Education for character

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Preface

The subject-matter of the following study is one department of the great problem how to develop in children and young people their latent capacities for good. Of the many agencies that may contribute to this end we shall confine our attention entirely to one, moral education. In the main our subject is moral education in the school. And we shall have before our mind's eye primarily one type of educational institution, the American public school.

Limitations of space compel a still narrower definition of our subject. The moral life is a very complex affair, and its existence and welfare are inextricably intertwined with all the other elements of life. The physical life is no exception. The school physician and the school nurse accordingly are, among other things, moral reformers, and in some instances the rest of us can accomplish little or nothing until they have done their work.

Furthermore, the moral life has many allies, as it has many enemies. Take, as an illustration of the former, pride in physical perfection. "It may be fairly claimed for reformatory and industrial schools," writes Mr. Legge, Director of the Schools of Liverpool, "that they have proved two things:

PREFACE first, that the earliest glimmer of reformation in the inmate of a reformatory school is detected When he is found to have developed a feeling of self-respect; secondly, that this feeling of self-respect is easiest aroused by inducing a boy to take a pride in his physical development." This principle is being used in the Philadelphia public schools for all their boys, in what seems to me an admirable and yet very simple fashion; and it is being used not merely to awaken latent self-respect but also to help arm the pupils against the temptations of vice and idleness.

An account of even the more important of these various auxiliary agencies would require an encyclopedia. Interesting and important as they are, they are omitted in this study because the only protection against scattering lies in confining ourselves to the center of the problem, how directly to develop and strengthen loyalty to moral ideals as such.

The teacher and the parent are dealing with a constantly changing organism. For this reason the writer of a book on moral education might perhaps be expected to present an account of the principles of moral development. Here again I have had to face the problem of the boy in the fable who put his hand in the jar of nuts and seized so many that he could not pull his hand out. It has seemed to me that the most pressing need at the present time lay

PREFACE

in the discussion of another set of problems. I have accordingly confined myself to a survey of the concrete aims of moral education and the agencies and instruments by which they may be attained.

The chief means at the disposal of the school for the development of character are the influence of personality on personality, exercised in the ordinary routine of its e very-day life, moral training through work and play, and moral instruction, or the influencing of character through ideas. These distinctions are far from being absolute, but they are convenient for practise. To each of these subjects is devoted a section of the book. The application to the home of the principles worked out at length for the school forms the last division of our study. The most general statement of the principles upon which all forms of moral education must rest, wherever they may be conducted, will be found in Chapter XII.

Of the methods described,, all have been actually tried in the fires of experience. For the more elaborate methods of moral training I have been compelled to rely upon a study of the work of other teachers. But the discussion of moral instruction rests upon a year's experience of my own in the city high school of Madison, and four years of work in the high school of the University of Wisconsin.

PREFACE

This book has grown out of lectures on moral education delivered in the University of Wisconsin from 1899 to 1902, and from 1911 to the present time. My students in these courses, particularly the members of my summer session classes, have given me valuable suggestions along many lines. For this help I wish to express my sincere appreciation.

F. C. S.

Contents

I The Place of Moral Education in the School 1

The school as an instrument o£ moral education — Limitations of the moral influence of the church — Limitations of the moral influence of the home — The school not a makeshift for church and home — Moral education as a source of class-room efficiency — What some great educators have accomplished.

PART I The Influence of Personality JI The Personality of the Teacher .... 9

The importance of the personality of the teacher — The limitations of its effectiveness — (1) The good tends to pass unnoticed — (2) The schoolroom offers a limited field for the display of character — (3) Men teachers do not represent their pupils* ideal of success — (4) Women's influence upon boys has definite boundaries — (5) Admiration does not necessarily produce principles — The necessity of creating special channels of influence — ^The qualifications of a good teacher — How the demand may be supplied — Moral education will give the teacher a new status in the community.

Ill The Teacher as a Friend 24

The conditions of effective personal relationships — How friendship arises between teach-

COt^TE'NTS— Continued

CHAPTER PAGB

ers and pupils — The limitations of this method of moral education.

IV The Tone of the School 33

Capturing the leaders — Excluding the bad from leadership — Segregation or expulsion of the hopelessly bad.

PART II Moral Training V The Discipline of the School i . . . . 40

Moral training defined — The distinction between conformity and loyalty to the moral ideal — External discipline can not create character — The insufficiency of the school virtues — The insufficiency of habits of outer conformity — These facts do not prove that discipline is morally valueless — The place of punishment in the development of character — The moral value of drudgery — The place of drudgery and of enthusiasm in school work — The habit of hard work.

VI Pupil Government . . . • 56

The meaning of pupil government — Conditions of success — The results of the system — Its dangers — Pupil government vs. self-government — The honor system — Dealing with serious offenses under the system of self-government.

yil Mutual Aid in Class Work 74

Moral training in the old-fashioned home — Methods of developing the desire for active service — Mutual aid in class work : the under-

CONTENTS— Continued lying principle — Its employment in handwork — Its employment in the traditional studies — Its value as intellectual discipHne — Its effects upon character — The conditions upon which these effects depend — Unsupervised mutual aid: the danger of pauperizing — The fundamental limitation of the entire method.

VIII The Service of the School 89

The opportunities offered by handwork — Service through the work of the traditional curriculum — Care for the moral welfare of fellow pupils — The Francis W. Parker School : handwork — The museum — Written class work — Dramatic and musical work — "Investigation Lane" — The morning exercises ■ — The value of these methods.

IX Moral Training through the Extra-Cur-

RicuLAR Activities of the School . . . . 106

The old-fashioned methods of social training — These methods may be employed in improved form by the school — The initial idea came from Arnold of Rugby — Application to American conditions in the University of Chicago High School — Athletics — Other activities — The class as a social unit — Student publications — The Students' Council — The honor societies — The Assembly — School parties — The solution of the fraternity problem — The conditions of success.

X Direct Training in Citizenship 124

Work for the poor — Schoolboys as policemen and municipal workers — The work of the Two Rivers (Wisconsin) High School — The

CONTENTS— CoH^ww^(f first step — The establishment of public bath-houses — The creation of a city park — Other forms of civic improvement — The constructive character of this work — The high-school organizations responsible for the work — The results, material and moral.

XI The Nature and Conditions of Effective

Moral Training 139

Moral loyalty not the product of fear or approbativeness — Methods of moral training: (1) Leading the horse to water — (2) Developing interest through contact — (3) Curing thoughtlessness — (4) Destroying enemies and strengthening alHes — Importance of distinguishing between these methods — Many effects attributed to training really due to contact with character — The relative effectiveness of the different agencies for moral training — The necessity of moral instruction.

PART III XII Aims of Moral Instruction ...... 155

The principal aims of moral training and instruction — The need for more Knowledge of what is right — How to strengthen the desire to do right — Training and instruction In acquiring self-control — The second of these ends Is the most important — The nature of the moral life — The desire to serve can be strengthened through (1) the discovery of the effects of our conduct — (2) The development of the power to realize these effects — (3) The

CONTEl^TS— Continued

'development of a spirit of hopefulness — (4) Increased respect or admiration for our fellow men — (5) The recognition of the claims of gratitude — The existence in every normal human being of the desire to serve — Awakening the desire for excellence of character — The portrayal of evil in moral instruction — The claims of egoism — The possibility of a conflict between egoism and altruism — Summary—! The discovery of identities and differences — • Morality not something alien from human nature — Moral ideals subject to growth — The function of moral instruction.

XIII Training in Moral Thoughtfulness . . . 193

Instruction in the sense of pouring in information relatively worthless — Application to morals — The limitations of authority in morals — The limitations of abstract knowledge — The work of moral instruction should consist in training in moral thoughtfulness — The nature and value of moral thoughtfulness — ^The field of moral instruction.

XIV Moral Instruction through the Existing Curriculum 201

Training in moral thoughtfulness through history — (1) The direct influence of character upon character — (2) Training in tracing the effects of conduct — (3) Developing the power to realize the absent — (4) The cultivation of national patriotism — (5) The cultivation of racial patriotism — The influence of history upon character depends on good teaching — The selection of material for class work—

CONTENTS— Continued

Literature as a picture of the real world — Literature compared with history as a means of training in moral thoughtfulness — Some advantages of literature over history: (1) It may exhibit the laws of life with greater clearness — (2) It can reveal the potentialities of human nature — (3) It deals with the concrete — The qualifications of a good teacher of literature — The place of history and literature in a system of moral instruction — Civics: its principal aims — Its results — The literature of civic instruction.

XV Moral Iststruction through Biography . . 236 Some advantages of history over literature as a means of moral instruction — Biography combines most of the advantages of history and Hterature — Some specific aims of the study of biography — The statement of purposes to be made to the class — Methods of conducting the course — The immediate aim — The place of the course in the curriculum — A course in American biography — A course in contemporary social progress — Results to be expected from this course — The relation of these courses to other forms of moral education.

XVI The Systematic Study of the Conduct of

Life: Its Aims 257

The insufficiency of the incidental method of moral instruction — The fundamental aims of a systematic course in the conduct of life — The knowledge of what is right: (a) Analysis of the situation — (b) The determination of the standard to be applied to the situation —

CONTENTS— Continued

The appeal to authority in determining the standard — Summary — The knowledge required for the attainment of self-control — Application to the elementary school — Impossibility of separating the three aims — The development of the desire to do right is the most important of these aims — Moral instruction and ethics — The French system of moral instruction and that here described, contrasted.

XVII A Program for the Systematic Study of the

Conduct of Life 279

The classification of duties — A course for the elementary school — The problem of sexual instruction in the elementary school — The high-school course in moral Instruction — The system of classification used in the following outline — (I) The service of self — (II) The home — (III) Our friends (chums) — (IV) School life — (V) The remaining duties of special relationships — (VI) Duties to all men as such — Illustrations from veracity — (VII) Vocational ethics — (VIII) The nature of a successful life — An illustration from friendship.

XVIII The Systematic Study of the Conduct of

Life: Methods and Results 318

Methods in the high school — Methods in the elementary school — Place in the curriculum — How to find room in the overcrowded curriculum — The problem of legal requirement — The pupils* interest in the work — Its effects — Moral instruction and moral training.

PART IV The Home chapter page

XIX Moral Education in the Home 342

The fundamental aims and methods of moral education the same in the home and the school — The value of general principles as a guide to practise — Example — Companionship — Discipline — Punishment — Moral instruction — Danger of our children's home being inferior to our childhood home.

A Program of Moral Instruction for the Elementary School . . 361

Chapter I The Place Of Moral Education In The School

The value to the community of a system of training in marksmanship will depend not merely upon the amount of skill which it succeeds in developing, but also upon the direction in which the rifle will be aimed after the skill has been acquired. Precisely the same thing is true of an educational system. We teachers are attempting to impart knowledge and to sharpen wits. But the value of our work depends upon the ends for which these acquisitions are employed. In an address delivered shortly before his death Professor James said : "In my time there has been in Eastern Massachusetts no enterprise of public or private rascality that has not been organized or led by a Harvard man." Professor James was speaking as a Harvard graduate. But if for "Eastern Massachusetts" you read cities of the United States, and for "Harvard man," college man^ you obtain a statement which, as a college graduate, I am prepared to admit is near enough the truth to be an extremely disquieting fact. When one considers that the community, either through taxes or donations, is all the while paying the expenses for thus drilling its enemies, the transaction seems, in one aspect, almost grotesque. The conclusion to be drawn from the facts would seem to be that the training of the intellect should be balanced by the training of the will, so that the result will be a well-rounded personality, and not a perversion, repellent in itself and a menace to the community.

The School as an Instrument of Moral Education. — A great many agencies must contribute if the moral situation which we face to-day is ever to be radically and permanently improved. Of these, none has greater potentiality for good — all things considered — and none is more amenable to public sentiment than our public schools. Moral education, in fact, lies in the way of the school as certainly as it does in the way of the home and the church. For the end of education can not be stated in any less inclusive terms than as training for complete living. This is one justification for the introduction of physical education into the schools. It applies equally to the training of character. The moral end was indeed regarded as the fundamental one by Horace Mann when he toiled to create our present public-school system. And this view was shared by the great majority of the teachers, and served to guide the actual conduct of their work — according to their lights — until about a generation ago. The one-sided insistence upon intellectual results is — broadly speaking — a phenomenon of comparatively recent years. Such a point of view can never have been universal, and even its partial acceptance can be only temporary. For the effects of grafting upon the wolf the qualities of the fox and letting it go at that are too serious long to escape observation. Hence the wide-spread interest to-day in the problem of moral education in the schools.

It is indeed maintained by some that the proper place for moral education is the church and the home. The proper place for moral education is wherever it can be given. For the' task is at once enormously difficult, and one which is vital to human society. For our civilization can be preserved, to say nothing of being rendered worth preserving, only in so far as every agency uses all its powers to this end. And if the home (and to a considerable extent this statement holds for the church) ever does its full part it will be because for a generation the school has impressed upon its pupils the value of character by the training and instruction which it has given them, and shown them how — for it is no easy matter — ^to train and instruct the children who, when they themselves become parents, will be entrusted to their care. Here, if anywhere, apply the words of von Humboldt: "What you wish to see appear In the life of a nation must be first introduced into the schools."

Limitations of the Moral Influence of the Church. — Furthermore, while home and church have many advantages over the school as the seat of moral education, the school in its turn has and alv^ays will have certain great advantages peculiar to itself. The limitations of the influence of the church are easily discovered. It fails entirely to reach a considerable proportion of the population; it secures a large am.ount of time and attention from only a very small part of the community. Those who carry its message to the children, whether in church service or Sunday-school, are too often without pedagogical experience, or skill, or knowledge of and sympathy with the child's point of view. The great Roman Catholic communion has virtually admitted the truth of this contention by its practise of establishing a very expenwive system of parochial schools to supplement the influences of the church.

Limitations of the Moral Influence of the Home. — The home, too, has its own limitations as compared with the school. A higher average of intelligence and character undoubtedly obtains among school-teachers than among the adult population as a whole; and it must never be forgotten that intelligence is an indispensable factor in developing character. Teachers are as a class more interested in and also more familiar with the methods of producing results upon immature human personalities than are parents. What is even more important, you can often do with a group of children what you can not do with the individual alone. At the theater we laugh or weep, as one of a crowd, as we should never do while witnessing a private performance. Poetry means more to us when we read it in the company of others than when we read it alone. Similarly, what is said, and not merely what is said but what is done in the presence of a class, has a distinctly greater effect than when it is said or done in the comparative solitude of the home.

Another fact must be taken Into consideration. There are men high in the business and political life of the United States whose home life is beautiful, but who are so crooked or so unfeeling in their relations with all outside its boundaries that they are a curse to their country and their age. Like many savages, they recognize moral relations only within the limits of the tribe, and their tribe is their family. This tendency to limit the area of one's obligations is deep-seated in human nature; few entirely escape it. As a consequence it is possible for children to grow up in model relations to parents, brothers, and sisters, and yet lack most of the essentials of character. The child in the school is trained, or may be trained, to take its proper place in a larger world, a world consisting mainly of mere acquaintances, a world consisting also of his equals in age, and power, and experience. Good parents will, of course, educate their children for the larger life. But the school child is actually leading the larger life. In developing an interest in those who share this life with him he leaps the bounds of family morality, and takes the great step of coming to love his neighbor, even if he has not thereby attained the insight that his neighbor is any fellow-being that needs his help, whatever his race or creed.

The School Not a Mere Makeshift for Church and Home. — The school, then, is something more than a mere makeshift to take the place of a church to whose voice many are invincibly deaf, and a home derelict in its duty. It is an institution extremely well adapted at many points for the cultivation of character and capable of indefinite improvement in this as in the other departments of its work. Its duty in this matter to the state and equally to the individuals placed in its care is thus beyond dispute.

Moral Education as a Source of Class-Room Efficiency. — There is, however, another reason why the school must devote itself to this work — for the sake, namely, of its own efficiency. We have built gymnasiums in our school buildings, and made games and sports an integral part of the school life, not merely for the sake of our pupils' future physical well-being, but also because we recognize that the best school work can be done only where the brain is supplied with pure, well-aerated blood. The clogged brain means the dull mind. Similarly with morals. An utterly unreasonable and unnecessary proportion of our efforts as teachers goes to waste because pupils are unconscientious in their work, and that in a dozen directions. As an agency for making school work effective, moral education is demonstrably worth many fold the requisite amount of time and energy.

What Some Great Educators Have Accomplished. — What the school can accomplish in the way of character building may be seen from the results obtained by Arnold at Rugby. Arnold, to be sure, was a genius, and he had his pupils under his influence for every hour of the waking day. But where genius leads we less gifted mortals may follow in its footsteps, as has been proved by the English preparatory schools. And while the boarding-school has its own peculiar advantages it is, on the other hand, handicapped by corresponding disadvantages, while many of the sources of influence which it uses are equally open to schools of all forms. The most significant contribution made to the theory of moral education by such men as Arnold is, indeed, not the particular devices which they introduced, or the institutions which they created or reshaped. It is rather the demonstration of the fact that every human being is born — not, indeed, with an illimitable number of possibilities which the environment may evoke without let or hindrance — but rather with a very considerable number of potentialities for both good and evil, and that it is in the power of the teacher to cause the former to grow and bear fruit — the latter to atrophy and disappear. One of the most beautiful illustrations of what moral education can accomplish, and at the same time what limitations are set to it by the nature of the material with which it works, is afforded by the experience of the great French preacher Fenelon, as tutor of the Duke of Burgundy, grandson of Louis XIV. Their relationship and its results in the formation of character should be studied by every one who is interested in moral education.

Part I: The Influence of Personality CHAPTER II THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER

The Importance of the Personality of the Teacher. — The most important single force at the disposal of the school for the upbuilding of character is undoubtedly the character of the teacher. Conduct is subject to the influence of contagion as to nothing else in the world. While this influence can radiate from the portrayals of biography — Henry IV of France called Plutarch his conscience — it reaches its highest potency when life comes into direct contact with life. It is always true that "nobleness enkindles nobleness," or tends to do so. But it molds our conduct most effectively when it enters into the circle of our own daily life. For then we can see its good works with our own eyes, appreciate their value because their advantages accrue in part to ourselves or to those with whom we are personally acquainted, and realize their cost to the giver because he is for us a concrete, living personality, in whose place we can put ourselves in imagination, and to whom we can feel a personal gratitude.

The consequent effects upon character are not due primarily to any blind impulse to imitate modes of outer action as such. For the undiscriminating tendency to imitate those parts of an action which are visible to the eye has little significance for education beyond infancy, or indeed, for any other department of practical life.* The only form of imitation in which the educator has any great interest is selective; it depends upon the pre-existing likings and admirations of him who imitates, and works through its tendency to strengthen these, or to point the road to their goal. The power of imitation as an educating force depends chiefly on the fact that what we admire in another we desire to possess for ourselves, and to the fact that where the mind has been rendered alert and receptive by admiration and affection it tends to enter more easily into the feelings and ideals of the one admired, and having there caught a glimpse of their value, to carry them back to itself, with the consequent enrichment of its own nature.

While character is the direct source of these effects in the field of morals, it can exert the highest and most complete influence upon others only when it is an element in a large, impressive personality.

* Much nonsense has been written about imitation, some of it by those who should know better. The most serious blunders in the literature of the subject are due to an uncritical use of the same name for half a dozen psychologically different processes. In this situation it is a pleasure to be able^ to refer the reader to Professor McDougall's discriminating treatment of the subject in his Social Psychology, chapter iv.

Keenness of observation, sanity and clarity of judgment, breadth of view, tact, refinement of taste, richness of nature, dignity of carriage both in body and mind, yes, and a healthy sense of humor — these arouse their quota of admiration, too, and increase tremendously the influence of the teacher's character. If, in addition, he possesses the secret by which, without any pandering to popularity or other sacrifice of the essentials of dignity, he can obtain admission to the "tribal pale" as a leader among equals in the free activities of his pupils, there are few positions in the world which can compare with his in power for good.

The teacher will realize more completely the responsibility of his position if he recognizes the fact that character acts upon character not merely through its power to awaken admiration, but also as a demonstration of the reality of the higher ranges of human nature. "Go with mean people and you think life mean," writes Emerson. And when you think meanly of humanity your enthusiasm for making life better tends to be lamed, and your desire to exert yourself for the benefit of your fellow men tends to be hamstringed. If in this situation the pupil sees before him moral excellence as an undeniable reality, the experience may be to him a revelation of a new world. With a wellgrounded faith in its existence, admiration may then lead him to enter.

The Limitations of Its Effectiveness. — We may agree, then, that the personahty of the teacher may be the most important single force in the work of moral education. In view, however, of the complacent attitude of many school authorities, who, having obtained teachers of high character, think they have done all that is necessary for the moral w^elfare of their pupils, emphasis must be placed on the fact that serious limitations are set to the influence of the teacher, even of the teacher possessing the best type of character. In consequence of this fact we are not justified in depending for results upon this agency alone. The extent and importance of these limitations will appear if we inquire to what causes they are due. Among the most important are the following.

(1) The Good Tends to Pass Unnoticed. — The first applies everywhere, alike in and out of school. It is a well-nigh universal tendency to notice only the bad in human conduct, and ignore, or take for granted, the good. To be sure, when the latter is exceptional in degree or dramatic in circumstance, as unexpected and exceptional control of temper in a very difficult situation, public acknowledgment of a fault or mistake, an instance of special kindness for one who has been making life miserable for the teacher, then recognition is instant and hearty. But the teacher may be a miracle of sincerity, honesty, or justice, and no one think anything about it, because the opportunit}^ for insincerity and trickiness is not noticed and the strength of the temptation is not reaHzed. It is possible for a pupil (I speak from my recollection as a pupil) to be for many months with a teacher of exceptional devotion, and yet, until years of reflection have come, to be conscious of no element of the character except a few petty flaws. Great virtues were eclipsed by small defects, as a penny held before the eyes will hide the sun. The matter is made worse by the fact that the immature minds of the pupils — like the immature minds of most adults — are unable to distinguish between faults that are fundamental and those which lie on the surface.