Moral Principles in Education Part 2

(2) But something more is required than sheer force. Sheer force may be brutal; it may override the interests of others. Even when aiming at right ends it may go at them in such a way as to violate the rights of others. More than this, in sheer force there is no guarantee for the right end. Efficiency may be directed towards mistaken ends and result in positive mischief and destruction. Power, as already suggested, must be directed. It must be organized along social channels; it must be attached to valuable ends.

This involves training on both the intellectual and emotional side. On the intellectual side we must have judgment--what is ordinarily called good sense. The difference between mere knowledge, or information, and judgment is that the former is simply held, not used; judgment is knowledge directed with reference to the accomplishment of ends. Good judgment is a sense of respective or proportionate values. The one who has judgment is the one who has ability to size up a situation. He is the one who can grasp the scene or situation before him, ignoring what is irrelevant, or what for the time being is unimportant, who can seize upon the factors which demand attention, and grade them according to their respective claims. Mere knowledge of what the right is, in the abstract, mere intentions of following the right in general, however praiseworthy in themselves, are never a subst.i.tute for this power of trained judgment. Action is always in the concrete. It is definite and individualized. Except, therefore, as it is backed and controlled by a knowledge of the actual concrete factors in the situation in which it occurs, it must be relatively futile and waste.

(3) But the consciousness of ends must be more than merely intellectual.

We can imagine a person with most excellent judgment, who yet does not act upon his judgment. There must not only be force to ensure effort in execution against obstacles, but there must also be a delicate personal responsiveness,--there must be an emotional reaction. Indeed, good judgment is impossible without this susceptibility. Unless there is a prompt and almost instinctive sensitiveness to conditions, to the ends and interests of others, the intellectual side of judgment will not have proper material to work upon. Just as the material of knowledge is supplied through the senses, so the material of ethical knowledge is supplied by emotional responsiveness. It is difficult to put this quality into words, but we all know the difference between the character which is hard and formal, and one which is sympathetic, flexible, and open. In the abstract the former may be as sincerely devoted to moral ideas as is the latter, but as a practical matter we prefer to live with the latter. We count upon it to accomplish more by tact, by instinctive recognition of the claims of others, by skill in adjusting, than the former can accomplish by mere attachment to rules.

Here, then, is the moral standard, by which to test the work of the school upon the side of what it does directly for individuals. (_a_) Does the school as a system, at present, attach sufficient importance to the spontaneous instincts and impulses? Does it afford sufficient opportunity for these to a.s.sert themselves and work out their own results? Can we even say that the school in principle attaches itself, at present, to the active constructive powers rather than to processes of absorption and learning? Does not our talk about self-activity largely render itself meaningless because the self-activity we have in mind is purely "intellectual," out of relation to those impulses which work through hand and eye?

Just in so far as the present school methods fail to meet the test of such questions moral results must be unsatisfactory. We cannot secure the development of positive force of character unless we are willing to pay its price. We cannot smother and repress the child's powers, or gradually abort them (from failure of opportunity for exercise), and then expect a character with initiative and consecutive industry. I am aware of the importance attaching to inhibition, but mere inhibition is valueless. The only restraint, the only holding-in, that is of any worth is that which comes through holding powers concentrated upon a positive end. An end cannot be attained excepting as instincts and impulses are kept from discharging at random and from running off on side tracks. In keeping powers at work upon their relevant ends, there is sufficient opportunity for genuine inhibition. To say that inhibition is higher than power, is like saying that death is more than life, negation more than affirmation, sacrifice more than service.

(_b_) We must also test our school work by finding whether it affords the conditions necessary for the formation of good judgment. Judgment as the sense of relative values involves ability to select, to discriminate. Acquiring information can never develop the power of judgment. Development of judgment is in spite of, not because of, methods of instruction that emphasize simple learning. The test comes only when the information acquired has to be put to use. Will it do what we expect of it? I have heard an educator of large experience say that in her judgment the greatest defect of instruction to-day, on the intellectual side, is found in the fact that children leave school without a mental perspective. Facts seem to them all of the same importance. There is no foreground or background. There is no instinctive habit of sorting out facts upon a scale of worth and of grading them.

The child cannot get power of judgment excepting as he is continually exercised in forming and testing judgments. He must have an opportunity to select for himself, and to attempt to put his selections into execution, that he may submit them to the final test, that of action.

Only thus can he learn to discriminate that which promises success from that which promises failure; only thus can he form the habit of relating his purposes and notions to the conditions that determine their value.

Does the school, as a system, afford at present sufficient opportunity for this sort of experimentation? Except so far as the emphasis of the school work is upon intelligent doing, upon active investigation, it does not furnish the conditions necessary for that exercise of judgment which is an integral factor in good character.

(_c_) I shall be brief with respect to the other point, the need of susceptibility and responsiveness. The informally social side of education, the aesthetic environment and influences, are all-important.

In so far as the work is laid out in regular and formulated ways, so far as there are lacking opportunities for casual and free social intercourse between pupils and between the pupils and the teacher, this side of the child's nature is either starved, or else left to find haphazard expression along more or less secret channels. When the school system, under plea of the practical (meaning by the practical the narrowly utilitarian), confines the child to the three R's and the formal studies connected with them, shuts him out from the vital in literature and history, and deprives him of his right to contact with what is best in architecture, music, sculpture, and picture, it is hopeless to expect definite results in the training of sympathetic openness and responsiveness.

What we need in education is a genuine faith in the existence of moral principles which are capable of effective application. We believe, so far as the ma.s.s of children are concerned, that if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of anything like the same a.s.surance in morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set off by themselves. They are so _very_ "moral" that they have no working contact with the average affairs of every-day life. These moral principles need to be brought down to the ground through their statement in social and in psychological terms. We need to see that moral principles are not arbitrary, that they are not "transcendental"; that the term "moral" does not designate a special region or portion of life.

We need to translate the moral into the conditions and forces of our community life, and into the impulses and habits of the individual.

All the rest is mint, anise, and c.u.mmin. The one thing needful is that we recognize that moral principles are real in the same sense in which other forces are real; that they are inherent in community life, and in the working structure of the individual. If we can secure a genuine faith in this fact, we shall have secured the condition which alone is necessary to get from our educational system all the effectiveness there is in it. The teacher who operates in this faith will find every subject, every method of instruction, every incident of school life pregnant with moral possibility.

OUTLINE

I. THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL 1. Moral ideas and ideas about morality 2. Moral education and direct moral instruction

II. THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY 1. The unity of social ethics and school ethics 2. A narrow and formal training for citizens.h.i.+p 3. School life should train for many social relations 4. It should train for self-direction and leaders.h.i.+p 5. There is no harmonious development of powers apart from social situations 6. School activities should be typical of social life 7. Moral training in the schools tends to be pathological and formal

III. THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS OF INSTRUCTION 1. Active social service as opposed to pa.s.sive individual absorption 2. The positive inculcation of individualistic motives and standards 3. The evils of compet.i.tion for external standing 4. The moral waste of remote success as an end 5. The worth of active and social modes of learning

IV. THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE COURSE OF STUDY 1. The nature of the course of study influences the conduct of the school 2. School studies as means of realizing social situations 3. School subjects are merely phases of a unified social life 4. The meaning of subjects is controlled by social considerations 5. Geography deals with the scenes of social interaction 6. Its various forms represent increasing stages of abstraction 7. History is a means for interpreting existing social relations 8. It presents type phases of social development 9. It offers contrasts, and consequently perspective 10. It teaches the methods of social progress 11. The failure of certain methods of teaching history 12. Mathematics is a means to social ends 13. The sociological nature of business arithmetic 14. Summary: The moral trinity of the school

V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION 1. Conduct as a mode of individual performance 2. Native instincts and impulses are the sources of conduct 3. Moral ideals must be realized in persons 4. Character as a system of working forces 5. Force as a necessary const.i.tuent of character 6. The importance of intellectual judgment or good sense 7. The capacity for delicate emotional responsiveness 8. Summary: The ethical standards for testing the school 9. Conclusion: The practicality of moral principles

RIVERSIDE EDUCATIONAL MONOGRAPHS

_General Educational Theory_

COOLIDGE'S America's Need for Education.

DEWEY'S Interest and Effort in Education.

DEWEY'S Moral Principles in Education.

ELIOT'S Education for Efficiency.

ELIOT'S The Tendency to the Concrete and Practical in Modern Education.

EMERSON'S Education and other Selections.

FISKE'S The Meaning of Infancy.

HORNE'S The Teacher as Artist.

HYDE'S The Teacher's Philosophy in and out of School.

JUDD'S The Evolution of a Democratic School System.

MEREDITH'S The Educational Bearings of Modern Psychology.

PALMER'S The Ideal Teacher.

PALMER'S Trades and Professions.

PALMER'S Ethical and Moral Instruction in Schools.

PROSSER'S The Teacher and Old Age.

STOCKTON'S Project Work in Education.

STRATTON'S Developing Mental Power.

TERMAN'S The Teacher's Health.

THORNDIKE'S Individuality.

TROW'S Scientific Method in Education.

_Administration and Supervision_

BETT'S New Ideals in Rural Schools.

BLOOMFIELD'S The Vocational Guidance of Youth.

CABOT'S Volunteer Help to the Schools.

COLE'S Industrial Education in the Elementary School.

CUBBERLEY'S Changing Conceptions of Education.

CUBBERLEY'S The Improvement of Rural Schools.

DOOLEY'S The Education of the Ne'er-Do-Well.

GATES'S The Management of Smaller Schools.

HINES'S Measuring Intelligence.

KOOS'S The High-School Princ.i.p.al.

LEWIS'S Democracy's High School.

MAXWELL'S The Observation of Teaching.

MAXWELL'S The Selection of Textbooks.

MILLER and CHARLES'S Publicity and the Public School.

PERRY'S The Status of the Teacher.

RUSSELL'S Economy in Secondary Education.

SMITH'S Establis.h.i.+ng Industrial Schools.

SNEDDEN'S The Problem of Vocational Guidance.

WEEKS'S The People's School.

_Method_

ANDRESS'S The Teaching of Hygiene in the Grades.