art subjects, a field, characteristically enough, in which Pragmatism is less occupied than it is in the utilitarian. The function of these is to reveal, not merely how man lives, but how, in the light of ideal excellence, he ought to live. To catch the inspiration of great lives through biography, to appreciate the wisdom of life con¬ veyed in a beautiful tale or memorable saying, to compare types of behavior according to the highest principles we can help youth to understand, to promote visions of a so¬ ciety infinitely more praiseworthy in its relationships than to-day’s — all this is important enough to receive definite place in the school program. Constantly higher standards must always be set to correct the arresting tendency of occu¬ pation with things as they are. This is peculiarly the need of a country so given as ours to the worship of the practical, so fond of strenuousness, and, at the same time, so willing to trust to luck, to let things drift without far-reaching plan. Pragmatist edu¬ cation does indeed want something better. But it has not yet seen the need of reflection upon the aim of ultimate THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 185 consequence, quickened understanding of the best there is about the souls of men. To be sure, no sound education wants little children to spend periods in moral introspec¬ tion. The chapters that follow will indicate the something better we have in mind when we speak of ethical thought¬ fulness. But the need for such reflection is all important. Democracy requires at all times the guidance of the very highest of ethical ideals. A constantly freshened under¬ standing of them is indispensable. Everything hangs upon the ultimate objects we set before us. In Pragmatist language, we need a principle of or¬ ganization for an enlarging experience. “Efficiency,’^ * ‘ growth, ” “ control ’ ’ should be very definitely understood, not as ends in themselves, but as aids to the developing of ethical personality. An efficient society may be skilled in the most effective production of want-satisfiers without ask¬ ing itself what these wants and their satisfaction contribute to helping or marring the inner life. Growth and control of experience are only as worth while as their direction is. All the so-called virtues are instrumental. A cool head is as useful to the burglar as it is to the surgeon. Profiteer¬ ing interlocking directorates practice group-activity and co¬ operation as truly as athletic teams. But a community in which each man, woman, and child so lives that everybody else is enabled to appreciate better the reality of the highest best for life is practicing ethical cooperation. The best, therefore, about Instrumentalism in education is its reminder of how many instruments available for moral progress exist in the native tendencies to activity. It has performed excellent service in showing the folly of choosing school work without regard to these propensities. Its service, however, has been greater in exposing the harm done by the traditional schooling than in pointing to con¬ crete, positive ends. Much has come from learning what a 186 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH waste it is to keep children by threats or bribes at studies they dislike. Is it true that the reverse is good ? Professor Dewey himself answers in the negative to those extremist followers who quote him to defend their schools of “free’’ < (and confused) activity. A life of unguided instinct, he insists, is not at all to be the aim. What should the ob¬ jective be ? We need more light upon it than is shed by the ideal of “enlarged experience.” The specific content of that experience requires a more thoroughgoing ethical philosophy. Questions and Problems 1. What pragmatist methods were employed in your schooling? What benefit did you derive from them? 2. Explain why it is charged against many schools that the further the child travels from the kindergarten, the poorer its education becomes. 3. Recall any experience where a piece of work became inter¬ esting only after you had mastered the early and uninterest¬ ing steps. 4. Describe any methods of your own for making a dogged grind less dreary. 5. Should one^s aims be so high that one necessarily falls short or should the goals be within reach? How may partial failure in the first case be made tolerable, even beneficial ? 6. What dangers are there in laying down the moral law as something indisputable? What dangers are there in holding that there are no absolute laws? Describe the educational practice that would avoid both dangers. 7. On the basis of the principle illustrated in Mark Twain^s The Man That Corrupted Hadleyhurg, would you advocate early practice in overcoming the temptations likely to be met later in life? References See, besides references quoted in the text: Adams, G. P., Idealism and the Modern Age. Bode, B. H., Essentials of Educational Theory. THE PRAGMATIST CRITICISM 187 DeweY; John,, Human Nature and Conduct; Interest and Effort in Education; Moral Principles in Education. Leighton, J. A., The Field of Philosophy, Ch. XXII, XXX. Pratt, J. B., What Is Pragmatism^ Schiller, F. C. S., Humanism. ScHiNZ, Albert, Anti-Pragmatism. Shaper, Robert, Progress and Science, Ch. III. Webster, A. W., Pragmatism and Its Critics. PART III THE RESOURCES OF TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW CHAPTER XI MORAL ACTIVITIES We have dealt thus far with the problem of ideals for American culture and with the forces contributing to the shaping of them. It now remains to examine agencies for giving the ethical motive effect. The illustrations in the chapters that follow are drawn chiefly from the life of the grades and secondary schools ; but the principles apply just as truly, we venture to believe, to later years as well.^ The most important moral agency, when it is rightly in¬ spired, is found in the actual performances of the pupils themselves. It is one thing to hear right conduct praised or see it exemplified; it is quite another, and more neces¬ sary, thing for the boys and girls themselves to do the acts. Character is essentially a matter of action, the habitual performance of certain kinds of deeds rather than others, and the only genuine way of learning how to do these deeds is to do them, just as the only way to learn tennis is to play it. Nobody really understands what ‘‘responsibility’’ means until he has been entrusted with a task that has succeeded or has failed because of him. So with respect to “service,” “generosity,” and all the possible terms of the moral vocabulary : any genuine comprehension of them, — - - - — - - . . . . - — ■ 1 For recent statements on values in the subjects taught in college and on the methods, see Paul Klapper, College Teaching (World Book Company, 1920). 191 192 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH as Aristotle pointed out, first requires practice in the deeds themselves.^ The better schooling of our times has seized upon the fact, not only that this practice must come first in the order of learning, but that pupils take to activity so much more readily than they do to the relatively passive business of listening or reading. They are eager to engage in athletics, to run a school paper, to dance, to act plays, to build, to do dozens of things impossible for those who merely sit at a desk, study, and recite. One of the richest veins in educa¬ tion has been tapped in recent years by turning these en¬ ergies to account. Instead of frowning, as in olden days, on the desire of the young to act upon their own initiative, we have learned that only upon these very interests can be laid the surest basis for sturdy growth. This is the justification of the large measure of liberty which so surprises the old-fashioned disciplinarian. A group of mothers who had come for the first time to see their children at work in a public kindergarten were wor¬ ried because the youngsters were engaged in painting, ' handling actual paints, and real paint-brushes. Fears of ruined clothing and of other mischief were written on the mothers’ faces. They had not yet realized the importance of the lessons the youngsters were receiving in being their own guardians. An easy way of preventing mischief would have been to keep the paints and brushes out of the chil¬ dren’s reach. So too they could have been saved from doing damage with scissors or with the crayon which they might have used to scribble on the wall. Keep these things away from the children and we prepare them admirably for a very orderly and docile existence, but we are not 2 Some of the material used in this chapter has already appeared in a bulletin prepared by the author for the Commission on Reorgani¬ zation of Secondary Education, entitled Moral Values in Secondary Education, and issued by the Bureau of Education (Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C.) MORAL ACTIVITIES 193 preparing them for democratic self-government. A man can be kept from burglary by locking him up in jail. But then we keep him not only from doing harm but from doing needed work. Repression is the chief reliance of the despot. He may believe, with mistaken benevolence, that people who enjoy liberty will use it mainly for mischief. The anxious mothers were sharing this belief of the benevolent despot. They had not yet grasped the point that a child does not gen¬ erally take to mischief more readily than he does to useful activities. He turns to disorder only when he has nothing better to occupy him. Once upon a time, boys got into trouble on the streets, because our cities gave them nothing else to do. Now we construct swimming pools, playgrounds, athletic fields, because we have learned — what the kinder- gartners have long known — that the way to escape mischief is to keep busy at worth-while occupations. The children engaged in painting were too busy for disorderly pranks, and better still, they were learning self-mastery. There was no need for them to be told, “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” They were controlling themselves. The old way discouraged the doing of wrong by what it called breaking the will. The better way seeks to develop the will by providing opportunity for self-direction. Kin¬ dergarten children are given lumps of clay and allowed to make whatever they choose. One little fellow decides that he will make an inkstand, let it dry, shellac it, and carry it home proudly as a gift. But this result depends on the use he makes of his liberty. He may waste the time, or, after beginning on his inkstand, he may want to change it into an automobile or a chicken like his neighbor’s. But when the morning is over and the boards must be put away, he knows that he has only himself to blame if he has noth¬ ing to show. His choice is his own, and with it goes a readily understood responsibility for the outcome. The 194 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH more practice he gets in sticking to aims of his own choos¬ ing, the better introduction he receives in the self-direction needed for democratic life. To be sure, things would often run more smoothly if the children could only be kept still and all working at the same task at exactly the same time. But such smoothness has to be paid for in the loss of initiative. Troublesome as initiative is, it needs more to be trained along lines of re¬ sponsible self-direction than to be discouraged. The first to understand this point were the kindergartners, and, little by little, the idea has been working its way up into the grades and beyond. As we shall see presently, pupils are now encouraged, not only to choose among selec¬ tions offered by the teacher, but to propose and execute projects of their own. One may still go, however, to many schools where practically every step taken by the children in the course of the day is controlled by the word of the teacher. Here is an instance: A class in an elementary school was to make a working drawing of a clock bracket. The teacher began : ‘ ‘ Hold your papers ‘ the long way ’ as I am doing. Measure two inches down from the top along the left edge and put a dot.^^ This difficulty being dis¬ posed of, not without furtive glances at their neighbors’ papers by a few timid ones to make sure that they had not ‘ ‘ disobeyed, ’ ’ the class was now free to obey the next edict. “Two inches from the top of the right edge put another dot. Now connect these two dots by a very faint line. Now put your rulers down, and let me see what you have done. ’ ’ Having thus made sure that the upper line of the drawing was parallel to the long axis of the paper and properly distant from the top, the teacher continued to dole out similar minute commands, stopping first to see that every one had drawn his dot or line correctly, and then issuing the next order. The work was then put aside with the com¬ forting thought that the problem of an accurate working MORAL ACTIVITIES 195 model, rightly placed with respect to the four edges of the paper and drawn to scale, had now been solved satisfac¬ torily. Moreover, did not the pupils gain valuable lessons in neatness, in listening to orders, interpreting them cor¬ rectly, and obeying them strictly ? But the whole procedure was inaugurated and controlled by the will of the teacher. The pupils exercised their wills simply in holding themselves in restraint until given per¬ mission to act out the next steps. But as democratic char¬ acter calls for more than such passive or negative control, the youngsters should have been allowed this active part: Even if they had not originated this task themselves, they should have first formulated the problem which they were to solve, and then received every chance to make their own solution. They ought to have been free to suggest and discuss the best methods of meeting the difficulties involved, in order that, having once decided upon the course to take, each might have been left to go ahead for himself with the responsibility resting for the outcome of the whole on his own shoulders. In all such cases, mistakes will, of course, result. But mistakes are highly educative when they happen to people who know that they themselves are responsible for doing better. A schooling that tries to forestall error by rigidly prescribing every line to follow will fail to build up the habits of initiative, free choice, and self -amendment essen¬ tial to democratic living. All these better habits must be given the chance for culti¬ vation in the daily life of home, school, and college. Those ideals of a better human order will mean most to our young people that they have made some attempt to put into prac¬ tice themselves. Prom this viewpoint, consider, for ex¬ ample, to what a slight extent the more generous traits may be developed by the kind of school procedure that ordi¬ narily prevails. In too many places the aim encouraged 196 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH by the actual conduct of the work is of the type that lays major stress upon ‘booking out all the time for number one/^ For instance, is not prompting in recitation too often punished without a thought that back of this offense is a kindly desire, which, instead of being thwarted, should rather be encouraged to express itself in some form of gen¬ uine helpfulness ? ^ This is not to imply that any less training is needed in self-reliance, cleanliness, punctuality, thrift, courtesy, hon¬ esty, perseverance, obedience to authorities, respect for the rights of others. These still remain fundamental, and it would be folly to ignore them while working for still finer behaviors. But we have been obliged at last to recognize that equally necessary to preparation for democratic life is practice in worthy cooperation and worthy initiative. We have learned that there is something woefully lacking in a citizenship that does no more than obey the law and refrain from infringement upon the rights of neighbors. We can no longer conceive of democracy as mainly a matter of everyone for himself within the limits of the law. That conception, still too common, is symbolized, as Professor Dewey has pointed out, by the very equipment of the ordi¬ nary classroom. Each pupil sits by himself at a desk, which is fastened irremovably to its place. Each occupies his own little island, from which, as a general rule, communication with other islands is forbidden. This rigid separation typi¬ fies the importance attached to the virtues of non-interfer¬ ence. The class acts as a group only in obedience to orders from headquarters. • Such a method overlooks two weighty facts : In the first place, though even a democracy must obey orders, the rules are not decreed by an autocrat ; they are willed by the group itself. Responsibility for the success or failure in the exe- 3 See F. C. Sharp, Education for Character, Ch. VII, “Mutual Aid in Class Work.” MORAL ACTIVITIES 197 cution rests with those who not only obey the orders but make them. This is true of more than the administration of school routine. A school magazine, for instance, is in this sense a democratic institution to the extent that the students themselves initiate and run it. It chooses its own policies and selects its own managers to carry them out. It is not democratic when outside pressure, like that of the teachers, is necessary to keep it up. Secondly, the members of a democracy must be animated by the spirit of cooperation, a spirit more constructive than merely refraining from interference, the spirit of freely working together for the positive good of the whole. Initia¬ tive is encouraged in order that better contributions may be offered to the common task. In short, in a democracy ethically motivated, everyone does his part in behalf of worthy enterprises which he has helped to will into exist¬ ence. This conception, we repeat, is a special need in the America of to-day and to-morrow, now that the old rule of ‘^each for himself without infringement’^ has proved so sadly unserviceable a tool for our changed and changing social order. To expect school life to exhibit the perfect working of a democracy conceived in these terms is unwarranted. In the matter of freedom, for example, it would be unreason¬ able to permit inexperienced children to enjoy the liberties that only mature persons can manage. But the principles of initiative and cooperation are capable of being put into practice in many ways indeed that pupils can well employ. School life should be organized around the idea, not that each student is to do his utmost to get a better mark than his neighbor, but that all are expected to make a free offer¬ ing of their best to the progress of the class and the school as a whole and, through these, of the larger community. Bearing this in mind, let us consider a few typical instances of the resources at our command. 198 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Give the pupils every possible chance to participate in the management of the school life. Compare, for example, two types of assembly. In the old-fashioned school the pupils gathered to sing a song or two, to hear the principal read from the Bible, to listen to an address from the prin¬ cipal or a visitor, and to hear individual “star” pupils, selected by the teacher, “speak pieces,” likewise selected from above. Except for the singing, there was no coopera¬ tion on the part of individuals or groups. The management being in the hands of the teachers, there was little or no chance for initiative on the part of the pupils. In the main, the chief motive to which appeal was made was the desire for individual distinction, a motive at best inadequate, since only the few had a chance to shine as elocutionists. To-day the better type of assembly is run by the pupils. Its success depends not on the execution of a teacher’s de¬ cisions by a few, but on the voluntary cooperation of all. Working with a faculty adviser, they select the program and the ones who are to carry it out. It is a striking fact that where this is the case, their choice so frequently takes the form of a dramatic offering. The reasons we need not stop to analyze. The significant thing is the opportunity here afforded for the interplay of initiative, responsibility, and the spirit of teamwork. A class responsible, let us say, for a dramatic performance as the chief item on the pro¬ gram of a given date, is at once put to it as a group to do its best. It knows from experience what it means for auditors to be bored by a play poorly chosen or poorly acted. Realizing that the success or the failure depends chiefly upon itself, it feels a real obligation to select wisely. It must therefore encourage every individual in its mem¬ bership to help the enterprise along. He must do his share to choose the right play, to pick the most competent per¬ formers, to act his own part well (even though he would have preferred the leading role), to assist in making stage MORAL ACTIVITIES 199 properties, and in general to express and to stimulate the team spirit without which the undertaking is bound to f ail.^ This is the point of view for all the activities of the school. Hence the value of pupil self-government wherever such a scheme represents a genuine cooperation among the pupils themselves and between the pupils and the teachers. The latter are not at all to abrogate their functions. The main point is the intelligent sharing by the pupils themselves in the responsibilities of their own school community. For their period of life, the school is, or should be, the special field for their activities as citizens. The proper perform¬ ance of these activities now is the best preparation for the civic duties of the years to follow.® Hence, it is important that pupils learn from experience that, among other things, the law of the school is aimed at their best interest. This they do see most readily when they participate in framing and enforcing the regulations under which they are to live. Thus in one school a valuable result was reaped from an experiment in leaving the care of the study periods to the pupils without supervision by the teachers. The scheme worked badly, and at the end of the year the faculty voted its abandonment. The situation was saved, however, by the student council. It requested that the plan be given another trial. It saw that the matter was discussed earnestly in all the classes, proposed certain modi¬ fications, and pledged the student body to faithful perform¬ ance. The pledge was kept, and at the present time there is little likelihood of a return to the old system. The thing of special value in affairs of this kind is the first-hand experience of the students in meeting the prob- — ■ ■ I - I ■ --I - , — . ,1 ■ I . . , t 4 For illustrations see ‘‘Assemblies” in School and Home, pub¬ lished by Parents’ and Teachers’ Association, Ethical Culture School, 2 West 64th Street, New York, and pamphlet, “Morning Exercises,” Francis W. Parker School, Chicago. 5 See paper by the author in Proceedings of the National Educa¬ tion Association, 1913, pp. 41-45. 200 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH lems of their own corporate life. They appreciate more readily that their school is a community with certain func¬ tions to perform for the good of the entire membership, that is, that it must safeguard the health of its members, protect them against injury from the indifferent or ill- disposed, bring the ’weakest up to standard in intelligence, refinement, and moral character, and encourage all to reach new and higher levels. These are the tasks of the adult citizenship into which they are later to enter. They learn, and perhaps nothing else can teach them so well, what these tasks require in the way of free and generous cooperation. How much their understanding of certain fundamental problems of democracy is furthered may be gathered from the following testimony. One student writes : Whether the system of unsupervised study periods works or not depends upon each member of the group. Some are unable to control themselves. They make the plan fail since the teacher must again be placed in charge. Such a backward step usually takes several months to regain. On the other hand, some study periods of this kind may be carried on very successfully if there are present enough of the older students who can practice self- control and are not afraid to take it upon themselves to remon¬ strate with the younger and more unruly pupils. Another student writes : Give us a chance to do something on our own responsibility. The academic part of school life offers little field for such training. Perhaps we are too young to realize the importance of what we ought to be learning. But if we were given complete control of such matters as study periods, athletics, assemblies, and social functions, even if mistakes were made, it would not be a very serious matter. But I doubt if many mistakes would be made, as even the most scatter-brained, frivolous people at our age turn out best when given responsible positions. The great trouble with the so-called self-government at our school is that the faculty doesn’t seem to trust us. That is why there is so little interest among the pupils at large. They feel MORAL ACTIVITIES 201 that the student hoard is a mere figurehead. No one will ever be interested in anything unless made to feel that the movement or institution needs his help. These declarations convey their own comment. They in¬ dicate incidentally the important educative influence of the pupils upon one another. That ‘^even the scatter-brained, frivolous members turn out best when given responsible positions’’ is undoubtedly due not only to their sincere interest in the tasks thus entrusted to them, but to their being held to account by those whose favorable judgment they genuinely respect, namely, their own peers. A lad who for one reason or another can escape with a passing mark from his teacher in English or history knows that bluff will not succeed with his comrades. For a game lost through his negligence, or for a performance or an outing spoiled by his poor conduct, he is certain to hear from his peers with a sharpness that carries home. The same is true of more than reproof. How frequently does it happen that young people will take from other students advice which they reject when it comes from the more or less uncongenial world represented by the faculty! Hence the wisdom of enlisting in the school management the active interest of those to whom the other pupils look up. Democracy rests upon public opinion. The soundest public opinion is gen¬ erated where the best leaders receive the amplest encourage¬ ment.® In some schools the chance for these new expressions is offered even in connection with what has always seemed to be peculiarly and exclusively the concern of the teacher, namely, the choice of topics for study and the conduct of ■■■ — — , , ■ ■ „ — ' — — ■ — . I , , . ■ , » 0 It is a pity that where the idea of student self-government is broached, teachers so often think of it chiefly as a means whereby offenders can be disciplined by their fellow-pupils. Important as this function is, it is not the main object. The more the students can be encouraged to use the student organization for constructive purposes, the better. 202 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH the recitation. Just as a group will make itself responsible for selecting a play and presenting it, so in the course of the regular work in history or in science, let us say, a group will select some topic for investigation and hold itself re¬ sponsible for teaching the results to the rest of the class or school. Following is the account of a project worked out by a seventh-grade elementary class to present to a school assembly the fruits of their geography study : The problem of the ^‘Evolution of Transportation’^ came through the art work. The class had been particularly interested in the papier mache modeling it had done the year before and wished to continue this work in some form. In considering a suitable project, the majority agreed on creating a picture to fill a long blank space on a schoolroom wall. The picture was to have color — the suggestion of out-of-doors — and it was to be typical of the work of the grade. In the study of geography some mention had been made of the growth in transportation that had changed the ^Tocal” market into the “world” market. It was unanimously agreed that the picture should represent this growth or evolution in transportation. This problem took pos¬ session of the class, and in the following ways was carried out by the several departments. Geography. — The geography work already under way was laid aside for the study of this new problem, as the subject had to be well understood before any scheme could be worked out for the picture. The captains of the five permanent committees into which the class had divided itself, apportioned the work by con¬ tinents; then each committee undertook its task in its own way. The members of each committee made reports of their findings through pictures shown by lantern or in other ways, or else by models. From these pictures and models each pupil chose some¬ thing which might later aid him in the big composition. Thus an excellent comparative study of the modes and facilities of transportation in various lands filled the geography periods for many weeks. History. — Manners, customs and other historical factors as reasons for progress or retardation in the economic life of many 7 School and Home, Ethical Culture School, Winter, 1921. MORAL ACTIVITIES 203 peoples came under discussion, and took the time of a number of history periods. English. — Most of the theme work at this time was on subjects connected with this problem. A number of English periods were given to the organization of the assembly, and to criticism of work presented^ Manual Training. — This department supplied a large number of models showing the evolution of conveyances on land and water. New models were made and added to the collection. In order to keep models safe in the room, hanging shelves were made by some of the boys who thus sacrificed some hours of after¬ noon play. Art Work. — The art problem worked itself out in the picture shown on the wall. There were five committees of five pupils each, and every pupil was to have a panel in the finished picture. Much figuring and drawing resulted in the acceptance of the following plan: Each committee was to picture the continent it had studied, so there would be five divisions in the picture. Asia and Australia were to be considered together. Each of these divisions was to be made up of five panels; a large central one, showing the most distinctive form of transportation developed on that continent, and four smaller ones, two of which would show water crafts, and»two land vehicles. The five composite panels were to be put together in such a way that the large central pictures would show the distinctive progress in the evolution of transportation in the world. It was finally agreed that the steam locomotive, the steamboat and the airplane were so uni¬ versal that they must be pictured by themselves on a long panel, which should extend over all the panels of all the continents. After the captains had made all the assignments, the designing began in large outline drawings. When these drawings had been made acceptable, reduced to a scale and perfected in outline, they were traced on to individual pieces of wall board which were sized with glue and made ready for the papier mache. Meanwhile, to save time and labor of paper cutting, it was sug¬ gested that confetti be tried for making the pulp. One committee experimented with the confetti which proved to be a good medium and also a great time-saver. When the modeling was finished, all the twenty-five parts were assembled, arranged, and the painting of the background planned so as to bring out unity in the whole panel. Tempora paints were used, and shellac was added to keep out the dust. 204 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Mathematics. — One of the most difficult considerations of all came in adapting the plan to the space the picture was to decorate. Much measuring and proportioning was done, and many complicated plans laid aside, before an acceptable drawing was turned over to the boys who were to saw the wall board into just the proper sizes required. The Assembly. — The Assembly was an outgrowth of the interest in the project, and by no means an aim while doing the work. It might possibly be thought of as an excellent form of test, requir¬ ing so much condensation of the matter covered, and so careful a consideration and balancing of values, as to result in the best form of review and drill. The sense of possessing a knowledge of facts and a power of comprehension so much greater than they were able to present in an assembly talk of twenty minutes, gave to the class a taste of the joy of power in a subject. The opportunities the assemblies afford for such summaries of work are invaluable.® In all these activities it should be our aim to call upon the worthiest motives we can get. Cooperation in itself is not essentially ethical. Everything depends upon its ob¬ jectives. All encouragement should therefore be given to cooperative enterprises in aid of philanthropies and other forms of civic welfare. No one can fail to appreciate the moral value of these activities after seeing a class go through all the steps involved in an undertaking such as the follow- 8 “Given opportunity under the right conditions for making plans and working out their own ideas, children show a resourcefulness and ingenuity which compared with the lack of it shown by many adults, suggests the possibility that the emphasis we have placed on the acquisition of isolated facts has hindered rather than fur¬ thered the mental development of children.” — Meredith Smith, “The Community Project,” Survey, June 4, 1921, p. 303. See also M. R. Goodlander, Education Through Experience : A Four-Year Experi¬ ment in the Ethical Culture School (Bureau of Educational Experi¬ ments, 16 West 8th Street, New York, 1921). Other illustrations will be found in C. C. Scott, Social Education; John Dewey, Schools of To-morrow and Flew Schools for Old; W. H. Kilpatrick, “The Project Method,” in Teachers’ College Record, Vol. XIX; C. A. McMurry, Teaching by Projects', J. A. Stevenson, Project Method of Teaching ; M. E. Wells, A Project Curriculum. MORAL ACTIVITIES 205 ing: A class which had become interested in the problem of a poor family decided that the best help it could give was to raise money toward a fund to enable the daughter to take a two-year course at a technical school instead of going to work at once. The value of what was taught by this discussion alone is apparent. Then came the consid¬ eration of ways and means, candy sales, dramatic perform¬ ance, and so on. The problem enlisted the participation of every member of the class in one committee or another. From the beginning to the final handing over of the money to the settlement worker in charge, no one was without some responsibility to his class for some share in this laudable project which the class as a whole had voted. Here is an account of an excellent project on a larger scale, voted by the student council for an entire school : ® This year the committee of the Student Council had arranged to celebrate the Pilgrim Ter-Centenary, when several speakers brought vividly before the school the acute suffering in China and Eastern Europe. The immediate response of the pupils resulted in a complete change of plan, and the Pilgrim Festival gave way to the Yarmarka. To the astonishment and possibly the dismay of some of the parents, it was announced by the faculty that one week would be devoted to festival work, with all academic studies set aside for that period. The time selected was the week before the be¬ ginning of the new term year and after the midyear exami¬ nations. Taking the great Russian fair of Nijni-Novgorod as their model, the students attempted to recreate in New York a village bazaar, or Yarmarka, with merchants and jugglers and beggars, Europeans and Asiatics, dancers and fakirs and peddlers. The Student Council selected a Central Committee to undertake the entire management of the fair. Each member of this committee became a chairman of a sub-committee composed of pupils, teachers, and at least one parent from the Parents’ and Teachers’ Association. There were nine committees to shoulder the re- 9 School and Home, Ethical Culture School, Winter, 1921. 206 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH sponsibilities. One gathered donations, evaluating, classifying, distributing material for sale. Others had complete control of the decorations, the erection of booths, the designing and making of costumes. One committee had charge of the sideshows, one of plays to be given as part of the festival, one of a Russian Inn and Tea House where Russian dancers diverted the guests. One committee arranged a concert of famous musicians which took place on the Sunday afternoon following the bazaar. Each pupil was scheduled for special work during the days of preparation, so that on Monday morning the school presented a most interesting appearance. In every room there were groups with pupil chairmen directing work, the teachers there only as advisers — an ideal school of the future. Though fully $7,000 were realized by the Yarmarka, this money was by no means the chief gain. Educationally the experiment was valuable in many ways ; it was the most practical kind of education, by doing, not by reading. The freedom of action, both mental and physical, brought out powers of leader¬ ship, of skill, of ingenuity, of originality. Talents hitherto unrevealed in the non-academic type of boy or girl had an opportunity to shine, so that the pupil usually a follower often became the leader. Pupils and teachers all became better ac¬ quainted through equality of work. Self-effacement was under¬ stood, for it was a community project. Most important of all, perhaps, these young people received vivid lessons in their relation to the rest of our human society. Another illustration : In a small Western town a class in civics came to the conclusion that there was need for im¬ provement in the community. It arranged a series of public meetings, invited parents to attend and experts to deliver addresses. As an outcome it helped to secure, among other results, the establishment of a system of garbage collection for the town, the employment of a municipal nurse, the creation of a public park, and the establishment of a bathing beach with bathhouses for the public use.^® Even if every 10 For details, see F. C. Sharp, Education for Character, Ch. X. See also The Social Studies (Government Printing Office, Wash¬ ington, D. C.), and Dunn, Teaching of Community Civics (Govern¬ ment Printing Office, Washington, D. C. ). MORAL ACTIVITIES 207 school cannot teach citizenship by such immediate practice as thi^, the principle may be applied to local conditions in a variety of ways. The chief value consists in learning how to work for worthy social ends through voluntary coopera¬ tion. Let it be repeated, however, that the way to cultivate the spirit of service is to begin with rendering service to one’s own immediate community. Hence the desirability of mem¬ bership in the school orchestra or glee club, of running the school paper, managing the school bank, assisting backward pupils, supplying stage carpentry, making bookshelves, um¬ brella stands, waste-paper baskets, flower boxes, apparatus for the laboratories, or repairing school furniture. Nor should it be overlooked that services of this kind draw the pupils more closely to their school. It is a matter of familiar observation that people are apt to become more firmly attached to an institution by reason of what they themselves do for it than by virtue of what it does for them. Young people who have helped to build a school playground or prepare a school garden are much more likely to keep the grounds in good shape than those who come into a place where everything has been made ready for them before¬ hand. Like adults thej^ cherish that to which they have given themselves. The experiences related by Booker T. Washington in Working with the Hands, have been proved true elsewhere: to care for your community, perform a voluntary service for it. An example of what can be done in this direction in urban high schools is contained in the following report of the manner in which the new pupils were registered in a public high school in New York. As the girls from the ele¬ mentary school entered : They were met at the door hy a reception committee of pupils who made them feel perfectly at home and showed them just 208 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH what to do. Each member escorted a new girl to the registration table where 26 young ladies recorded the entrants. One whose last name began with K formed in line with the others under the placard K, or if her name was Robinson, she walked over to the girl under the sign R and told her all about herself. After she had registered, she found at her side a delight¬ ful, chatty girl, who treated her as if she had known her all her life. This girl took her through the building and showed her all about her alma mater to be. She asked her what she was par¬ ticularly interested in. Did she like debating or music? Well, then she must be sure to join the musical and debating clubs. And she took her over and introduced her to the presidents of these organizations. All this time she had not met a single teacher, nor had she received a single order or command. She had simply been wel¬ comed to her future alma mater by her equals, who were glad that she had come, and who hoped that she would remain to honor the school, to educate herself in the finest sense, and to form lifelong friendships begun already on her first day. More than 1,300 applications for admission were received. The chairman of the ushers saw that every girl was taken care of and she seemed to be in a dozen places at once, always pleasant and hospitably smiling. The principal walked about the school delighted. He knew that the impression these hundreds of girls were getting on their first day would abide and would strongly initiate an attitude of cheerfulness and courtesy throughout the school life^ ‘‘How much better is this,” said he, “than having the new girls met by a corps of teachers tired out with writing down names. Listen, did you hear that?” He was standing near the main entrance of the school, and a “Glad to meet you” rang out clear and hearty. “Glad to meet you,” the principal repeated. “Why, if the teachers were driving away at writing down name after name would they have time for a greeting like that? Would they feel like giving a handshake and a smile? People are wondering why so many youngsters run away from school or get working papers as soon as they are of age. Why don’t they stop to think a minute and consider the spirit in the usual schools? Nobody smiles, nobody has time for courtesy, nobody tries to make the boy or girl feel at home. Everybody has something to growl about, to demand, to enforce. If you go to a restaurant or a theater, they don’t try to order you about or to punish you. MORAL ACTIVITIES 209 They try to make you feel at ease. They want you to come again. If the schools tried this method, the number of pupils who leave before they finish their course would decrease as by miracle.” [William McAndrew in the New York Globe.] Note the importance of what those pupils received who contributed their assistance. It is true that only a small number out of the entire student body enjoyed this par¬ ticular opportunity. The principle, nevertheless, remains fruitful, and the best schools of the future will devise methods of enlisting every one of their students in activities of cooperative service. In another public high school in New York, the pupils contribute their help in the following ways ; Do all kinds of clerical work: (1) mimeographing, (2) multh graphing, (3) typing reports, (4) act as secretaries to grade advisers and chairmen. Serve as messengers. Do printing for school. Assist weaker pupils in scholarship. Operate the tele¬ phone switchboard. Operate the school bank under the super¬ vision of a teacher. Edit three school publications under the teachers’ supervision. Build equipment for school (typewriter desks, fire-drill signs). Operate motion-picture machine. Aid in community activities: Charity organizations, hospitals, city departments (block captains). Supervise lunch rooms. Super¬ vise movements of pupils entering and leaving building and pass¬ ing through corridors. Patrol corridors during the day. Receive visitors. Make sanitary inspections of building. Take charge of classes when teachers are absent and substitutes cannot be ob¬ tained. Handle minor cases of discipline between pupils. Another such school has squads for every office and de¬ partment in the building. A library squad of twenty mem¬ bers assists in managing the library ; a chemistry laboratory squad of twelve members aids in setting up material for class work and demonstrations and in storing it after use ; an afternoon help squad of ninety-six members, developed II ■■!■■■» ■ I „ I I , ■! I . , > 11 Annual Reports of the Superintendent of Schools, 1920-1922, “High Schools,” Board of Education, New York, p. 16. 210 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH twelve years ago at the suggestion of one of the pupils, meets four days a week after school to help boys who need aid in any subject. A blind squad of fourteen members escorts blind boys to and from classes and to and from school and home. It helps them in studies by reading to them and translating Braille.^^ Special undertakings may be suggested for selected stu¬ dents in colleges and the last years of the high school : It is eminently worth the trouble to form clubs to intensify the spirit of the members by activities pointedly aimed at the refining of human relationships. . . . Such tasks are found in problems which have to do with mutual interpretation, for example, black folk and white, foreign and native stocks in America, delinquents and the community, immigrant parents and unsympathetic children. Students might organize clubs for one or more of these purposes, for intimate discussions of personal problems, for public meetings on the ethics of the vocations and on the more distinctly ethical phases of political and international progress. Such societies can do much more good for their members than the average debating club with its premium on mere forensic skill, or the fraternity with its encouragement of snobbishness. The wholesome thing about the spirit of fraternity should be set to work upon some such creative activities as here mentioned. Not only does the comradeship strengthen faith in right-doing; but these practical endeavors offer a notable help to the deepening, extending and clarifying of that interest in ethical progress with¬ out which there can be none of the intelligent leadership for which our democracy looks to its colleges. Years of experience have worked out courses of book- study for the various periods of life. Young people can now be sent from kindergarten to university with the as¬ surance of finding fairly standardized study material for the different stages. To-day, moreover, our schools are learning what rich educational resources are at hand in 12 pp. 116, 117. 13 From a chapter by the author in Paul Klapper, College Teach¬ ing, p. 331. MORAL ACTIVITIES 211 such activities as this chapter has described. Their value as an introduction to the requirements of democratic life is now unquestioned. A great advance, however, still lies ahead. Not only must we provide a curriculum of activi¬ ties, graded like the study material, for all the various stages, but even more, we must supply those activities that will lead our youth toward ever finer understanding of spiritual ideals. Questions and Peoblems 1. Is cooperative activity in the young hard or easy to get? If you do not find the same true of their elders, how explain the difference ? 2. Do you recall occasions in your own schooling when coopera¬ tion would have been more valuable to you than individual effort? 3. What fault is to be found in athletics as the chief coopera¬ tive enterprise? 4. In Dorothy Canfield^s The Bent Twig, the heroine makes right choices at three critical steps in her life. What in her childhood training helped her? How can the principle of self-reliance be applied to school life? 5. Study Charles Norris’ Salt and Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh from the same point of view as in question 4. 6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a formal system of pupil self-government? If it should be instituted, at what age would you begin? What preparations can be made in the years preceding? 7. How do you account for the fact that the training received by soldiers in self-restraint, quick obedience, etc., does not always show itself in their civilian life? 8. Explain why the best schools have done away with corporal punishment. 9. Explain why bright children often have a hard time with their fellow pupils. How is this problem to be met? 10. Report on the experience of teachers with regard to the honor system. What conclusions do you draw? 11. If your aim is to have “good order,” you may obtain it; but at what price? If your aim is higher, you may obtain good order and something more. Illustrate. 212 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH References See, besides references in the text: Baglet, W. C., School Discipline. Dewey, John, Democracy and Education; Interest and Effort in Education; Moral Principles in Education; School and Society. Dewey, E. and J., Schools of To-morrow. Fisher, D. C., Self-Reliance. Freeland, G. E., Modern Elementary Practice, Ch. II, III, IV. Fretwell, E. K., ‘^Extra-Curricular Activities of Secondary Schools,” Teachers College Record, Jan., Mar., May, 1923. Goodlander, M. R., Education Through Experience (Bureau of Educational Experiments, New York). Hannah, J. C., “High-School Fraternities” in C. H. Johnston, Modern High School, Ch. XX; “Moral Agencies Affecting High-School Students,” ibid., Ch. XXIX. Hart, J. K., A Critical Study of Current Theories of Moral Education; The Unprintable Text Book (reprint from the Survey, New York). Klapper, Paul, Principles of Educational Practice, Ch. X, XIV, XXIII-XXV. Meriam, j. L., Child Life and the Curriculum. Patri, Angelo, A Schoolmaster of the Great City, Ch. II, VI, VII. Scott, C. C., Social Education. “The Social Motive in School Work,” School Yearbook, Francis W. Parker School. “Student Government” (booklet, William Penn High School, Philadelphia, Pa.). Wilson, H. B., and Wilson, G. M., The Motivation of School Work. CHAPTER XII DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION This chapter aims to present the case for direct, scheduled moral instruction in those schools where there are teachers competent to undertake this delicate and important task. It would be most unwise to introduce courses of this kind at once into every class in every school. These courses make special demands. They call, in the first place, for grenuine, eager interest on the part of the teacher. Lack¬ ing this, they become dry monologues or the perfunctory execution of so many items per period in a given syllabus. It is bad for pupils to dislike the reading of the best books because of poor teaching in literature. It is worse to have a similar dislike associated with ethical reflection. In the second place, the teacher must possess special knowledge and special skill. He should be familiar with the principles of ethics, with the classic literature on the subject, and with the history of ethical thinking and of moral evolution. It is especially needful that he be trained in the application of ethical principles to the concrete prob¬ lems of present-day life. Since nothing is more disastrous in moral instruction than academic tediousness, it is here particularly that the teacher must possess that peculiar skill which can bring together the near and the remote, the immediately practical and the ideal, in ways interesting, dignified, and productive. Here, more perhaps than in the teaching of any other subject, are required those special personal qualities by which the confidence of young people is won and retained. Among the temptations for the teacher 213 214 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH to avoid are censoriousness, cheap familiarity for the sake of ‘‘getting down to their level, and the pedantry that emphasizes trivialities and forgets what boys and girls may reasonably be expected to outgrow of their own accord. Nowhere is there greater need for tact, for a sense of humor, for broad, human sympathy, and for the example that speaks far more convincingly than the most effective word. Where these requirements have been met, and where the other agencies of the school cooperate in the interests of the moral aim, the advantages of supplementing these agencies by scheduled moral instruction offset the objections com¬ monly urged. The desirability, therefore, of introducing such courses into any given school will depend upon the special conditions in that school. That moral judgment requires a carefully planned edu¬ cation is apparent when we reflect that we see in any situa¬ tion whatever — moral, prudential, assthetic — only that to which our attention is somehow directed. It was always true, for instance, ever since the first pendulum was swung, that pendulums oscillate regularly in periods of time ac¬ cording to their length, but until Galileo pointed out this fact, nobody seemed to be aware of it. So it has been with all of Nature’s secrets now familiar. Every commonplace accepted to-day had first to be called, at some time or other, to somebody’s attention. The same is true with regard to facts of the ethical life, and the need still exists, renewed as it is for every generation. All of a man ’s years are none too long for the learning of all that can be known here, and youth is none too early to begin.^ 1 It is easy to forget that facts which, to our adult experience, are most obvious, must be brought explicitly to our students’ atten¬ tion even in secondary schools or colleges. A certain group of high- school boys fell into the habit of assembling in a thick crowd at a DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 215 Intelligence in general, we are often pained to discover, is no sufficient moral guide. Is there, indeed, any such faculty as general intelligence? No matter how well they can analyze sentences in grammar, children cannot solve a problem in geometry unless they know the data of their problem and have been taught how geometric problems must be attacked; they cannot find the hypotenuse of a given triangle if they do not know the length of the other two sides and if they are ignorant of the necessary formula. For the same reason a brilliant chemist, with all his knowl¬ edge of chemistry, may be as inept in his political opinions as an illiterate. He cannot judge civic problems properly unless he possesses the facts of the situation and unless he uses the right political standards. So, likewise, to solve moral problems, no general intellectual capacity can take the place of a knowledge of ethical data and the special ways in which ethical questions must be approached. For example, nothing needs to be insisted upon more often with our young people than the ethical commonplace that we do not make our duties, but that they are none the less real for that reason: Stevenson did not choose to be afflicted with consumption, but the special obligation laid upon his life by his illness was not, therefore, to be escaped. Fathers and mothers do, indeed, see things from another subway station and rushing in football fashion through the passage¬ way where they were to drop their tickets. Their idea was that some, at least, would be borne through without paying their fares. Perhaps they were actuated as much by love of fun as by thrift or by a familiar enough desire to get the better of a railway com¬ pany. At any rate, the boys had to be reminded that they were stealing a ride, that rides could be stolen like other purchasable things, that they were making it likely for the ticket collector to lose his position, that they were giving the public a wrong impres¬ sion of their high school and of the civic value of education in gen¬ eral, and especially that however able the railroad company might be to afford the loss of a nickel or two, no lad could afford to sully himself by being a cheat. Explicit mention of this kind is frequently quite necessary. 216 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH angle than their children’s, the growing child must be reminded; but the main point is that a duty arises from that very fact. Relevant and essential data such as these must be constantly taught. They do not always come with intelligence in other fields. All in all, the real problem before us is not whether the moral intelligence is to be instructed or not instructed, but rather how and by whom and by what it is to be taught; for whether we choose or not, children receive teaching anyway. It is impossible to withdraw a child from all suggestive influences, unless he is brought up in airtight isolation. He will receive suggestions from servants, from companions, from shop- windows, from the life that he sees in the streets. Thfe efforts that are sometimes made to bring up a child with an impartial mind on matters of religion, morality, or politics, in order that he may be free to take his own line when he is of a fit age to judge, are bound to end in failure. From birth he is exposed to contagion on every side, and long before he reaches maturity will be tinged with prejudices which render true impartiality of judgment difficult if not impossible. Impartiality is a state of mind that arises out of mature knowledge and after a long process of examination and rejection of prejudices or precon¬ ceived opinions. With immaturity and ignorance it cannot exist.^ The folly of trusting the development of judgment to chance information cannot be exaggerated. For illustra¬ tion, we need only think of the ideas on sex which children ^ ‘ pick up by themselves. ’ ’ Such an education is unreliable. It may occasionally teach what is true, but it does not do so always. Even if its lessons were always acceptable, we could not trust it, because it cares nothing about securing a steady growth into better insight. It is inexpert ; it often adopts such hurtful methods as appeals to superstitious fears. It is altogether irresponsible. Unlike the school, it 2 M. W. Keatinge, Suggestion in Education, p. 185. DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 217 feels no special call to teach what is best, and is therefore just as likely to teach what is harmful. It is especially from these irresponsible sources that our young people are likely to get that dangerous code of ethics which asks only for outward conformity to public opinion. The following statement from a typical devotee of the morality of custom indicates the peril which a sounder education of the judgment must combat. Lord Chesterfield, so often held up as a model for youth, writes to his son : ® The world judges from the appearance of things, and not from the reality, which few are able, and still fewer are inclined to fathom; and a man, who will take care always to be in the right in those things, may afford to he sometimes a little in the wrong in more essential ones: there is a willingness, a desire to excuse him. When public opinion is the sole mentor, what harm is there in having one^s fling when nobody knows! ^ A real man of fashion and pleasure observes decency; at least, neither borrows nor affects vices : and if he unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice delicacy and secrecy. This condoning of transgression as long as it remains hidden is always the danger when there is no better guide than the opinion of polite society. Only the outward pal¬ pable observances seem to be called for, because there is no understanding of the true reasons why some acts should be frowned upon and others encouraged. These funda¬ mental meanings must be made clear, and for this task there can be nothing better than wise teaching by home, school, and church. Not by any means that custom is always wrong. When the moral significance of what is good in custom is grasped, public opinion can be used to 3 Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son, Letter LXXIV (italics ours ) . Letter XVI. 218 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH make a very useful contribution to character. Adolescents, for example, often tend to rebel at tradition, to glorify “ unconventionality, ’ ^ and to stigmatize the requirements of good society as so many hypocrisies. Valuable as is a sturdy independence of character, nevertheless there are also grave dangers in this youthful point of view. With all its sophistication, this period is apt to be ignorant of the fact that back of many “conventions’’ there is a wisdom bom of ages of experience. The impatient young rebel needs to understand the reason for these safeguards, and here teachers can be of .invaluable aid. Many girls in our high schools, for instance, need to be told with unending patience, that severe as the standard undoubtedly is which demands a stricter code of conduct for their sex than for their brothers, it is nevertheless wisest for them now, while that code is still in force, to accept the rules about chap- eronage, introductions, and the like. With these observations many teachers may no doubt concur who nevertheless ask, “But why make a distinct subject of morals and give it a prescribed period of the school time?” Let us consider the objections in detail. In the first place, we are told, there is danger of looking upon morality as essentially a matter of knowledge. Thus Professor Palmer of Harvard objects : ® What is asked of us teachers, is that we invite our pupils to direct study of the principles of conduct, that we awaken their consciousness about their modes of life, and so by degrees impart a science of righteousness. This is theory, ethics; not morals, practice; and in my judgment, it is dangerous business with the slenderest chance of success. . . . Many matters do not take their rise in knowledge at all. Morality does not. This position is easy to understand. It is indeed a fact 5 G. H. Palmer, “The Teacher,” pp. 36, 37. Reprinted in “Ethical and Moral Instruction in Schools.” DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 219 that life is not shaped by reason alone. Instincts and habits, envy, prejudice, laziness, all undoubtedly play just as im¬ portant a part. Often, moreover, as Aristotle pointed out, our intellect cannot even be convinced that a bad act is really bad, because our habits have loaded the scales of judgment in favor of our own special practices. A boy who has been used to lord it over his uncomplaining sisters grows up for that reason into mistaken but firm views of masculine superiority, just as the libertine, fixed in his habits of indulgence, cannot understand why his ‘‘perfectly reasonable’^ pleasures should be condemned. Such also is the case in the doing of the right ; here, too, the part played by a bare thinking is frequently very small. Many of our best acts are as immediate and unreasoned as a mother’s rushing to her baby at the cry of pain. In view of these facts, it would indeed seem true that direct moral instruc¬ tion may be counted unnecessary. Nevertheless, because a mere process of cognition alone fails to bring right conduct, it does not follow that attempts to enlighten the judgment by instruction are futile. To trust behavior only to instinct is certainly to rely upon an unsafe guide. Instinct itself needs direction, for it is just as likely to lead us wrong as it is to point us aright. It is the experience of all human society that children must somehow, at some time or other, be taught which innate tendencies to suppress and which to encourage. The com¬ monest method is to infiict pain when they let a wrong instinct rule, but as they grow older and continue to act out their instincts for mischief, this surely is not the only way, nor the wisest, to teach them right choices. Would anyone maintain that children can never be helped, even before maturity, by appeals to an intelligent understand¬ ing of what right and wrong conduct mean? It is equally mistaken to hold that moral development can be entrusted solely to the forming of habits. To build 220 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH habits calls also for the help of intelligence. Every grow¬ ing life mnst advance by breaking many of its habits, even its good ones ; and how is this to be done ? There comes a time, for instance, when the child's practice of indiscrimi¬ nate alms-giving mnst be superseded by wiser charity. In every snch readjustment, the significance of the new custom must be -made clear. If it is to commend itself, the new line of conduct must at least appear reasonable ; and here, it would seem, there is a decided place for adult counsel. What, moreover, shall we do with the many boys and girls who come to school without those habits which right home training ought to have inculcated? Some word of helpful teaching is certainly demanded to get the necessary start. A like assistance is needed to make so-called experiences yield their best fruit. To get the most out of an ^‘experi¬ ence,” there must be more or less understanding of its meaning. It is one thing to perform an act and quite another so to appreciate its significance as to want to do more and better. How many children perform acts of punctuality every day at school without seeming to care enough for the underlying principle of courtesy and re¬ spect to apply it in their conduct after graduation ? Neces¬ sary as it is to get specific acts and habits, it is equally requisite to understand why they are needed. A boy who is disgruntled because he thinks he is a good pitcher but is obliged to play center-field, may be forced by his comrades to do his allotted share in the work of his team and thus, according to some teachers, be educated into obedience to a group will. The simple fact remains, however, that this experience is of no value unless its ethical significance is understood and grasped. Left to himself, the lad may get no more out of the situation than a mood of ugliness. Far from being “socialized,” he may feel nothing but anti¬ social emotions. A word or two of interpretation may do much, however, to send the boy back to his undesired post DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 221 with a clearer notion of responsibility and a helpful resolve to live up to it. A member of one of the writer’s classes told of a pupil who had received such help in a situation of this very sort. Disliking his position on the school team, he resigned against the protests of his fellow athletes. A month later, he was allowed to play a leading role in a per¬ formance of Julius CcBsar, where he acquitted himself with all credit. His teacher thereupon reminded him of the part contributed to his success by the obscure but none the less important efforts of the other actors. The boy was ashamed and saw his selfishness in its true light. Whatever the ex¬ perience, it counts for most when its fuller implications are comprehended, and here the clearer and wider insight of the teacher may render valuable aid. It is no argument against direct and regular instruction to say that this in¬ stance was simply the interpretation of a very real experi¬ ence. Man, unlike the animal, is able to profit by antici¬ pating experience. And he needs to have his experiences interpreted over and over again. A second misconception, responsible in part for the pre¬ ceding, is due to thinking that children have no capacity for reflection upon ethical problems before their late adoles¬ cence. Professor Palmer says : ® The college, not the school, is the place for this study. . . . Many of the evils that I have thus far traced are brought about by projecting upon a young mind problems which it has not yet encountered in itself. Such problems abound in the latter teens and twenties, and then is the time to set about their discussion. Evidently it is assumed that ethics-teaching in the schools is to be an attempt to reconcile conflicting sanctions. Has he grown up unquestioning? Has he accepted the moral code inherited from honored parents? Then let him be thankful and go his way untaught. But has he, on the other hand, felt ^ Ibid., pp. 46, 47. 222 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH that the moral mechanism by which he was early guided does not fit all cases f Has he found one class of duties in conflict with another? Has he discovered that the moral standards obtaining in different sections of society, in different parts of the world, are irreconcilable? In short, is he puzzled and desirous of work¬ ing his way through his puzzles, or facing them and tracking them to their beginnings? Then is he ripe for the study of ethics. This study is further declared to be analogous to ‘‘phil¬ ology, grammar, rhetoric, systematic study of the laws of language,’^ “abstract grammar,” “theoretical talk”; “it should be pursued as a science, critically, and the student should be informed at the outset that the aim of the course is knowledge, not the endeavor to make better men. ’ ’ ^ If it were proposed to introduce such a study of ethical science into the schools, the objection here cited would be unanswerable. But moral instruction is not at all synony¬ mous with the teaching of ethics as a science. To see what the difference is, let us look at other fields of study in the elementary schools where the same misconception obtains. Teachers of “nature study,” for example, have to be warned that they are not to teach the science of biology or the science of physics. A science is an attempt to explain the whole ground of known phenomena by relating these to certain great generalizations, such as the atomic theory, or the evolutionary hypothesis, or the law of conservation of energy. An organization of this sort represents the needs of the adult scientist. It does not correspond to the needs of children. For them there need be no more than a study of the facts of botany, zoology, physics, chemistry, geology, that affect our daily life. They are interested, that is, in what makes the electric bell ring without discussing the nature of the electric current ; they want to know about the formation of a river-basin without caring for the de- 7 Ihid.f p. 41. DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 223 tails which a Lyell would demand to prove in what period the watershed had been elevated. The same point of view is held by experienced teachers in regard to other subjects. They teach hygiene effectively without going into histology or comparative morphology, music without treating the mathematical basis of harmony, grammar and composition without giving a college course in philology or rhetoric. They do, indeed, teach laws and rules, not, however, be¬ cause their pupils are interested in generalizations as such, but because, and in so far as, these principles help to explain the concrete things of greatest interest. This selection and organization with reference to the needs of the pupil, rather than the demands of a perfected science, is the guiding principle in moral instruction. Chil¬ dren do not have to organize their ideas of right and wrong around their understanding of the categorical imperative or the theory of utilitarianism. The main business of the school is to get them to perform concrete acts of right con¬ duct. To be sure, the older they grow, the more we shall want them to organize their reflections around basic ideas such as Kant^s, “So act that the maxim of thy will may deserve to become a universal maxim, or better, Felix Adler ’s, ^ ^ So act as to elicit the higher nature in others and thereby in thyself.’^ But the goal to be kept in view is always behavior. The generalizations are to be offered only in the later years, and only as a guide to better understand¬ ing of specific cases. The aim of moral instruction below the college years, is not, as Professor Palmer thinks, “a study of puzzles,” but an attempt to clarify the meaning of familiar experiences in terms that pupils can under¬ stand at their particular stage of development. On this problem, a gifted teacher of long and varied ex¬ perience writes : ® 8 John L. Elliott, School and Home, March, 1922, p. 33. 224 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH The data of ethics are furnished by experience. While we use the material of the fairy stories, the fables, the Bible, biog¬ raphy, etc., it is only used in helping the children to interpret their own experience. Ethics lessons may be called a series of interpretations continued through the school year and developing as the children's minds and natures develop. Not for one moment would either the ethics teacher or the classroom teacher think it possible to neglect the opportunities for indirect ethics teaching that school life gives or which come out of the history and ethics lessons. Constantly there are rising to the surface instances and experiences in which the child is implicated, and these are invaluable opportunities to the parents and to the teachers to make a deep impression and to render the moral insight of the children clear and vivid. There are, however, two reasons for also using the direct method. One is that the experience of any individual is bound to be accidental. Our pleasures, hurts, friendships, successes and failures all depend more or less on chance. Nothing is more evident than that fine insights in a person’s mind can coexist with opinions on other subjects of equal importance which are utterly unenlightened. This gives the whole life a spotted character. And a good life is, after all, made up of one piece. There must be something like a rounded point of view at least attempted that the child may go out into life prepared otherwise than by accident. The second reason is this ; While experience is the real subject matter of ethics teaching, experience gets its real value as illus¬ trating principles. If a boy or girl grows up as most of those do with whom I come in contact, without any touch with the old faiths, and without any substitute or development of those faiths, almost inevitably he drifts into the point of view that human life after all has nothing permanently or fundamentally good in it. Human beings cannot really fulfill their best function if they have not some sense of a great pattern which is working out and which far exceeds the experience of any individual or for that matter that of any generation or race. Life at its greatest, and certainly at its strongest, is dependent on the sense of contact of the individual with great and noble principles. Really to bring this idea home requires systematic work, and this can practically only be accomplished when time is given to it; when it is taken up not as a poor little adjunct to the practical matters of daily life. DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 225 but when the achieving of a point of view and a way of living which is really noble and spiritual is put at its proper place, as the real purpose and end of living. What of the objection that yonng people have no interest in ethical problems? Undoubtedly they will resent our expounding a science of ethics, and we cannot blame them. Hear them, however, debating, without any prompting from the teacher, whether a committee, authorized to purchase athletic supplies and discovered to have accepted gifts for themselves from the dealer, has been guilty of “grafting,’^ whether street-car workers are justified in striking, what are the rights and wrongs in current events, whether a foreign-born citizen ought to forget all about the old coun¬ ty. The interest is intense, because, among other reasons, ^estions are here raised of immediate importance. But from these points of departure, a good teacher can lead his pupils to deeper and wider reflection and to a clearer under¬ standing of far-reaching principles which many of them never dream of taking into account. Moral instruction does not at all act in vacuo. It assumes that children nor¬ mally do a certain amount of thinking; it seeks to have them give more thought than they ordinarily do to moral issues ; it endeavors to get them to think more soundly, and, as they grow older, to have their thoughts include increas¬ ingly remote but essential considerations. Here, for instance, is the comment expressed by a pupil on the problem of the apparent injustice of parents in treating a difficult child differently from its brothers and sisters : The parable of the Prodigal Son has always been of great interest to me, because I think that the elder brother was in the right when he said that he had lived with his father and helped him all his life, and no feast had ever been prepared for him, and now it was unjust to do honor to the other brother, who had wasted all his father's money, and at last, driven by cold and hunger, had repented and come home. 226 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Of course, the elder brother may have spoken with selfish motives, and it would have been better if an uninterested person had made the argument, but nevertheless I think the point was well taken. Of course, the father was right in saying there is more joy felt when a sinner repents than at any one time during the life of a perfectly good man. The idea that there is one less wicked person in the world is very gratifying. But unfortunately a man cannot be wicked unto himself alone — any more than he can be good unto himself alone. Every day of his life almost, each man’s character makes itself felt on the characters of those around him. Five years of wickedness on the part of one man can do horrible things — the influence of every wicked deed spreads quickly. How much finer, then, it is to lead a good, though quiet life, than to be at first very wicked, and then make a grand commotion by repenting and ‘being converted.’ Of course, every time that a sinner repents should be a# occasion for great gladness at the thought of how much less wicked the world would be. But to feast and do honor to the repentant one is to me a piece of unfair sentimentality, putting a premium on romantic wickedness and conversion. It is unfair to the rep enter, to the one who has been good all along, and to society in general. These remarks were called forth in a discussion of the parable with the practical purpose of getting light on a question in which brothers and sisters can very easily be interested. Evidently this pupil was doing some thinking upon the problem. Surely such thought can be helped by the class discussion and by the suggestions offered by the teacher. The same is true of these questions which an eighth-grade class desired to have discussed after several periods had been spent upon the laws of their state : Is gambling wrong? Why is ignorance of the law no excuse? If a public officer does his duty and you pay him for it, is that the same as giving him a bribe ? When you have a weak will, how can you strengthen it? Is it right to play baseball on Sunday? Should we stop strikes by law? DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 227 Is it right to play baseball for money? When something is done in the class room, is it right for you to tell on the person, if you know who did it ? If you find something that is not yours, should you keep it ? If somebody stole something on you and the policeman does not wish to help you get it back, can you take it yourself! What are the right and wrong points in Socialism? Is Prohibition right? Are labor unions bad? Has the state a right to punish a man by killing him? Here are questions which ninth- and tenth-grade pupils handed in: Why are poor officers elected by such large majorities? Are the people of the world living better than a hundred years ago? What is the reason for religious prejudice? What are the rights and wrongs of the railroad strike? Should people be allowed to inherit full property? What should you do when you have to tell somebody an un¬ pleasant truth? Why do coal miners dislike people who try to make agreements between them and the owners? How should we deal with hasty-tempered people? Is it good for children to be sent to boarding-schools away from home? Is it true that some people are constitutional liars or thieves? Can three people have as good a friendship together as two people? Should you vote for yourself in a class election ? What should we do when our parents want us to give up certain friends ? How should we treat our help, especially when they are stupid ? Is it right for a child to argue with a parent when he knows his point is the right one, or does he just have to sit back and accept the parent’s opinion without any back-talk? Should boys and girls treat each other familiarly or with reserve ? Is it proper for a young man to go with a girl of the same age to a show in the evening not escorted ? Is it vain to be ambitious for your own career? 228 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Is it right for men to want their country to be greater than others ? Since women have equal rights as men and get angry when called the weaker sex, why should men oiler their seats to a woman in a car? Trivial as some of these questions may seem in compari¬ son with others, all of them open up larger questions and especially questions of fundamental moral importance. It is difficult to see how anyone can object to setting aside a period a week for reflection upon these principles. In the pressure of the many claims upon the school time, this need is quite likely to be crowded out of sight. As to the contention that ethics-teaching should not be given before the pupil is aware of a conflict between his sanctions, it should be noted that in the elementary grades where such instruction is offered, for instance, in the Ethical Culture School, most of the ethics work consists in learning about excellent lives and has very little to do with conflicts of sanction. In the second place, many important conflicts do appear before the pupil reaches college. For example, a boy brought up in a home atmosphere of truth, refinement, unselfishness, finds people outside untruthful, vulgar, and selfish. The standards of his own home may be considerably higher than those of his fellow pupils. How shall he comport himself? Shall he look down upon these others, shall he withdraw from their company, shall he ac¬ cept their standards? The problem here raised is a very serious one indeed for boys and girls long before college years. It raises one of the gravest questions a democracy must encounter: how shall we cultivate right relations among unequals ? Back of the following question on which one pupil asked for light there was a real difficulty by no means confined to this one child’s experience: “If you believe you are in the right but others misunderstand you, are you to act according to your own judgment or as you know others expect you to act?” DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 229 The objection is, however, pressed by the Pragmatists that in the long run it is best for our children to get what¬ ever moral ideas they need through the performance of their own activities. How valuable such activities are, we have already indicated in the preceding chapter. Indeed, if we were restricted to a choice between the formal teach¬ ing of ethics and providing occasions for the doing of deeds, without question the latter would be the wiser alter¬ native. But where is it written that our choice must be thus restricted ? Both are needed, not one to the exclusion of the other. Moral activities do not comprise the whole of character¬ building. As we have tried to explain, experiences become fruitful only when their meaning is understood. Our pupils must not only put into practice all that we can get them to do, but they must be acquainted with the need for ever better experiences than any they have yet undertaken. Character requires incessant growth; and moral growth is a problem of endlessly reaching out after experiences of finer and higher kinds. Here lies the great field for direct teaching. Its essential function is to interpret the experi¬ ences already known in such a way that the children may he stimulated to undertake still better. They need stand¬ ards, measures of value, outlooks, ideals — and constantly higher than those which they already accept. Of course, we must not overtax their powers at any given stage of de¬ velopment. Ethical wisdom is a growth, often a very slow growth indeed, and our work fails badly whenever we for¬ get the fact. But our pupils can and do think about the right and wrong of conduct, and the object of the ethics lessons is to take such thinking where we find it and help it to become better thinking. Moreover, it does not follow that ethical suggestions have no value unless they can be carried into effect more or less immediately. Those who put the entire stress upon chil- 230 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH dren’s doing things seem to forget how many a splendid idea can be stored np in youth against the time when op¬ portunity arrives to practice it. It is admitted that young people can cherish long-standing grudges. Is it true that nobler promptings must always be wasted for lack of in¬ stant expression? Elizabeth Cady Stanton was able to do her pioneer work for women ’s rights only when she reached maturity ; but it is significant that her resolve to undertake this task went back to the days of her youth, when she heard the clients in her father’s law office recite tales of injustice suffered by women. Furthermore, if we trusted only to the project method to develop character, we should be obliged to pass by many an ethical need that can scarcely be met by the perform¬ ance of projects, especially by the group undertakings to which the new education is quite properly attracted. An outstanding moral difficulty is the strain that arises be¬ tween children and their parents when the former grow away from their earlier uncritical affection and admiration. No reward could be too handsome for the educational geniuses who would show us how to minimize this strain by a series of activities. But, in the meantime, would it not seem that something can be done by interpreting for young people the reasons for the tension, and trying to have them understand the attitude proper to sensible young folks, even when their parents are so painfully uncongenial ? Many an important principle is overlooked fintil atten¬ tion is thus specifically directed to it. Most people imagine that we can do wrong only to people who are as spotless and lovable as the heroes of our plays. There comes a time to learn the vital truth that we have duties even toward those whom we have found by no means perfect. This is a principle which can hardly be learned by the performance of either group or individual activities, or yet by an ex¬ tended series of the best of formal lessons. Right attitudes DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 231 of heart and mind take many years to develop. This, how¬ ever, is no reason for neglecting to use every resource we can. Not every right attitude can be created by the project method. Indeed, many of them would seem rather to grow out of such quiet and unobserved performances as the trains of thought occasioned by reading a book or hearing some specially memorable word from a teacher. The matter of the children’s interest is not the final con¬ sideration. Beneficial as is the assault of Professor Dewey’s doctrine of interest upon lifeless teaching, it is far from disposing permanently of the entire educational problem. Some children may be less interested than others in prob¬ lems that are, nevertheless, of great importance to all of them. There is something illuminating in these comments, some deprecatory, others favorable, by pupils asked to set down on paper, without signing their names, what they thought had been most helpful, and what least, in the year’s ethics course. ‘^One thing was as bad as the other,” wrote one pupil. Another said, ‘‘There ought to be more snap in the ethics class. ’ ’ Another : ‘ ‘ Most of the time was wasted.” Another: “More time should be spent consider¬ ing practical things that really come up in everyday life instead of discussing things that come up in an ideal life. ’ ’ “I think we ought to spend more time on current events.” On the other hand, there were those who mentioned the following; “The discussions have broadened me.” “I am glad we spoke about how to treat a friend.” “I liked most the talks on sportsmanship.” “We ought to spend more time on problems like the ones we took up about for¬ eigners and negroes.” “I wish we could have had more talks about the different customs of different nations.” “The current events were the most interesting.” “Prison reform.” “The parents’ point of view on subjects on which parents and children disagree.” “The lessons on self-respect helped me most.” “Why a person must be 232 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH treated differently from an animal.” “How to be neigh¬ borly to all types of people.” “The most helpful was about pupils dealing with one another and with the teacher. ” “ When points of everyday life were discussed. ’ ’ “I think we ought to spend more time on home problems and daily troubles.” It is evident from these illustrations that the needs of our pupils are quite varied. They come from homes of different backgrounds. Problems of acute interest to some are meaningless or distasteful to others; and it is to be regretted that any pupils at all must sit through lessons on topics where they need but little help from the school. But it is impossible to tell beforehand just what problem will interest all. The ethics teacher and the class teacher should, by all means, try to find out what are the questions about which the young people care greatly. It makes all the difference in the world when the problem discussed comes home to them as one immediately their own. One day while a teacher was speaking of the principle under¬ lying the law of the state against embezzlement, he men¬ tioned the case of a committee treasurer in a settlement club who had spent the club dues for some personal want of his own, although with the thought of paying the money back whenever it should be called for. Instantly there was a noticeable increase of attention, and from the glances which the pupils exchanged with one another, and in the direction of one of their number, it was distressingly apparent that the teacher’s illustration bore directly upon a real situation in that class. It will no doubt be said that this simply proves the point that there should be no ethics lesson, unless I a situation has arisen that requires such interpretation. But, readily as we grant the fact that the interest in such cases is more keen than it would otherwise be and that the teacher should try to know the actual problems confronting every one of the pupils, it does not follow that the lessons DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 233 should be dispensed with because all the pupils are not always at one in their degree of interest. Indeed, it often happens that problems in which pupils ought most to be interested are those that they may not feel in the mood to consider. This is a challenge rather to the teacher’s skill than to the claim of ethical instructions as such. The root fallacy is the misconception that thought must come only after experience and never before. It quite for¬ gets that human beings grow more human to the degree that they are able to anticipate experiences and thus pro¬ duce the finer kinds. This is what ideals do for adults. In this respect are young people so very different ? Surely then, when all is said and done, there is no more fundamental need than to use every possible chance — not one kind alone — to cultivate moral thoughtfulness. Think of the speed at which we live. Think of the thousand and one clamorous and misleading appeals made by modem city life to our young people. Sometimes we marvel that, with so much to distract them from the pursuit of the quieter and better modes of living, they turn out so well. The time we set aside for reflection upon these worthier things is not wasted. Little as the results would seem to justify themselves in some cases, the school would not be living up to its obligation if it did not make provision for steady, regular reflection upon the things of highest ex¬ cellence. In some circles the objection is raised that moral teach¬ ing has no value except as it is consciously linked up with religion. Private schools are, of course, free to relate their teaching to this or that religion or philosophy. Public schools are not. Must they therefore desist from offering courses in moral counsel! The question goes back to the misconception behind Professor Palmer ’s fear that teachers will be expounding ultimate sanctions. The answer is given 234 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH by experience : they are not obliged to tread upon this de¬ batable ground. When school principals, for example, give a series of talks on the right use of school property, or on the value of cooperation, do they feel obliged to go into the philosophic or religious sanctions and say that their words are true because they rest upon this or that article of a creed or text in the Bible? They know that they cannot enter into religious discussion because the schools are sup¬ ported by a population of widely divergent beliefs, so much at variance that it is impossible to enunciate a doctrine which will not give offense in some particular to some one body or other. The city superintendent of schools in New York tried to get a body of the clergy of different denomi¬ nations to draw up a code of moral instruction for the pub¬ lic schools of his community. The conference came to naught. In his report on the project. Dr. Maxwell voiced the conclusion which has presented itself to many other students of the problem elsewhere : ® In view of this fact . . . that an agreement as to ethical instruction has not been, and probably will not be, reached among the clergy, ... I here express my conviction that educators should take up the subject, even without the aid of the clergy, and formulate large rules of conduct which may be illustrated by innumerable particular instances, and which are so well founded in the usages of civilized communities, and so well attested in the lives of nohle men and women, that no one will he hold enough to gainsay their validity. The words that we have italicized strike bottom as far as public education is concerned : there is an undeniable moral heritage into which all right-minded people alike, no mat¬ ter what their religion, wish their children to enter; and into this common heritage our public schools can and ought to lead. 9 Report of the City Superintendent of Schools of New Yorkf 1908, DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 235 The unwillingness of the schools to stir up religious con¬ troversy does not therefore leave them helpless before their great task of moral guidance. Religious teaching they must perforce leave to other agencies ; moral education they may and can give, and effectively, too. Deficient as our public system may be in many respects, it is also true that its best teachers do much to quicken their pupils’ lives unto good without raising the issue of final religious sanctions. Con¬ vinced by experiences like these, the advocates of moral instruction are simply pleading for more of this better practice. They are encouraged by the further fact that the problem of ultimate sanctions is rarely brought up by the children themselves. It is only the mature mind that in¬ sists upon a metaphysical answer to its inquiries; young people are quite content with secondary explanations. Another misconception is the notion that moral instruc¬ tion consists chiefly of a preaching of bald generalities or repressive ‘‘don’ts.” A school principal, addressing an audience of teachers, declared that he saw no opportunity to point a moral, for instance, in a lesson on the Spanish conquest of Mexico. “Cortez was not punished for his inhuman treatment of the Indians,” he said, “and we do not know whether he was punished in the hereafter.” If the drawing of a moral from a punishment were all there is to ethical values in the teaching of history, one might well be glad to see all such attempts ruthlessly forbidden. A moral value, however, might be realized in the lesson on Cortez, if the pupils were simply made to hate the cruelty of which his conduct was a type and if the lesson made clear the unfortunate truth that people, young as well as old, often use their superior powers to harm those who are weaker. The best treatment, however, would leave the young people conscious of a nobler way of using such gifts and would inspire them with a love for such exemplars of the better way as the Puritan Apostle Eliot, for instance, 236 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH who employed his talents to make life better for the Indians, not worse. This is something quite different from using, and often distorting, facts of history to prove that good is rewarded and evil punished. Moral education would be richly justified if it did no more than to realize Plato’s ideal of a ‘draining in respect to virtue which makes one hate what he ought to hate and love what he ought to love. ’ ’ Here we may consider the charge that a constant offering of ideal characters to admire and a constant calling for judgments on acts of conduct do harm by making children priggish. The best excellence, it is declared, is that which grows unconsciously. But it is evidently forgotten that a perfectly unconscious growth is a goal beyond the reach of most of us. There would never be any need of a word of warning or of a reminder that there are better ways of behavior than our customary ones, if all of us really grew better unwittingly, if we really imitated spontaneously the best examples around us; but, unfortunately, we do not. Somewhere, at some time, conduct must receive a certain degree of very conscious attention. It is indeed true that this attention may bring with it a sense of moral self- satisfaction, if not of superiority, but this possibility need not always be actualized. Even if it were not a fact that comrades and relatives are only too ready to shake out whatever moral conceit happens to be generated, there is little danger of its being fostered to any alarming extent when the teacher goes about his task properly, with due tact and a saving sense of humor. For one thing, he can teach his pupils to respect different moral views from their own, as every good teacher of literature, history, and geog¬ raphy tries to do. He can also remind them of how easy duty is for those who have not been tempted so hard as others. Where he is sure that priggishness exists, he can readily find occasion to show that there are still greater heights of moral endeavor to be climbed. The method, in DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 237 short, is in most respects like that employed to prevent or overcome conceit about skill in drawing or composition or athletics. The possibility of spiritual pride is real and serious, but it ought not to frighten us into letting things alone, when conditions call as loudly for moral betterment as they do to-day. Another misconception is due to a popular, but neverthe¬ less fallacious, theory of character. The conscious effort of the school to instil high principles of conduct is called an idle dream on the ground that a loftier morality cannot be inculcated there than is practiced in the life outside. Ac¬ cording to this view, the attempt to make school pupils honest is doomed to failure until there is more integrity, let us say, in the world of business. This idea is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, that character is something which is inhaled like a physical atmosphere. Character, however, is not an affair of purely passive reaction to surrounding influences. It is a mat¬ ter of strength that comes from victory over obstacles. These obstacles are certain tendencies in our own make-up that prompt to evil doing. Wrong exists in the environ¬ ment, but only because, in the last analysis, human beings commit it or suffer it to be. The same traits that incline people to do or to permit the bad in the outer world, such as vanity, the love of gain, or the love of ease, are found in the nature of young folks in the school. These germs must be destroyed, to be sure, in the life outside; the efforts of the school must, indeed, be backed up by the unceasing efforts of the rest of the community to drive out its worst and encourage its noblest; but, since the germs of evil are lodged also in the individual within the fold, here too the bad must be made over into the good. The social-determi¬ nation view of human improvement is as one-sided as the old idea of the complete spontaneity of the moral nature. Besides, the environment outside is not composed exclu- 238 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH sively of the morally inferior. There are rogues in every calling, but honest men too can be found. In every occu¬ pation there are high grades of moral development which are no whit less real than the low. The imitation which plays so strong a part in character-building should be di¬ rected to these better examples. Furthermore, if the social- determination argument is sound, the schools ought not to hold up any standards at all that are higher than those already extant in the environment. In courtesy, in neat¬ ness, in purity of speech, the tone of the school is better than that of life in many homes and certainly higher than the tone of the street. Children are ashamed of ridicule from their comrades when they pronounce the ‘^u^’ prop¬ erly in “ student and the “h’^ in “when,’’ yet the school would call itself recreant to its trust if it did not at least make the attempt to supply correct standards of speech. If there is no desire for better things, what better place is there to try to create it than the school, and what better time than the years when the worthier influences are still possible? If this is true of a secondary value like good English, how far more urgent is the need with respect to the primary matter of the moral life ! The objections which we have here considered serve a very useful purpose. They warn us of no imaginary dan¬ gers. Perhaps the greatest mistake of all is our nation-wide tendency to put our trust in isolated devices and quick remedies. We forget too often that character is of the slowest growth and of the most complex interplay of forces. With an all too easy optimism, some of us are inclined to fancy that, just as the teaching of spelling in the school years ought presumably to insure a permanent excellence in spelling, so moral training, or else the inspiration of good examples in history and literature, or set lessons upon the various duties — in short, some single happy device, will make for a permanent bettering of the national character. DIEECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 239 How idle is this hope! No ethical instruction alone will see to it that every legislator of the future spurns a prof¬ fered bribe or that ‘‘big business” scorns to offer it. The task of social regeneration is far too vast to be left entirely to the schoolhouse. In like manner, the share in this task which can properly be demanded of the school is too com¬ plex to be entrusted to any single one of the agencies within the school. Indeed, special care must be exercised to see that the burden of moral education — to use the word of wider significance than instruction — is not shifted to the teacher who conducts the ethics lessons. Every agency in the school, must do its part. If this is clear, we may sum up the case for moral in¬ struction by stressing these considerations: 1. Our pupils need constantly better standards of right life. In the next chapter we shall try to show what can be done in this direction by utilizing the subjects now taught everywhere. Here we wish to emphasize the value in the two methods frequently referred to in these pages, the use of stories and biographies, and the discussion of principles. Matthew Arnold once offered young students the sound advice that to cultivate their appreciation of the best in poetic beauty, they should commit to memory selected pas¬ sages from the greatest poems of the masters.^® These lines act as touchstones by which one can judge the degree of excellence in the other poems that he reads ; that is, a mind which is saturated with the peculiar “feel” of the highest specimens is enabled to say in the presence of other works, “This has the ‘feel’ of the first-rate; that is inferior be¬ cause it lacks the grace and dignity characteristic of the ‘touchstone.’ ” In something of this fashion great personages act as 10 See “The Study of Poetry” in Essays in Criticism, first series. Also found in introduction to Vol. I, Ward’s English Poets. 240 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH standards. To appreciate what first-rate lives are like, we must live with persons of that quality. Fortunate are those who meet such beings in the flesh! At any rate, however, the school can make them real to its young people through fostering a live acquaintance with great biographies. Un¬ flinching fidelity to truth above all other allegiances means more to our young people when they have had the chance to make the acquaintance of Sir Thomas More, willing to lose honors, estates, life itself, sooner than twist in King Henryks favor the law which it was his duty to interpret honestly. So, too, of the conduct of Socrates, refusing to escape from the jail when the law, which he had taught his young friends to obey, descended upon him unjustly : “And now that this thing has come upon me, I cannot cast away the reasons which I gave in former time, for I honor and reverence them as before.” Such standards will teach our young people to know what high rectitude means. A similar purpose lies back of the discussion of concrete situations. The object is to clarify principles and especially to get the young people to apply higher standards than they already recognize. The lad who cheats is obviously misled by a false scale of values. Other standards whose falsity is not quite so apparent work mischief everywhere. Take, for instance, the matter referred to in Chapter II, the tendency of one who has been wronged to pass on to others exactly the same kind of treatment when he himself is on top. There is a difference between resenting an injury to oneseK and resenting a wrong because of its wrongness. Animals are capable of the former. It is only men who can show their abhorrence of wrong as something morally reprehensible by refusing to continue the chain of evil effects. But most adults as yet rarely get beyond the con¬ ception of Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic “that, when people condemn injustice, they do so because they are afraid not of committing it but of suffering it. ’ ’ Our pupils should DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 241 be introduced to some understanding of what Emerson meant by saying, ‘ ‘ Every man takes care that his neighbor does not hurt him. The daj^ arrives when he takes care not to hurt his neighbor. Then all goes well with him. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.^^ Man’s duty is not at all to pass his experiences on but to improve upon them. Reference has already been made to another tendency which is specially in need of correction, the supposition that we are somehow absolved from obligations to people when we discover them to be uncongenial or deficient.^^ It is curious how readily we can be misled by the romantic inter¬ pretation of life offered on the stage and in novels to sup¬ pose that only those who are spotless can be wronged. In the play it is the hero who is wronged, and he is always without fault. Or when the aged father and mother are unable to pay the mortgage on the farm, our sympathy for them is won by portraying them as altogether lovable. In consequence, it becomes a bit easier in real life to reconcile oneself to unjust treatment of aged or other folks who are not so utterly free from defect. This is an exceedingly grave matter. IIow many people, for instance, feel a senti¬ mental pity for oppressed races until they learn that these objects of their sympathy have their gross failings! “They are a dirty, ignorant lot I ” It does not follow that, because we at first pity people, they must be as lovely as we would like to think them. Yet it is precisely at this point that duty arises. The obligations we owe to our fellow beings are owed to real people, not to stage heroes. In spite of the , shock of disillusion, these imperfect persons have their ideal natures, and the task of honoring this better self is no less obligatory when the beings before us make it so much harder. Oppression of backward peoples is wrong in spite 11 See p. 230. 242 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH of the fact that they are so glaringly defective. Nay, it is rather because they are backward that they have the greater need of all the highest influence which the more advantaged can exercise. But this is not the place to amplify this consideration. It is offered to illustrate the need of introducing our pupils to thoroughgoing ethical standards, and standards that are as valid in the affairs of home and school and neighborhood as they are in business, in politics, and in international affairs, or vice versa, 2. With the standards must of course go a knowledge of ways to meet their requirements. Just as soon as we can get our pupils to appreciate the fact, they should learn the ethical justification for the curriculum and the whole life of their school. Civilization has arrived at certain great conquests for man^s good. These are to be made still better. The school is there to help by training the young generation in intelligent and eager cooperation in this pursuit. It is to introduce the young to the ends and to the instruments. And what a difference it makes when teachers and pupils realize what this means ! Would not our teaching of mathe¬ matics, of science, of the manual arts, and of everything else take on more vital significance, if these disciplines were looked upon as instruments to the better promoting of the mission of the human race? Of immediate use to our pupils in this regard is the moral assistance offered by psychology. This subject, in coopera¬ tion with the study of hygiene, can certainly help them to cultivate strength of will. It is an aid, for instance, to be reminded of the causes that make us go wrong. ‘ ‘ Following the line of least resistance is what makes many rivers — and some people — so crooked.’’ It is well to know that the temptation to lie may be traced to cowardice or to lazy de¬ sire to shirk responsibility. It is good to be put on guard against the trick our mental make-up plays upon us of DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 243 giving flattering names to our shortcomings. We call our vanity sensitiveness and our obstinacy firmness ; we neglect our work because we must be “sociable.” We save our¬ selves by ‘ ‘ thinking rightly. ’ ’ There is every value in thus learning ways to overcome weaknesses. These range all the way from the elementary “When you are angry, count ten,” to the help in such writings as the chapter on “Habit” in James’ Psychology or his Talks to Teachers and Students, or works like Payot’s Education of the Will, or to the wisdom in selected sayings, for example, Stevenson’s: “You cannot run away from a weakness forever ; you must some time fight it out or perish ; and if that be so, why not now and where you stand ? ’ ’ All this help applies, of course, not simply to avoiding acts of wrong. The stress must always be positive: “Here and here are the ways to reach the strength of character which at heart you want. ’ ’ 12 “The hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual drunkard under temptation. He has made a resolve to reform, but he is now solicited again by the bottle. His moral tri¬ umph or failure literally consists in his finding the right name for the case. If he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never met before, or a case of stimulating himself to more energetic resolve in favor of abstinence than any he has ever yet made, then he is lost. His choice of the wrong name seals his doom. But if, in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name, and apperceives the case as that of ‘being a drunkard,’ ‘being a drunkard,’ ‘being a. drunkard,’ his feet are planted on the road to salvation. He saves himself by thinking rightly.” William James, Talks to Teachers and Students, p. 187. 13 Much can be done to teach adolescents the fallacies in the sentimentalisms to which they are often prone, for example, “I’m all right. My heart’s in the right place.” Note the frequent ten¬ dency to suppose that one can excuse the wrong one has done by giving a psychologic description of oneself, for example, “I was 244 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 3. From all this it follows that the necessity for moral education is not confined to delinquents or the children of the poor. Boys and girls of “respectable^’ homes also re¬ quire it. None of our young people, whatever their par¬ entage, are so perfect that there is no need of suggesting better effort to reach standards already accepted and of holding up standards still higher. Of course, the ideals that we suggest will fail to possess vital meaning unless they go with a genuine desire to realize them, but this is no reason for never calling attention to them. Moral instruc¬ tion might be compared to an attempt to increase our young people’s circle of acquaintances in the hope that thus they will be more likely to find the friends whom they really want to cultivate. It is not by any means the poor or the criminal classes alone who need such an opportunity. Nor are the dangers confronting our democracy confined to the perils of illiteracy or of violent radicalism. A more persistent menace to progress, less obvious, and therefore the more deadly, is the fact that the number of persons in any community who do any prolonged, serious, intelligent thinking upon fundamental ethical principles is certainly smaller than the number of those to whom life is a game to be played no better or no worse than everybody else plays it. One need not lose his faith in democracy by admitting how huge is the multitude of those adults who are more interested in the baseball score than they are in the vastly more important news from legislative halls, from European councils, from disturbed industrial centers, and in the moral principles there involved. But it is precisely for this reason that we see again the need for our schools to dedicate them¬ selves to lifting our democracy above the present level. There is every call to send into the world year after year tempted.” See Chapters IV and V in Babbitt’s Rousseau and Roman¬ ticism for the mischief in supposing that we can dispense with nine- tenths of the virtues when we have “sympathy.” DIRECT MORAL INSTRUCTION 245 graduates who have been introduced to higher standards than the majorities yet accept, and who have begun to think, if even to the slightest degree, more deeply, more steadily, and more wisely on ethical issues than most people do now. ^‘Men who live in democratic communities not only seldom indulge in meditation, but they naturally entertain very little esteem for it. ” De Tocqueville may have been right in his day. But there is no reason why this should always be true. Questions and Problems 1. Illustrate from your own experience or reading some act of wrong that was due chiefly to the failure to understand its wrongness. 2. Would you say that Tito in Eliot’s Eomola did wrong through ignorance? In view of such cases, is there anything that can still be said for moral instruction? 3. Mention instances in the life of to-day where a new con¬ science is being generated just as such a conscience had to be created about slavery. 4. What standards were employed in the discussion mentioned in the opening paragraphs of Chapter I? How common do you think such standards are? 5. Read “A Question of Conduct” in the Outlook of July 12, 1913, and summarize the moral standards in the various answers. 6. Read Irving King’s High School Age, Chapters V-IX, on changes in outlook in adolescence, and discuss the moral and educational needs thus implied. 7. What is the relation between good manners and moral intel¬ ligence ? 8. In answer to the question, ‘‘Can virtue be taught?”, Plato says that, as a matter of fact, virtue and vice are being taught everywhere and always. Explain and illustrate this state¬ ment. 9. Describe ethical values and limitations in any one of these customs: fashions in dress, chivalry, a patriotic celebration. 14 A. C. De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, p. 43. 246 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 10. Mention instances where people fail to imitate excellent models. How might instruction help 1 What else is needed 1 11. Name instances where moral instruction might profitably anticipate situations likely to arise in later years. 12. What good is there in memorizing proverbs? What cautions as to the use of such material should be observed? 13. An intelligent and well-ordered goodness requires, not a stifling of the feelings, but their right direction. Illustrate. 14. Show how the ethical aims here sketched may be used as a means of correlating the various school studies and activities. References See, besides references quoted in text: Adler, Felix, Moral Instruction of Children. Cabot, E. L., Everyday Ethics. Chubb, Percival, “Direct Moral Education” (in Religious Educa¬ tion, Vol. VI). Drake, Durant, Problems of Conduct. Foerster, F. W., Jugendlehre. Gould, F. J., Moral Instruction in Theory and Practice. Griggs, E. H., Moral Education, Ch. XIX. Henderson, E. N., “Moral Education” (in Monroe, Cyclopedia of Education). Hutchins, W. J., Children’s Code of Morals. International Moral Education Congress Proceedings (First, Second, Third). “Iowa Plan,” Character Education Methods (National Institute for Moral Instruction). MacCunn, John, The Making of Character, Part III. Mezes, S. E., Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory, Part III. Sadler, M. E., Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. Sharp, F. C., Education for Character. Sneath, E. H., and Hodges, George, Moral Training in the School and Home. Sisson, E. 0., “Moral and Religious Education” (Ch. VIII in Monroe, Principles of Secondary Education). Spiller, Gustav, Moral Education in Eighteen Countries. Tufts, J. H., The Beal Business of Living. For graded courses of study, see Gould, Sharp, Sneath and Hodges, and “Course in Moral Education,” Ethical Culture School, New York. CHAPTER XIII MORAL VALUES IN THE VARIOUS STUDIES There are many schools where, for one reason or another, distinct courses in moral instruction cannot at this time be introduced. For these one of the best methods of encour¬ aging moral thoughtfulness will be found in developing the moral values in the subjects at present studied. And even where special time is set aside for ethics, the method here suggested can also be employed to advantage. The topic is broad enough to call for all the contributions of the entire teaching staff. I. Literature’- Literature is especially rich in ethical values. The reason is simple. Literature deals with those instances of human conduct on which most people pass judgments of approval or blame, and it does this with a beauty which heightens and reinforces whatever truth may be conveyed. It is thus an indispensable aid to clarifying the moral understanding and to touching the feelings. The earliest years are none too soon to begin a love for the best we can supply. “Tell me a story” gives us our first chance and indeed a chance continued all through life. The story is the child ’s introduction to a world bigger than he sees with his eyes. The dwelling-place of bears, wolves, dragons, princesses, and fairies is outside his immediate 1 Part of the material in this section is taken from a pamphlet by the author, “Teaching American Ideals Through Literature” (Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. ). 247 248 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH ken ; and by thus widening the range of his imagery, these beings from storyland prepare him for emancipation from that excessive, thoughtless concern for self alone which causes more moral failures than downright cruelty ever does. The story touches sympathies that a bare recital of facts would leave unmoved. To many a child in a comfortable home, “The Nuremberg Stove” or “A Dog of Flanders” may be the first occasion to learn that there are children in the world who suffer great want. The story suggests all sorts of opportunities for excellent practice. It tells the child that he, too, can be self-reliant with Ulysses, loyal with Faithful John, chivalrous with Gareth, forgiving with Joseph in Egypt. If we select only stories of the highest rank and tell them feelingly enough, often there is little more that need be done by way of ethical stimulation. No good tale should be spoiled by insisting that its “moral” be stated explicitly. But just as a picture that we enjoy beholding is made more enjoyable when some detail of conception or composition which we might else have overlooked is interpreted for us, so a word or two of ethical suggestion may heighten the appeal of a story already loved for its own sake. The tale of Ulysses’ wanderings is interesting enough just as it stands, but when, for instance, we tell how the sailors ship¬ wrecked on Circe’s island were transformed into pigs, the enjoyment need not be diminished when a few questions bring out the fact that many people, children included, sometimes do make pigs of themselves. In the Jataka story of the Lost Caravan, the children are eager to hear how the water was at last found, and they do not resent the ques¬ tions that remind them how, in their own lives, obstacles yield to persistent attack. It is certainly an additional gain when a story already welcomed widens one ’s understanding of life. VALUES IN LITERATURE 249 This is true of literary study of all kinds and for all years, and it indicates to the teacher the leading principle of selection and treatment. Whatever else a literary work may be, it is essentially an attempt to offer, in a setting whose beauty is a joy, an interpretation of life. Shake¬ speare never intended his plays to serve as material for school examinations. He tried to interest his audiences in the attempt of a Brutus, a Macbeth, a Hamlet, to work out certain big life problems, and he outdid his fellow drama¬ tists because he accomplished this task with keener insight and greater artistic skill. The cue for the teacher, there¬ fore, is to help his pupils think more soundly upon the aims of life because of the truths that the author has made more strikingly clear. This is not at all to rob young people of due enjoyment. On the contrary, we repeat, their delight in a work of beauty is increased when they appreciate how truthful its interpretation is. Of the many ethical services performed by great litera¬ ture, there is first the chance already mentioned to broaden and deepen insight into other people’s lives by sharing their experiences. Reference has also been made to the need for various types in our country to understand each other bet¬ ter than they do. Here we shall find literature an incom¬ parable help. Pupils in the North should know more than they do about the work of Poe and Lanier, of Cable and Harris, of Page and Allen, besides merely remembering that Patrick Henry, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were Virginians. One of the best studies of an American gentleman is Robert E. Lee, American, by Gamaliel Brad¬ ford, a portrayal all the more deserving of our pupils’ attention for being the appreciative work of a Northerner. Paul Hamilton Hayne’s sonnet to Henry Wadsworth Long¬ fellow is a tribute in the other direction. East and West meet in Mark Twain. Joaquin Miller’s Autobiography in the Bear Edition of his poems gives an excellent picture of 250 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH life in the West. For understanding the hard life of the Middle-Western farmer, which has led to so many misunder¬ stood and easily ridiculed radicalisms, Hamlin Garland’s Son of the Middle Border is recommended, and, in his Main Traveled Roads, the two stories, “Up the Cooley” and “Under the Lion’s Paw.” Religious differences present few grave difficulties to-day, and the great majority of our people would vote that our traditional policy of keeping our public schools unsectarian has been the best. But everything we can do to supple¬ ment this policy by fostering in all our citizens a positive appreciation of those whose faith is different from their own is worth trying. The study of ^ ‘ Evangeline, ’ ’ for ex¬ ample, should direct attention to Longfellow’s hearty ad¬ miration for a Catholic community. A descendant of the Puritans, he showed the best kind of democracy in portray¬ ing the life of a Catholic village with such fine feeling for its beauty. He did the same thing in his translation of Dante, his sonnets “The Divina Commedia, ” and his “Lad¬ der of St. Augustine.” America will be the better for having her widely varying children not simply tolerate differences, but respect them with an eye ever open to divergent excellences. It is notable that children of Jewish parents, particularly from Poland or other lands where persecution has been extreme, learn from the conduct of American teachers, more perhaps than in any other way, how utterly un-Christian is the spirit of bigotry and prejudice. The Russian child who has heard from his father and mother, or seen for himself, as some have done, how Christians in the old country celebrated Christmas and Easter by massacring Jews, can thank the American public school for teaching him something better about the religion he once had ample reason to fear. The study of The Merchant of Venice offers such an opportunity when rightly pursued. The teacher who has read the com- VALUES IN LITERATURE 251 mentaries of Verplanck and Hudson will wish, his class to see how both the Christian characters and Shylock are de¬ based by the spirit of persecution. Antonio, the gentleman, becomes much less the gentleman by his treatment of the Jew, whereas the latter is goaded by his injuries to inhuman revenge. Literature can also help to overcome national provin¬ cialism. Americans should be specially able to appreciate the British character from their love of British literature. To recognize the indebtedness of our writers to those of the mother country is another opportunity. Our literary speech has been molded by the English of the King James Bible. Until our country produced its own literature, it knew, be¬ sides the Bible and the Greek and Roman classics, only the literature of Great Britain. The debt should be remem¬ bered. For instance, Whittier’s “Snowbound” might be compared with Burns’s “Cotter’s Saturday Night,” and ' Lowell’s “Dandelion” with “To a Mountain Daisy.” Lowell’s tribute to the plowman poet in his “Incident in a Railroad Car,” and Whittier’s in his poem “Burns,” de¬ serve to be noted. Where, if not in American schools, should “A Man’s a Man for a’ That” be committed to memory ? Edmund Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with the Amer¬ ican Colonies repays the careful study it receives in many high schools. It is good for our pupils to know the man himself, to admire him for his fight to drive out the rotten- borough system, to abolish imprisonment for debt, to pre¬ vent oppression of the natives in India by colonial admin¬ istrators (as they read in Macaulay’s Warren Hastings), and especially for the breadth of mind that made him study the American colonies in order to interpret them aright to his fellow-statesmen. His speech will help our pupils to understand the American spirit in the light of one line of its ancestry. His arguments against the use of force still 252 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH hold good against the policy of conquest. The solid good sense in these arguments, as well as his eloquent reminder that the deepest ties among peoples, “links which light as air are strong as iron,” are ties of respect and affection, should he as familiar as anything in our native literature. A genuine pride in our. own achievements need not suffer if we direct our pupils ’ attention in this way to what writers in other lands have done. No American will care less for “The Vision of Sir Launfal” for knowing how Victor Hugo taught much the same ideal in Les Miserahles and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Let it be borne in mind, however, that the greatest broad¬ ening comes when literature helps us to understand those who are markedly different from ourselves. Not Anglo- Saxons nor Europeans alone must be understood. Let the muses acquaint our youth with at least something of the inner life of the East. Pupils who know anything of the writings of Tagore, Hearn’s books on Japan, G. L. Dick¬ inson’s Letters of a Chinese Official and Appearances, Cooper’s My Lady of the Chinese Court-Yard, Brown’s The Wisdom of the Chinese, Wu Ting Fang’s America through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomatist, Yoshio Markino’s When 1 Was a Child, will be a little less supercilious toward the Oriental peoples whose growing contact with the West is bringing forward some of the gravest problems of the age. Other services offered by literature will be apparent when we turn to the following considerations of method. Caution must be repeated against supposing that the lit¬ erature period is to be given solely to discussion of moral questions. Poor literature is to be ruled out always. No excuse that it points a moral will justify selecting a story or poem whose literary quality is inferior. There is abundant ethi¬ cal value in the great works, and not because they preach VALUES IN LITERATURE 253 sermons, but because, as we have seen, they portray life truly. Pupils must enjoy what they read. The characters may be never so admirable, the sentiments never so exalted ; but unless the pupils are really stirred, whatever moral stimu¬ lus the poem or story can afford will fail of its object. To affect their lives, the high behaviors with which literature deals must genuinely be admired and the low ones be con¬ demned by the young people themselves. Therefore, it is of prime importance that what the pupils discuss be first enjoyed in the spirit that sends the teacher himself to the theater or to a novel by a favorite author for an evening’s recreation. One of the surest means to this object is to introduce a new work by the most expressive reading of which the interpreter is capable. Just as the good song needs to be sung, not merely recited, so the great poem or speech, to convey its full message, needs to be heard. Let the teacher do justice to his subject by reading aloud, if only the passages he most admires, simply, sincerely, and without any misgivings about showing his enthusiasm. Or, let the work be introduced in this way by a pupil who cares enough for it to want the others to enjoy it. Another need is no less important. Avoid as the unpar¬ donable sin the temptation to club the heads of pupils with the question: “What does this poem teach?” Especially beware of the lamentable obsession haunting so many a classroom that the most effective “teaching” a poem can do is to scare young people by a picture of punishment. Pity that it needs to be said at all, but the ‘ ‘ lesson ’ ’ of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is certainly not that if you shoot an albatross, your ship is going to be becalmed, your mates struck dead, and your throat parched for days. Rather let the teacher first ask himself, not his pupils, ‘ ‘ Is the underlying thought of this poem true? What light does it throw on the aims of human life and the workings 254 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH of human conduct? How does it clarify one’s sense of the ideal life ? ’ ’ Thus, the instructor sees that when Coleridge wrote his ballad, he was telling us, in the setting of a medieval legend, that we can pray more sincerely after we have done an act of love than before. The mariner is so impressed with this truth burned in upon him in his soli¬ tude that he must tell all who are fond of company how to use the blessing of companionship. Tolstoi’s Master and Man conveys something of the same idea. When the teacher has thus settled for himself how the book can enrich his pupil’s sense of life’s excellences, the further procedure is a very simple affair, a matter of ques¬ tioning designed to lift the underlying truth into clearer relief, especially by applying it to the pupils’ own experi¬ ences. Sometimes it may require only the slightest ques¬ tion or two to bring out the fact that Lars Porsena’s wish for Horatius to reach the shore and Sextus’ desire for him to drown are characteristic everywhere and always of brave and cowardly foes respectively. Sometimes the teacher’s help consists in asking : Do you know people who take Ralph the Rover’s cruel delight in doing harm and the Abbot’s joy in service? Why does Calpurnia want to keep Ca0sar safe by sending a lie to the Senate; and why does Csesar object? What types of people resort to falsehoods ? Why do we admire Brutus in his failure more than Mark Antony in his success ? Would you call the play pessimistic because the better man is defeated ? Why does Shakespeare say: The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray us In deepest consequence? Such questions quite miss their mark, of course, if the answers do not suggest illustrations from the lives with which our pupils are best acquainted. VALUES IN LITERATURE 255 Here is a specimen of the more extended questioning sometimes needed: In teaching ‘‘The Vision of Sir Laun- fal,” some such questions as the following might be asked to bring out the truth that democracy respects the hidden worth in men: Why did the leper refuse the coin? Why did Sir Launfal toss it in scorn? Why is it inaccurate to say that he gave ‘from a sense of duty’? What would a genuine sense of duty require? Why did the knight shirk this real duty? Can you mention any instances where people offer a substitute (that is, toss a coin) instead of doing the harder thing? What was Lowell’s purpose in revealing the divinity of the beggar? Why did he make him not only a beggar but the victim of a loathsome disease? Go back to the line, ‘Daily we Sinais climb and know it not’; what does the reference mean? Why was the knight at first unaware of who it was that he was facing? Does this poem tell you anything about democratic ideals? How does democracy express this honor to the sacredness in men? Read Lowell’s poem, “A Contrast,” and the essay, “Democracy,” and compare the ideas with the one in this poem. Read also Emerson’s poem, “Music,” Whittier’s “Democracy.” Read and discuss “Exit Charity” in Zona Gale’s Neighborhood Stories. Another line of approach to ethical considerations is to try to get at the man behind the writings and then consult his biography, his letters, and other material for further light. This is character study of a specially helpful kind, when it brings out traits to admire and also, in the case of older pupils, aids them to distinguish degrees of merit. Let them compare values in various writings and incidentally be reminded that people themselves exhibit this mixture of poor and better in their personal quality. They will admire Wordsworth’s better work the more when they contrast it 256 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH with the work in which he did not do himself justice; and the exercise will be of no little further service, if it helps them to apply similar standards to their judgments of real persons — to know, that is, that people have their pitiful commonplaceness, but that a fine nature will try, as Words¬ worth did at his best, to see the glory latent even in these. Indeed, it is especially helpful to dwell with adolescents on the experiences recorded in the Tintern Abbey poem, and in “The Prelude’^ — Wordsworth^s eager enthusiasm for the French Revolution, his disillusion on learning what his idols were like, his sobered loves, and the final gain in learning To look on nature not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth but hearing often times The still sad music of humanity. There is a fruitful suggestion here as to ways in which youth can treat its own experiences of disillusion with re¬ gard to parents and other people. Other special help for adolescents is found in a study of the rebellious temperament as illustrated in Shelley and Byron. We want them to know the passion for liberty — the world would be infinitely poorer if youth were less in¬ clined to its protests — ^but we want this spirit to be purged, as far as we can help, of its unhealthier manifestations. It is good, for instance, to contrast Shelley and Byron at their best with the sentimentalism of their “nobody-loves-me^^ attitudes. Occasionally the pupils will squirm as they rec¬ ognize the portraits, but the exercise is good fun, and occa¬ sionally it may quicken a useful train of thought. Humor in the school needs no apology. The contribution of laughter to health of soul is beyond all question. The task of the teacher is to refine the sense of humor by culti¬ vating taste for fun of the cleaner, kindlier, subtler sorts. Mark Twain helps us to see the connection between the VALUES IN LITERATURE 257 best humor and fundamental qualities of character. There is a type of wit that is intellectually brilliant, but is in¬ tended to sting; but when we think of the affection that goes out to our greatest humorist, we see the aptness in William Dean Howells ’s characterization of him as “the Lincoln of our literature.’^ What attracts us in Mark Twain is not intellectual acuteness, but warmth of heart, a broad and deep human sympathy that makes a laugh with him a spiritual tonic. There is an important difference between the laugh that says : ‘ ‘ How ridiculous these other people are,” and the democratic sort which says: “What a funny thing human nature is, our own included ! ’ ’ The feeling for this better kind of humor should receive every encouragement in the classroom. It is no longer necessary to say that particularly in the making of a young life fun has its great place. The chief need is to rid the sense of humor of its coarser associations, to refine and sweeten it. The teacher can do much by showing how inter¬ related is the best humor with breadth and ardor of sym¬ pathy. The author of Tom Sawyer also wrote the Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and was a sturdy champion of many an appeal for justice. Finally, it is important for our boys and girls to care for their country ’s tongue at its best. Good reading aloud will do much to foster such affection. The French make a point of teaching their children French ideals by special atten¬ tion to beauty in their written and spoken discourse. We can profit by their example, for there is a subtle connection between the idealisms of a country and the language in which these are voiced. Note how the words of the least cultivated persons are lifted above the commonplace and take on a simple beauty the moment people give expression to the best that is in them. The “Gettysburg Address” is our classic instance of how dignity of thought and of phrase reinforce each other. Let us do all we can, and by no 258 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH means only in the neighborhoods of the foreign-born, to cultivate a feeling for something better than the usual slip¬ shod speech and slang. Language is a manner ; as in cour¬ tesy, a fine usage betokens the greater respect. Not that it is necessary — fortunately it is impossible — that children should learn to talk like books. But it is eminently desir¬ able that they should learn by example how beautiful a medium the tongue of their country can become. Even though their conversation and their letters may never sound like Irving’s or Hawthorne’s, it is good for them to learn by this method among others that democratic freedom need not connote cheapness and vulgarity. Questions and Problems 1. What is the objection to adding a moral tag to a good story? 2. Examine the poems or stories that you teach. Which of them have such tags? 3. Taking King Lear as a text, show that the ethical value of a great work does not depend upon the happy ending where virtue triumphs. 4. When an author has no specific moral purpose, for example, Poe in ^‘The Bells” or Keats in ^^Ode to a Nightingale,” should his work be studied in school? Give reasons. 5. Explain why personages in great literature are sometimes closer to us than people whom we actually meet. How can this fact be made to contribute to moral growth? 6. Read Sidney Lanier’s The English Novel. Wkat ethical sug¬ gestions are there in the fact that modern literature, unlike the ancient, concerns itself with the lives of common people? 7. Comment on the statement of Lowell: ^Tt is only through [literature] this record of man’s joys and sorrows, of his aspirations and failures . . . that we can become complete men, and learn both what he is and what he may be, for it is the unconscious biography of mankind.” References Adler, Felix, The Moral Instruction of Children. Arnold, Matthew, The Study of Poetry; The Function of Criticism. VALUES IN COMPOSITION 259 Bryant, S. C., How to Tell Stories to Children. Carlyle, Thomas, “The Hero in Poetry” in Heroes and Hero Worship. Chubb, Percival, The Teaching of English. Colby, J. R., Literature and Life in School. Cox, J. H., Literature in the Common Schools. Griggs, E. H., Moral Education, Ch. XXI, XXII, XXIII. Hosic, J. F., “Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools” (Government Printing Office). Klapper, Paul, The Teaching of English. Lowell, J. R., Books and Libraries. Lyman, Edna, Story-Telling. McClintock, P. L., Literature in the Elementary Schools. Ruskin, John, Sesame and Lilies. St. John, E. P., Stories and Story-Telling. Thomas, C. S., The Teaching of English in the Secondary Schoot II. Composition The chief aim of composition work is the efficient impart¬ ing of ideas to others. Hence, it is necessary first to be honest with one^s self, to realize the gaps in one^s own in¬ formation and the need of further study to acquire the necessary knowledge. Consciousness of one’s own igno¬ rance and an open mind are essentials of character no less than of ability to write or speak effectively. Success in composition work also requires the pupil to take the point of view of others. To impart truth, he needs that training in imagination which will enable him first to see how these other people look at things. Much can be done through themes that especially chal¬ lenge ethical thinking. For example, compositions on “The Most Disagreeable Occupation I Know”; “Ellen Douglas Tells What She Thinks of Jessica as a Daughter” ; “Gareth Talks to His Son on Chivalry To-Day,” “A True Older Brother” (in contrast with Hans and Schwartz in Ruskin ’s story) can be used as starting points for many a helpful reflection. 260 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH We need higher standards of debate than those ordinarily prevalent. There is moral danger when yonng people are more eager to win a victory in debate than to achieve the right object, a clarification of the truth. So common is this mistaken attitude that it may often be advisable to let the work in oral composition take the form of discussion rather than of set debate. Questions and Problems 1. Would you recommend the old school custom of having pupils write compositions on moral “texts’^? 2. What is the advantage in having pupils write their opinions on specific moral problems? Show how such topics may be selected from most of the school activities. 3. Show how a development of imagination helps moral growth and how composition work can aid here. What advantage is there in having pupils write their own dramatizations? 4. What advantages are there in introducing a course in ele^ mentary logic into the English work of the high school? 5. What is the ethical value in requiring clear outlines before a composition is written? References Brown, R. W., How the French Boy Learns to Write. Chubb, Percival, The Teaching of English. Cooper, Lane, “The Teaching of Written Composition” and “The Correction of Papers” in Two Views of Education. Davis, J. B., “Vocational and Moral Guidance Through English Composition,” English Journal, Vol. I. Hosic, J. F., “The Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools.” Klapper, Paul, The Teaching of English. Leonard, S. A., English Composition as a Social Problem. Stowe, A. M., “Student Debating Activities,” Ch. XVIII, John¬ ston, Modern High School. Thomas, C. S., The Teaching of English in the Secondary School. VALUES IN POREIUN LANGUAGES 263 III. Foreign Languages The ethical values in English literature are found also in writings in foreign tongues. The special advantage in the study of foreign languages is the opportunity to enter appreciatively into the lives and aspirations of people who are unlike us. It is not sufficient, as has been said, that we respect foreign nationalities simply for their points of like¬ ness to ourselves. Each nation has its unique contributions to make toward perfecting the general type. Respect for others, therefore, on the ground of their very difference from ourselves is quite as essential as the recognition of broad underlying similarities. In the daily exercises in translation, much should be made of the responsibility for reporting correctly what another person says or writes. It ought to be easy to make pupils see the mischief in loose or inaccurate reproduction of the statements of other persons, for example, gossip, rumor, or distorted versions of the truth. The lessons in translation should remind the pupils of the need to read accurately, not simply the letter of other people ’s utterances, but the spirit. Questions and Problems 1. What has America gained from the gifts of immigrants who are not Anglo-Saxons? (See H. A. Miller and R. E. Park, Old World Traits Transplanted; S. P. Breckenridge, New Homes for Old; J. P. Gavit, Americans by Choice.) 2. In the parable of ^‘The Rings” in Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, apply the point to national differences. 3. Select any foreign-language story that appeals to you, show its ethical values, and describe methods of making these values explicit. 4. To many people in America and Great Britain, the fact of a common language has not made for greater friendship. What must accompany the acquaintance with another country’s language and literature? 262 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 5. Lowell says that the literature of another language ‘Ogives us the prime benefits of foreign travel . . . and enlarges aesthetic charity.” To what further good should these benefits minister? See also “Questions and Problems” in “Literature.” References Bahlsen, Leopold, The Teaching of Modern Languages. Hall, G. S., Educational Problems, Vol. II, Ch. XV. Henderson, C. H., What Is It To Be Educated?, pp. 225-254, 348-355. Judd, C. H., The Psychology of High School Subjects, Ch. VII. Inglis, a. J., Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XIII. Lowell, J. R., The Study of Modern Languages. Monroe, Paul, Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XI. Thomas, Calvin, “Good and Bad Reasons for Studying Modern Languages in School,” Modern Language J ournal, October, 1920. IV. Art The ethical values implicit in great literature are true of the other arts as well. As Emerson put it : Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, saw the splendor of meaning that plays over the visible world; knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth than for tillage and roads; that these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind. It is this finer harvest that is the concern of those who teach music, painting, sculpture, dancing, dramatics, and the other arts. These studies prepare at the least for the worthy use of leisure. The importance of such use of leisure should be shown. Art activities also provide occasion to satisfy dis¬ tinct cravings of the growing nature which, unless they VALUES IN ART 263 find a healthy expression in aesthetic creation and enjoy¬ ment, are likely instead to find debasing outlet. If there is any special age that requires to be fed upon beauty, it is youth with its disturbing new wealth of emotions. No recreation can be more wholesome at this period than the making of beautiful objects. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that education in beauty must come entirely through the attempt to create. Those who cannot play musical instruments can neverthe¬ less enjoy good music and need to be taught appreciation. It is an excellent thing for our country that no city high- school building is considered completely furnished to-day unless it has a good organ and a good equipment for dra¬ matic performances. The relations between beauty and right living are close. Note how frequently terms of the moral vocabulary are taken from the field of aesthetics, for example, “fair,” “ugly,” “fine,” “coarse,” “beautiful.” The thing of beauty testifies to the fact that there are values in life which cannot be measured in terms of material standards. More¬ over, every beautiful object suggests perfect relationships. Inspired by this conception, the work of art represents painstaking selection and arrangement of precisely those sounds or colors or words that contribute to the perfect whole. Without tedious moralizing, teachers of the art studies have abundant opportunity to put forward these analogies between beauty and noble living. “The beauty of earth and all that is precious and great in this human life of ours is but a hint and a suggestion of an eternal fairness, an eternal rightness. ’ ’ ^ Group activities in music and in dramatization offer op¬ portunities for pupils to learn to cooperate for worthy ends. 2 Felix Adler, Life and Destiny, p. 13. 264 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Questions and Problems 1. Apply to painting and sculpture the points treated in the section on Literature. 2. Explain the statement: “The beautiful object lends us its dignity.’^ 3. Read Keats^ “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and show from it why there is ethical value in great art. 4. If art was neglected or frowned upon by the austere Puri¬ tans and loved by loose-lived folk in Athens and Renaissance Italy, is there still anything to be said for its ethical values? 5. Why do so many graduates of American schools and colleges patronize inferior plays and concerts? 6. What objections are commonly heard in America to teaching the fine arts in public schools? How are these to be answered? 7. What suggestions from the practice of ancient Athens can modern communities get? 8. What opportunities does your community provide for getting the best out of young people^s love of dancing? 9. What evidences can you mention that the taste of America in art is improving? To what is this growth to be attributed? References Addams, Jane, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, Ch. I, IV. Chubb, Percival, Festivals and Plays. Dickinson, G. L., The Greek View of Life, Ch. IV. DeGarmo, Charles, Principles of Secondary Education, Vol. Ill, pp. 158-172. Dow, A. W., The Theory and Practice of Teaching Art, Farnsworth, C. P., Music in Education. Griggs, E. H., Moral Education, Ch. XI. Hayward, F. H., The Lesson in Appreciation. Johnston, C. H., The Modern High School, Ch. XXVIII. Monroe, Paul, Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XV. “Music in Secondary Schools” (Government Printing Office). Palmer, G. H., The Field of Ethics, Ch. III. Parker, S. C., Methods of Teaching in High Schools, Ch. X. Sneath, E. H., and Hodges, George, Moral Training in the School and Home, Ch. XL VALUES IN HISTOKY AND CIVICS 265 Schiller, Frederick, Letters on the Esthetic Education of the Human Race. School and Home, March, 1923 (Art Number). Sharp, F. C., The Esthetic Element in Morality. Vo History and Civics ‘‘In the many-sided life of our American democracy, says a report familiar to all teachers of history, “there are opportunities on every hand for American boys and girls to exercise all they have found brave and wise and true in the study of their European and American ancestry.’’® But what is of first importance in all these traditions? Readers of Galsworthy’s The Mob will remember the scene where the news arrives that the British troops have beaten the enemy and Stephen More’s daughter exclaims: “Of course we were littler than them. We always are ; and we always win. That ’s why I like history . ” It was not in British schools alone that this kind of history teaching was the rule. For a time it looked as if this conception of his^ tory as a tale of each country ’s military glories were on the way to a well-merited banishment. To-day, however, there is danger of its resurgence luider the spell of victory in the World War. Although there is little likelihood of our going back to the extreme represented by the old-time “penny dreadful” tales of military glory, the related error is pres¬ ent in the shape of a renewed tendency to make American history the vehicle for reinstating the narrowest national¬ ism. The way out has been mentioned in the chapter on this topic. History should be an attempt to understand to-day’s problems, and not simply its military or political problems, by trying to see how people met their problems 3 The Study of History in the Elementary Schools, a report to the American Historical Association by the Committee of Eight (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911). 266 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH in the past, especially by trying to see what ideas and ideals they brought to bear. ‘‘It is not kings and dynasties, campaigns and statutes, that we have to study primarily, but problems; and prob¬ lems are history in the making. Unless the historian can find the moral problem in the event of the past, he is dealing with only dry bones.” ^ In other words, since people are obliged in every age to learn how to live together, history can be made one of the most fruitful subjects in the school when this point of view is applied to problems such as the follow¬ ing : ways of earning a living ; social classes, their conflicts and adjustments ; attitudes toward those who differ — toler¬ ance, intolerance, democratic appreciation, and encourage¬ ment ; patriotism and changes in the conception of loyalty ; science and its relation to health, industry, transportation, social intercourse; war and peace; education; recreation; changing moral standards.® The chief value of any such study should be the light that it throws upon similar prob¬ lems in present life. Suggestions as to the ethical approach to these problems have been offered in preceding chapters of this book. Here let us look at a few general ideas which history and civics can make specially fruitful. Prominent among these is the thought of social heredity, that is, that things do not just happen out of a clear sky but that they go back to the life of earlier days. For this reason it is good that the best schools now link up the study of American history even in the elementary grades with some knowledge of the European backgrounds, the contri¬ butions of Greece, Rome, Mediaeval Europe, Great Britain. - — ' — ■ ■ ■ ■ — ■ - ' ■ ■ ■■...■ - — . •*D. S. Muzzey, “Ethical Values in History,” a paper submitted at the Second International Moral Education Congress, p. 109. (Published by the American Ethical Union, 2 West 64th Street, New York, 1912.) 5 See, for instance, L. T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution^ Part I, Ch. VI. VALUES IN HISTORY AND CIVICS 267 The truth should be impressed that the acts of one. genera¬ tion bear fruit for good or ill in the lives of succeeding ages. Consider, for example, how our public schools of to-day, free, unsectarian, offering to every child opportu¬ nities undreamt of in the past, are indebted to the labors of many generations — to Luther, to the French Revolution, to the scientists, to reformers and workers of all sorts. Let the teacher recall his own studies at the normal school in the history of education to see how immense and how in¬ spiring is the debt for to-day ^s schooling to a long roll of men in the past. Each subject taught in the schools has its history. Is it fair to teach science without introducing our pupils to the history of its progress, especially its biographic history ? Some of our impatient advocates of modernity [forget that] . . . there is not an epoch in the past that cannot be made to reveal its vital connection with the life of to-day — to. those who have the eyes to see. . . . The sense of responsibility for the future is directly referable, in both origin and intensity, to the sense of heirship from the past. Moreover, it is but common decency that we should acknowledge the debt. We accept the comforts and liberties into which we are born as we accept the air we breathe. But if it had not been for the labor, the suffering, and often the martyrdom of men and nations, we should be still living the life of the uncivilized. . . . Can anyone who has never been taught the story of how he and his fellows came to be what they are, be expected to help society much in becoming what it should be? ® Not all our social heritage, however, has been beneficent. It is possible for the generations to bequeath evils. Amer¬ ica is indebted for good to the ship that landed at Pl5nnouth in 1620 ; but the year before this auspicious date, another ship brought momentous consequences of a different kind 6 D. S. Muzzey, “The Discipline of History,” School and Hornet March, 1922, p. 13. 268 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH to our shores. When that vessel landed its cargo of slaves at Jamestown, the fruits appeared in the tragedies of the slave system, of the Civil War and its aftermath. Our pupils will be better citizens if they form the habit of fore¬ casting the effect likely to be produced upon future genera¬ tions by what society is doing or failing to do at the present time. A second leading conception is that of evolution and with it, the duty of progress. Too frequent an obstacle to social advance is the inability of great masses of people to under¬ stand that harmful prevailing practices, in spite of their long and apparently secure intrenchment, should and can be changed for the better. One of the aims of history teach¬ ing should be to show how man has improved upon his customs and institutions, and to encourage the conviction that further change is still desirable and possible. There is every need of special help for the new truths which have not yet won universal recognition : ’’ At every crossing on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear lest the fairest towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most trained among us can do is not to add to the immense dead-weight which nature drags along. Care must be exercised, however, to keep young people from minimizing the good even in institutions that need reconstruction. The first essential to making the environ¬ ment over for the better is a genuine appreciation of what still deserves to be honored. In this connection pupils should be reminded how largely to-day’s advance over the past is due to the very labors of which they may now be tempted to think lightly. For example, we know vastly 7 Maurice Maeterlinck, quoted in J. H. Robinson, The New Sis- toryy p. 260. VALUES IN HISTORY AND CIVICS 269 more about America to-day than Columbus knew, but only because of what he achieved. ^‘A dwarf perched upon the shoulders of a giant” sees farther than the giant does, but he should remember why. A third idea over which to linger is that the great changes in life take time. In New York, the metropolis of the West¬ ern World, it is less than three-quarters of a century since the schools became entirely “public” in the present sense. It was only in 1853 that the city ceased paying a subsidy to a philanthropic body, the Public School Society, and put the schools on their present basis. Slavery lingered till 1863, even though Thomas Paine had advocated abolition as early as 1774 and though Southerners like Jefferson had emancipated their blacks. The thought should not at all be put forward to chill the enthusiasm of youth. The affairs of our globe call loudly enough for ethically directed evolution. Our age is sum¬ moned to abolish war, to abolish poverty, ignorance, dis¬ ease, famine, all with the ultimate object of lifting the per¬ sonal quality in the life of our planet. These are no light tasks, and it is especially to our young that we must always look for the needed fresh reserves of moral power. Their eagerness must not be dampened. The reason for mention¬ ing the obstacles is rather to impress upon them the fact that progress is more than a matter of youthful eagerness to initiate change and that it calls for endless patience to understand the problems involved, fairness to appreciate the best as well as the worst in the reasons for the opposi¬ tion,® and unflinching grit to persist in the face of repeated setbacks. Not the least opportunity open to teachers of the social studies is the chance to cultivate in young people standards of fair judgment. Science is often hailed as the great dis- 8 Cf. Lincoln’s understanding of the Southern point of view. 270 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH cipline to teach breadth and integrity of view. In some respects the opportunity offered by history is better, be¬ cause the facts with which the physical sciences deal are relatively impersonal, whereas history deals with personal judgments which are much more intimate and much more likely to be colored by the bias of race, section, class, and self-interest. This incident from recent history is instruc¬ tive: The New Republic of August 4, 1920, published a sup¬ plement of over forty pages of double columns setting side by side the news of happenings in Russia as presented in the headlines of the New York Times for the two and a half years preceding and as these events had really occurred. The counter-revolutionary generals, Kolchak and Denikin, were credited with victories, for instance, which had not been theirs at all. No charge was made that the paper had deliberately deceived its readers. The point emphasized was that the bias of the Times was very evident in believing and selecting only the news which it wanted to believe was true. The incident is important in that whatever Ameri¬ cans may have thought of the wisdom or unwisdom of rec¬ ognizing Soviet Russia, it was difficult for them to get the only basis on which to form a sound judgment — an accurate statement of the facts.^ Upon the history teacher in particular the burden is laid of trying to educate a generation that will want to be utterly fair in its judgments. Our young people should be taught the difference between gossip and proof. They should know the moral value in reserving one’s judgment until the necessary facts are known. They should be trained to look for the distorting effects of partisan bias. Espe¬ cially should they learn the truth in the saying of Emer¬ son, ‘ ‘ The wise man throws himself on the side of his assail¬ ant,” and of Edmund Burke, “My opponent is my helper.” 9 Read Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, especially p. 409, for illustration of how to teach pupils to read newspapers. VALUES IN HISTORY AND CIVICS 271 The clashes of people and of nations are rarely conflicts between angels and demons ; and no sophistry is more mis¬ leading — its very sincerity makes it the more dangerous — than the natural illusion that one’s own side to a contro¬ versy must be absolutely right and the other completely wrong. Perhaps we can never look forward to a day when men’s judgments on vital questions will be unanimous. But what a world of tragedy will be averted when they learn to recognize what is fair in the claims of their opponents ! Help to this end can be offered by closely examining both sides in controversies of the past. For instance, the point of view of the South in the Civil War should be explained to Northern pupils by something more than a perfunctory recital of “reasons why the South seceded.” These should be made as vivid as possible, through editorials from South¬ ern newspapers, through letters, through such biographies as Bradford’s Robert E. Lee, American}^ It is particularly enlightening to show how moral stand- n> “Can anyone who has observed the typical citizen of to-day doubt . . . that his political opinions are often formed on the flimsiest and narrowest foundation and afterwards parted with, if at all, with as much reluctance as one would display if called upon to give up a tooth or an eye? Of course this attitude is not due solely to the conservative study of history ... ; it is probably just human nature . . . ; but can one claim that the conservative view has done much to help men rise above this unreflective and partisan attitude ? “The progressive maintains that history should be related to the important institutions and happenings of the present time. . . . But the important thing still remains to be done — the right mental attitude in dealing with questions of the day has still to be culti¬ vated. . . . The right way implies open and fair-minded suspension of judgment, tentative conclusions, and reserve in expressing opin¬ ions. The first prerequisite for the cultivation of this attitude on the part of the pupil is, of course, the example set by the instructor. But this is not enough. The pupil who is to become open-minded must actually practice open-mindedness; the pupil who is to learn to suspend judgment must actually practice suspension of judg¬ ment.” F. C. Lewis, School and Home, March, 1922, p. 30, 272 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH ards change and how necessary it is to reckon with these changes in one ’s estimates of moral value.^^ There is much to ponder in this word by Dr. Lea : To depict a man like Philip the Second as a monster of iniquity, delighting in human misery, may gratify prejudice and may lend superficial life and vigor to narrative ; but it teaches in reality no lesson. To represent him truthfully as the inevitable product of a distorted ethical conception is to trace effects to their causes and to point out the way to improvement. . . . [This] is not to approve, tacitly or overtly, the infiuences which made him what he was — what, in fact, he could not help being. These influences we may condemn all the more heartily when we see that they made of a man, slow of intellect but obstinate in the performance of what he was taught to regard as a duty, the scourge of his fellow-creatures, in place of being their benefactor. The older our pupils grow, the more they will meet this problem of changed standards. The obligation of the school is clear. Although the younger children can understand only unqualified hero-worship, the older ones can be helped to be more discriminating ; for example, their reverence for the genuine greatness in George Washington need not be diminished by the fact that he owned slaves or by his dis¬ missing as folly the proposition that vessels could be navi¬ gated by steam. The Patrick Henry whose plea for political liberty has become one of our classics was opposed later to Thomas Jefferson’s bill for religious emancipation. Daniel Webster was by no means a saint; the rifts in the per^ sonalities of great men which our pupils sooner or later find out are numerous and important enough. The right sort of teacher will not shirk these difficulties. They offer the chance to train young people into a discriminating appreciation which will be proof against the devastating 11 For applications to American history, see W. H. Mace, Method in History, pp. 62, 63. 12 H. C. Lea, “Ethical Values in History” (American Historical Association, 1903), p. 69. VALUES IN HISTORY AND CIVICS 273 effects frequently accompanying the shock of disillusion. To the more thoughtful, they also warm the feeling for ideal excellence with the sense of how superb the ideal life must be in order to surpass the imperfections in the heroes whom one wants to admire without reserve.^^ Chief stress, however, should be placed on the construc¬ tive values in the lives of the great. If criticism implies discrimination, it is also, as Goethe said, “the ability to admire greatly. ’ ’ In the main, the chief value in biography will be found to lie in its witness to the idea that : The moral element is of surpassing importance in history. Truth has its supreme embodiment in personality. Therefore special emphasis should be given to personal force, because it is truth in the concrete, and the great life principles as they have been embodied in individual men, that win the deep interest of the boy or girl. . . . By emphasizing the service of distinguished men as they are identified with great social, industrial, and politi¬ cal movements, the pupil will get at the true meaning of history, for the aims and aspirations of great leaders reveal the aims and aspirations that inspire the people. To remember this connection between leaders and people will save us from the fallacy of making history the biog¬ raphies of great men. But the power of personality must never be slighted. It is true that economic interpretations do not yet receive all the importance they deserve. The teaching of history will never come into its own until every available light on our problems is free to offer itself. But we shall go astray if we ever minimize the dynamic impor¬ tance of ideals. 13 In this regard a reading of Emerson’s Representative Men is to be recommended. The writer recalls how, when he first read it in his youth, he thought that it was over-fastidious to point out limitations in Shakespeare, Montaigne, and the others. It was better for Emerson’s standard of greatness to be high, 1* The Study of History in the Elementary Schools, p. 107. 274 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Questions and Problems 1. In what respects does history offer advantages over literature for ethical treatment? 2. Apply to any problem of current history the distinction drawn in the closing chapter of this book (pp. 367, 368) between propaganda and the demands of truth. 3. Read G. B. Mangold’s Problems of Child Welfare and report on how a better citizenship would meet these problems. 4. In what respects do you think our political institutions can be improved? 5. What obstacles are there to the kind of teaching suggested in this chapter? 6. Show how the school life is itself an opportunity for the prac¬ tice of citizenship. What are the ideals of citizenship in the school that you know best? What changes in the school life would be necessitated by changed ideals of citizenship? 7. Few people know more about the forms of our government- than do our political bosses and party hacks. What problems are set for educators by this fact? 8. What means can you suggest to have pupils feel for their community and their state the attachment felt for the nation? References See, besides references quoted in text: Add AMS, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics; Twenty Tears at Hull House. Beard, C. A., and Beard, M. R., American Citizenship. Beard, C. A., American Government and Politics. Bourne, H. E., The Teaching of History and Civics. Cabot, E. L., A Course in Citizenship. Dole, C. F., The New American Citizen. Dunn, A. W., The Community and the Citizen; The Teaching of Community Civics. Follett, M. P., The New State. Hughes, R. 0., Economic Civics. Inglis, a. J., Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XVI. Johnson, H., The Teaching of History. Keatinge, M. W., Studies in the Teaching of History. King, Irving, Education for Social Efficiency. McMuery, C. a.. Special Method in History. VALUES IN GEOGRAPHY 275 Myers, P. V. N., History as Past Ethics. Rexpord, F. a., ^‘Teaching of Civics” (Board of Education, Ne'w York). Snedden, David, Civic Education. ^‘Social Studies in Secondary Education” (Government Prints ing Office). ^^Teaching of Government,” Report of Committee of the American Political Science Association, 1916. See also References for Chapter VI. VI. Geography Because geography is essentially the study of man’s rela¬ tion to his environment, it may readily be correlated with every other interest of the school. The connection is par¬ ticularly close with nature study, economics, history, and civics. To appreciate the dependence of intelligent citi¬ zenship on a knowledge of geography, one need only men¬ tion such problems as water supply and conservation of natural wealth and such activities as irrigation, road¬ making, canal-building, harbor construction, geological sur¬ vey, and coast patrol. In the earlier grades geography is too closely linked with nature study to need separate attention. The connection persists throughout the entire course, and what is said else¬ where of the ethical values of nature study and science applies here as well. A few further considerations, how¬ ever, may be offered at this point. Geography presents an excellent chance to keep before our pupils’ minds the thought of human interdependence. City and country need one another; so do land and land. Good and ill in any part of the world produce their effects elsewhere as well. The prostration of industry in Central Europe after the World War put millions of people out of work in Great Britain and America. A plague of influenza in India car¬ ried off populations in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. 276 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH But health and the goods of commerce are not the only things that pass from place to place. All the peoples of earth depend upon one another for the interchange of ideas. No country to-day dares remain provincial or content with the thought of its own superiority over other lands. East and West, for instance, need each other badly. The Orient needs Western science; but the West needs to learn from the East that feverish commercial rivalry and aggressive nationalism are not the unquestioned blessings that the Occident is prone to suppose. All the countries on the globe can learn from one another. No lesson is more ur¬ gently required than that differences do not necessarily mean superiority or inferiority. Each country, that is, has something unique to give to every other ; and only as each seeks to understand, to respect, and to encourage the special best in its fellows, will its own best gifts be promoted. This matter is treated at length in the chapter on “The Spirit of Nationalism” and in the section on “Literature.” The ideal to be kept in the foreground is that of world harmony resulting from the interplay of varied excellences. In the lower grades the geography lessons can begin working in this direction by trying to create the attitude of mind that at least refrains from regarding the customs of Chinese, Hindoos, Frenchmen, Italians, as merely funny. As the pupils grow older, they should be set to asking, “What is there in this country’s civilization from which our own can learn; and what can this other land learn from us?” Of highly practical importance to-day is the problem raised by the geographical fact that the world’s raw mate¬ rials are limited in quantity and that some lands are more favored than others. More and more we are being forced to understand that one of the chief occasions for modern war is the clash of desires to control the supply of oil or iron or other natural wealth, or to bar competitors from VALUES IN GEOGRAPHY 277 trade routes or fields of investment. During the World War, there was a temporary approach on the part of the Allies to something better than the usual practice of “each for himself.’’ Coal, wheat, cotton, oil, leather, instead of being left to each ally to buy or not as each could, were pooled and rationed. AVhen the War ended, the old way was restored, but the day must be made to come when war¬ breeding competitive scrambles will be replaced by enlight¬ ened cooperation. Geography teachers can do much to cultivate this better conception because, from the ethical viewpoint, geography is the study of what man’s will and reason can accomplish to overcome the difficulties of his natural environment. The story of civilization is a tale of how mankind has triumphed over wild beasts, plagues, excessive heat, biting cold, and other obstacles. The ocean which was once a barrier men have turned into a road by which swift, luxurious steamers bring land and land into touch. Man has wrought for him¬ self still another road through the air, just as he has also built roads beneath the earth and beneath the water. To avoid dangerous routes for his vessels, he has dug a Cape Cod Canal. To save more lives, he has erected sea walls at Galveston. He has irrigated deserts, drained swamps, cleaned up plague spots, tunneled the mountains, connected oceans by canals, conducted drinking water for a city from a reservoir over 100 miles away. All these are the conquests of man ’s will and reason ovei the difficulties presented by his natural environment. The task is not yet completed. There are still quarters of the globe that need to be saved from famine, disease, and flood. And a still greater step forward will be to overcome the obstacles created by man’s own disruptive prejudices, fol¬ lies, and greeds. The closeness with which the structure of civilization approached wrecking in the recent War is a warning. As long as nations still eye one another with a 278 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH mistrust that obliges them to spend billions of hard-won treasure on military preparations, our assurance that we are so securely and highly civilized needs to be chastened. We shall have a world freed from the assaults of the brute in man when enough men and women take to heart sound ideals of the purposes for which human will ^d intelli¬ gence are most wisely spent. Questions and Problems 1. Show how nations benefit from one another’s excellence in art. 2. What is the natural response of most children to pictures of queer foreign customs, for example, in the National Geo¬ graphic Magazine. Are these likely to create greater sym¬ pathy toward people of other lands? What suggestions have you to offer? 3. Comment on the problem presented in ^‘The Battle Line of Languages in Western Europe/’ National Geographic Maga¬ zine, February, 1923. 4. What activities are directed by international agencies to-day? See publications of the American Association for International Conciliation, Columbia University. 5. Read A. P. Brigham’s Geographic Influences in American History. How would such a study applied to other lands help us to understand their problems? fi. Read W. B. Forbush, The Coming Generation, ^‘The Wander Years,” and show how the impulses there described can be educated. References Breckenridge, S. P., New Homes for Old. Dodge, R. E., and Kirch wey, Freda, Teaching of Geography. Gavit, J. P., Americans by Choice. Herbertson, J. a. and F. D., Man and His Work. Kingsley, C. D., “The Study of Nations,” School and Society, January 8, 1916. McMurry, C. a.. Special Method in Geography. Reynolds, M. J., How Man Has Conquered Nature. Sutherland, W. J., The Teaching of Geography. / VALUES IN SCIENCE 279 Trotter, Spencer, “The Social Function of Geography,” Fourth Yearbook of the National Herbart Society. Tuell, H. E., The Study of Nations. See also the References for Chapter VI. VII. Science In the lowest grades, science or nature study is included more or less in geography. One of its aims is to cultivate a sense of being at home in the world of natural things and to foster a love of the lovable objects found therein. One early Spring day, a little child exclaimed : ‘ ‘ Ain ’t crocuses wonderful? Ain’t tulips wonderful? Ain’t — ain’t every¬ thing wonderful?” Without knowing it, the child was illustrating one of the sources from which the religious sentiments are fed. Another purpose of nature study is to lay the beginnings of that close, accurate, and sympathetic investigation of the ways of Nature by which man better enables himself to make a right use of her abundant gifts. Besides, by learning to take care of plants and animal pets, children are introduced to practices of thoughtfulness that are of obvious advantage in the right treatment of human beings. To hunt animals and birds with a camera calls for all the skill, steadiness, and quick judgment required in hunting with a rifle or a sling shot ; and it is worlds better for the boy in still more important respects. The nature stories of Seton, Long, Roberts, Hawkes, Sharp, and other writers are rich in suggestions for these better attitudes. Opportunities for practical application are abundant. The collecting tendency, which manifests itself early in life, should be directed to gathering interesting specimens for the school museum. In the upper grades, pupils can make further contributions to the school in the shape of shelves and other apparatus needed in the science work. There is scarcely an. interest with which this study may not be corre- 280 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH lated. Hygiene, domestic economy, industry, citizenship, owe uncountable debts to science. The citizen of to-day, for example, dare not be uninformed upon the relation of germs to public health, upon waste and conservation of natural resources. When an exposure of unhygienic con¬ ditions in the meat-packing houses led to the introduction of a bill to establish Federal inspection, a member of Con¬ gress made a sneering reference to ‘ ‘ germs and other inven¬ tions of chemists and theorists. ’ ^ And he was not alone in his unenlightenment. Fortunately the intimate connection between science and the human welfare which government is expected to promote is more and more being recognized. Indeed, so important is the work of scientific research now undertaken by State and Federal governments that teachers will find some of their best subjects and material in the bulletins issued by the various governmental departments, for example. Bureau of Fisheries, Geological Survey, Public Health Service, Forest Service, and Department of Agri¬ culture.^® Two cautions against the misleading uses of the natural sciences for ethical instruction must be sounded. First, no capable teacher will sentimentalize over the seeming analo¬ gies between the life of nature and the duties of man. To draw a ‘‘lesson’’ on the value of right social relations, as one teacher did, from the symbiosis exhibited by lichens, the alga contributing food and the fungus protection, is to forget that ethical relations are matters of right adjustment of human wills. There is nothing moral about the invol¬ untary adjustments in the natural world, and, besides, the natural world is only too full of examples of predatory struggle which we do not wish men and women to imitate. Second, the value of thrift and patience in the cultivation 15 Suggestions for teachers in cities will be found in “Course of Study in Nature and Environment,” Board of Education, New York City. VALUES IN SCIENCE 281 of school gardens, of strict accuracy in reporting experi¬ ments, etc., are only instrumental. Patience can be em^ ployed by men of science to manufacture poison bombs as well as medicines. Everything depends upon the ultimate aim. Where these facts are remembered, science teaching has much to contribute to the making of character. It would be a help if it did no more than offer stimulus and means to the right use of leisure. Fondness for plants and ani¬ mals will provide for many an interesting hour. An eager interest in the study of Nature’s secrets will fill the mind with as elevating an occupation as intelligent people can enjoy. The value of the “out-of-doors” movement of to¬ day is beyond question. So is the opportunity presented by science and mathe- matics for a training in exact reasoning, for learning better modes of reaching conclusions than to follow the lead of impulse, prejudice, and the crowd mind. The ability to reason from cause to effect is necessary to counteract loose thinking and wild theorizing. One ounce of fact is worth more than a ton of superstition. The use of the chart, the graph, the blue print, the scales and other instruments of precision can do much to correct or prevent habits of nebu¬ lous generalization. How far this training will carry over into right attitudes toward people whose desires clash with our own is by no means certain. It is worlds easier to be dispassionate and accurate in statements about chemicals, fiowers, insects, wave lengths, than about persons who op¬ pose our favorite beliefs in religion, politics, economics.^® Men of science in the various countries at war were not conspicuous for the moderation and accuracy of their utter¬ ances about enemy countries. The need, however, for every possible help toward cultivating fairness and exactness can- 16 See Walter Lippman, Public Opinion, Ch. XXV. 282 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH not be doubted. Here the training in science will be of assistance just as far as the practice is accompanied by sound thinking upon the general ideal involved, and by specific applications outside of the science room, for ex¬ ample, in the history or civics periods. The clue is to keep in the foreground the ethical function of knowledge as the instrument of human welfare and the need of progress toward more genuinely human living. In¬ struction in the sciences should therefore be correlated with history to show how man’s understanding of the natural order has affected his health, his home-making, his indus¬ tries, his intercourse with fellow beings in war and in peace. Much should be made of the biographies of men who have contributed to the sum of to-day’s scientific wisdom. This is important in order that pupils may appreciate the de¬ pendence of past and present upon the efforts of those who have gone before, catch the inspiration of lives dominated by lofty ideals, profit from the secret of their success, and remember the undying contributions of the heroes of peace. Although warriors undoubtedly have done their part to benefit mankind, the school should correct false notions of the supremacy of military, or even political, glory by em¬ phasizing the labors of science in the elevation of man from the level of the brute. A partial offset to the readiness with which science lends itself to the destructive purposes of war is the fact that men of science are usually among the first to recognize the fact of international interdependence. One of the earliest approaches to international concord after the World War was made in a letter sent by some half a hundred Oxford professors and doctors to German and Austrian savants with these words: We now personally approach you with a desire to dispel the embitterment of animosities that under the impulse of loyal patriotism may have passed between us. In the field where VALUES IN SCIENCE 283 our aims are one, our enthusiasms the same ... we can surely look to be reconciled; and the fellowship of learning offers a road which may . . . lead to wider sympathy and better under¬ standing between our kindred nations. The science teacher can clarify the pupils’ understanding of the meaning of law. The sublimity of the starry heavens suggested to Immanuel Kant the sublimity of man’s moral being. Great care should be exercised, however, against treating human life as if it were wholly subject to the prin¬ ciples found valid in the non-human world. Biology affords a case in point. Much mischief results from regarding man too exclusively as the kinsman of the lower orders. In his world, for example, ‘‘the struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest” should possess a meaning that they cannot have in the realm of plant and animal life, that is, fitness to survive is something quite other than moral right to survive. Or, to take another illustration, better than “adjustment to environment” as an aim for human life is the exercise of man’s capacity to protest against his environment, if need be, and to reshape it upon ideal lines. It is quite possible to interpret man in terms of his likeness to his inferiors, but this is only half the story. The other half, infinitely the better half, is the tale of how man sur¬ passes, and ought to surpass, plant and animal. Recognition of these differences should not be left to accident. Man, like the animal, acts upon instinct, but, unlike the lower creatures, he can be taught to take certain attitudes toward his natural proclivities. Although he, too, for instance, has his physical wants like hunger, he can be taught the etiquette of the table and other codes of decency. Like the animal, he feels the call to preserve his own life ; but it is no less a truth that, when a ship is sinking, right-minded men make way in the lifeboats for women and children. This distinction should be lifted into a place of primary importance in the teaching scheme. In 284 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH view of the tendency of our day to stress the ‘ ‘ naturalness ’ * of man^s impulses, the resultant moral damage should be forestalled by using every opportunity to emphasize man’s power to control his instincts by his reason and his will. The bearing of these considerations on the problem of sex morality needs special attention. That the task of helping to reach a sounder sex morality is delicate and difficult does not mean that it should be evaded. Ideally, the home is the chief place for such assistance. But many homes are utterly incompetent to give it, and the fathers and mothers who are to teach the children of the next genera¬ tion are now in the schools. At the very least, the schools can supply these future parents with a clean vocabulary and with certain elementary truths. Here are a few salient facts : Sex morality is a larger and more important considera¬ tion than sex hygiene. Knowledge of the latter is by no means synonymous with rectitude in the former. Sex hygiene is a help in so far as health in general con¬ tributes to strength of will. Truthful information does no harm when it is given at the right time and without undue emphasis. The problem of sex should not be singled out for isolated treatment. This method is too likely to focus a damaging degree of young people’s attention upon this side of their lives. Instruction had best be incidental to instruction in general hygiene, psychology, ethics, literature. Matters that the teacher is reluctant to speak of before a whole class can often be imparted indirectly but no less surely by a private word with pupils who are evidently leaders in their groups. Self-control in sex matters can be helped by the exercise of self-control in every other respect. The ultimate safeguard lies less in fear than in positive VALUES IN SCIENCE 285 ideals of self-control as a means to true self-expression. Everything helps that encourages the sense of dignity as linked with a sense of privacy and decency. Here every agency of the school can aid — the literature work, for exam¬ ple, to strengthen, to elevate and refine the sense of chiv¬ alry, the ethics lessons to clarify ideals of freedom and of responsibility for the best use of human life. It is fallacious to hold that the sex impulse is like any other hunger in that its primary purpose must always receive gratification. The hunger for food is satisfied only by eating; but the sex hunger can be sublimated, that is, it can be directed to non-sexual ends. Artistic creation is one such outlet ; so is philanthropic activity, especially work on behalf of needy children. It is unfair to let the individual carry the burden of control entirely alone. His environment should not hinder ; it should offer every help. Older high-school girls need to be told how their conduct, for example, their willingness to let themselves be cheapened, makes it more difficult for young men to keep to high standards (see Dorothy Can¬ field’s The Bent Twig). Young people are helped by forecasting in imagination the time when they will have children of their own to look up to them. It is not enough that parents be free from physical taint. The ethical function of marriage, the enhancing of personality in the parents through the exer¬ cise of their joint responsibilities toward the children, will be fulfilled better where father and mother can regard each other with a growing fine respect. On this topic, con¬ sult Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce.^^ ... _ iA _ _ _ _ _ 17 See T. W. Galloway, Sex Factor in Human Life, Ch. IV. 18 On the general topic, see The Social Emergency, edited by W. T. Foster (Houghton Miflflin Co.); M. A. Bigelow, Sex Education; Durant Drake, Problems of Conduct, Ch, XVII; T. W. Galloway, The Sex Factor in Human Life; Benjamin Gruenberg, “High Schools and Sex Education,” United States Public Health Service (Govern* 286 EDUCATION FOB MORAL GROWTH Questions and Peoblems 1. Report on the extent to which your community is helped by the scientific bulletins issued by Federal and State govern¬ ments. 2. What opportunities does your community offer for the use of leisure in nature study? 3. What are the special advantages of nature study to city children ? 4. Show how nature study can be correlated with home-making. 5. Read Pasvolsky^s “Civilization and Oil,” Atlantic Monthly, February, 1923, and report on its suggestions for teachers of science, geography, and civics. 6. Select three outstanding achievements of modern science and study lives of persons chiefiy responsible. 7. Draw up a list of facts in psychology by a knowledge of which you think your pupils might improve their self-mastery. 8. Summarize the objections to a special course in sex hygiene and sex morality. 9. Give your views on the advantages and disadvantages of coeducation (see article on the subject in Monroe^s Cyclopedia of Education and HalFs Youth, pp. 286-297). References See, besides references quoted in text: Allen, W. H., Civics and Health, Bailey, L. H., The Nature Study Idea. Caldwell, 0. W., Science Teaching in the Gary Public Schools. Comstock, A. B., The Pet Book. Garret, L. B., Animal Families in Schools (Bureau of Educa¬ tional Experiments, New York). McMurry, C. a.. Special Method in Science. Monroe, Paul, Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XII. “Reorganization of Science in Secondary Schools” (Government Printing Office). Twiss, G. R., Science Teaching. WooDHULL, J. F., Teaching of Science. ment Printing Office, Washington, D. C.) (contains bibliography); F. W. Foerster, Marriage and the Sex Problem j I. S. Wile, Sex Education. VALUES IN HOUSEHOLD ARTS 287 Woodcraft Manuals, Woodcraft League of America, New York City. See also the References for Chapter VII. VIII. Household Arts In the earlier years, the ethical value in household occu¬ pations is not so much that the children consciously prepare for later home-making of their own. It is rather that they ^ learn to cooperate in certain present activities of home and school, for example, dishwashing, sewing, providing refresh¬ ments for class parties, bazaars, etc., and that they are helped to vivify their acquaintance with history through reproducing home-making activities of the past, for ex¬ ample, making bayberry candles, dyeing wool red with sumach berries, or making lye from wood ashes. There was a time when the school had no need to give instruction in household matters, as these were looked after by the home. To-day many a community must make such provision in the schools. Too many children in the modern city get an utterly false notion of life from the ease with which their wants are satisfied. They have no sense of the labor it takes to produce things, when they can get them by simply going to the store or using the telephone. It is only when they make objects themselves that they reach any real sense of the human labor required to keep their needs supplied. Household activities offer a further help in that they in¬ troduce the pupil to many a question of hygienic living. Again we must note that though many homes are quite competent to instruct their children here, vast numbers of other pupils must turn for this purpose to the school. Temperance, balanced diet, the difference between whole¬ some and unwholesome foods, cleanliness, beauty, etc., are some of the considerations that need specific teaching. As the pupils reach the upper grades and high school, the idea of definite preparation for the making of homes 288 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH should be brought to their notice. Morally important as it always is to learn to do one’s work well, it is especially so in home-making. So greatly does human welfare, in every sense from the lowest to the highest, depend upon the effi¬ ciency and the moral atmosphere of the home that special attention to its many problems is of the utmost necessity. Under our present economic life, the maker of a home needs a more extended training than in former times ; she needs an insight into problems of to-day and a command of the best methods available through modern science. The paramount concern of a good home should be the personality which it is to develop in all its members. A home is something more than a place for bodily care of the young. Therefore, physical well-being, comfort, refinement, beauty, should all be valued in the light of their contribu¬ tion to growth of character in both parents and children. The housekeeper who employs labor can be helped into a better relationship toward her employees by first-hand knowledge of what their work necessitates. She is immeas¬ urably more fitted to appreciate their service if she herself has done housework; she is more likely to want her chil¬ dren also to show such comprehension. Besides, much fric¬ tion can be avoided and the general tone of the home raised by sensible management of its numerous tasks. There are many households which still need the shrewd advice offered in that picture of the De Coverley home where Sir Roger’s wise economies “made his mind untroubled and conse¬ quently unapt to vent peevish expressions or give passion¬ ate or inconsistent orders to those about him.” The following suggestions will indicate how a course in household arts may be made rich in content of distinct ethical value : 19 Consult Willystine Goodsell, The Family as a Social and Edu¬ cational Institution; A. G. Spencer, Women^s Share in Social Cul¬ ture; E. J. Putnam, The Lady. VALUES IN HOUSEHOLD ARTS 289 The home in history. Study the functions of the home in the progress of mankind. Compare the home with even the best-equipped orphan asylum in the matter of develop¬ ing individual aptitudes. The teacher has an excellent chance to introduce the older pupils to sound ideals of marriage by emphasizing the fact that the joint care of their children is the best means for both father and mother to develop their own personalities. Lax notions of marital responsibility are best countered by these pictures of what the marriage relation means at its highest.^® Social forces affecting the home. Consider how home life is affected for better or worse by urbanization, commer¬ cialized recreation, etc. The responsibility of the consumer. The eagerness to follow any fashion so long as it is new plays a part in the dislocation of industry, helps to create seasons of unem¬ ployment, and encourages the making of commodities which wear out quickly. The work of consumers’ leagues, child- labor committees, etc., may be studied to advantage. Cooperative societies in America and abroad. Pupils should know something of what is being done by consum¬ ers ’ cooperative societies, not only to meet the cost of living, but even more to teach important truths about the con¬ sumer’s relation to society Extravagance and thrift. Temperance is not exclusively a matter of men’s refraining from alcoholic stimulants. Women and children may be intemperate in their demands for sweets, for ornament, for recreation. Beauty. How distinguished from luxury ? 22 ^ home made beautiful is simply a home arrayed in the setting de- - -- - - - - - — - * 20 Felix Adler, Marriage and Divorce j Gustav Spiller, The Mean¬ ing of Marriage. 21 For information, address Cooperative League of America, 167 West 12tli Street, New York. ** For moral value of beauty see pp. 2Q2ff. 290 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH served by the ideal for which it stands. Luxury is indul¬ gence in excessive comfort or in mere display of wealth. Beauty stimulates; luxury enervates. Health problems may be treated in correlation with biology and physical culture. The opportunities for the discussion of such matters as self-control lie upon the sur¬ face. The matter of teaching sex hygiene has already been discussed. Questions and Problems 1. What light does Dorothy Canfield’s novel, The Squirrel Cage, throw upon the aims of many such households? Ard the same failures found in the homes of poorer people? 2. Is it wise to anticipate the future experiences of high-school and college students by discussing the ethics of marriage and divorce ? 3. How much of your course in the normal school would you recommend for all girls in high school and college? 4. Turn back to Chapter VIII and show the relation of home¬ making to other vocations. What does this tell about oppor¬ tunities for ^^culture”? 5. On what principles do you distinguish between luxury and simple living? 6. Read Income in the United States, National Bureau of Eco¬ nomics Research (Harcourt, Brace & Co.). Discuss its conception of “the American standard of living.” What problems are set by the fact that about ten per cent of our population receive less than the minimum necessary for bare subsistence ? 7. “No girl in an office is half so necessary there as is the suc¬ cessful girl in the home.” Explain why many girls fail to see this. How can teachers help them to see? 8. Dress should be beautiful, but this means that it must sometimes be unfashionable. Discuss the ethical principle which needs to be brought home here. 9. Read Pestalozzi’s How Gertrude Teaches Her Children. How much of what is there presented is pertinent to-day? 10. What things taught in modern schools, for example, dra¬ matics, will help future home-makers provide for their chil¬ dren’s recreations? For their children’s other needs? VALUES IN MATHEMATICS 291 11. Discuss in the light of the foregoing the complaint that “the schools have been asked to take over the entire moral, intel¬ lectual and aesthetic training of the child.’^ References See, besides references quoted in text: Allen, A. W., Home^ School and Vacation, Cooley, A. M., Marshall, J. A., Spohr, W. H., W1NCHELI4 C. M., Teaching Home Economics. Douglas, P. and D., “What Can a Man Afford?’^, American Economic Review, December, 1921. Goodsell, Willystine, The Education of Women. “Reorganization of Home Economies in Secondary Education” (Government Printing Office). Richards, E. H., Euthenics. Richardson, B. I., The Woman Who Spends. Spencer, A. G., The Family and Its Members. Strong, A. G., “Household Arts” in Monroe, Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XVI. Talbot, Marion, The Education of Women. UrwicH, E. J., Luxury and Waste of Life. Veblen, Thorstein, Theory of the Leisure Class, Withers, Hartley, Poverty and Waste. IX. Mathematics ‘ ‘ There have been elaborate articles written to show that the proper study of arithmetic has an ethical value, though exactly what there is in the subject to make us treat our neighbor better, it is a little difficult to say. ’ ’ This is a useful reminder that the richest material for ethical instruction will always be found where concrete cases of human bad and good, better and best, are dealt with. It is, however, a quite narrow view of the ethical life to limit its meaning to kindness toward neighbors. As these pages have tried to show, ethical conduct is a much 23 D. E. Smith, “The Teaching of Arithmetic,” Teachers* College Record, January, 1909, p. 4. 292 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH larger affair. It is a matter of trying to make the best of one’s life by trying to better all one’s relationships. Any¬ thing, therefore, that helps human beings to make a wiser use of their powers has ethical value, and arithmetical ability is no exception. Arithmetic is a tool to be employed whenever, instead of contenting ourselves with a vague *‘more” or ^‘less, ” we desire an exact statement of quan¬ tity. It thus has its help to offer to right living wherever the problems of right living demand such accurate infor¬ mation. Thrift and wise spending, for instance, need exact computation ; and for such purposes the school should pro¬ vide the necessary instruments in arithmetical skill and the knowledge of arithmetical processes. Much can also be done by making real to children the human values behind such terms as, for example, budgets and taxes. A study of home budgets with reference to reasons why parents must provide for rent, insurance, medical care, and the other items may help to interpret to children some of the diffi¬ culties their homes must meet, the need of economy and the need of cooperation for this purpose. Not saving for its own sake but saving for wiser expenditure should be the leading thought. This is equally true of city, state, and national budgets. What is the cost of a $40,000,000 battle¬ ship translated into terms of the cost, let us say, of build¬ ing and maintaining schools ? Civics, history, geography, science may all be drawn upon, and, in turn, be illuminated, by the teacher of arith¬ metic. Statistics of population, immigration, industry, con¬ servation, the cost of crime and of war, can be used to light up many an important public problem. The report of the United States Geological Survey, for example, on the waste in our present method of mining and distributing coal should be known to every citizen. In general, pupils should also be taught something of the ethics of statistical argument. All of us need to be cau- VALUES IN MATHEMATICS 293 tioned against statistics that are so selected as to be partly true but essentially misleading. On the formal side, the disciplinary value of arithmetic and the other mathematical studies is less taken for granted to-day than it was in earlier times. We must guard against supposing that the training in accuracy, concentration, reliance upon one ^s own correct reasoning, etc., will of itseK always carry over into like habits elsewhere. Habits are mainly specific ; and just as right practices in language are fostered when the mathematics teacher shares the respon¬ sibility for them with his colleague in the English room, so the aptitudes encouraged by training in mathematics are more likely to be effective in other fields when all the other teachers cooperate. The special help of the mathematics instructor lies in clarifying the ideals behind the training acquired in his room. To those who can be brought to care for such an oppor¬ tunity, it offers a training in working out the relationships of generalized entities. The best teachers of mathematics will seek to have their pupils feel as early as possible the beauty to be discerned in ^^a universum of exact thought, an everlasting cosmos of ordered ideas, a stable world of concatenated truth. ’ ’ Students should appreciate more¬ over, how indispensable a contribution this subject has made and is still making to science and invention. The title ^‘mother of the sciences” is no misnomer. Both the direct and indirect services have been invaluable. Mathematics has not only offered essential tools to the chemist, astron¬ omer, physicist, and social scientist; it has ‘‘supplied kin¬ dred interests of thought with a standard of clarity, rigor and certitude.”^® The attention of more advanced stu¬ dents may be called to such significant attempts as Spinoza’s to base a system of ethics on the principles of geometric 24 c. J. Keyser, The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking ^ p. 34. p. 309. 294 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH necessity. In general, the distinctly ethical service of mathematics may be said to be its helping ns ‘‘to think rigorously whatever is rigorously thinkable or whatever may become rigorously thinkable in the course of the up¬ ward striving and refining evolution of ideas. ^ What has been said elsewhere with regard to the study of history and biographies in other subjects applies also here. Pupils are often led to take a new interest in mathe¬ matics when they realize that their textbook represents the cumulative contributions of lofty natures from India, Arabia, Egypt, Greece and modern lands. It is well to know something about Thales, Plato, Euclid, Archimedes, about the founder of the Pythagorean fellowship, and the moderns from Descartes on. By explaining the crude ideas of remote antiquity, tracing the gradual discovery of new facts, naming the great masters in the roll of mathematicians and the most important of their discoveries, it is possible to give most students a greater sympathy for the search for truth, and a broader view of mathematics as a body of knowledge which has been acquired by long and arduous labor, and is constantly being enlarged.^’^ Questions and Problems 1. What is the ethical value in cultivating habits of mathematical accuracy ? 2. Would you recommend that time be given to lessons on sound and unsound investments? 3. Would you recommend to parents that children be given a regular weekly allowance of spending money? 4. Examine textbooks in arithmetic to see how many problems are concerned with other than commercial transactions. References See, besides references quoted in text: Dewey, John, and McLellan, J. A., The Psychology of Number. 26 Ibid., p. 3. ~~ 27 “Course of Study in Mathematics,” Ethical Culture School. VALUES IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION 295 Hall, G. S., Educational Problems, Vol. II, Ch. XVIII. Judd, C. H., Psychology of High School Subjects, Ch. II Kirkpatrick, J. A., The Use of Money. Klapper, Paul, The Teaching of Arithmetic. “The Problem of Mathematics in Secondary Education” (Govern¬ ment Printing Office). Smith, D. E., The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics. Wilson, G. M., Survey of Social and Business Use of Arithmetic, Teachers^ College Contributions, No. 100. X. Physical Education Although some gifted persons may possess strong wills in spite of weak bodies, for most people physical and moral vigor are likely to be connected intimately. Johnson’s remark that the sick man is a scoundrel is borne out by innumerable instances where irritability, gross indolence, exaggerated fears, and other indications of weak will may be traced to poor health. Other things being equal, boys and girls will bring to their tasks minds more alert, spirits more cheerful, and wills more energetic if their bodies are sound. Particularly in adolescence many are apt to enter¬ tain morbid fears which better health can do far more to banish than continued exhortations to cheer up and be brave. The same may be said of other nervous disorders. Frequently they require most of all a proper physical regimen. The means at our disposal are hygienic surroundings, instruction in hygiene, the inspiration afforded by ideals of self-control, gymnastics, including calisthenics and folk dancing, and athletics. Instead of being interested chiefly in training select teams, the best schools will see that every pupil is encouraged to participate in athletic pursuits. The moral values in athletics are abundant. Even a single reason like the contribution to clean recreation would justify the importance attached to this activity. Warning must be sounded against excessive eagerness to score a repu- 296 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH tation for victories. The ethical aim is to cultivate the spirit of teamwork, and especially of honorable rivalry, with all that this implies of fair play, courtesy, and gen¬ erosity both in victory and in defeat. In gymnastics much can be done to instil habits of in¬ stant, voluntary control and discipline in obedience to orders. Without the corrective supplied by free coopera¬ tion in sports, gymnastics on a large scale might perhaps simply inculcate habits of automatic obedience which are hardly consistent with the ideals of democracy. The value of the combination lies in the fact that both types of team¬ work are needed, each in its special place. There are occa¬ sions, for example, on an alarm of fire, when it is essential that whole groups respond implicitly and instantly to sharp commands from those in authority. There are other occa¬ sions, for example, a civic reform, where the freer type of teamwork is required. In both cases what is needed is not only the practice but that conscious, intelligent grasping of the ideal to which reference has been made in these pages many times. For the timid natures both gymnastics and athletics afford excellent means of developing self-confidence. Boys and girls are often helped in this regard, not simply be¬ cause of improved health, but because of the self-trust inspired by the consciousness of having overcome difficul¬ ties once feared. Questions and Problems 1. Comenius said that children should be trained early in “temperance’^; and he was not thinking of alcoholic drinks. Was the word well used? 2. Consult Cannon’s The Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage. What suggestions does it offer for a course in self-discipline ? 3. Make a list of a dozen games in the order of young people’s fondness for them. Point out the values in each. VALUES IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION 297 4. What can America learn from the athletic practices of ancient Athens? What from the practice of English schools? See chapter on the latter subject in Conover’s Personality in Education. 5. Do you know instances where traits developed in athletic pursuits were not carried over to other activities? Explain the reasons. 6. Consult parents as to the hurtful effects of excessive home¬ work. Why is the parent’s viewpoint in such cases apt to be wiser than that of the ordinary teacher? 7. Why do some courses in gymnastics repel the pupils? How can this difficulty be met? 8. What opportunities for supervised recreation are provided by your community? 9. Do you notice in your pupils any effects of the commercializ¬ ing of athletics in our country? How can these effects be avoided ? 10. Why is it better to stress the positive benefits of hygienic living than to play upon fears of the bad results of failure? References Allen, W. H., Civics and Health. Andress, J. M., Teaching of Hygiene in the Grades. Curtis, H. S., Education for Play. Johnson, G. E., Education by Plays and Games. Lee, Joseph, Play in Education. Monroe, Paul, Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. XVIII. “Physical Education in Secondary Schools” (Government Print¬ ing Office). Rapeer, L. W., Educational Hygiene. Sies, a. C., Spontaneous and Supervised Play in Childhood. Terman, L. M., Hygiene of the School Child. CHAPTER XIV NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS To quicken the better sentiments and get the types of behavior we have been considering, to what native tend¬ encies shall we appeal? No man is able to say just why, in the last analysis, human beings in a given situation choose one line of conduct rather than another. In our pupils as in ourselves there is a welter of motives, some quite admirable, others much less so. Our task as teachers is not always simple. On the one hand, we must avoid appealing to motives that are so far beyond the range of our young people that nothing results but weariness on their part, or what is worse, cant and self-deception. On the other hand, the higher powers are likely to atrophy from failure to call upon them, and it is in the spirit of our motives, rather than in the number of overt perform¬ ances, that moral excellence resides. In general, there¬ fore, it would seem wisest to appeal unfailingly to the highest levels, to reinforce the better motives where neces¬ sary by appeals to the other kind, and to try always to have our pupils understand, as far as they can, the differ¬ ence between the two sorts. In the main, the difference is that the lower motives do not represent a deliberate choice of the right as such. Their activity either is subconscious, or, where it is more clearly apprehended, it is prudential rather than ethical. Since high and low both play their part in the actual conduct of life, it is well, therefore, to survey all of these many resources in their turn. First, however, there are a few general considerations 298 NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 299 that apply to both the higher and the lower types. Positive suggestions, for instance, are always better than negative. The ethical life is not a life of ‘‘donTs,” but a life of power put forth to reach positive objects. Thus a desire to hold a job and to excel in it will do more to make a lad discipline himself than a hundred warnings by his parents about courses from which he must abstain. The more finely he conceives his vocation, the more positive will be the excellences in which he will want to train himself. In like manner, a high expectation is usually more cer¬ tain to call forth a proper response than is the resort to rebuke. We all tend more or less to become what others expect us to be. The lad who gets on his mother’s nerves because ‘‘she always has to scold him” may possibly be what he is precisely because of the attitude betokened by her complaint. She has probably gotten into the habit of noting every single misdeed and so is continually suggest¬ ing to him that he misbehave. He surprises her by his better conduct elsewhere, but it is probable that there it is taken for granted that he will comport himself becomingly. Just as Nelson’s “England expects every man to do his duty” brought out the hero in every sailor in the fleet, so the quiet confidence that we show in young people ’s better capacities will help to bring them forth. In this respect, teachers have much to learn from the success of mission workers in rescuing the fallen. Suggestions come with greatest force from those who are already admired or respected. Besides, only a constant play of better suggestion is of any value. The experience of advertisers that their suggestions must be continuously repeated is a warning against reliance upon a few inspiring talks. Suggestibility is dependent also upon the proper atmos¬ phere. The same ideas can often be conveyed in moods of ^alm that a mind occupied with other considerations will 300 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH reject. For this reason, the quiet of the church service, the silent impressiveness of a stately ceremony, or the appeal of music all help. A brief word in the assembly, before the day ^s work is begun, will often be found to have less obstacles to overcome than a more forceful exhortation delivered at a time when the mind is bristling with more or less hostile preoccupations. And there is no doubt that many an indirect suggestion will carry over where direct appeal is resisted. Do we not all know the moods in which we rebel at the idea that another person can advise us as well as we ourselves ? Then somewhere the very idea which we rejected is gently dropped into the dim background of our consciousness without our being aware of the fact, and we act it out and fancy ourselves to have originated it. Undoubtedly there is much in a strategy of this sort that will be found useful. The Freudians, too, have something to offer in their reminder to lessen wherever we can the possibilities of conflicting desire. To get the best motives operative with as little friction as possible is by all means common sense. Nevertheless, all these indirect approaches are quite limited in their usefulness. They call only upon the lower order of will. They are avowedly used to save people the need of deliberate self-direction. The skilled nurse does not ask an enfeebled patient what he wants for dinner, but spares him the effort of choice by presenting her own selec¬ tion in the most appetizing way. Under the circumstances, this method is quite justified. But it would scarcely be recommended if the aim were what it is in the education of the normal person, the strengthening of the will. What substitute can there be here for the exercise of conscious volition ? Far worse than to be bored in one 's youth is to be exposed all one’s life to the mercy of whatever sugges¬ tions are presented attractively enough. Here we are confronted again with the problem of the NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 301 nature and the place of voluntary effort. Thanks to the assaults by the Pragmatist school upon the old type of drudgery and thanks to the correctives offered by the expe¬ rience of others who have tried the Pragmatist methods, the road ahead is now reasonably clear. The way to train will-power is neither to make school work easy nor to pro¬ vide meaningless hardship, but rather to have the children attack their difficulties with a real conviction that the effort involved is worth their while. Nobody ever drudges for the sheer sake of working hard. Those who were perma¬ nently benefited by the old-fashioned discipline were the selected minority who showed by their survival that these methods were either specially adapted to their tougher fibre or that they themselves were able to put enough will of their own into the disagreeable tasks to win this by¬ product of further strength. Mechanical performance never educates, no matter how often it is repeated. Effort strengthens only when it is put forth whole-heartedly ; and this happens when w’e know that, howsoever distasteful it may be in itself, it leads to something for which we really care — for example, we may study our mathematics to get into college — or when we feel it to be good in itself — for example, solve a puzzle for the sheer delight of mastering it. Hence the wisdom of the present-day insistence upon eliminating the mechanical grind in which the class can see nothing of either this direct or indirect value. Hence also, the positive good in utilizing for educational pur¬ poses those interests that the older pedagogy scored as sinful. In short, the upshot of the ‘‘interest-effort^^ con¬ troversy is that it is best not to turn school work into play but to select the educational material and methods that call out the utmost of the child’s voluntary assent in his own training and, where the child encounters the disagreeable stretches, to keep before him those positive aims of his own which will spur him to overcome the hardships willingly. 302 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH We come here to the central problem of deliberate choices. If our pupils are to advance morally, they must knowingly choose higher aims than they already accept. But their higher wants will be called into play only as these are in some fashion linked up with wants already operative. Does this view condemn us to fatalism? The facts reassure us. First, we never can tell what moral efforts our pupils are capable of until we have tried and tried over and again. Until Dr. Seguin found that there was a way to wake up the undeveloped brain by educating the muscles, every¬ body was convinced that any improvement of the feeble¬ minded was hopeless. Let this warn us against assuming that our pupils are incapable of moral growth. We never can really know whether our failures are due to the children or to our own inability to find suitable methods. Second, we may find encouragement in the fact that, as a matter of experience, people can and do grow better, and, third, that within the stock of native endowments there are to be found tendencies and desires which a wise education will seek out in order to work them over into moral growth. ‘‘Take away these instinctive dispositions with their powerful im¬ pulses, and the organism would ... lie inert and motion¬ less like a wonderful clockwork whose mainspring had been removed or a steam-engine whose fires had been drawn.’^^ These we shall now consider. It will help us to try to classify them even though, because there are so many of them, and because in the actual conduct of life, different sorts are so intertwined, it is impossible to offer a classi¬ fication which will satisfy everybody. Endless ink has flowed upon this problem, and the best that each of us cau do is to mention those tendencies which, in his experience, seem to be fairly typical : ^ 1 William McDougall, Social Psychology, p. 44. 2 See William McDougall, Social Psychology ; William James, “Energies of Men/’ in Memories and Studies; Joseph Jastrow^ NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 303 1. Self-respect. “There are some things which the most depraved will not do. Come what may, even the most aban¬ doned can be insulted by the imputation that they are capable of certain things. ’ ’ ^ How largely or how little this openness to insult is compounded of foolish conceit, is beyond our present question. The fact exists that all of us have a certain measure of pride to sustain us upon some level or other of good behavior. Nor can we minimize the importance of self -judgment as a final arbitrament by re¬ minding ourselves that often it is largely mixed with a fear of losing the advantages of social communion. O’Shea suggests that a boy’s protest against an accusation of cow¬ ardice is not so much an eagerness to vindicate his claim to his own respect as it is a desire to keep from forfeiting the advantages denied to the unworthy.^ There is, to be sure, a social reference in all our conceptions of self — we do, indeed, measure the value of our conduct largely by the comments that it calls forth in others — but there is also a unique sense of the value asserted by ourselves. This is seen most strikingly in the condemnation which we pour upon ourselves when we know that we do not really deserve the approval which has come from outside. O’Shea is right in saying that there is little of this unmixed attitude before adolescence, but it is nevertheless to be found even then,® in some degree or other, and our cue as teachers is to lay hold of it just as soon as we possibly can. At its best this motive appears in such attitudes as the Character and Temperament ; D. Irons, Psychology of Ethics; A. F. Shand, The Foundations of Character ; E. L. Thorndike, The Original Nature of Man; Graham Wallas, The Great Society^ Ch. II, III, VIII, IX. 8 Irons, op. cit., p. 148. 4 M. V. O’Shea, Social Development and Education, pp. 124-128. 5 Sully says that, even in childish resentment at physical injury, “self-feeling, a germ of the feeling of ‘my worth,’ enters . . . and differentiates it from a mere animal rage.” James Sully, Studies of Childhood, p. 235. 304 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH martyred Giordano Bruno : “I preferred a spirited death to a cowardly life.” It is well described in these words of John Stuart Mill’s: ® Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of the beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though . . . persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs. ... We may give whatever explanation we please of this unwillingness; we may attribute it to pride ... to the love of liberty ... to the love of power . . . but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or another . . . and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could, otherwise than momentarily, be an object of desire with them. ... It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. 2. Desire for independence. When Hawthorne was a student at college, he was reported for having violated the rule against card playing. Writing to the lad’s mother, the president suggested that perhaps her son was not wholly to blame, as he had probably been led astray by older stu¬ dents. When young Nathaniel heard of this gratuitous extenuation, he promptly wrote back that he would again break the rule just to show that he was sufficient master of himself to be responsible for his own conduct. Teachers of adolescents will recognize this spirit as typical. It reaches out into many directions, for example, into the desire to be self-supporting. Rightly guided, it is of incal¬ culable value. It is an especially important help to young people’s understanding of the conception of inviolable worth. * J. S. Mill, U tilitarianisniy Ch. II. NATIVE AND ACQUIKED PROMPTINGS 305 3. Desire for self-assertion against obstacles. This is closely linked with the combative instincts. It explains the force of such an appeal as Garibaldi’s to his soldiers: ^‘I do not offer you provisions or money or soft couches. I offer you hunger and thirst, forced marches, cold and fatigue. Let him who loves Italy not with his lips but in his heart, follow me.” Since character calls for struggle against difficulties, it is good to remember that there are tendencies in human nature that can be made to welcome this very fact. We all hate to admit defeat ; we all want to get the better of a hardship. Indeed, so strong is the passion to assert our superiority over unfavorable circumstance that for amuse¬ ment we deliberately create obstacles in order to enjoy the fun of overcoming them. There would be no zest to tennis if the lines of the court could be disregarded. Boys take delight in pranks involving an element of decided danger. Without the spice of difficulty, much of their iniquity would lose its seductive flavor. Mr. George of the Junior Re¬ public once declared that he had had a hard “case” to manage who said it was too easy to be good. He helped the lad to redeem himself by making him see that it was really a tough job. 4. Desire for distinction. Parallel with the wish to be like one’s fellows in order to enjoy their society, is the aspiration to win a certain glory by being better. By it we are spurred to do more than the minimum required for mere social conformity. This incentive shows itself in the eagerness to win in athletic contests and makes a very com¬ mon inducement to hard training. Here is another use made of this motive in a public school in New York : ’’ 7 Annual Reports of the Superintendent of Schools, 1920-1922, “High Schools” (Board of Education, New York), p. 140. The finer spirits, to be sure, need no such public recognition to encourage them. 306 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH After five years of whole-hearted service from our boys, we began to ask ourselves why there should not be some public recognition of faithfulness of this sort. The students high in scholarship in our school have their names inscribed in letters of gold on the Honor Roll Boards. The successful athletes receive their trophies of victory on the assembly platform. Why, we asked ourselves, should there not be some formal tribute paid to quiet and effective service rendered in the printing office, in the school library, stock-rooms, corridors, and lunch rooms? And so the Principal appointed a committee to consider the matter. A plan was drawn up and submitted ... to the teachers and to the student body. It was adopted enthusiasti¬ cally by all. Thus began the Morris Service League. . . . An inspiring speaker is secured, and the newly elected members of the League are called to the platform to receive the bronze pin bearing the inscription ^‘Morris Service League’’ in the school colors. Those selected for distinguished service exchange their bronze for silver pins of similar design. . . . The desire to get in training for Service League membership has become so evi¬ dent even among the first year students that some time ago we organized the Morris Volunteers to work under the leadership of the Service League captains. The desire for distinction has close affiliations with the other motives already mentioned. In its higher forms, it contributes to the sense of worth as the sense of unique and intrinsic preciousness. 5. Vocational interests. It is a commonplace among teachers to-day that young people who cannot be induced to study on other grounds are moved to apply themselves to school work more readily when once they see the con¬ nection between their studies and so keen an interest as •» the desire to earn a living. Industrial education is one of the chief resources in schools for truants and other delin¬ quents. The vocational motive works with other types as well, and it is often a spur, not only to right behaviors in the school, but to a general self-discipline. Indeed, few other appeals carry such conviction as the very evident need for self-control, sound health, perseverance, if one is NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 307 to succeed in the business of making a living. When the vocational motive is ethicized into the desire to put the making of a living at the service of the making of a life, the worthiest promptings are thereby reinforced. Consider only how the sense of the vocation of parenthood makes many a parent a better person than otherwise. The rule holds for other callings as well, once they are regarded ethically. 6. Desire for fellowship. One of the worst of punish¬ ments is isolation from our kind. The result is that in order to live in a society, we must ‘ ‘ behave ourselves, ’ ’ for, unless we are like other people in what they consider essential qualities, we cannot continue in their company. The thought that certain modes of conduct are expected from the members of a given circle is often a marked prop in moments of weakness. Noblesse oblige/^ “the honor of our country” — all such requirements of one’s particu¬ lar “set” help to brace the unsteady will. They make the boy of six stop crying on being told that only babies cry ; they discourage the slacker; and, in the shape of the ethical code of his profession, they keep the lawyer or the doctor in the more honorable path. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to be admitted to a medical school in America, was moved to fresh energy every time she thought that, if she failed in her work, it would henceforth be harder for other women to be allowed to study medicine. For the honor of our group, we do many things that would otherwise be much less easy. Testimony to the strength of this motive is offered in this report from a public school : ® At daily assemblies each boy is conscious of his part as one of 1,200 present. On special occasions he is conscious that he is a part of the student body in which is lodged the honor ^ Log. cit., p. 151. 308 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH and the reputation of the school and that the guests on the platform are his guests. He realizes his responsibility on such occasions and often proves it by giving attention or feigning it when the speaker cannot be heard beyond the first few rows of the orchestra. When, as an individual, he fails to maintain a standard of conduct corresponding to the accepted standards of good breeding, he is not treated as a lav/ breaker and visited with a set dose of disagreeable punishment. Rather he is made to feel that he has shown a shameful ignorance of the dictates of refinement, culture, and good breeding, that, by being incon¬ siderate of the rights of others and thoughtless of the reputation and honor of the school, he has injured himself. The power of the fellowship motive is exhibited most dramatically in the patriotic fervors of war time. Regains, whose fidelity to his word Kant instances as an example of high moral scruple, was perhaps more moved by the wish to serve Rome than by the desire to do right as such. The appeal of country has become in multitudes of lives their one religious impulse. The great task of the school is to cleanse this motive of its baser ingredients, its jingoism, its blood lusts, its conceits, by linking up the idea of pa¬ triotism with the services of peace and by emphasizing the thought that each nation is to serve humanity by such an interchange of influence as encourages in each the calling out of its distinctive best. In a few schools the services rendered by the children in the W^orld War have been followed up by a freshened interest in civic service. More, than this, however, can be done. Special stress should be laid on the fact that it is a patriotic service to give your country the best work that hand and brain can offer in the daily calling, and that just as the soldier must go to the training camp, so young people should regard their school¬ ing as a training camp in which to prepare for the best of vocational service, even before they know definitely what careers they will follow. The relation of the patriotic motive to the need of a sense of fellowship in the world NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 309 community has already been discussed in our study of the spirit of nationalism.® 7. Affection and benevolence. It is quite mistaken to say that human beings are utterly self-seeking. Regard for the welfare of others is every whit as natural as the impulse to seek one’s own gain. As Shaftesbury said in old-fashioned phrase : In the passions and affections of particular creatures there is a constant relation to the interest of a species or common nature. This has been demonstrated in the case of natural affec¬ tion, parental kindness, zeal for posterity, concern for the propa¬ gation and nurture of the young, love of fellowship and company, compassion, mutual succor, and the rest of this kind. The examples of parents and such philanthropic natures as Florence Nightingale, or Father Damien, or Dr. Walter Reed, come to mind at once. But the naturalness of the altruistic tendencies is demonstrated in numberless other instances. Patriotic devotion is one example. So is the readiness with which people subscribe to the support of charities once they see the need ; so is the frequency of the little services which we are perfectly willing to perform every day without the least thought of reward, for example, to direct a stranger, to readdress a letter received for one who has moved away, to help a blind man across the street.^’^ s See A. W. Dunn and H. M. Harris, Citizenship in School and Out, for suggestions for the first six years of school life. Consult also A. W. Dunn, The Community and the Citizen; C. F. Dole, The New American Citizen; W. L. Sheldon, Citizenship and the Duties of a Citizen; E. L. Cabot, A Course in Citizenship. See also refer¬ ences in section on “History and Civics.” 10 A. A. C. Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, Book II, Part I, Section I. See also Epictetus, Discourses, Book I, Ch. XXIII. 11 A worker among prisoners contributes this testimony. Speak¬ ing of on® of the inmates of the jail, she says : “Long after, I asked 310 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH In adolescence there is often a marked outpouring of these impulses strong enough to make young people dedi¬ cate themselves to life careers of philanthropy. It is a pity that in much of our vocational teaching, the attention of students is not called to the service side in all the work of the world, not simply in distinctly philanthropic callings, but in every occupation properly pursued. 8. Promptings to justice. These are compounded of many impulses, some of them considerably less ethical than others. Children are most rigorous, for instance, in de¬ manding equal treatment for all who seem to be equal. If John and James both do wrong, and it is possible to punish only John, then Thomas insists stoutly that both should be whipped or neither.^^ This insistence upon equality and upon the rendering of strict quid pro quo leads no doubt to the ‘ ‘ eye for an eye ’ ’ code which children are much more likely to honor than the doctrine preached in the Sermon on the Mount. But, crude as these promptings to justice are and greatly as they need to be refined and enlightened, they constitute the raw material with which we must work. Fortunately few persons are so dead to any sense of justice that the idea of ‘‘a square deaU’ fails to appeal, once its squareness is clearly apprehended. 9. Imitation, especially in hero-worship. “What man has done, I can do. ’ ’ The inspiration of example is beyond question. Our task is to offer the richest variety of the best examples we can find. Certain cautions, however, must be uttered, {a) For instance, monotonous repetition defeats its own purposes him what had induced him to reply to my questions so frankly and sincerely. His answer was, ‘Because I knew if I lied to you, it would make it harder for you to believe the next man you talked with, who might tell you the truth.’ ” W. L. Taylor, The Man Behind the Bars, p. 235. 12 See Earl Barnes, Studies in Education, “Children’s Ideas oi. Punishment.” NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 311 and creates dislike. Imitation follows only where the ad¬ miration is genuine. (&) Great skill is needed to give the deeds of a hero the living meaning which they possess when they are trans¬ lated into terms of the child’s own possibilities. On this head, speaking of the attempt to encourage self-control by holding up such examples as that of the Roman who plunged his hand into the fire to show his captors that tor¬ ture could not move him, an able educator writes : We cannot make our teaching of this trait effective simply by telling anecdotes of the ancient Romans. . . . The fact is that the child is not an ancient Roman; his temperament is different, his social environment is different — namely, a society where everything is done to satisfy his wants and to make life easier for him. In addition, he does not know the methods by which the Roman hero trained himself to this degree of self- control; and even if he did know, such means would be out of the question for people of our modern nervous tendency. Hence, this example, apparently so attractive, is best employed only as a symbol and a picture. Then the author goes on to say that this symbol gets its meaning only as it is interpreted into the child’s own expe¬ riences in self-control and those further experiences which the modern child ought still to meet. The conduct of the hero, that is, must be conceived as possible of imitation in the child’s own life. It is not enough to have a stock of images of other people’s heroic deeds; one must imagine himself doing acts of this sort in his own sphere of con¬ duct. Hence it is well, along with Homer’s and Plutarch’s heroes treated in this way, to keep before him the heroes of his own time and opportunities, the heroes of his own years and powers. We must not underrate the value of an appeal that strikes home to the boy as something that he must obey now. Morality means making the best of one’s 13 F. W. Foerster, Jugendlehre, p. 15. 312 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH present daily life, not simply waiting for the moral oppor¬ tunities of adult years. A wise system of education must take account, in other words, of the double aspect in the needs to which hero- worship ministers. We need the distant goals and we need the immediate helps. As James Lane Allen put it, we need both the beacons shining from afar and the candles we can hold in our hands. (c) A quantitative study by Barnes of children’s ideals brought out the fact that girls mentioned as their models a disproportionate number of persons of the opposite sex.^”* The reasons are obvious. Our histories deal chiefly with the exploits of men, women being often completely ignored. To make up for this deficiency, we must introduce our girls to heroines in literature, but, better still, we should have them know what part women have really played in the world’s work. We must introduce them to Alice Freeman Palmer, Caroline Herschel, Mary Lyon, Elizabeth Black- well, Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Jane Addams, Rosa Bonheur, and Madame Curie. It was a wise provision of Mr. Durant, when he founded Wellesley College, to in¬ sist upon having women as professors, through fear that the girls would not reach high levels if they got the idea that there was something in their sex which ‘‘debarred them from high scientific standing. ’ ’ The whole question of heroes as ideals, it may be said in closing, needs very careful and constant attention. Ac¬ quaintance with biographies alone may give life a false interpretation. Children are apt to think that the world’s good and bad are the work of a few selected individuals, whereas history, in spite of Carlyle, is not simply a record of its great men. Nor is it the hero of to-day’s newspaper who has the monopoly of present-day moral opportunity. Earl Barnea, Pedagogical Seminary^ Vol. VII, pp. 3-19. 15 G. H. Palmer, Life of Alice Freeman Palmer^ p, 93. NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 313 There are daily heroisms which never get into print, and, most important of all, life is not a string of heroic situa¬ tions whether sung or unsung. We may call the daily per¬ formance of unpleasant little duties heroic if we will, but, after all, it is these humble, uneventful tasks that make for most of us the great bulk of the day’s living. 10. ^Esthetic sense. ‘‘Our ordinary words descriptive of righteousness are largely borrowed from sssthetics. We speak of what is good as fair, fit, fine, clean, square — assthetic terms all. What is bad is ugly, hideous, repulsive, coarse, unsuitable. ... If I were a father and were send¬ ing my boy from home, I should tremble at his departure if I knew that he had no regard for beauty. . . . Many times have I been saved from wrong-doing through the thought of . . . what an ugly and repulsive person I must afterwards appear, and not to others only but to myself. ’ ’ That the aesthetic sense alone is no guarantee of rectitude, the lives of countless artists will testify. Benvenuto Cellini is hardly a model for youth, judged even by the standards of his own dav. Nevertheless, for some situations there is a likelihood of moral suggestion in the feeling for beauty by which “fastidiousness protects from vice as effectively as a colder ascetic conscience. ’ ’ 11. Religious feelings. All human history attests the influence exerted upon conduct by the sentiment of awe in the presence of unseen realities, especially of awe for a power constraining men to righteousness. The ethical significance of the religious sentiments is discussed at length in a succeeding chapter. The existence of all these tendencies should encourage 16 G. H. Palmer, Field of Ethics, pp. 92, 93. See also F. C. Sharp, /Esthetic Element in Morality, Ch. III. 17 Joseph Jastrow, Qualities of Men, p. 15. “The virtues, though subject to complex sympathies and antipathies, have an underlying afl&nity for their kind,” p. 17. 314 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH us. If our pupils are so constituted that a higher course of conduct does not appeal to them as spontaneously as to those rarer natures like Emerson ’s who seem never to have known the wrestlings wdth conscience familiar to other men, there is always the chance that the better way will be ac¬ cepted through its connection with some of the promptings we have here indicated. One or two further reminders, however, need to be stressed. One is the w^arning to beware of the formal discipline fallacy. There is no guarantee that the motives impelling to a particular type of conduct will necessarily operate in other fields. A lad whose combative instincts are strongly marked in athletics is not for that reason to be expected to welcome the difficulties offered by his problems in mathe¬ matics. That such a spreading of good result is possible must by all means be conceded, but it is only possible, not certain. The likelihood of such an extension depends on the degree to which the ideals back of any special aptitude are consciously taken to heart with the resolve that they shall be so extended. The self-discipline imposed by a lad for the sake of athletic success will be part of his life plan only as he has the good sense to see the need of making the highly specific applications necessary elsewhere. We are thus recalled to the fact that experience alone does not teach but that everything depends upon intelli¬ gent understanding of its meaning. Hence, too, it is essen¬ tial to enlist the intelligent cooperation of our young people in working over their native tendencies into genuine ideals. Ethical conduct is not a matter of gratifying such self- regarding impulses as the desires for self-assertion, etc., here mentioned. Nor is it, on the other hand, what so many think it, an affair of the altruistic impulses. Neither egoism nor altruism, as such, has any final ethical value. Both are necessary. Robust self-assertion is quite as essential to character as the spirit of kindness. The ethical ideal tran- NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 315 scends both egoism and altruism by making both of them contribute to the best of conduct, that is, to the conduct in which, as we saw in an earlier chapter, we raise up in one another the sense of spiritual reality. Every such perception becomes a stimulus to ever better dealings; and here the most practical resource lies in a habit as yet insufficiently cultivated — the habit of seeing people in the light of their ideal natures. What this means we understand readily enough when we have lost someone whom we have greatly loved. We behold his countenance now transfigured with the light of what was best in him, and the image becomes for us a kind of guardian angel admonishing us when our conduct is unworthy or in our better moments smiling approval. The face of a living child performs the same office for us when the eye of our affection looks ahead and sees the noble person we want the child to be. These images of the ideal life in people are marvelously potent. It would help us greatly to form the habit of thus regarding people, beginning with the per¬ sons closest to us, practicing the habit especially in the case of those whom we are tempted to rate cheaply, always seeing their faces illumined by the inner excellence raised to its loftiest degree. By such means we get glimpses of that in people which most merits our services ; the best we can do for people is to help them become aware of their highest selves. And the attempt has a creative effect upon our own lives ; it quickens the spiritual consciousness in us. Extended beyond our own circle to ever wider groups and projected in time beyond our own day, these mental portraits symbolize for us the universe of perfect being. If we learn to surround ourselves by this ideal company of guardian and guiding souls and to consult their glance, we shall find something exceedingly energizing in the practice. Just as the soldiers of Napoleon, about to give way to weariness, were roused by the call : ‘ ‘ The eyes of all Prance 316 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH are upon you,” we too can find an unfailing stimulation in the thought of the beloved spectators gazing upon us. The greatest power in all the world is the power we draw from contact with the good life in people. If, then, we learn to draw upon it by constructing images of our ideal company, we shall be better able to pass on to our young people the most effective of all agencies for the quickening of their own best. The other motives become ethical to the extent of their penetration by this highest. Let us not be timorous about addressing the loftiest levels to which youth can ascend. There is danger in the pro¬ fessional tendency to fall into a rut and to be content with whatever conduct we can get, whether the motives be high or low. The ethical life is essentially a life of growth, a matter of endlessly reaching out after rarer, higher, and deeper relationships than those already lived. The arch temptation for most people, let it be said again, is not wickedness but indifference and stagnation. School and college, because they deal with lives as yet relatively uncompromised, are of all places the ones to keep the currents of moral energy always fresh by revealing con¬ stantly higher sources of inspiration. What else is the function of ideals? The story is told that a certain class once objected : ^ ‘ Professor, this course is above our heads. ’ ^ ^ ‘ I know it, ’ ’ was the quiet reply, ‘ ‘ I am directing it where your heads ought to be. ’ ’ Questions and Problems 1. Read JSuchleherry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Whitens Court of Boyville, Howells’ A Boy^s Town, Martin’s Emmy Lou, Can¬ field’s Understood Betsy. Report from these books on chil¬ dren’s interests and the educative uses to be made of them. 2. Summarize the arguments for and against the use of prizes, medals, etc. How can the good in rivalry be so employed as to minimize the harm? NATIVE AND ACQUIRED PROMPTINGS 317 3. Explain why children are sometimes more unhappy in schools where they can do as they please than in schools of a stricter sort. 4. Give instances from both adult and child life to show that an obedience obtained chiefly by force fails to stay put. Explain why. 5. What is your idea of a prig? Why is the name sometimes applied unjustly? How can priggishness be avoided? 6. Adolescent boys will often develop an interest in personal tidiness because of their interest in girls. What further educational suggestions are there in a fact of this kind? 7. Discuss the point in the illustration (Freeland’s Modern Ele¬ mentary School Practice, p. 371) of how boys were diverted from killing birds by being set to build bird-houses. References See, besides references quoted in text: Addams, Jane, Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, Ch. III. Bagley, W. C., and Colvin, S. S., Human Behavior, Ch. IX, X. Barnes, Earl, Studies in Education, Second Series, ‘‘Children’s Ambitions.” Bligh, S. M., The Direction of Desire. Dewey, John, Human Nature and Conduct; Interest and Effort in Education. Hartmann, Gertrude, The Child and His School, Part I. Hocking, W. E., Human Nature and Its liemaking. Holmes, Arthur, Principles of Character Making, Ch. V, IX, XII. Jastrow, Joseph, Character and Temperament. Martin, E. D., The Behavior of Crowds. Korsworthy, Naomi, and Whittly, M. T., The Psychology of Childhood, pp. 219-297. O’Shea, M. V., Mental Development and Education, Ch. XI, XII. Swift, E. J., Mind iZ the Making, Ch. II; Youth and the Race, Ch. I, II. Thorndike, E. L., Educational Psychology, Vol. I, “The Origi¬ nal Nature of Man.” CHAPTER XV THE POWER OF THE FEELINGS From what has been said thus far, it might seem as if the activities and mental processes we have mentioned could be carried on with the impersonal coldness with which, for instance, we agree that two and two make four. This is not so. To focus attention upon specific phases of our problem, we have omitted to notice that in all these opera¬ tions there is a certain tone or coloring to our states of mind, a matter of feeling such as we recognize when, for instance, we compare an auctioneer ’s description of a house with the ideas in the minds of those to whom “house’’ has meant “home.” In the main, our attitudes toward matters of right and wrong are of no consequence for character-building so long as they remain a more or less cold-blooded awareness of the fact that such and such duties exist. To agree that cheating is wrong in the same detached way in which we say that the square of a binomial must be a trinomial is not going to lead to any notable inner change. The really fruitful decision is made with feeling. It says, * ‘ Cheating is some¬ thing I detest.” Where these feelings are absent, at least in the initial stages — the fixing of habit renders their oper¬ ation less and less necessary — conduct does not follow. “What’s Hecuba to him . . . that he should weep for her?” asks Hamlet. So with all of us, a moral issue is a quite lifeless affair unless it strikes us with a moving sense of its being our concern. This sense of intimate concern is hard to analyze, but it is a fact to be reckoned with in all our moral behaviors. Its function is to release the energy 318 THE POWER OF THE FEELINGS 319 needed to overcome moral inertia. Character develops through the setting up of new ends; we grow by being consciously or unconsciously dissatisfied with our familiar selves and by wanting new and better. Our native inertia, however, inclines us to follow the lines of least resistance already marked out by instinct and habit. The force needed to overcome this tendency is feeling. How readily actions that otherwise would never be performed become possible when feeling is intense, the war-time efforts to stimulate “morale” abundantly illustrate. The feelings also may clarify the judgment. To be sure, they may mislead. Envy, for example, blinds us to an¬ other’s excellence, or love exaggerates it. But the fact for the educator to remember is the powerful reinforcement that the feelings can bring to the better judgments. A sense of shame, for instance, makes us see with penetrat¬ ing clearness a truth otherwise obscured. Love makes us understand better the claims of its object upon our service. The wish is father to the thought in right thinking as truly as it is in our unworthier prejudices. ‘ ‘ If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, ” says Professor James, ” your head will assuredly never make you believe in one. ’ ’ ^ For teachers the point is important. Do we not often meet situations about which we find it fruitless to argue? Sometimes, for example, the line between vulgarity and its opposite is too fine for many of our pupils to see it from our demonstration. We may give them reasons by the score, but for certain minds there remains somewhere in the line of argument a baffling ‘ ‘ why ’ ’ ? Our hope in such instances is feeling, a sentiment of self-respect, a growing refinement of disposition, a quickened loyalty which argument, as such, can never expect to create. Now as of old the issues of life are out of the heart. 1 William James, Will to Believe, p. 23. 320 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH A third important function is the power possessed by certain feelings to bring individuals into union. Although feeling is a sense of special significance to the self, some facts make the same appeal to all normal beings. Brothers and sisters who are separated by intellectual difference are united when the family finds its honor attacked or when it suffers a grief. So are nations. The sense of community is almost entirely a matter of feeling. The task of cultivating these resources is fraught with peculiar difficulties. It is easier to correct an error of reasoning in physics than it is, let us say, to dislodge a prejudice against foreigners. A teacher can be more sure of success in the attempt to teach a fact of astronomy than to instil a love of beauty. One thing, however, is certain : the method of direct attack upon harmful feelings is futile. Guardians of the young are often tempted into frontal assaults upon misdirected affections, only to find that the labor is lost. Emotional states have an annoying tend¬ ency to welcome only such ideas as are congruous and to repel the inharmonious. As Williams James put it:^ If we be joyous, we cannot keep thinking of those uncertainties and risks of failures which abound upon our path; if lugubrious, we cannot think of new triumphs, travels, loves, and joys; nor if vengeful, of our oppressors’ community of nature with our¬ selves. The cooling advice which we get from others when the fever fit is on us is the most jarring and exasperating thing in life. Reply we cannot, so we get angry; for by a sort of self¬ preserving instinct which our passion has, it feels that these chill objects, if they once but gain a lodgment, will work and work until they have frozen the very spark from out of our mood. Our cue in such cases obviously is to lie in wait for the fury of the hostile mood to subside. Even where the feeling to be replaced is more than 2 James, Psychology y Briefer Course, p. 451. THE POWER OF THE FEELINGS 321 momentary, a similar principle holds true. To make a direct charge upon a detrimental fondness is useless. If the better sentiment is to take its place, it must win by the unforced recognition of its own superior merit. Much as we may deplore the mischief in the inferior motion-picture show, nothing but an uncoerced love for the higher kind of entertainment will drive out the lower. All this demands not only skill and tact but endless patience, for the results come with such painful slowness. After months of untiring effort to get youngsters to care for fun superior to the horseplay of the Sunday comic supplement, or for ‘ ‘ ideals ’ ’ better than those admired with such tantalizing wayward¬ ness, what aching of the heart it brings to find that the perverse admiration still persists! This is the time to be specially on guard. Nothing is easier than to be moved at this point into hurrying matters by eloquent denuncia¬ tion, and nothing is more fruitless. The feelings that rep¬ resent a change of heart come often without the least con¬ sciousness on the student’s part that his tastes are chang¬ ing. The experiences of the teacher’s own youth in regard to reading illustrates the point. Fondness for the detective story of the poorer sort disappears once a delight is felt in Conan Doyle and Poe ; the historical tales of Henty appear childish as soon as Scott and Dumas are enjoyed. Quite the same holds with regard to personal ideals. Only the uncompelled love of the higher can banish the love of the lower. What further can be done? At the outset we can con¬ serve what is undoubtedly good in the mixture of feelings already operative. Ridicule, for example, is sometimes apt to be bad, because it may weaken one of the most essential props to the moral nature, the sense of personal dignity. The greatest care is likewise necessary to respect the desire of the young to be their own masters. Many a trying act of seeming depravity is the expression of this highly valu- 322 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH able trait. To wound it by punishing it as if it were utterly wicked is the gravest mistake. Furthermore, it need hardly be said that we must not try to eradicate prema¬ turely a feeling that serves a useful function in a lower stage of development, howsoever necessary its absence may be at a higher. Thus, the contempt of a child of nine for a tattle-tale must be respected. The wider loyalty involved in the duty of the citizen to expose an offender is too diffi¬ cult for children to understand in the ordinary situations of the school life. The time comes, to be sure, when the idea of this better type of loyalty must be understood. But at least up to early adolescence the narrower loyalty should be respected, because it constitutes the material out of which to develop the later and better types. A good general rule for the education of feeling is to remember that feelings are normally evoked by concrete acts, specific ideas, or persons, and never by generalities. We admire not excellence in general but definite manifesta¬ tions in particular acts of human beings. We are never indignant at abstract wrong but always at acts of specific injustice or cruelty. Other conditions being equal, the more vivid the images we form the more deeply the feel¬ ings are touched. The story of one famine-stricken child affects us more powerfully than to be told that millions are starving. A picture is still more moving. The actual sight of one child itself is the most effective method of all. Let the school, therefore, use every recourse to make the noblest conceptions concrete and vivid.^ Literature is one such means. Our pupils catch in a new way a sense of what makes a home precious, when they enjoy the pictures in ‘‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night” or “Snowbound,” or when they linger over Eppie’s decision to stay with Silas s A method of interesting children in moral ideas through pictures on the screen has been worked out by M. J. Fairchild, Character Education Institution, Chevy Chase, Washington, D. C. THE POWER OF THE FEELINGS 323 Marner. They feel a scorn for the ‘‘street-angel, house- devil” behaviors when they enjoy Browning’s “My Last Duchess.” The hitter experience of Arthur Donnithorne in Adam Bede, when he hears of the arrest of Hetty Sorel — -“there’s a kind of wrong for which you can never make up ’ ’ — may stir in many an older high-school lad reflections on sex morality otherwise less easy to start. Other arts than those of the writer must also be levied upon. Music, painting, sculpture have their tale to tell of the splendor that life wears whenever it is irradiated by the light of ideal excellence. Wise indeed were the Greeks in making their cities beautiful. They wanted children to grow up amid images that would make them draw them¬ selves erect with a heightened sense of dignity : ‘ ‘ Then will our youth,” said Plato in The Republic, “dwell in a land of health amid fair sights and sounds and receive the good in everything ; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear like a health-giving breeze from a purer region and insensibly draw the soul into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.” For this purpose much can be made of the school festi¬ val, the ceremony, the ritual, the play, and the pageant where the best treasures of all the arts are brought together and the effects are heightened by communal participation. ‘ ‘ Natures specially gifted can live lives that are emotionally vivid even in the rare high air of art and science ; but many, perhaps most of us, breathe more freely in the medium, literally the midway space, of some collective ritual. ’ ’ * The development of the primitive Greek ritual into plays which the modern ages have not surpassed, the debt of the modern drama to the ceremonies of the Church at Christ¬ mas and Easter remind us how close is the connection be¬ tween religious sentiments and drama in its most inclusive * Jane Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual, p. 206. 324 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH sense, and how useful a clue is thus afforded to the school of to-day. Not only are the feelings reenforced by the aesthetic appeal which every worthy ceremony makes, and by the sense of a collective sentiment, but a ceremony is primarily an attempt to present an important fact with the most striking concreteness. It bids participants and spectators stop their usual work for the very purpose of directing all attention upon the importance of this single circumstance. Says a teacher who has done notable pioneer work in this field : ® We plead for the incorporation of the festival in the regular activities of the school on the general ground that it is important to keep alive in the child those feelings of joy and gratitude, of admiration and awe, of which the festival has at all times been the expression. It is important that the child should have an imagi¬ native sense of the great rhythms of life and the mighty presence and potencies of Earth the mother, Earth the sustainer of his life, Earth the august home of his labors. We should preserve in him, if we can, something of the child-man’s responsive glow in the presence of the changes of nature — Christmas and New Year, with their returning light and length of days; Candlemas, the old mid-winter feast ; Easter, with its fresh glow of life in grass and tree; May Day, with its tribute to Flora; Thanksgiving And Harvest Home, with their grateful load of winter store. It is more important still that the child should recall continually on birthdays and death-days the great heroes and martyrs and sages to whom the race owes its priceless gifts of liberty and humanity ; its inventors and voyagers and toilers, its singers and artists; as well as the great historical anniversaries and centennials which mark turning-points in man’s advance along the centuries. It is by these commemorations as by nothing else that we can feed in the young those emotions of admiration, reverence, and love which are the fundamental forces in education as in life. It is thus that we can develop — unconsciously, of course — that underlying consciousness of kind, of human solidarity, of cooperative unity, 6 Percival Chubb, “The Function of the Festival in School Life,” pamphlet published by the Ethical Culture School, New York. See also his Festivals and Plays, THE POWER OF THE PEELINGS 325 which may offset the crude and narrow individualism that every¬ where menaces us. Important as all these considerations are, one fact should be prominent: that in the last analysis, feelings are kin¬ dled by the contagion of personality. The flame of moral enthusiasm is lighted only at the fire that burns in other people. It is this that makes so invaluable the contact with ex¬ cellent life in the persons about us and in those whom we meet in history and biography. Plutarch’s Lives has been for ages a help unfailing to inflame The noble youth with an ambitious heat To be thought worthy the triumphal wreath By glorious undertakings. Such in varying degrees and in different directions is the service of Socrates, Sir Thomas More, Sir Philip Sidney, William the Silent, Hugo Grotius, Florence Nightingale, Lincoln. Each of the school studies will furnish its own list of great lives worth knowing. Surely no course in science is doing all that it might unless it brings pupils into touch with the passion for truth which inspired Roger Bacon, Bruno, Faraday, Darwin. Mathematicians, artists, workers of every kind must all be known. And especially fruitful for to-day is the field opened up by the many inter¬ esting biographies of educators like Horace Mann, Samuel Gridley Howe, philanthropic workers like Dr. Grenfell or Jacob Riis, forward-looking, socially-minded business men like Robert Owen and Richard Cobden. We must guard, of course, against supposing that any human being can ever be a perfect exemplar for any other. To no two beings does life bring exactly the same combina¬ tions of opportunity and hindrance which constitute the field of duty. Likewise we must remember that none of our heroes is himself a perfect being. The best of men, as 326 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH some of our pupils will eventually discover, had deficien¬ cies which eulogy ignores. The younger the child is, the less should attention in any way be called to these shortcomings. In a general way, silence on this head will perhaps be found best for many, if not most, pupils even in the high school. Let them obtain what they can from the positive excellen¬ cies of their heroes. The more thoughtful can be helped by learning that though the work of the world would undoubt¬ edly be done better if there were less clay in man’s make¬ up, after all the good work must be carried forward not by angels but by men. All people are a medley of high and low. The more reflective pupil may therefore learn from biography to be more just in his judgments of his fellow beings, to temper these judgments with discrimination and at the same time to admire heartily the good he discovers in the mixture.® In the main the most useful function of biography should be to kindle enthusiastic, positive admi¬ rations. Much will depend upon the degree to which these person¬ ages are made real to our pupils. The happy anecdote will not suffice. To know one’s heroes in biography, we must live with them from day to day, in something of the fashion in which we meet those whom we admire in the life about us. There must be a certain mass to our knowledge of them, not simply the stray and often unrelated illustrations selected for purposes of anecdote. The most vivid touch of all is that of the living person. William Cullen Bryant, who, as editor of The Evening Post, frequently braved a popular dislike by taking a posi¬ tion in advance of the community’s average moral senti¬ ment, records this debt to his mother : ^ « There is food for reflection in such a characterization as that made of Robert Owen: “He was one of those intolerable bores who constitute the salt of the earth.” f Bryant, English Men of Letters, p. 6. THE POWER OF THE FEELINGS 327 Her prompt condemnation of injustice, even in those instances in which it is tolerated by the world, made a strong impression upon me in early life; and if in the decision of public questions, I have in my sober age endeavored to keep in view the great rule of right without much regard to persons, it has been owing in a good degree to the force of her example which taught me never to countenance a wrong because others did. Another such tribute is that of Matthew Arnold to his father. It is of special interest because the father in this instance was a teacher, the headmaster of Rugby, who inspired not only his son but a host of other men: And through thee I believe In the noble and great who are gone; Pure souls honor’d and blest By former ages, who else . . . Seem’d but a dream of the heart, Seem’d but a cry of desire. Yes! I believe that there Hved Others like thee in the past . . . . . . Souls temper’d with fire, Fervent, heroic, and good. Helpers and friends of mankind. There can be no such thing as educating the sentiments by themselves. To set out to educate feelings as deliber¬ ately, let us say, as we set aside time for gymnastic exercise, is worse than useless. Feelings never exist in isolation. They accompany activities and ideas, and it is in these that they find their justification. Our main concern, there¬ fore, is to introduce our young people to the soundest ideas and the worthiest of activities and let these work their own transforming effect. Anything else breeds senti¬ mentality, the curse that lies in cherishing feeling for its own sake. And finally, important as it is to touch the feelings, this does not mean that the atmosphere of the school must be tense with emotion. Some teachers seem to believe with 328 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH certain types of revivalist that moral ardor requires on their part a constant effort at more and more stirring meth¬ ods of appeal. Whatever may be said for these methods in the treatment of hardened adult sinners — and even here their value is dubious — the task of the school is different. To kindle the steady glow Avhich warms the sense of duty in the relatively uneventful details of the daily living, there is no need to start moral bonfires.® Besides, to change the figure, by continued thunder on the louder chords we make it impossible to accentuate prop¬ erly. Where every phrase is played fortissimo, what terrific pounding is needed to create the necessary sense of propor¬ tion ! All in all, it must be repeated, our pupils ’ salvation is not to he won by attendance at single ethics lessons or impressive pageants nor even at whole courses. Character is a matter of slow growth depending occasionally, to be sure, on the performance of a single striking act here and there, or on some rare, penetrating flash of moral percep¬ tion ; hut in the vast majority of instances, moral growth is a matter of the steady, cumulative effect of quite obscure performances, with a slowly increasing insight into their richer significance. If, to our impatient expectation, it seems that sufficient enthusiasm is lacking, it will hardly help to hurry matters vehemently. All that we can do is to place our young people in those situations where responses of feeling are usually evoked. We can only bid them look upon this picture and on that. We can lead them into the presence of the sublime realities revealed by the lives of the world’s greatest. We can bring them into 8 One of the writer’s students wrote the following testimony as to the harmful after-effects of the usual ‘revival method’: ‘In some cases the feeling is wrought up so much that after people come to their normal selves again, they almost hate the place where their feelings were played upon and the person who did it.’ An excellent discussion of this problem will be found in H. C. King, Personal and Ideal Elements in Education, Chapters on revival methods. THE POWER OP THE FEELINGS 329 touch with earth’s profoundest inspirations recorded in art, in story, in sacred writing. Whether the glow we wish will be kindled in every case, we cannot always be certain. We must, however, begin and end our work in the spirit of the teacher ’s ultimate trust : never assume that any pupil is doomed to permanent insensibility on every side of his nature. Then, without relaxing our efforts to understand our problem better, our hopes will also have their salutary patience. Questions and Problems 1. Study people of your acquaintance from the viewpoint of their response to emotional appeals. Would you say that those whose response is quicker are of a higher moral type? 2. Explain why many schools are prone to neglect the cultivation of feeling. 3. Recall personalities that have influenced your life. To what do you attribute their influence? 4. With all the preaching done in schools, church, and elsewhere, why is not the world much better than it is? 5. Are persons with a highly developed sense of beauty more likely than others to respond to ethical appeals? (See Haw¬ thorne’s thoughts on this in connection with Clifford Pyncheon in The House of the Seven Gables.) 6. Read George Eliot’s essay Debasing the Moral Currency and illustrate from the life of to-day. 7. Illustrate from your own experiences or reading how a lower affection was expelled by a higher. 8. ^‘It is on the wings of enthusiasm that we rise.” Illustrate. If this is true, what is the function of intelligence? 9. Illustrate the truth and the limitations of the statement that moral standards are catching. References See, besides references quoted in text : Chambers, W. G., “The Evolution of Ideals,” Pedagogical Semi- nary, Vol. X. 330 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Chubb, Percival, Festivals and Plays. Hall, G. S., Adolescence, Ch. X. Hill, D. S., “Comparative Study of Children's Ideals,” Pedagogi¬ cal Seminary, Vol. XVIII. Horne, H. H., Psychological Principles of Education, Part IH. King, H. C., Personal and Ideal Elements in Education. Klappkr, Paul, Principles of Educational Practice, Ch. XXH. CHAPTER XVI RELIGIOUS EDUCATION The criticism is sometimes made that the school of to-day is godless and that it can never fulfil its mission of charac¬ ter-building until it abandons its present policy and teaches religion. The relation between religion and character is indeed close and important. But in much of the discussion on this subject, the essential fact is overlooked that char¬ acter determines the religious outlook quite as certainly as religion shapes character, and perhaps even more. Al¬ though it is true that great multitudes are made better by the inspirations fostered in the churches, these inspirations are themselves the outcome of what people make of their moral opportunities. A clearer understanding of this dependence of religion upon ethical experience will do much to settle many a question now vexing parents and school boards. At the outset, it must be recognized that the absence of religion from the schools to-day goes back to something more than the desire to continue our necessary policy of neutrality. Important as it is that schools maintained by the taxes of all the people should not teach the beliefs of any one sect, is it not also true that people are hardly as deeply concerned about religion to-day as they once were? The churches will be here for long years to come, and in many of them the religious life is as active and sincere as can be wished. But to gauge the religious atmosphere, all we need do is to contrast the majority of church-goers 331 332 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH to-day with, let us say, the Pilgrim fathers and their descendants up to a few generations ago. Religion scarcely means to the latest descendants the tremendously vital con¬ cern it was to the ancestors. To many a church-goer, religion is at best a point of good form, and church attend¬ ance a chance for sociability, hardly different in kind from belonging to a social club. Nor may we overlook the dwindling attendance complained of everywhere. There are growing numbers of those to whom religion, whether orthodox or liberal, is frankly of very little concern what¬ ever, or none at all. If religious teaching is introduced into the public schools, it is likely to be, in the main, at the instigation of energetic groups who really represent only minorities. This is said with no desire to underprize the value of religious belief. The moral power encouraged by the old reverences is beyond question. People who got from their religion a compelling sense of exalted aims for the guidance of their lives were, to that extent, better than their easy¬ going, jaunty descendants who never put the fundamental questions at all. When one looks around and sees the cheap, superficial smartness of many a disbeliever, the frivolity, the tawdry emptiness of many a life that finds it easy to laugh at the faith of older days, one wishes that these per¬ sons could feel but the least touch of the religious earnest¬ ness that dignified the lives of their forbears. But without entering upon the reasons for the decline of belief, we must accept the fact that many people to-day, by no means either frivolous or dishonest, find it impossible to believe as their ancestors did. Are they imperiling the moral salvation of their children by not teaching them the old faith ? And how, they ask themselves, shall they respect the child’s right to choose its own religion and at the same time protect it against the mischief attending exposure to . the mercy of chance? The answers to these questions, we RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 333 believe, will throw light on the problem of so-called godless¬ ness not only in the home but in the schools as well. Letting things alone will not meet the situation. It is right that a parent should hesitate to bind his child’s mind. But other people, he will discover, are not so scrupulous about letting his child alone. On every side impressions, beliefs, views of all sorts will compete for the child’s alle¬ giance. The parent’s choice is not whether his children’s views are going to be influenced or remain uninfluenced. The alternative is rather whose promptings the child is to receive, a haphazard, careless, perhaps mischievous indoc¬ trination from strangers, or the help, carefully-planned, of the ones who love the child most. The growth of character — for the sake of which the plea for religious education is now uttered — cannot be the result of accident. The poorer types of personality may be expected to breed anywhere, but the flower of excellence demands the most painstaking cultivation. A mere introduction to the beliefs of many religions will not solve the problem. It is right that children should be saved from the absurd provincialism which regards the “heathen” of China, India, Arabia as illiterate barbarians. The claims of intellectual culture alone, if there were no higher grounds, would forbid any such per- ' version. But the chief virtue of the orthodox training, it must be remembered, was its concentration, its repeated and exclusive stress upon one or two leading motives. Its strength lay in its intensity, a value that attempts at breadth for its own sake will never realize. Fortunately there is an opportunity to provide a training that does possess the necessary intensiveness. We mean ethical train¬ ing — a training in character pursued with all the focal earnestness which the orthodox give to religious nurture. It is the writer’s conviction that an ethical training — not 334 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH moral instruction alone or any other single device, but an intensive cultivation of the moral life at its best — will do these two things: (1) It will give the child all the moral sustenance that a “religious” education can give without binding him to beliefs he may feel called upon later to dis¬ card. (2) It will provide the best basis for whatever religious beliefs he may come later to profess. To make this clear it is necessary to dwell at length upon the fact that religious beliefs themselves depend upon the quality of our ethical experiences. The view here offered is not at all novel. Its ancestry may be traced in part to Aristotle ’s reminder that ‘ ‘ he who is to understand the principles of nobleness should have been well trained in habits. ’ ^ There are abundant illustra¬ tions of this dependence of belief upon practice. To Macbeth upon the throne, existence has become utterly futile, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. ’ ’ His soliloquy sums up the experience of all who look back like him over lives misdirected, and to whom, therefore, the business of living the declining years has become only a leaden-footed journey to the grave. Nothing else could be expected of one whose own conduct had killed the best in himself. A testimony in the other direction appears in George Rennan^s report from Siberia on the aged worker for Russian freedom, Catherine Breshkovsky : “Neither hardship, nor exile, nor penal servitude had been able to break her brave, finely tempered spirit, or to shake her convictions of honor and duty.” These instances each of us may supplement with experi¬ ences of our own. Try to persuade a man who has always lived loosely that such a life is wrong, and we learn quickly enough how largely philosophies are shaped by what people actually do. Or see, on the other hand, how men and women who have always been accustomed to consider the needs of the poor meet the suggestion that their kindness RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 335 is folly. Nothing is more completely reasonable to them than their own generosity, and the explanation is simply that they have always lived that way. That is why their principles are really convictions — beliefs that ‘^conquer, that take hold of them with power. In practice, this means that nobody can get his religion on the authority of a faith held bj^ somebody else. How often people give up the faith which they thought they had entertained in earlier years simply because they had only imagined it was theirs! What they had supposed was a genuine belief was the faith of somebody else, of their parents or their Sunday-school teachers. It was a product passed on to the children as something ready-made, finished, perfect, to be imparted to the young in infant-size packages week after week. If the child was puzzled at the theological conceptions dealt out to him, few thought of welcoming the difficulty as a good sign. We are never puzzled until we begin to think upon our own account. But when a child put questions which showed that he was trying to find his own way through a difficulty, at once a ready-made answer was put forward as final. In consequence, the child reached not religious convic¬ tions but more or less good-natured acquiescence in the faith of somebody else. Not that help from others is to be slighted. Strange indeed would that person be — if it were even possible for him to exist at all — whose thoughts took no color from the thinking of those before him and about him. But when all due weight has been given to the importance of having parents who believe with all their hearts in some commanding ideal goal for life, it yet remains true, as Emerson said, that what another can offer is not instruction, but provocation. He can show what he himself has found best or where those who have gone before have either halted or drawn inspiration and fared further. He can try to win a love for this road rather than that. 336 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Beyond this none can help. We must tread our several paths ourselves. And no path is surer than that of moral experience. When people declare that even though they themselves no longer possess a compelling belief in God, they must assume it for fear that the character of their children will somehow suffer without such a faith, they misread the relationship between faith and practice. The right order puts the prac¬ tice first. If the history of Hebrew-Christian tradition reveals anything at all, it tells that this is the source whence its sublimest doctrines arose. What is now the creed or dogma was once the ardent conviction of a soul on fire with high ethical seriousness, and, if we are to have morally helpful religious convictions to-day, this is the way to get them. To illustrate : A sensitive soul in our own time is touched, let us say, by the burdens imposed on children by life in the slums. He sets to work to remove their handicap. The more deeply he enters into his task, the more he is convinced that he is right, and the more sure he is that everybody who can should assist. He draws on every possible source of help — writing to the papers, publishing books, as Dickens or Jacob Riis did, addressing meetings, petitioning public officers, organizing committees, enlisting his friends and associates. Everybody must work with him, and the more earnestly he holds to his purpose, the more certain he is that all will some day back it up — the city, the nation, and a Divine Providence, too, if he believes in one. It was by some such process that synagogue and church came to possess the doctrines which they preach to-day. The God of the people Israel was not always the God who desired his children to do justice above all else. He became that kind of deity only when the passion for a better justice took possession of men on earth. Some Amos beheld the miseries of the poor. He saw debtors sold into slavery for RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 337 lack of the price to pay for a pair of shoes. He saw injus¬ tice driving through the streets in ivory chariots and the nation looking on unashamed. The spectacle was too much for him. His people must be rescued, the poor from their oppression, the community from its moral indifference. In his mind’s eye, he beheld a picture of this misery banished and his people elevated to a truer sense of their duties. And the more he dwelt upon this image, the more he turned for help to his people’s God. And who was this God? A deity powerful enough to send plagues and to fell the oaks with his thunderbolts — surely he was mighty enough to put a stop to the evils in Israel ! At this point came the greatest step forward in the religion of the Jews — when it flashed upon the souls of the more morally gifted that this God of the lightning bolt, before whom the trembling worshipers laid their sacrifices, would turn, not to the side of the plen¬ teous offering, but to the side of morality and social justice. That is why the synagogue to-day has a God to worship who is at all entitled on moral grounds to reverence. For the belief in a deity better than the thunder god on Sinai before whom good and bad alike were obliged to tremble, the thanks are due to the men with the moral fire in their souls. If they had never risen to this vision of a perfect society, they would not have cared whether their deity was a god of justice or only of sheer brute power, an exalted magician like other gods of old. Be the deity who or what he may, he always reflects the moral attainments of his worshipers. There was a time when the God of the Jews ordered them to slay women and children. “Happy shall he be that dasheth thy little ones against the stones, ’ ’ says the Psalmist ; but this view simply endorsed the prevailing practice of men, a practice which, because they themselves approved it, they could then regard as right. The word of the deity always sanctions what his worshipers already do and command. The Crusaders rode 338 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH into battle with songs about Christ the warrior, not the meek sufferer. Our moral experiences and convictions de¬ cide what the image of our deity is to be. If, therefore, Jews have noble doctrines to believe to-day, it would seem reasonable to suppose that these ideas came as a conse¬ quence of noble experiences lived out by their fathers. The history of Christian doctrine likewise illustrates this relationship. Jesus is a Jew in whom love for his fellow beings is unusually strong and fine. There is something markedly tender in his feeling for those who have been hurt by life’s uglier visitations. Hence, he makes a point of seeking out just these — the poor and the sick, the out¬ casts, the drunkards, the wayward, in all of whom he dis¬ cerns something precious and worth the loving. It is no wonder that, when he wants help for them, he turns to the Father in heaven; but the kind of father to whom he appeals is not the stern dispenser of justice ; he is a parent with a brooding love like Jesus’ own. And one of the utter¬ ances attributed to Jesus puts so unmistakably the psy¬ chology of the dependence of creed upon conduct that one wonders w^hy its importance is so frequently ignored : ‘ ‘ He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, cannot love God, whom he hath not seen. ’ ’ The deed first, then the doc¬ trine. Without that sequence, where would the churches to-day have any doctrines at all worth preaching ? It will be objected that what is said here reverses the proper order, since ethical practices are shaped by religious beliefs and since both the religious beliefs and the ethical principles have come as a revelation from the source of all life. To discuss these ultimate origins is beyond the pur¬ pose of this chapter. That men’s conduct is influenced by their religious convictions is undoubted. But, as we have seen, these convictions are themselves affected by the believ¬ ers’ ethical experiences. In other words, the initial cause RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 339 of the process is of less consequence to the educator than the fact that the moral experiences and the moral beliefs are more immediately in his power to influence. Translated into practice, this requires that whatever religious beliefs our children at last reach must be grounded in their own conduct and their own thinking. Before the facts of religious experience can be interpreted adequately, our major effort must go into providing an intensive devel¬ opment of the best ethical experiences themselves. If, as a result, the children then enroll themselves among the believ¬ ers in God, this belief will have been rooted into the best of soil. If, on the other hand, they believe in their adult years that the traditional religions cannot be theirs, where is the harm if their lives are indeed ethical ? We shall understand this further if we consider the ethical attitude in such a fertile field for religious experi¬ ence as the problem of evil. In some form or other, sooner or later, it crosses the path of every child’s life. A girl who had just recovered from a severe illness was told that the cause was a disease germ and that people catch germs from one another. Some time later, she asked “Who made the first germ ? ’ ’ Should the answer have been ‘ ‘ God made it?” Yes, if this was the parents’ belief. If it was not, the only answer was, “We do not know.” It is not true, as some insist, that the child mind requires the positive answer “God” or the positive answer “Nature.” The imagination of the child is more genuinely stirred by the mystery encountered in trying to think back and back and still further back. To answer “Nature ” is to have the child think of Nature as some kind of powerful person and as one who invented a disease germ only a space of a few years ago — a long span to the mind of a child. Explain, how¬ ever, that we do not know but that life comes from pre¬ existing life, and the child is more likely to feel a sense of vastness and mystery. 340 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH The ethical attitude, however, is not primarily interested in intellectual solutions or in problems of origin. Its inter¬ est is in ideals — how things ought to turn out. Evil is something not so much to be explained in terms of ultimate origins as to be put down. It is less important to know who made the first disease germ or the first foul thing of any kind than it is to know on which side your life is going to be enlisted, on the side of the disease germ or of those who fight it. The main point is this practical attitude. Evil is to be overcome, and, at every step, our service to children must consist in helping them learn how. With the youngest children the method is very simple. In their world, the bad must always be defeated. Red Riding Hood must be rescued and Jack get the better of the Giant every time. Only the friendliest expressions on the face of the W'orld must be sho\\Ti to them in their stories, in the love of flowers and birds and sunshine, in the fostering care bestowed upon them by their own homes. Where they come upon the sadder experiences, for example, in the suffering of animals or of people, acts of kindness of their own must remove the sting. Where they meet evil in stories, ^ilways the good must conquer. When they outgrow the fairy-tale stage, let them see evil as put down by real people, by the heroes of history and of everyday life. Almost every story they read in history is a tale of evil, but, at their stage of life, the empha¬ sis must always rest on the triumph of bravery and wit and the cooperation of the good. Again their own chari¬ ties, kindnesses, and the activities discussed in an earlier chapter are to make real the meaning of right effort. From the age of about twelve on, though the children still need to be encouraged by seeing how the good wins, their confidence should be interpenetrated now with some sense of the immensity of the task. It is at about this stage that they begin to be aware of the shadows accompanying the RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 341 brighter side of life’s pictures. They see the long roll of centuries it took the world to rid itself of such evils as slavery. They begin to realize that poetic justice is not always done in life as it is in their literature, but that often good men and women suffer. Or they see how the excel¬ lence in life is accompanied by its evils, how the liberties of men, for example, have been purchased by the cruelest of bloody conflicts, how religion went hand in hand with per¬ secution perpetrated by people who were not deliberately cruel but often quite sincere in believing such conduct to be a duty. Or they grow conscious of imperfection in those whom they had once beheld in the light of full-orbed hero- worship. In many ways, this period is full of questionings unfamiliar to the earlier stage. This is therefore the time to prepare for appreciation of the supersensible character of genuine ideals. Now that the young people begin to realize that perfection is further off than they had once supposed, they are better prepared to understand how the ideal of the best always outruns the very best of achievement. When the adolescent, unlike the child, realizes that there are ills which cannot be cured by immediate acts of charity, we can use this new under¬ standing to intensify what desires he has for a world of progress. Not at all that youth is pessimistic or ought to be. The normal adolescent, if he is aware that things are wrong, is buoyantly confident that they can all be set right. His faith needs to be fused with some perception of the immensities of the problem and the sublimity of the ideal goals, once these are pitched as high as the truth requires. We can help by clarification in two directions: (1) by an attempt to deepen and enlighten the sense of the inherent saeredness of human life and (2) by interpretation of the meaning of ethical power. It is a great day when one first appreciates that there is something holy about people, something that we can think 342 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH of with only a kind of breathless awe and that forbids us to mistreat them. In the life of primitive man, mere things were believed to possess this sacrosanct quality — stones, statues, strings of beads, the charms used by the priests. The ancestors of Mohammed used to kiss with all reverence a certain black stone at Mecca. Most of these holy objects were holy in the sense of being untouchable. In ancient Israel, the ark was holy in this sense. So sacred was it that to touch it, as Uzzah did when the oxen stumbled and the man involuntarily put out his hand to keep it from falling, was followed by his instant death. One of the big steps forward was taken by the race when men turned from the idea of holiness attaching to mere things and transferred the idea to holiness in people. It was this profound sense of an inherent sacredness in man that led the Hebrews to lay such stress on the command¬ ments forbidding one to maltreat a fellow man, to enslave him, to deny him food and shelter, to take his life or the property needed to sustain his life — in short, to use him as one might use a thing. On its negative side, this conception may be brought liome to young people whenever their feelings are touched by stories of man’s inhumanity to man. The tragedies of history have always arisen where the sacred thing in man was trampled upon by tyrannies, by religious bigotries, by commercial exploitation. In 1903, for example, during the Russo-Japanese war, a Russian commander decided that to save future trouble, it was necessarv to strike terror into the Chinese at Blayovestchenk, a city on the Amoor. The whole town was ordered to clear out. There were no steamers or other conveyances. Drive them into the river, ’ ’ was the order ; and it was executed.^ Examples of this sort of thing are painfully abundant in history. They 1 W. Morgan Shuster, Strangling of Persia, p. 220. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 343 » should be brought up only to vivify the sense of the sacred presence thus outraged and to contrast this denial of human worth with the acts which pay that worth its due reverence. It is on the latter that heavier stress should be laid. Right conduct takes on a religious quality to the extent that it leads to a deepened understanding of the essential worth in every life and of the ethical power that such worth exhibits in action. How is this conception to be inter¬ preted? We are not thinking, let us remember, of a single lesson or two. We are concerned here with a question of feelings and attitudes which take years to develop. Indeed, all life, the life of even the oldest thinker, is a matter of growing insight into the nature of ethical activity, or as we shall call it here, spiritual power. Contrast will help. Children understand, for example, what physical power means — the power of the waterfall, or the wind, or the lightning bolt. To be sure, the modern city child gets less of the sense of dread might at work in Nature than people did in former days when they beheld black clouds rise in the sky and roll their destruction over a valley. Primitive man believed that there must be mighty beings behind the hurricane and the lightning bolt. Our children should understand this attitude. And they can be helped by feeling other solemnities of Nature. Words¬ worth on the shore of Calais is inspired with a religious calm from contact with Nature ^s powers in their august repose ; It is a beauteous evening calm and free ; The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; The gentleness of heaven broods o^er the sea. The value of these experiences lies in their helping us understand the spiritual power which is far more deserving of the moods of reverence than the mightiest of physical 344 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH force. Power as such does not merit worship. It may be the power of a demon. Another and higher kind of power than Nature’s is that displayed in the intellect of man, the power which invents the lightning rod and steers the dread energies of the thunderbolt harmlessly into the ground. It is the power that has invented the alphabet and that, in general, has made possible so many of the achievements of civilization. The awe we feel for it is suggested in these lines inscribed over the corridor of a great public library : Speak low, tread softly through these halls 1 Here genius lies enshrined, Where rest in silent majesty The monarchs of the mind. But again we would not have the child ’s worship content itself with a power of this kind. Intellectual power is not the worthiest. How readily it has lent itseK to the grossest misuse! The villainies of history have not always been the work of sheer brutes. They have often been the work of highly-trained, cunning intellects. The deeds of ambi¬ tious conquerors, of lying diplomats, of the vulpine types of one sort and another, make it impossible to worship intel¬ lect as such. Highest of all is the ethical power which the acts of people at their rarest levels can only suggest. It is the power at work in the imperative we feel to treat fellow beings with the utmost justice, or the power in the sufferer who, instead of letting the visitation imprison him in his own self-centered thought, becomes the bringer of light to oth¬ ers; or it is the power of those “who can be inspired by great purposes without hating those who thwart them,” nay, which can go out to these opponents in the forgiveness which seeks their good. Such is the power which all our various efforts at ethical training are intended more and RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 345 more to call out in all the countless activities of the good life. Our children’s understanding of this power must come chiefly through the exercise of it in their own lives. The harm in the old religious teaching was the fact that it so frequently made the wrong beginning, trying to get the child to understand a God of justice and love without seeking at every turn to have children appreciate from their own practice what justice and love really meant. The soundest basis for a religious outlook will be erected on every possible act of kindness, of bravery, of generous sym- pathy, of respect for man as man, which we can get them to do. Every noble deed that they themselves perform is to be a help to the understanding of a still vaster and nobler goodness beyond their own best. The ultimate aim is to have them realize that there is a righteousness beyond any righteousness that past or present has ever embodied. Its sublimities are suggested in part by the boundless extent of the stars: ‘‘All I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the limit of the farther systems. Wider and wider they spread, expanding always expanding, outward and outward and forever outward.” The more sublime reality is the perfect life unbeheld of the bodily eye but no less real than the mighty depths and the vast reaches of the constellations. From this point on, school and home will follow different courses, for the religious interpretation of what has here been described will not be possible in schools. But our children ought to know how the traditional religious beliefs go back to the attempts of men to explain the origin and the nature of spiritual power. Even those who do not share the religious faith of their neighbors owe it to the children to have them understand what the churches are trying to teach. Perhaps the best plan for home and 346 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH church is to use the historical method — showing how the idea of divinity has changed through the ages, how there was a time in Hebrew history, as we have seen, when the sheer physical might of the tribal god Jehovah was the main thought, and how the yearning for a better justice led to the idea of a universal God who commanded all men to make their worship consist of just and merciful dealing. Let the children see that the God idea has changed throughout history, that it centered around moral experi¬ ence, and that where men are changing it to-day, it is again because of the broadening and deepening of the world’s ethical experiences. In some homes, for instance, the par¬ ents will explain that they find it hard to accept the symbol of a heavenly King, because this idea goes back to a period before the age of democracy when men everywhere turned for justice and mercy to earthly kings. The changed experi¬ ence requires a new symbol. Some people to-day, it may be pointed out, are applying the social conceptions of the time to their theology and speaking of God not as an indi¬ vidual but as a society of beings. Others, like Mr. Wells, reflecting the futurist tendencies of the age, will have no infinitude to their deity but make him finite, young, struggling. These religious interpretations of moral experience are problems for the home and the religious society. Obviously they can find little or no place in the public schools. The function of the latter is to unify and harmonize the diver¬ sities of our democracy. Only in moral education, there¬ fore, will the school find the common ground on which the various sects, and believers and non-believers, can best unite. A Roman Catholic will differ on many points with his Protestant, Jewish, or non-believing neighbors, but all of these will have at heart the same desire that their chil¬ dren grow up to be honorable men and women, living fine, upright, unselfish, public-spirited lives. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 347 Whatever the place and value of religious beliefs may be — and differences seem likely always to persist — the school I is not the place to make children conscious of them. Ideally, it would be splendid if we had teachers so gifted and so broad-minded that just as they teach ethical values in Shakespeare, they could interpret the best in the Bible in ways that all the community could accept. Every pos¬ sible help to the making of better souls is urgently needed. But, facing the facts as they are, we shall find it better to concentrate upon agencies less likely to revive ancient quar¬ rels. The churches can make their contribution directly through the homes. They can offer it indirectly to the schools through inspiring higher ideals of professional serv¬ ice in the teachers and through backing up every civic effort to enable the school better to perform its functions. The final outcome need not cause any very grave concern. The essential consideration is that the children obtain the moral training which is indispensable even to religious belief. If their ethical experience brings them to believe in a supreme nobility, a perfect God on high as the giver of the moral law, then this belief will come by the best route it can travel. If, on the other hand, we have induced in their young lives the best conduct of which they are capable, and they think later that religious belief is not necessitated for them, the school has not failed. There may be mean ways of believing and noble ways of disbelieving ; or there may be noble ways of belief and mean ways of disbelief. In themselves belief and disbelief are of vastly less consequence than the depth, the earnestness of the moral practice by which one works his way toward either. If growth in character is cherished as sufficient in itself, our children will be getting the only result which gives religious teachings their reason for being and the only product which loss of doctrinal beliefs does not necessarily destroy. Nobody has any right to expect of the public 348 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH school that it bring children to this or that conclusion with respect to God. We do have the right to ask that it help every boy and girl to give every act of hand and brain which can make life nobler. That such an obligation to contribute our best is laid upon all of us we can never teach children by philosophic argument. We ourselves are never convinced by that method. We know that the better way is to live the good life first. The philosophy follows as the outcome of such an attempt and thus alone becomes a genuine inspiration to still better living, out of which in turn a still nobler philos¬ ophy issues, and so on in ever-broadening expansion upon ever-loftier planes. Principles become real to us only in the effort to live them out. It is related that some who listened to the Man of Nazareth raised the question whether what he said came from the Father on high. His answer was : ^ ‘ If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching.” So likewise there is but one sure way to the realization that of the many aims competing for the energies of heart and mind, there is a moral highest to be given supreme place. The attempt to live the life will bring the conviction. Questions and Problems 1. In what ways, if any, do you find your religious beliefs to have changed through larger experience of life? 2. To what do you attribute the modern decline in church attendance ? 3. ‘‘Do you shiver violently, faintly, or not at all at the word ‘unbeliever’?” How do you account for the fact that the word carries less of the stigma conveyed in earlier days? 4. “On one occasion Governor Winthrop paid a visit of state to Bradford, the governor at Plymouth. . . . Arrived at Plymouth, all repaired to church . . . and a religious ques¬ tion was started in honor of the guests.” Why does this sound strange to-day? Would you say that the change indi¬ cates a decline? RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 349 5. Consult the biography of Louis Pasteur for the influence exercised on a scientist’s life by his religion. But see also the biographies of Mill and Huxley. 6. Report on the conflict between the two generations in Edmund Gosse, Father and Son. 7. “Life is good to the extent that we give it to good causes.” Draw up a list of such causes in the order of their importance to you. 8. When does respect transform itself into worship? What educational practice does this suggest? 9. How do you account for the fact that some Sunday-school teaching drives people away from the church of their child¬ hood? 10. Explain Emerson’s statement : “All the victories of religion belong to the moral sentiments.” 11. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having public- school children of different religions go to separate rooms for religious instruction for a given period each week. References See, besides references quoted in text: Adler, Felix, The Moral Instruction of Children. Betts, G. H., How to Teach Beligion. Coe, G. a., Education in Religion and Morals; A Social Theory of Religious Education. Cope, H. F., Education for Democracy, Ch. Ill, IV, VII, XV. Dawson, G. E., The Child and His Religion. Emerson, R. W., “The Sovereignty of Ethics,” Lectures and Biographies. Hall, G. S., Youth, Ch. XII. Hartshorne, H., Childhood and Character. Hodges, George, Training of Children in Religion. Horne, H. H., Idealism in Education, Ch. V; Psychological Prin¬ ciples of Education, Part V. King, Irving, The Development of Religion. Leuba, J. H., The Belief in God and Immortality ; The Psycho¬ logical Study of Religion. Richardson, N. E., The Religious Education of Adolescents. Rotce, Josiah, The Philosophy of Loyalty. 350 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH Religious Education, magazine published by the Religious Educa¬ tion Association. Salter, W. M., Ethical Religion. Starbuck, E. D., The Psychology of Religion. WiLM, E. C., ^‘Religious Life of High-School Students,” Ch. XXX, C. H. Johnston, Modern High SchooL CHAPTER XVII THE TEACHER A WOMAN who had given forty years of her life to work in reformatories and prisons was once asked, “Do you not find your occupation terribly depressing ? ” “ No, ” she replied ; ‘ ‘ not all the preachers in the land could teach me spiritually what these convicts are teaching me, or give me such faith in the ultimate destiny of the human soul. ^ If this reward came to one whose years were spent in contact with life’s failures, what shall be said of the com¬ pensations to those who are privileged to work with the unspoiled young and be friend and guide to hopeful youth ? Like every worker, the teacher meets those trying, sandy stretches where the question forces itself upon him, “What is the sense in sticking at a job like this?” At college reunions, he obsers^es classmates who have done more strik¬ ing things in the world, who see more tangible returns and have certainly “prospered” to a greater degree. At such times everything for him depends on his faith in the prin¬ ciple which he is at pains to have his students understand, that in the final reckoning, what counts is one’s scale of values. If success in life means the ordinary thing, then the returns undoubtedly show that his investment has hardly been prudent. But what if his dividends must be of the rarer and better sort ? Such indeed do come to him. Is it much or little to be kept young by contact with youth and by, what is even 1 W. L. Taylor, The Man Behind the Bars. 361 352 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH better, its friendship? Is it a slight return that his work has helped his own mind to grow? To be sure, if he had devoted himself entirely to research and been spared the distractions of teaching, he might perhaps have made him¬ self the distinguished specialist. But recompense for this loss, too, has come. Association with youth has kept him younger than he might otherwise be, younger in the sense that his horizons have been kept wider and his interests broader because the interests of youth are so winningly many-sided. The young constitute a perpetual protest against overspecialization. All their happy spontaneity, even their waywardness, is a constant challenge to the spirit that would lock life up forever into a few classroom formulas. The touch of youth is endlessly provocative. No teacher can put himself at the point of view of the young without reading a new meaning in everything he teaches. If it is history, then he sees the struggles of men in a new light; if it is art, then the beauty he is trying to win them to love is heightened for himself. It is customary to think of the poet as essentially the interpreter, the one whose task it is to lift the veil from the face of things familiar and show a splendor we had else not marked. But the teacher is no less an interpreter. His reward is his own enriched seeing. What does he interpret? Some two centuries ago, the attention of savants was called to the case of the ^‘wild boy of Avignon” found in the forest by a party of hunters. This was a child who had been lost in his infancy and by some marvel of good chance, had been kept alive in the woods till about his tenth year. His hair and nails were inordinately long ; his skin was more like an animal ’s than a child’s. He could neither speak nor understand a single word. His face had none of the expressions that reflect the civilizing influences of home and school. His entire demeanor was simply an exhibit of what results when these THE TEACHER 353 * influences are absent. All that he had missed we recog¬ nize as the things for the agencies of civilization to supply. His teachers would have sifted for him from the myriad acquisitions of the past those that would have best enabled him to become the better person. Not all that the past has wrought can be handed on, or deserves to be. The teacher is to select. And what a privilege ! The thoughts that the ages have found true and wholesome, the dreams they have cherished, the treasures of matchless beauty that lift man worlds above the level of the brute — to all these at their best it is the teacher’s privilege to introduce his charges. With a world stretching endlessly ahead like a land of dreams So various, so beautiful, so new, all sorts of noble choices may be theirs for the mere asking. Deeply privileged is the task of the one who is there to help them choose wisely. It is a function which we have compared with that of the poet who interprets, but it is an office even higher than his. When the poet draws aside the veil, he calls to us to enjoy. The teacher bids us take what we see into our lives with something more inclusive than enjoyment. He invites us to contribute to the making of a life still better. His special reward is the chance to keep this aim bright before his own eyes with each new class that enters his room. No one can try to explain to another the details of a house or a landscape without clarifying his own mental picture. So, by trying to interpret to the young the inex¬ haustibly interesting world in which they and he dwell together, he learns to read its meanings more ably for him¬ self. The effort to kindle a love of the things most excellent helps him to rate them the more highly for his own life. Prom many sources this return comes to him. The joy, already mentioned, of sharing the unwearied curiosity of 354 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH the young is one. Another is the constant challenge to his own self-respect in the trust imposed in him by children and parents. Teachers who are asked to take charge of ethics classes or Sunday groups or clubs in settlements sometimes reply, ‘ ‘ I hardly think I am good enough for the task. ’ ^ But this confession is really the sign of an essential qualification. When one thinks of all the high demands his work entails, the wisdom, the patience, the unflagging faith in the verities he professes, one is obliged to say to himself in sober truth that no person is ever fit to be a teacher, any more than he is fit to be a parent. But such partial fitness as we are ever permitted to possess is achieved only by practice, and the first step to it is the confession that we do not merit the honor it is to teach aright. We are to make ourselves more fit by practice, and not the least of the incentives is the faith our pupils and their parents place in us. Their trust is a rebuke, but it is also an inspiring illumination. Not less is the enlightenment afforded by the teacher’s failures. It is the special joy of the teacher to know that part of the credit for the good his pupils do in the world is his. He meets them later in life, and he is touched when they make a point of telling him, “This and this which I learned from you has been a help to me. ’ ’ The true teacher learns to distinguish between what is genuine in these testi¬ monies and what is only polite fiction. He is entitled to the joy they bring him. But the defeats must also be faced, and in this experience, too, there is compensation. The teacher thinks of the pupils who were unresponsive, and it is slight consolation to say that but for the school they might have been worse. His task is more positive. Then he sees other types of failure. Here is the lad who does respond as long as he remains protected by innocence in the sheltering seclusion of the school. But ten years later the boy comes back a man whose life is a tale of many a THE TEACHER 355 low surrender. The type is common enough. The crooked politician, the merchant who plays the game shabbily, the so-called man of the world (his “world,” forsooth, a sty), or — ^what is often more trying — the immense number of the inert, the worldly, the flippant, the clotted, blandly apathetic souls, all these were once pupils who gave promise of a better use of their gifts. To the teacher sensitive to the high demands of his calling, such experiences are at first disheartening. But they bring their recompense. They send him home again to his vision of the life that ought to be. He sees once more the types of life that these failures and all the others, the partial successes as well, have it in them to become at their ideal best. The contrast makes more splendid for him the grandeur of that spiritual landscape, and it turns him again to his work, humbled but the more convinced that his efforts are more than ever needed. These are among tne teacher’s compensations. But his calling, like every man’s, has its special perils. Notorious, for instance, is the danger of egotism. To be looked up to by so many may impel a man to the modest disclaimer voiced by Socrates, but its effects may be far less chasten¬ ing too. How hard it is for many teachers to bear contra¬ diction ! It is worlds easier to let the habit grow of laying down the law: “This is the last word on the subject; believe it and you are right ; disbelieve and suffer. ’ ’ Teachers, like other autocrats, fail to realize that a dog¬ matic veto upon opposition stops discussion, but rarely stops thought. The lad whose objections are brushed aside will justify himself in silence. Letting him speak up brings out into the open the dissent that otherwise might not be answered satisfactorily, the very kind that evidently means most. Our young people accuse us of blinking the facts of life, and no charge, if it is true, can be more fatal. 356 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH At the very least, we can avoid this pitfall by a generous readiness to hear the other side. “It is not the falsehood of sophistry which is to he feared,” said Lowell in his paper on Lincoln, “but the grain of truth mingled with it to make it specious.” Only by conceding what is true in the opposing case, can we hope to bring home the larger truth which the fallacy obscures. And why, for that matter, must the teacher always seem to his pupils omniscient? His function is not to supply information, but to cultivate thoughtfulness, to quicken the desire to think soundly upon ethical issues, to kindle hunger for the quest of moral truth. The final word has by no means been spoken on every moral problem. Especially in an age of such unusually rapid transition as the present, the right way is not always as clear as noon. There is no greater service the teacher can perform than to impress upon his students that the first essential to right life is the search for truth, with humility in the quest, and with frank willingness to confess where we are baffled. His example will tell, more impressively than anything he can say, that ethical wisdom is not a preachment handed down by per¬ sonified infallibility, but a quest, not always over easy roads, undertaken jointly by teacher and students. He is, of course, the older and the more experienced, else he would have no warrant to face his class. For that very reason, however, he will exemplify the modesty indispensable to the proper conduct of the pursuit.^ Another source of danger is pedantry, at bottom a false 2 Caution must be sounded against letting an ethics lesson degen¬ erate into an exercise in hair-splitting or into a chance to argue for the sheer fun of talking. One fundamental proposition it is futile to debate, namely: “Why we should do the right?” We must take it for granted that normal human beings want to do right, that there is no need to waste time over this axiom but that we have to learn what is right in given situations and how right solutions can best be reached. THE TEACHER 357 perspective as to moral values. Why must teachers paint in so deep a scarlet the offenses that are either trifling or likely to be outgrown without much urging ? Is it because examinations bulk so large that the lad who prompts his neighbor must be treated as an utter sinner, regardless of the fact that his purpose is kindly ? Non vitae sed scholae discimus. Montaigne’s warning is still timely. What energy is still misdirected, for example, upon securing the negative, sedentary traits which show up well when the old-fashioned visitor enters the room but against which a sound instinct in our sturdiest boys and girls cannot help rebelling? Perhaps the trouble is that many teachers see little of their pupils beyond their behavior in the classroom. The writer recalls a college teacher whose absurd judgments made him the laughing-stock of the students. He would seat close to his desk, where his eye could observe freely, a student whom the others all knew to be the soul of honor. He trusted' another whom they knew to be the prize bluff. But teachers as a rule are inclined to judge in terms of classroom virtues — so-called. A trick of seeming deference carries many a fraud into the instructor’s good graces. So do more creditable qualities that are nevertheless not the highest. Teachers are attracted by patience and industry in a pupil ’s attention to his book, forgetting that lago, too, was patient and persevering and probably in his youth was a very good lad in the classroom. The consequences are disastrous and abundant. The teacher’s scale of values exaggerates the acquiescent traits. The student of “good” character is the one who has given no occasion for censure. Think of the hordes of eminently respectable but harmless citizens who pride themselves on the fact that they were never fined or arrested. William James mentions a hostlery of which the guidebook said that it was a “temperance hotel,” but beyond this it possessed no other recommendations. The standard is familiar 358 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH enough. It is responsible for many a commencement ad¬ dress by ‘‘leading” citizens whose business and civic prac¬ tices are dubious, but who are strong in their warnings to the graduates never to chew or to smoke or to play cards. Such persons can always count for allies upon the teacher who fails to have his pupils distinguish between the thresh¬ old virtues — the instrumental proprieties that are by no means to be slighted — and the more robust excellences re¬ quired within the arena. The teacher’s vigilance must also be exercised against a professional tendency to petrification. “It must be awful to have a mind as rigid as yours,” Mark Twain once felt himself obliged to reply to a certain critic. “I advise you to take it out and dance on it. ’ ’ Then he added, ‘ ‘ Also use it once in a while.” We use our minds, the functional psychologists have been telling us, when we encounter diffi¬ culties. This may be one explanation of the teacher’s occupational peril. After a few years, his work becomes too easy from treading the same round too often. In other callings, the stress of competition supplies a corrective. The merchant must keep abreast of his rivals ; the lawyer must meet alert antagonists; the doctor may lose cases which better-informed colleagues save. The teacher, alas, is too often spared these incentives. In the army, there exists what is known as a “ plucking board ’ ’ to retire officers who have grown fat and lazy. It would be an excellent thing for the teacher to constitute himself his own plucking board, and long before superannuation is reached. To many a pedagogue it would be a help if his lesson notes were all consumed by a kindly fire. The thrill of inventing a new way to treat an old subject would be tonic. But the community must also do its part. The drudgery of clerical work, the inadequate salaries which oblige many teachers to take on extra occupations, the shamefully large size of the classes in public schools, the tendency of supe- THE TEACHER 359 riors to prefer old and tested methods to the risks attending experiment, do much to encourage the process of spiritual hardening. The Ethical Culture School in New York has set a notable example in the better direction. It grants to all its teachers, to those in the kindergarten no less than to those in the Normal Department, the seventh-year holi¬ day given in the universities. The teacher of the youngest child has every whit the same need as the others to cultivate fresh contacts, to stand aside from her work and survey it from a new angle, to come back invigorated by new study, or travel, or other stimulating experience. Some nine or ten cities in America now grant such absences, but only these few have yet caught the idea.® Our citizens have still to learn how much it pays to put taxes into better life for teachers. Akin to the peril of rigidity is that of a prejudice in favor of immediately obvious results. There are some things in the teacher ^s work that can indeed be graded. His skill can be judged by the marks his class gets in its Latin and mathematics examinations. But there is also much in his work that forever defies any such attempt at external measurement. And the pity is that he himself, quite as often as the supervisory staff, is willing to accept this fetish of the immediately tangible result. It is worlds easier to prepare his English class for the college examina¬ tion of howsoever free a type than to rouse the lad who thinks poetry all nonsense to a single genuine admiration. It is easier to see whether a class has covered the ground in the history textbook than it is to guarantee an apprecia¬ tion of the grave ethical import in the tragedy which the cla^ is studying as so much ‘‘assignment.’^ The long view reveals the truer aim. Let the instructor recall how large was the mass of finished product he was s On this subject, see School and Society, September 3, 1921. 360 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH called upon to deliver in his own youth and how much less it helped him than many an experience much harder to set forth palpably, many a new way of looking at life sug^ gested by some remark or example coming from his teacher, or, what is often more effective, the stimulation afforded by school comrades. His pupils must indeed make good; life tests them not by intentions but by performances. But the value of the performances may never be regarded as final. What they get out of the honest attempt to make the per¬ formances better is the thing to prize, not the smoothly rounded accomplishment, but the growing life. It gives greater value to the stained drawing paper of the lad who is trying to improve his painfully limited powers than to the neat paper of the boy to whom the task is altogether easy. Perfect beings have never walked this earth and never will. The best external achievement will always fall short. Its value is symbolic, suggestive. The importance of the outward act is that it helps the doer to understand better the line of growth still ahead. All this requires an unceasingly freshened attitude toward the young. Danger comes in the tendency to regard them in the lump, to think of them as a “ class, ^ ’ not as a group of persons with all their perverse but precious dif¬ ferences, or to single out for favored attention the ones with some special attractiveness of feature or of manner. The teacher ^s charges come to him year after year, class following class, selected by no choice of his from homes of varying degrees of excellence or demerit. If only all thus thrust upon him were as attractive as some few are ! But his task is assuredly better than to follow this line of least resistance. Michelangelo in one of his sonnets pic¬ tures the sculptor as standing before his block of marble and saying that the same block contains either hideousness or beauty according to what the artist’s hand succeeds in THE TEACHER 361 calling forth. This duality gives the teacher his chance, too. It calls for an eye that sees in the young people both the repellent characteristics and the promise. Pestalozzi, whose work at Neuhof with children of the least attractive sorts obliged him even to wash and comb them, kept a note¬ book in which he recorded his observations on the growth of each, for each one of these unlovely youngsters was his special concern. He seized on every appearance of a gift that offered the slightest hope. Something of this spirit the teacher would do well to bring to the beginning of each term and to the days when his reservoirs of faith are low. The unattractive types, the mentally tongue-tied, the im¬ pudent, the furtive, the sluggish, are for him the ones who have more need of the physician than those that are whole. Let him be alert for the least glimmer of attractiveness he can find. Then let him see iii his mind ’s eye this attractive quality so enlarged that it covers the pupiPs whole nature and expunges' the repellent traits. The mental picture of the child at his best tells the teacher the direction his efforts are to take. It impels him to fresh efforts to help the child himself become conscious of that direction.^ No student is a hopeless case till every method to reach him has been tried. The principal of a school for “incor- rigibles ’ ’ overheard one of the little lads saying to another, ‘‘Those gloves you got on came from the charity. When I want gloves, I go and get them,” meaning of course by the method of his profession. But there is hope for a pick¬ pocket with self-respect enough to scorn charity. Children more privileged have likewise each some special avenue of hope. The reminder is necessary because we forgot some¬ times that there are high levels to which appeal can and 4 One way that may be found useful is to invite the pupil to share some piece of extra work; for example, the physics teacher may ask him to help get the laboratory equipment ready, the history teacher, to look up a reference or prepare a map, etc. 362 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH should be addressed. It is small wonder that a lofty sense of honor is so often lacking when we think how little appeal to it is made by many a school. Nobody has any right to say that the poorest of specimens is dead to the better ap¬ peal until that appeal has been made more times than we ordinarily prefer to count. The lad whose sense of honor is untouched will, of course, have to be watched and be held to the mark on the lower level. But failure to address the powers available on the higher level encourages the atrophy that spells death, and let it be added, invites atrophy in the teacher himself. Life is fostered in the quickening of other life. A freshened attitude toward fellow teachers is also indis¬ pensable. The teaching staff constitute a community of their own with abundant occasion for the practice of right relationships among themselves. The school is specially fortunate where esprit de corps means, not only willingness to share the common burden and to accept in the best of grace the necessary give and take, but a hearty desire on the part of each of the staff to do all that will help every other member do his best work. Willingness to see where new and more interesting correlations can be worked out is one illustration.® Such opportunities are endless, and all who take them are helped in more ways than one. There is perhaps no better evidence of the respect in which a teacher holds his calling and no truer way to re¬ animate his own loyalty than his attitude toward the novice in his profession. Many a young recruit loses his early enthusiasm as a result of the light, indifferent, possibly cynical way in which veteran associates have come to re¬ gard their vocation. The better sort of teacher will make 5 A class studying the history of education in a normal department was greatly indebted to the art teacher who was at pains to provide material for an understanding of Greek, Medieval, and Renaissance ideals by drawing upon the art collection of the school. THE TEACHER 363 a special point of seeking out the newcomer and helping him to a high conception of the value of their common calling. The principal enjoys a rare opportunity to bring about right relations in the teaching community. He must have in mind a more democratic model for his staff than the pattern set by an army or factory. He should regard him¬ self, not as a chief drillmaster issuing orders to a corps of subordinate drillmasters, but as the leader of a group of fellow teachers, each of whom should be permitted to share to the full extent of his inclination and power in the re¬ sponsibility for the whole school community. Teachers are less likely to be indifferent toward the management of the school when it is their votes that decide school policies. The clue to right relationships is the consciousness on the part of the teachers that they are under a joint obliga¬ tion to raise the standards of their profession. In every vocation, there is a service to be performed which needs to be done better than it is at present. In the case of the teacher, this task is the elevating of America’s conceptions* of democratic life. This brings us to one of the most vexatious problems of to-day, the question raised by the social heresies which many teachers have come to accept. We touch here upon exceedingly delicate ground, but this surely is no excuse for passing it by. Sooner or later the problem will have to be faced everywhere, for the issues at stake are vital. They test our professions of democracy more searchingly than any other problem our schools encounter. They are raised in such questions as these : What attitude shall school boards take toward teachers who are active, let us say, in Socialist circles, or toward those who affiliate themselves with labor unions ? Or to take a recent occurrence : Are high- school librarians justified in discontinuing the circulation 364 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH of papers like the Nation, the New Republic, the Survey^ Shall high-school textbooks in history be permitted to give the arguments for and against Socialism ? In one commu¬ nity a first-rate textbook which had been used for years was discovered, in the period of alarm following the Armistice, to include in the chapter on to-day’s problems four pages setting forth the pros and cons of Socialism with no indica¬ tion of the author’s bias. These pages were ordered to be tom out. In other communities the entire book has been banned, though for many years before the War it had won a deservedly high reputation. Of this we may be sure : Just as long as schools are taught by men and women to whom their convictions — conserva¬ tive, liberal or radical, as the case may be — appeal strongly enough to constitute a real force in their lives, we shall have these differences cropping out in the school life and threatening what would otherwise be a much more har¬ monious relationship. But it hardly seems too optimistic to trust that the problem is not insoluble. A spirit of fair¬ ness all around will not only prevent undue friction, it • will not only redound to a far better performance of the function of the school in a democracy, but it will also go a long way to make clearer what that democracy itself should mean. To the writer it seems that the greater danger at present comes from the conservatives. To declare, as one state superintendent did in opposing the formation of a teachers ’ union, that the teachers ’ obligations were like those of fire¬ men, policemen, and soldiers is to reveal a rather deplorably one-sided view of the teaching function. This is not said to justify the existence of labor unions among teachers. There are reasons for opposition to teachers’ unions even by those whose politics are not at all conservative. We shall not debate here whether the aims of the teachers’ unions can be better attained by forming such unions or THE TEACHER 365 not.® A more fundamental question is raised by declaring the function of the teacher to be like that of the firemen, policemen, and soldiers. The function of the latter is essentially protective, pre¬ servative. Who ever looks upon a police station or an armory as the community’s breeding-ground for higher ideals ? Nobody thinks of policemen and soldiers as setting out to create anything better than already exists. They are intended simply to conserve what is already there. This, however, is not all that is expected of the teacher. Un¬ doubtedly his function, too, is to help conserve what the race has already found good, but this is only half, and by no means necessarily the better half, of his task. The past has no sacredness for being past. Neither, for that matter, is there anything sacred about futurity. The point is sim¬ ply that what has been found good in the past should be conserved in order that upon it still better may be erected. The aim of education for citizenship as now conceived is a preparation for the same old citizenship which has so far failed to eliminate the shocking hazards and crying injustices of our social and political life. For we sedulously inculcate in the coming generation exactly the same illusions and the same ill- placed confidence in existing institutions and prevailing notions that have brought the world to the pass in which we find it. . . . Instead of having [to-day’s institutions and ideals] represented to [the young] as standardized and sacred, they should be taught to view them as representing half -solved problems.^ But is there anything more likely to retard this growth than the fiat that all questions of public right and wrong have been forever settled, that, for instance, no one can 6 Case for and against in leaflet published by Teachers’ Union, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. See also debate in Educational Review, September, 1920, and The Public and the Schools, Nos. 56, 57, 58, 60, issued by the Public Education Association, 8 West 40th Street, New York. 7 J. H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making, pp. 23, 220. 366 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH work for the Socialist party and at the same time be a creditable American citizen? The question is answered by « putting it. Thomas Jefferson answered it in his first in¬ augural address in a day when the doctrines of the French Revolution were as much feared in large sections of Amer¬ ican life as those of the Russian are to-day : If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monu¬ ments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where, reason is left free to combat it. The debt of civilization to its dissenters is beyond ques¬ tion. As Viscount Bryce well says : ® Room should be found in every country for men who, like the prophets in ancient Israel, have, along with their wrath at the evils of their own time, inspiring visions of a better future and the right to speak their minds. That love of freedom which will bear with opposition because it has faith in the victory of truth is none too common. Many of those who have the word on their lips are despots at heart. Those men in whom that love seemed to glow with the hottest flame may have had an almost excessive faith in its power for good, but if this be an inflrmity, it is an infirmity of noble minds, which democracies ought to honor. . . . There must be leaders of a firmness which will face opprobrium and defend causes for the moment unpopular. The chief defect of public opinion is its tendency in times of excitement to over¬ bear opposition and silence the voices it does not wish to hear. Courage is the highest and perhaps the rarest quality among poli¬ ticians. It is especially needed in democratic countries. The question is not primarily one of the teacher’s rights. It is essentially a question of the best interests of demo¬ cratic life. No teacher who k worth his salt will want to continue in the profession if he must be at pains to conceal the fact that he sides with the minority on to-day’s con¬ flicts of opinion. To drive such from the schools will mean 8 James Bryce, Modern Democracies, Vol. I, pp. 59, 162. See also G. A. Coe, ‘‘Religious Education and Political Conscience,” Teaehera* College Record, September, 1922. THE TEACHER 367 eventually that our future citizens will be trained only by those who are militantly committed to the preservation of things as they are or by those whom fear of losing their places has clubbed into ignominious silence. Our schools are then to be hotbeds of radical propa¬ ganda? It is curious how easily the passion of conflict impels to extreme statements. This is not a plea for radical propaganda at all. Most of the teachers who are working for the more enlightened attitude recognize that it is quite unfair to expose children in tax-supported schools where attendance is compulsory — and especially in the elementary grades, to whatever propaganda for which the teacher hap¬ pens to be zealous. They know that a religious enthusiast might seek to indoctrinate his helpless charges with his views on religion. The Roman Catholic teacher should cer¬ tainly not teach his faith in a public school, the atheist atheism, or the Christian Scientist the beliefs of his sect. No more should the Socialist seek to win converts to So¬ cialism in a school from which the parents are not free to withdraw the pupils. But if the principle works in one direction, it holds good in the other as well. Is not the attempt to identify Amer¬ icanism with anti-Socialism also propaganda ? Nobody for¬ bids the local banker, for example, to enter the school and address the students on the perils of Socialism. Very few at present challenge his right to tell ‘‘immature minds” that criticism of our present method of conducting industry is un-American. If the teacher is not to use his position to make propaganda for new conceptions, it would certainly seem no less than fair that propaganda in favor of things as they are should likewise be forbidden. In the second place, a distinction should be drawn be¬ tween propaganda and the requirements of truthful teach¬ ing. The teacher of history must not go out of his way to make Socialists of his pupils, but, if in the discussion of 368 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH current events, questions about Russia or a pressing indus¬ trial disturbance are raised, is he to permit only the one side to be presented, the side which most of the papers in his community are likely to offer? Is he true to his func¬ tion as a teacher of history to forbid the presentation of the other side? Are we to forget how essential to his function it is to train future citizens to form sound judg¬ ments ? How can they do so if the unpopular side is denied a fair hearing? We shall never get anywhere by dodging these issues. In the long run nothing will work more grievious damage to young people ^s respect for American institutions than the discovery they will make some day or other that schools may misuse the flag to cover a policy of strict committal to the existing order in industry — a committal which some persons desire to make as complete as was that of the schools in the South to the slave-holding system. What kind of civic ideals will our pupils learn when they realize that a teacher can be dismissed for his activity in the Socialist party but that no one seems to think less of cer¬ tain superintendents and principals for activity in political circles which are orthodox but quite unsavory ? It ought not to be impossible to reach a modus vivendi on these matters. In Prance, where a system of nation-wide moral instruction was introduced and civic duty was made the central idea, all shades of opinion in politics and eco¬ nomics had to be treated with respect. The textbooks, ranging through all the degrees from conservatism to radi¬ calism, are prepared by committees in which all the varie¬ ties of opinion are represented, and from these lists the teachers are free to accept those books from which they can teach with the heartiest accord. Eventually we shall have to make some such adjustment. Radical opinion in Amer¬ ica is not going to be killed by suppression. In the long run it will have to be reckoned with on some such basis as THE TEACHER 369 the French have worked out, or better, let us hope.® In the meantime, fair play will carry us much nearer a proper solution than the present temper of the extremists on both sides. The problem bears upon the fundamental nature of democracy, and, without anti-climax, it touches upon a special need of the teacher himself. Reference has already been made to the narrowing tendency in the teacher’s work, to the pedantry and the unreality attaching to his classroom valuations. One of his great needs is to be in active touch with the currents of life outside the school. Why are teachers, however, represented in such small num¬ bers on public-spirited committees, in civic leagues, and the like? Is it because they are regarded as impractical? Is it because their dealing with the young unfits them to deal with adults? If so, this simply indicates the more how necessary it is, for the education of the teacher, and thus for the eventual benefit of the child and the community, to get him out of his present isolation, to draft him for these public undertakings and so broaden his understanding of life. Lovers of Shakespeare know what mischief is per¬ petrated by commentators familiar with the text but unac¬ quainted with the life on which the plays themselves are 9 On this problem see French Educational Ideals of To-Day, An Anthology of Holders of French Educational Thought, by F. Buis- son and F. E. Farrington (World Book Co., 1919). This book is an outcome of the closer relations between France and America as a result of the War. It deserves all the more praise for including in this anthology two addresses by Jean Jaues, the Socialist leader whose opposition to the War brought about his assassination. In one of these addresses, Jaures tells the teachers why they should be Socialists but condemns the attempt to make distinctly Socialist propaganda in their classrooms. It is refreshing to see how the various writers listed in this anthology, differing as they do on vital questions of religion and politics, agree in urging teachers to culti- vtite in their pupils the spirit of fairness, of accuracy, of inquiry, and the open mind. 370 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH but commentaries. “The scholar loses no hour in which the man lives. ’ ’ The best contacts are always active. One such oppor¬ tunity to put new life into the teacher’s work is to make himself a missionary in behaK of a better relation between school and community. He will be a better teacher, it goes without saying, if he learns how the school can give back better service to the community. But it is equally essential for him to do his part toward seeing that the community gives better service to the school. Many teachers in some of our cities know that the children who come to them are prevented by bad home conditions from reaping in school the full benefits they are expected to receive. Thousands of young people are underfed. They sleep in hovels where the air is foul. They play amid surroundings whose filth and other degrading effects mock the efforts of the school to draw them to a love of things clean and sweet. The teacher who knows these facts is not doing his full duty unless he tries as a citizen to get these obstacles to a sound education removed. Let him speak up out of his experi¬ ence. His fellow citizens need to know from him how the best forces for good citizenship within the school require all the backing of the best forces outside. All this, in short, means that the teacher’s constant need is to keep himself alive by acquiring ever new insights into the meaning of his work. In some ways it has been a great drawback that in high schools and colleges people teach only a single subject. As compared with the teacher at the other end of the ladder — the kindergartner or the mother — the instructor at the top is too likely to regard himseK as the teacher, not of a child, but of a subject, and one subject out of many whose relation to one another in practice, whatever may be said in theory, is chiefly that each is required for graduation. It is no wonder that teachers ossify and that classes so often emerge from the educational THE TEACHER 371 mill scarcely better than they were upon entering! There is just one subject taught by every teacher worthy of the name, and that is life itself. The true teacher of literature or science does not teach these subjects. He teaches life with literature or science as the medium. He tries at every turn to see his calling in relation to the work of other callings.^® He knows that the school has been called into being and enriched by the labors of men and women in every department of life, the world’s toilers in field and factory and market, thinkers, poets, statesmen, seers. The history of education is a record of how all that man has done or thought or dreamed has affected for better or for worse the upbringing of earth ’s children. And now that men have caught a glimpse of the magnificent hopes which democracy betokens, the school must be more than ever consecrated to deliberately enriching and elevating the life which gave it birth. The teacher is, after all, the true optimist. The child is often spoken of as the symbol of the forward look, and his unspoiled faith is hailed as the great sign of hope. But the teacher typifies an optimism more distinctly ethical, because it is more deliberate and more conscious of the arduousness of its task. That the school exists at all is an expression of faith that people ought and can grow into beings vastly better than they are now. We hear it said that human nature can never be changed and that, in some form or other, the moral poverties and bestialities with which the race is now afflicted must always persist. Let the biologists settle the biologic arguments for and against. The main fact is that human nature ought to he changed, 10 The closest relation is to the home. The growth of Parents’ Associations is a good sign. The movement should, however, be ex* tended beyond the work of the elementary grades. For illustration of the possibilities of cooperation, consult School and Home, the quarterly published by The Parents’ and Teachers’ Association of the Ethical Culture School, 33 Central Park West, New York. 372 EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH and changed to unspeakably better than it is now. Those who have caught the vision of the life to which this im¬ perative points will labor to devise the necessary instru- ments ; and their endeavors will be unceasing. Questions and Problems 1. Contrast the teacher of to-day with Ichabod Crane. What progress in his position is still to be attained? 2. Study the teachers whom you have known from the stand¬ point of their leading motives, for example, worldly motives, technical interest, ethical interest. 3. What is the effect of Regents and College Entrance require¬ ments upon the highest kind of teaching? 4. Does self-government in schools improve the teacher’s stand¬ ing with his pupils? Is the “high priest” attitude essential? How can it be avoided without the teacher’s becoming just a “good fellow”? 5. Explain why some young people with an idealistic turn of mind are not attracted to the teaching profession. 6. Study the biography of any great teacher and enumerate, in the order of their importance, the qualities explaining his or her power. 7. Read Montaigne’s essay “Of Pedantism” and apply to pres¬ ent-day school life. 8. Explain why the best of moral counsel from some teachers fails to exert the desired influence. 9. What forces in your community are working against, and what with, the best efforts of the school? 10. Describe the training and study which you think a teacher of ethics should pursue. References See, besides references in text: Adler, Felix, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, Book IV, Ch. VI. Bagley, W. C., Classroom Management, Ch. VIII. Bury, J. B., History of Freedom of Thought. Chafee, Zechariah, Freedom of Speech EDUCATION FOR MORAL GROWTH 373 Henderson, C. H., Education and the Larger Life. Horne, H. H,, The Teacher as Artist. Inglis, a. J., Principles of Secondary Education, Ch. IX. Jenks, J. W., Citizenship and the Schools, Ch. VI. Mecklin, j. M., Introduction to Social Ethics, Ch. XVI. Palmer, G. H., The Ideal Teacher. Skinner, H. M., The Schoolmaster in Literature. Woodley, 0. 1., and Woodley, M. V., The Profession of Teaching. See also References for Chapter I. INDEX Academic freedom, 3QBff. Activities, Ch. XI. Adam Bede, 323. Adams, G. P., 64, 186. Adams, Henry, 31, 70. Addams, Jane, 11, 264, 274, 312, 317. Adler, Felix, 11, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, 64, 104, 164, 178 note, 246, 258, 263, 285, 289 note, 349, 372. .Esthetic sense, 313. Agriculture, 111, 164. Allen, A. W., 291. Allen, W. H., 286, 297. Andress, J. M., 297. Angell, Norman, 104. Antioch College, 141 note. Apostle Eliot, 235. Aristotle, 109, 191, 334. Armstrong, Samuel, 104. Arnold, Matthew, 46, 119, 239, 258, 327. Art, 2Q2ff.; see also Literature. Assemblies, 198. Athletics, 296. Babbitt, Irving, 244 note. Bacon, Francis, 129. Bacon, Roger, 325. Bagley, W. C., 104, 212, 317, 372. Bagster-Collins, E. W., 262. Bahlsen, Leopold, 262. Bailey, L. H., 286. Balfour, A. J., 120. Barker, J. E., 130 note. Barnes, Earl, 310 note, 312 note, 317. Barnes, H. E., 100 note. Barton, Clara, 312. Beard, C. A., 95 note, 274; and M. R., 274. Beauty, 289, 313, 323; and Puri¬ tanism, 71. Becker, Carl, 75, 86. Beethoven, 95, 182. Benevolent impulses, 309. Bennett, C. E., 119. Bent Twig, The, 285. Betts, G. H., 164, 349. Bigelow, M. A., 285 note. Biography, 240, 273, 282, 294, 312, 324. Biology, 129, 280. Blackwell, Elizabeth, 307, 312. Bligh, S. M., 317. Bloomfield, Meyer, 164. Bode, B. H., 186. Bojer, Johan, 136. Bond, R. A., 136. Bonheur, Rosa, 312. Boston Latin School, 106, Bourne, H. E., 274. Bradford, Gamaliel, 249. Bradford, William, 68, 83. Brandeis, Louis, 148 note. Breckenridge, S. P., 262, 278. Breshkovsky, Catherine, 334. Brewster, Elder, 69. Briggs, T. H., 164. Brigham, A. P., 278. Bristol, G. P., 119. Brooke, Rupert, 103. Brooks, J. G., 58, 103, 164. Brown, R. W., 260. Bruno, Giordano, 178, 304, 325. Bryant, S. C., 259. Bryant, W. C., 326 note. Bryce, James, 24, 31, 46, 103, 119, 366. 375 376 INDEX Budgets, 292. Buisson, Ferdinand, 369 note. Bureau of Educational Experi¬ ments, 204 note. Burke, Edmund, 15, 251, 270. Burns, A. T., 86 note. Burns, C. D., 105. Burns, Robert, 46, 251. Bury, J. B., 136, 372. Business education, 164. Business and ethics, 162; and Puritanism, 73jf. Butler, N. M., 163. Butler, Samuel, 147, 211. Byron, Lord, 256. Cabot, E. L., 246, 274, 309 note. Caldwell, O. W., 286. Calvinism, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73ff. Canfield, Dorothy, 211, 285, 290, 316. Cannon, W. B., 296. Carlton, F. T., 164. Carlyle, Thomas, 43, 46, 96, 164, 259, 312. Cellini, Benvenuto, 313. Chafee, Zechariah, 23 note, 372. Chambers, W. G., 329. Channing, Edward, 83. Character and environment, 237. Chesterfield, Lord, 217. China, 96, 276. Chubb, Percival, 246, 259, 260,. 264, 324, 330. Civics, 265ff. Civilization, 136. Classical studies, Ch. VII. Cobden, Richard, 325. Coe, G. A., 349, 366 note. Colby, J. R., 259. Coleridge, S. T., 254. Colvin, S. S., 317. Commerce and culture, 153 jf., 162. Commission on Reorganization of Secondary Education, 191 note. Committee of Eight, 265 note, 273. i Commons, J. R., 23. Comstock, A. B., 286. Condorcet, Marquis de, 30. Conklin, E. G., 136. Conover, E., 297. Cooley, A. M., 291. Cooper, Lane, 119, 260. Cooperative League of America, 289 note. Cope, H. F., 11, 64, 349. Cortez, 235. Cosmopolitanism, 90. “Cotter’s Saturday Night, The,” 322. Cox, J. H., 259. Crevecoeur, H. St., 88 note. Criminality, 3. Cubberley, E. P., 11. Culture and conservatism, 112. Curie, Madame, 122, 312. Curtis, H. S., 297. Curzon, Lord, 89. Damien, Father, 309. Darwin, Charles, 325. Davis, J. B., 164, 260. Dawson, G. E., 349. DeCoverley, Sir Roger, 288. DeGarmo, Charles, 264. Democracy, 4, 8, 9, 15, 24, 31, 32, 44, 49, 62, 79; and evolution, 122; and intelligence, 244; and science, 121 ff.; in school life, 192)7. Dewey, John, 73, 118 note, 166)7., 187, 196, 204 note, 212, 294, ^17. Dickens, Charles, 336. Dickinson, G. L., 38, 94, 103, 264. Disillusion, 50, 58, 230, 241. INDEX 377 Doctor’s vocation, 151. Dodge, R. E., 278. Dole, C. F., 274, 309 note. Douglas, P. and D., 291. Dow, A. W., 264. Drake, Durant, 246, 285 note. Drew, Daniel, 73. Duhamel, Georges, 136. Dunn, A. W., 206 note, 274, 309 note. Duty to uncongenial, 50, 58, 230, 241. Edwards, Jonathan, 68, 71. Eliot, C. W., 119. Eliot, George, 329. Elliott, J. L., 223, 224. Emerson, R. W., 10, 11, 62, 82, 241, 262, 270, 335, 349. England, 94. English schools, 109. Epictetus, 309 note. Equality, Ch. Ill, 79; and eco¬ nomic life, 33; and law, 34; and political life, 36, 37, 42; and schooling, 35. Erskine, J., 11, 39, 77. Ethics of the Professions and of Business, The, 164. Ethical and social conceptions compared, 171jl5^. Ethical Culture School, 359, 371 note. Experience and intelligence, 179, 183j5P., 220, 228, 314. Faguet, Emile, 96. Fairchild, M. J., 322 note. Fair-mindedness, 26, 122, 2Q8ff., 363)7. Faraday, Michael, 325. Farnsworth, C. F., 264. Farrington, F. E., 369 note. Feelings, Ch. XV. Ferrer, Francisco, 129. Festivals, 324. Feudal ideas, 41. Findlay, J. J., 109, 115 note. Fisher, D. C., 212. Fiske, John, 83. Flexner, Abraham, 119, 129, 134, 135. Foerster, F. W., 97 note, 246, 286 note, 311 note. Foght, H. W., 164. Follett, M. P., 274. Forbush, W. B., 278. Formal discipline, 110, 281, 293, 314. Foster, T. W., 285 note. France, 39, 97. Francis W. Parker School, 199 note, 212. Freedom, Ch. II; as non-infringe¬ ment, 17-20; ethically defined, 20 ; in school management, 192j7., 197. Freeland, G. E., 212, 317. Free-will, 29. French Educational Ideals, 369 note. French Revolution, 15, 32, 40, 366. Fretwell, E. K., 212. Freud, Sigmund, 300. Froebel, Friedrich, 166, Frost, Robert, 83, Gale, Zona, 255. Galileo, 214 Galloway, T. W., 285 note. Galsworthy, John, 265. Gantt, H. L., 116 note. Garibaldi, 305. Garland, Hamlin, 45, 250. Garrett, L. B., 286. Gavit, J. P., 262, 278. Geography, 275)7* George, William, 305. Germany, 95, 197. Gibbons, H. A., 105. 378 INDEX Gladstone, W. E., 3, 95. Gleason, A. H., 152 note. Goddard, H. H., 30. Goethe, J. W., 30, 56 note, 95, 171, 273. Goldmark, Josephine, 123 note. Goodlander, M. R., 204 note, 212. Goodsell, Willystine, 288, 291, Gosse, Edmund, 349. Gould, F. J., 246. Gray, Thomas, 41. Great Hunger, The, 136. Grenfell, Wilfred, 325. Griggs, E. H., 259, 264. Grotius, Hugo, 147, 225. Gruenberg, Benjamin, 285 note. Haldane, Lord, 113. Hall, G. S., 262, 295, 330, 349. Hannah, J. C., 212. Hanscom, E. D., 71. Happiness, 129, 177. Harris, H. M., 309 note. Harrison, Jane, 323 note. Hart, J. K., Ill note, 164, 165, 212. Hartmann, Gertrude, 317. Hartshorne, H., 349. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 304, 329. Hayne, P. H., 249. Hayward, F. H., 264. Hedonism, see Happiness. Henderson, C. H., 11, 164, 262, 372. Henderson, E. N., 246. Henry, Patrick, 272. Herbertson, J. A., and F. D., 278. Herschel, Caroline, 312. Hill, D. S., 330. History, 265ff. Hobson, J. A., 74. Hobhouse, L. T., 266. Hocking, W. E., 317. Hodges, George, 246, 264, 349. Holiness in people, 342. Holmes, Arthur, 317. Holmes, J. H., 104. Horne, H. H., 330, 349, 372. Hosic, J. F., 259, 260. Household arts, 287ff. Howe, S. G., 325. Howells, W. D., 256, 316. Huckleberry Finn, 71 note. Hudson, J. W., 11. Hughes, R. 0., 274. Hugo, Victor, 252. Humor, 256. Hutchins, W. J., 246. Huxley, T. H., 109 note, 121, 136, 349. Idealism in America, 8, 82, 100, 101, 103. Imitation, 311. Immigrants, 38, 86, 103. Income in the United States, 290. Independence, 304. Individuality not egotistic, 22, 40, 45, 58. Industrial problem, 3, 116, 153, I56ff. Industrial Revolution, 19, 117, 156. Inglis, A. J., 119, 262, 274, 373. Initiative to be encouraged, 194j5F. Instinct, 283, 302; and intelli¬ gence, 219. Instrumentalism, 167; see Prag¬ matism. Intelligence and moral conduct, 183, 215jf., 344. Interests, 169, 192^5^., 231, 301. Internationalism, 90, 91, 99, 102. International Moral Education Congress, 246. Inventions of the Great War, 136. “Iowa Plan,” 246. Irons, David, 303 note. Irwin, Will, 105. INDEX 379 Jackson, Andrew, 76. James, William, 167, 243, 302 note, 319 note, 320 note, 357. Japan, 87, 96, 97. Jastrow, Joseph, 302 note, 313 note, 317. Jaures, Jean, 369 note. Jefferson, Thomas, 101, 269, 272, 366. Jenks, J. W., 373. Jesus, 338, 348. Jewish religion, 336, 346. Johnson, G. E., 297. Johnson, H., 274. Johnson, J. W^., 26 note. Johnston, C. H., 264. Jordan, D. S., 130 note. Judd, C. H., 262, 295. Justice, 23, 26, 34, 48, 49, 122, 310. Kant, Immanuel, 49, 125, 181, 223, 283, 308. Keatinge, M. W., 216 note, 274. Keyser, C. J., 293 note. Kilpatrick, W. H., 204 note. Kindergarten, 194. King, H. C., 328 note, 330. King, Irving, 245, 274, 349. Kingsley, C. D., 278. Kirch wey, Freda, 278. Kirkpatrick, J. A., 295. Klapper, Paul, 191 note, 210 note, 212, 259, 260, 295, 330. Koch, Dr. Robert, 102. Krehbiel, Edward, 105. Labor problem; see Industrial problem. Landor, W. S., 107. Lane, F. K., 5. Lanier, Sidney, 258. Lawlessness, 23, 24. Lawyer’s vocation, 147. Lazear, Dr., 101. Lea, H. C., 272. Learning by doing, IQSff,, Lee, Joseph, 297. Lee, R. E., 249, 271. Leighton, J. A., 187. Leonard, S. A., 260. Leuba, J. H., 349. Lewis, F. C., 271 note. Libby, F. J., 105. Liberty; see Freedom. Lincoln, 82, 109, 147, 177, 269. Lippman, Walter, 25 note, 31, 270 note, 281 note. Literature, 247^. Longfellow, H. W., 249, 250. Lowell, J. R., 28, 31, 84, 109, 119, 134 note, 251, 259, 262. Luther, Martin, 267. Luxury, 150. Lyman, Edna, 259. Lyon, Mary, 312. McAndrew, William, 209, McBain, H. L., 95 note. Macheth, 334. Macaulay, T. B., 84. MacCunn, John, 46, 246. Mace, W. H., 2‘72 note. McClintock, P. L., 259. McDougall, William, 302 note. McLellan, J. A., 294. McMurry, C. A., 204 note, 274, 278, 286. Maeterlinck, Maurice, 268. Manchester Guardian, 113. Mangold, G. B., 31, 274. Mann, Horace, 101, 325. Markino, Yoshio, 252. Marot, H. M., 148 note. Marriage, 289, 290. Marshall, J. A., 291. Martin, E. D., 11, 317. Martin, E. M., 316. Marvin, F. S., 105, 136. Mathematics, 291ff. Mather, Nathaniel, 71. 380 INDEX Maxwell, W. H., 234. Mecklin, J. M., 31, 84, 164, 373. Meiklejohn, Alexander, 111 note. Merchant of Yenice, 250. Meriam, J. L., 212. Mexico, 96, 97. Mezes, S. E., 246. Michelangelo, 360. Mill, J. S., 38, 304, 349. Miller, H. A., 262. Miller, Joaquin, 249. Milton, John, 83. Minority opinion, 26, 268, SQZjf. Mohammed, 342. Monroe, Paul, 119, 262, 264, 286, 297. Montaigne, Michael, 357. Moral Equivalent of War, 100- 102. Moral instruction, 182, 183, 185, Ch. XII. Morality, meaning of, 6, 7, 47ff. Morality of custom, 217. More, Sir Thomas, 147, 240, 325. Motives, higher and lower, 298ff. M unroe, J. P., 119. Murray, Gilbert, 107, 133. Music, 264. Muzzey, D. S., 266, 267. Myers, P. V. N., 274. My Last Duchess, 323. Napoleon, 315. Nasmyth, George, 130 note. Nation, The, 100 note, 363. National Education Association, 99. Nationalism, Ch. VI; and re¬ ligion, 85. Nature morally indifferent, 126. Negro problem, 20, 31. New Republic, 37 note, 104, 270, 363. Newspapers, 25, 270. Nicolai, F. G., 130 note. Nietzsche, Friedrich, 43. Nightingale, Flo-rence, 309, 312. Norris, Charles, 211. Norsworthy, Naomi, 317. Occupational diseases, 146. Olgin, Moissaye, 37 note. Oriental life interpreted, 252, 276. O’Shea, M. V., 303 note, 317. Owen, Robert, 325, 326 note. Paine, A. B., 71 note. Paine, Thomas, 269. Palmer, A. F., 312. Palmer, Frederick, 105. Palmer, G. H., 147, 2l8ff., 221, 223, 264, 312 note, 313 note, 373. Pandora, 122. Parents’ associations, 371 note. Park, R. E., 262. Parker, Carleton, 153 note. Parker, S. C., 119, 264. Pasteur, Louis, 30, 102, 135, 153 note, 349. Pasvolsky, Leo, 286. Patri, Angelo, 212. Patriotism, see Nationalism; see also Public service. Payot, Jules, 243. Peace, 93, 99, 100, 101. Pearson, Karl, 121. Perfect life, 52, 54, 60, 61 note, 94. Perry, R. B., 136. Persecution, 16, 79. Pestalozzi, Henry, 290. Petrarch, Francis, 107. Philosophy shaped by conduct, 334, 338. Physical education, 295. Plato, 135, 240, 236, 323. Plutarch, 325. Pound, Arthur, 128 note, 148 note. INDEX 381 Pragmatism, Ch. X, 301. Pratt, J. B., 187. Priggishness, 236, 339. Progress, 6, 58, 60, 82, 268, 269, 371. Project method, 20lff. Promptings, 29Sff. Propaganda, 367. Property, 74 note. Provincialism, 333. Psychology, the moral value of, 242. Public service, 100, 101 149j^., 308. Putnam, E. J., 138 note, 288. Bapeer, L. W., 297. Bathenau, Walter, 164. Beed, Dr. Walter, 101, 152, 309. Beligion, 85, 182, 233, 250, 313, 331 ft . Beport of Commission on Indus¬ trial Belations, 23, 31. Representative Men, 273 note. Beverence, 56, 327, 3M2ff. Bexford, F. A., 274. Beynolds, M. J., 278. Bichards, E. H., 291, Bichardson, B. I., 291. Bichardson, N. E., 349. Biis, Jacob, 149, 325, 336. ^‘Bime of the Ancient Mariner, The,” 253. Bitual, 323. Bivalry, 305. Bobinson, J. H., 5, 268 note, 365 note. Bobinson, Pastor, 72 note. Bogers, Lindsay, 95 note. Romola, 245. Boss, E. A., 84. Bossetti, D. G., 63. Bousseau, J. J., 72, 90, 126, 153 note. Boyce, Josiah, 349. Buskin, John, 164, 259. Bussell, Bertrand, 102, 104, 114, 173 note, 180. Bussia, 37 note, 78, 117, 270, 360 Sabbatical leave, 359. Sadler, M. E., 246. St. John, E. P., 259. Salter, William, 64, 350. Schiller, Frederick, 265. Schiller, F. C. S., 187, 265. Schinz, Albert, 187. School and Home, 199 note, 202 note, 205 note, 265, 371 note. Schurz, Carl, 24. Science, Ch. VIII, 279ff.; and democracy, 121 ff., 280; and in¬ ternational concord, 282; and social progress, 123. Scott, C. C., 204 note, 212. Seguin, Dr., 302. Self-assertion, 305, 314. Self-expression, 22. Self-government, 24, 27, 97, 98, 199 ff. Self-respect, 303. Service to school and community, 207ff., 308. Sex education, 216, 284^., 289. Shafer, Bobert, 31, 136, 187. Shaftesbury, A. A. C., 309 note. Shand, A. F., 303 note. Sharp, F. C., 196 note, 206 note, 246, 265, 313 note. Sheldon, W. L., 309 note. Shelley, P. B., 256. Shorey, Paul, 107 note. 111 note. Shuster, W. M,, 342 note. Sidney, Sir Philip, 325. Sies, A. C., 297. Sisson, E. 0., 11, 246. Skinner, H. M., 373. Sloane, William, 144 note. Small, W. H., 84, 111 note. Smith, D. E., 291 note, 295. Smith, J. A., 31. Smith, Meredith, 204 note. 382 INDEX Sneath, E. H., 246, 264. Snedden, David, 166, 276. Snowbound, 261, 322. Social ethics, 6, 7, 67; 7Sff., 84; feelings, 307; heredity, 266; studies, 274. Socialism, 364. Socrates, 27, 28, 240, 326. Soddy, Frederick, 136. Speech on Conciliation with the American Colonies, 261. Spencer, A. G., 288 note, 291. Spencer, Herbert, 17, 123, 126, 128, 129, 136, 141 note, 291. Spiller, Gustav, 246, 289 note. Spinoza, Benedict, 30, 293. Spiritual, claims denied, 29, 49; ideals, 316; nature, ^7ff., 53, 63; power, 344; ties, 131, 132, 171. Spohr, W. H., 291. Squirrel Cage, The, 290. Stanton, E. C., 230. Starbuck, E. D., 350. Steiner, E. A., 86 note. Stevenson, J. A., 204. Stevenson, R. L., 30, 204 note, 215, 243. Story-telling, 247. Stowe, A. M., 260. Strong, A. G., 291. Suggestion, 299. Sully, James, 303 note. Survey, The, 18, 152, 204 note, 363. Survival of the fittest, 35, 73, 74, 131, 283. Sutherland, W. J., 278. Swift, E. J., 317. Tagore, Kabindranatli, 92 note, 105, 252. Talbot, Marion, 291. Tannenbaum, Frank, 164. Tawney, R. H., 164, Taylor, VY4 iilU, 351 note. Teacher, 213, Ch. XVII; and principal, 363; and staff, 362. Teachers’ compensation, Z53ff. Teacher’s perils, 355. Teachers’ Union, 365 note. Tead, Ordway, 148 note. Terman, L. M., 297. Thomas, Calvin, 262. Thomas, C. S., 259, 260. Thomson, J. A., 136. Thorndike, E. L., 303 note, 317. Thrift, 289, 292. Times, New York, 270. Tocqueville, Alexis De, 26, 37, 245. Tolstoi, Leo, 254. Trotter, Spencer, 279. Trudeau, Dr. E. L., 102. Tuell, H. E., 279. Tufts, J. H., 31, 46, 246. Turner, F. J., 31, 46. Twain, Mark, 43, 71 note, 186, 249, 256, 316, 358. Twiss, G. R., 286. Ultimate standards, 174, 175. Unlikeness, 42, 43, 44, 51, 79, 91, 94, 228. Urwick, E. J., 291. Utopia, 122, 147. Value, 48. Veblen, Thorstein, 136, 291. Verification, 132, 133. “Vision of Sir Launfal, The,” 255. Vocation, Ch. IX, 299, 306; and culture, 118, 141. Wallace, A. R., 136. Wallas, Graham, 136, 148 note, 303 note. War, 5, 20, 92, 99. Washington, B, T., 207. INDEX 383 Washington, George, 272. Webb, Beatrice and Sidney, 164. Webster, A. W., 187. Webster, Daniel, 82, 272. Wells, H. G., 69, 104, 109 note, 138, 346. Wells, M. E., 204 note. West, A. F., 107, 110, 144 note. White, W. E., 316. Whitman, Walt, 45, 137. Whittly, M. T., 317. Wild Boy of Avignon, 362. Wile, I. S., 286 note. William the Silent, 326. Williams, Roger, 80. Wilm, E. C., 350. Wilson, H. B. and G. M., 212. Wilson, G. M., 295. Winchell, C. M., 291. Winthrop, R. C., 84. Withers, Hartley, 164, 291. Women’s education, i37jgF. Wood, Gen. L. H., 10. Woodcraft League, 287. Woodhull, J. F., 286. Woodley, 0. I. and M. V., 373. Wordsworth, William, 30, 256, 343. Workingmen’s colleges, 162. Worth, 41, 47#. Wu Ting Fang, 103, 262. Yocum, A. D., 119. ip) THE END ■ ' • \ ,.^ 'i u HI,-' .i '‘^.:sv,^^;^,;.i* ,<'v«'*-^.^iw'>/ r^iV'' ‘ ■’■'■<: ’ ■ fi t »M r 'wY f '■ ^y'pt r^i- ,.-.>• 'f^T. .•^'• p- i' \«flSp^^'''‘>-‘'f.'^ 1k\T'V(7-’ ■•77::;’^ ^'■' '. '*• ,v’;'W;.^.: i.>: ' ■ .•.;^;'J ,;A .;{ --"’'PXX \P .X> l''M .'P.J) ,Ci»-;i’ -.“ i V I -;',Xi. '■ ' - . , , ■(“ V.':^ --fei. Wi'mv XMmXX^^ ',: :.v.0V.:v>;, r^-. yvvyrf^^. ""'■ ,.■ ■' k' . I . "i I'A'i- ..’‘a;'v^ ..r; V..*. i ' 'f ■‘■•’i '^‘ ■ ■*\»'l' ■■li A'. ' ,,. , . ,, ':;i;j5j';);i^iV*^'. jffl , > i; '."5>. 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