Conduct as a fine art

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Preface

The American Secular Union, a national association having for its object the complete separation of Church and State, but in no way committed to any system of religious belief or disbelief, in the fall of 1889 offered a prize of one thousand dollars "for the best essay, treatise or manual adapted to aid and assist teachers in our free public schools, and in the Girard College for Orphans, and other public and charitable institutions, professing to be unsectarian, to thoroughly instruct children and youth in the purest principles of morality without inculcating religious doctrine."

The members of the committee chosen to examine the numerous MSS. submitted were : Eichard B. Westbrook, D. D., LL. B., President of the Union, Philadelphia; Felix Adler, Ph. E>., of the Society for Ethical Culture, New York; Prof. D. G. Brinton, M. D., of the University of Pennsylvania ; Prof. Frances E. White, M. D., of the Woman's Medical College, and Miss Ida C. Craddock, Secretary of the Union. As, in the opinion of a majority of the committee, no one of the MSS. fully met all the requirements, the prize was equally divided between the two adjudged to be the best offered, entitled respectively, " Character Building," by Edward Payson Jackson, one of the masters of the Boston Latin School, and " The Laws of Daily Conduct."

Although the two books were written with no refer-

VI PREFACE.

ence to each other, they seem to be, both in manner and matter, each the complement of the other. The deficiencies of each are, in great measure, supplied by the other. While " Character Building " is analytic and cast in dialogue form, the present work is more general and synthetic in its style and treatment. The two are therefore published in a single volume, as well as separately, at the earnest request of the Union, and the authors hope that the joint book will be preferred by purchasers. Much of the matter in the introduction to " The Laws of Daily Conduct " is equally pertinent to " Character Building. "

The authors of both books are friends to religion, and they have written from a deep conviction that there is a great need of instruction in morals in the public schools. Experience, however, has amply proved the inexpediency of the attempt to teach ethics there on a religious basis. Of the success of this endeavor to place the study on a scientific basis others must judge. But in a country marked by a great diversity of creeds, the way of practice is surely the one way to follow. To teachers and parents who would not neglect the main matter of human life while imparting general knowledge, I offer this volume, in the hope that it may be somewhat of an aid in moral training in the home and in the school.

X P. G.

Contents

Page Introduction: Morals in the Public Schools.

Can they be Taught? 3

Should they be Taught ? 6

Introduction

MORALS IX THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

This small volume has been written to aid teachers in public and private schools, and parents in the home, in the very important work of the moral education and training of the young. As it is intended primarily for professional teachers, it has been put into a form supposed to be especially suitable for their use. But I trust that some fathers and mothers will be glad Njbo take hints, at least, from these pages. A line drawn between education at home and education in the schoolroom is surely somewhat artificial when the subject is such a matter as the right direction of the whole life. The distinction between the home and the school in this connection is not that the home has. properly, a monopoly of moral instruction, but that the field of the school is the more restricted.

There are three important questions relating to the teaching of morals in public schools which may well be answered here, before we take up the main subject of this book.

Can morality be taught in these public institutions, supported as they are from taxes laid upon the whole community, without doing injustice to any portion ? This question, in our present condition, resolves itself into two distinct inquiries. 1. Can ethics be taught in our common schools without sectarianism, but from a religious standpoint ? Tor one, I should answer this question without hesitation in the affirmative. It seems to me possible to teach the primary truths of practical morals (all that it is wise in any case to attempt in schools open to all), grounding them on the great propositions of natural religion in such a way as to give no reason for offence to any person who accepts these. But this task, confessedly difficult when we simply mark the many diversities of religious belief in our country, it seems inexpedient to undertake when we remember that a considerable number of our fellow-citizens, who are likewise taxpayers, declare themselves | to be destitute of any religious belief, or even vigorously opposed to all forms of religion. A much larger number of persons, again, are believers, but are none \ the less hostile to any inculcation, in the public schools, directly or indirectly, of any form of theology or religion. They consider the State to be, properly, a purely secular institution, and they would not have it wound the conscience of any citizen by teaching morals from a religious point of view. Granting that this would be the unavoidable effect with some, be they few or many, of the attempt to give ethical instruction on the basis of natural religion, we are led on to the second question under this first head.

2. Can morality be taught in our public schools in complete separation from religion and theology, from what may be called " the scientific standpoint " ? Can instruction in practical ethics be so given that no injustice shall be done to any portion of the community, religious, unreligious, or anti-religious ? In other words, Ir is there a common ground, in the duties and rights confessed by all, on which the teacher may stand and give tuition in morals as securely as he does in geography or arithmetic ? This question would probably be answered in the negative by the great majority of persons in our country. They would, it is most likely, say that while the teaching of morality without sectarianism is difficult, to teach it omitting religion entirely, even so-called

"natural religion," is practically impossible. As the present book is an honest attempt to do precisely this thing, it is evident that I emphatically differ with the great majority on this point.

It remains for the reader, or the user rather, of this volume to determine its value as an answer to the question whether morality can be taught from the scientific standpoint in our common schools. The work must speak for itself, but the fact that it is a manual of practical morals, not a short treatise on ethical theories, will at once suggest to many that the most troublesome of the supposed obstacles in the way of moral education are left on one side. In fact, I have aimed as directly as possible at actual practice ; I have so far omitted ethical theory that it would not be strange if some should be uncertain whether to rank the author in this school of ethical theorists or in that : he may belong to none ! Such uncertainty would be a source of gratification to him, as an indication of his success in keeping to the ground where all schools agree. The great facts and the main laws of the moral life are obvious to all mature men and women ; certainly, they are not dependent, for their clearness and their binding force, upon any notions as to the origin either of the universe, of mankind, or of the perception itself of these facts and laws. The facts of astronomy which affect men's daily life — such as the so-called rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, and the phenomena of the ocean tides, for instance — are plain to every one ; the explanation of them given by the astronomer to the farmer and the sailor (whether correct or not) will not essentially change the arts of agriculture and navigation.

So the common practical duties of human beings have long been familiar. [ Each new generation must learn them afresh, indeed, but it learns every-day morality as an art, not as a science, f The difficulty lies in the practice, not in the theory. | Philosophers may dispute as to the exact reason why a man loves, or should love, his mother ; but the duty of loving one's mother is not a question considered open to discussion in common life. The same may be said of the other obligations which make up the substance of their duty for the great mass of mankind, in all but exceptional times and situations. When, then, we have in mind as a subject for public-school instruction, not the science of ethics, not the speculations of moral philosophers, but the orderly presentation of the common facts and laws of the moral life which no one in his senses disputes, we perceive how the religious or theological difficulty at once disappears, to a large degree. There is possible a theistic explanation of the moral law ; there is possible an atheistic explanation ; but there is a third course open here to the common-school teacher, — to attempt no such final explanation at all ! It is not necessary for him to teach that morality rests upon religion as its ultimate foundation ; it is just as unnecessary for him to -teach that religion, on the contrary, reposes upon morality as its basis. Let the relation of religion and morality be as it may be : the teacher is not called upon to decide an issue of this magnitude.

He can teach the duties of ordinary life, showing their reasonableness and their interdependence, in a consecutive, orderly manner, without appealing to religion ; he can use the plain and usual consequences of actions, good or bad, as reasons for morality, without being open to a just accusation of irreligion. These consequences as he should teach them are admitted by all. He has, then, a right in reason to stop with them, because of the practical limitations imposed upon him by the time at his disposal, the immaturity of the faculties which he is training, and, most of all, because of the wide difference of men's minds as to the final explanation. The intuitionist and the utilitarian agree in attaching much importance to the consequences of action as a test of its moral quality. So far as these two keep company, the teacher, then, may safely and properly go along with them, not because he is, necessarily, in his own theory, an intuitionist or a utilitarian, but because he is on common and undisputed ground. The conduct of mankind is but little affected by theories of the origin of the moral sense ; this is in the highest degree true of the children in our schools. If the teacher will constantly bear in mind that religion is not morality, but an interpretation of the whole of human life and the universe, he will see that he is not unreligious or anti-religious in giving to moral instruction a practical limit, such as I have indicated, in a scientific presentation of practical duty — its facts, its methods, and its laws — fitted to the scope of the child's mind.

Such a limitation bars out all matters of theological controversy. The sectarian difficulty and the religious difficulty in moral education disappear when we keep to conduct and its common laws, and stop short of theological or philosophical explanations why right is right or wrong is wrong. If sectarians or religious people of any faith should denounce this abstinence from disputed matter as in itself unwise, wrong, or sinful, we must ask them to consider more carefully that the public schools are for all, and that the only ground on which they can stand and teach is common ground, — as much in morality as in arithmetic or language. 1

The first question as to the teaching of morals in schools — the question of its possibility, in justice to all kinds of religious belief and no-belief — has detained us

1 The ancient philosophers disputed long- and to little profit over a question which, as Dr. Jowett says, "no one would either ask or answer in modern times,' ? — " Can virtue be taught ? " In the Protagoras of Plato, Socrates maintains that it cannot be. But this " is a paradox of the same sort as the profession of Socrates that he knew nothing". Plato means to say that virtue is not brought to a man, but must be drawn out of him ; and that it cannot be taught by rhetorical discourse or citations from the poets." The discussion is, to us, pure logomachy.

long enough. Allowing that such instruction on ground common to all, believers and unbelievers, and in a scientific manner, is possible, the second inquiry arises : Is it desirable to give general moral education in the schoolroom ? The objection from sectarianism and diversity of religious beliefs has been anticipated. If it is, in fact, possible, and even far from difficult, to teach morality scientifically, giving no reasonable ground of offence to the various sects, — any or all of them, — then the further question of the desirability of imparting in the schoolroom a knowledge of moral law may be discussed on other grounds.

On general principles, the common criticism of our public-school system, that it looks too much to purely intellectual results, and that it has too little influence upon the life of pupils after they have left school, tends strongly toward giving moral instruction, now much neglected, a more conspicuous place in the school course. Many of the arguments forcibly used to recommend industrial training bear upon moral training as well. Fairminded critics who are among the warmest friends of the common-school system find its chief defect, where it has been carried, as in the large cities, to its highest pitch of apparent excellence, in its actual overrating of knowledge alone. Sheer memorizing and cramming for examinations are generally to be condemned on purely intellectual grounds. The training of the mental powers of children, which is surely a most important part of the teacher's duty, is very inadequate when the two processes just named occupy the place of real honor in the educational course. The lack of adaptation to the needs of real life in which such a partial education results has long been obvious.

One good remedy for the old narrow and injurious insistence upon sheer book knowledge, gotten by heart and recited by rote, is the industrial training which takes* the boy or girl away from textbook and recitation for a part of the school day, and educates the hand, the eye, and the practical judgment in other work. It is a new discipline of the mind, compared with the usual round of study, and it complements admirably the intellectual training given by even the best teacher of book knowledge. But it is, as well, a new moral discipline in the virtues, the very essential virtues, of work. If the pupils are required to do their manual exercises in the training shop with neatness, alertness, and steady attention, with economy of time and material, and with a thorough interest in their work, the total discipline of mental faculties and the moral nature is in the highest degree helpful toward true success in after life. This kind of education boys and girls out of school, and men aud women earning their living, must get from actual life ; a gradual transition to it from the education chiefly by books is, therefore, most advisable. Industrial training, to be of any worth, involves no small amount of moral training, given, of course, by the same person. The latter discipline, equally as a matter of course, is not to be imparted in recitations from a book ; it is given, as in the actual industries of men, by the word and the example of the skilful and energetic. There can hardly be any dispute as to the desirability of moral training in connection with this department of education ; no separation of industrial and moral education is possible. The "virtues of work," as I call them further on, are indispensable to technical skill and to business success.

Numerous educators, however, will dispute the advisability of giving formal instruction in morals in our schools as they are now conducted (without any provision for industrial training) ; they take this ground even when convinced that the difficulties arising from sectarianism and religion in general have been overrated, and can be surmounted by the exercise of care and judgment. They say that the schoolroom has a

INTRODUCTION.

necessary moral discipline of its own, which is enforced by every capable teacher ; that it is not well to go beyond this ; that the number of branches of study in our schools is already sufficiently great; and that moral education is the proper function of the home and the church. But I quite fail to see why the moral matters which are continually coming up in the schoolroom, whether practically in the actual discipline, or theoretically as suggested in the reading-books used, should be thus artificially divided from the ethics of the rest of life. The set teaching of arithmetic and geography, for instance, is, indeed, the peculiar task which parents confide to the schools ; but the instruction which bears on character is not to be dismissed by the teacher, on his side, as a thing to be attended to entirely by the child's guardians at home or in the Sunday school. This would be taking altogether too limited and partial a view of moral training. Wise instruction in the art of right living in human society can hardly be too frequent ; the practice must always be going on, so long as we live here on earth, and help in making that practice better and more successful is not likely to be too insistent.

The child spends its earliest years entirely at home, and its parents are responsible for the moral influences which shape its infant character. When he is five or six years old, he is sent to school for some thirty hours a week out of the one hundred or so which are not given to sleep. Henceforth the responsibility of moral instruction must be divided between the parent and the teacher ; but much the larger share continues to fall upon the home authorities, of course. Such obvious duties of the schoolroom as obedience, industry in study, punctuality in attendance, and ordinary politeness, even if thoroughly enforced, are far from exhausting the moral range of the life at home, with its more frequent and varied opportunities for the display of good or bad character, in word and act. But though the father and the mother cannot properly throw the whole burden of the moral training of their children upon any person or persons beyond the home circle, they naturally look for a vigorous reinforcement of their own efforts from an institution so expressly adapted to training as the public school, with its special buildings, its determined hours, its professional teachers, and its ample apparatus of instruction and discipline.

The teacher who draws an artificial line in the child's life, dividing intellectual training from moral, to devote himself to the first and throw the entire burden of the second upon the home, commits not only a blunder, but also an offence. The child is growing as a moral being in school hoars as well as out of them. In them there are some special advantages for effective ethical teaching which the home does not possess. The teacher and the parent are even more natural allies in this direction than in the field of purely intellectual effort. Every public-school teacher is bound, then, I hold, to make the school hours a time for instruction in character, so far as this is compatible with the chief object of imparting the elements of knowledge. But this does not by any means necessarily imply that we shall add a new branch to the course of study, which is often too full already of varied subjects, or that textbooks of virtue or moral theory shall be put into the hands of children in order that they may learn to define elaborately and recite by rote the rules and distinctions of a formal morality. On the contrary, I can imagine few studies more dry, repulsive, and ineffectual in reaching their proposed aim than such a study of morals ! In the highest degree it is true of instruction in this art of life that it should come direct from the teacher's lips and pure from the teacher's heart and example. I am not a believer in textbooks of morals for the use of children in public schools. But it would be a great assumption to suppose that the whole great army of teachers, as a rule, are already entirely competent to give familiar talks occasionally on points of good conduct, and that no assistance from a well-devised handbook of practical ethics, especially intended for their use, could be of value. Manuals of the art of teaching, in general and in particular, are multiplying every year. It would be a curious exception if only in the comparatively untried field of moral instruction the teacher were left to his own devices. Precisely the opposite method I hold to be adapted to the actual state of the case ; in no part of the common-school course should a good manual for teachers be more welcome or more profitable than just here.

The present book is an earnest attempt to perform what seems to be the much-needed service of clearing the mind of the common-school teacher as to the nature and limits of the moral training which may advisably be given in the schoolroom. The younger and more inexperienced instructors may find here some useful hints as to the best way of putting things. But I shall leave it to the older and experienced teachers, who have realized the desirability of moral training, to answer the third question, " How shall morality be taught in our schools ? " largely in their own way. The science of education has been amply and thoroughly illustrated of late years in books, many and excellent, for the guidance of teachers. The fit methods to pursue in moral education are essentially the same as those laid down in these numerous manuals and treatises on intellectual development in the schools. There is, of course, no fixed and plain line between the two disciplines. Writers on psychology and the principles of education nowadays devote no small part of their space to topics which are common to both. Their frequent remarks on the training of the will, on the formation of habit, on the influence of association, and similar subjects are of vita]

importance to the proper method of instruction in practical ethics. From my own short experience as an educator, but much more from observation and reflection on the matter, I offer to teachers the following suggestions for what they are worth, as to manner and method in moral education.

The one principle to keep firmly in mind is to avoid didacticism ("preaching") as much as possible, and to hold fast to actual life as children already know it, or may easily be led to comprehend it. Concrete instances of right-doing or wrong-doing, happening in the schoolroom itself, or just outside, within the immediate knowledge of the boys and girls, afford the best startingpoint for talks about the moral points involved. It will be easy to bring the children's minds, through a consideration of actual examples, to recognize in some degree the general principles involved. The same caution needs to be urged here as in the case of other general notions, against haste and consequent disregard of the immaturity of the childish mind. But if the teacher will shun formality and generality, and keep mainly to the particular and the concrete, he will find that few subjects interest children more than these questions of right and wrong in common conduct. These men-and-womento-be find j^eopZe the most attractive matter, just as they will find them later in life. Man is not only the "'proper," but also the most engaging "study of mankind," large or small. Conduct is to children, who have not yet entered upon the great activities of business, art, or science, much more than " three fourths of life," and the lines of it on which they are beginners will continue unbroken through all their years. Elaborate casuistry, hair-splitting about imaginary situations, anything and everything in the line of pure ethical theory, should be utterly tabooed in the schoolroom. But with these precautions observed, and under the guidance of a teacher of well-developed moral sense, boys and girls between eight and fourteen years of age (in the grammar schools, where moral education has its most fruitful field) wili reason about points of ethical practice with interest, and often with a freshness and an acuteness that are surprising. If this be not so, then these children in school differ very much from these same children out of school !

If the course of study is, anywhere, so full or crowded as not to allow time for the occasional talks (one or two a week) about conduct, which I should advise as the best method, then that course should be shortened by the omission of some branch of much less useful knowledge sure to be found in it. I would avoid set times for these conversations ; in them question and answer should play a large part ; the more easily (if not very frequently) the teacher " drops into " one of them for a few vivacious minutes, the better. Some incident of the schoolroom life that has just occurred, or some matter in the lesson in reading or history, may well interrupt the routine of the ordinary recitation, as the teacher asks the opinions of the class or of the school on the moral point in question, incites them to think more carefully about it, and indicates the conclusion to which long experience has brought the world of man. The school itself will, naturally, supply the startingpoint at least for the majority of these ethical talks, for, like every other social institution, it has its moral law which must be observed by all its members in order to attain its end. The plainly visible chief function of the public school is to impart the elements of knowledge. To this end there must be full obedience to the natural authority, the teacher ; the prescribed conditions of quiet, order, and studiousness must be observed by the pupils. Punctuality in attendance and readiness for all the exercises ; truthfulness in regard to absence from school, tardiness, or any other failure to comply with the regular order ; honorable conduct with respect to doBALS IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 13

methods of passing examinations ; polite treatment of the other scholars ; attention and courtesy to the teacher, — such are some of the moral necessities of the schoolroom to be met by the scholars.

The pupils have no duties which should not be met by an equal faithfulness to his duties on the part of the teacher, who should not be there teaching unless interested in his work, qualified for it, and industrious in improving his practice of it. He must be just and impartial in his treatment of the scholars ; he must, having the authority, exhibit the virtues of a ruler. Teaching politeness and honor, the instructor should be an honorable gentleman. He has some advantages over the parents at home in respect to the moral discipline demanded by the schoolroom. Indulgence or partiality for any individual child is out of place, of course, whereas at home it may sometimes be very natural ; the aim of the school is more limited and definite than that of the home ; the hours are set, the labors are plainly marked out, and to accomplish them successfully something like military discipline is necessary. On the other hand, the teacher has no direct influence over the pupil except in the school hours, and his earnest efforts may be rendered almost useless by the indifference, or the hostility even, of parents. But none the less must he strive to connect the morality of the schoolroom, which he can enforce, with the morality of life outside, as resting on the same general principles of reason. While the first rudiments of common sense will keep him from speaking of any vice, such as lying or stealing or drunkenness, in such a way as to proclaim his knowledge that it prevails in any scholar's home, he is still free to enlarge upon the manifold evil consequences of it. Thus his word may help somewhat to keep children pure in the midst of a bad home atmosphere, which he is otherwise powerless to change.

" Word/' — this will usually be easy for the teacher to give in attempting moral education; but nowhere else does word amount to so little compared with example. £ If the word is not reinforced by the example, its influence will be small. | The demand upon the patience and good nature of the public-school teacher is great, and by the vast majority the call is well met; but one good result of teaching practical morals may be in that reaction upon the teacher himself which is