Riverside Educational Monographs

EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO

SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, AND PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

MORAL PRINCIPLES IN EDUCATION

BY

JOHN DEWEY

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO

The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY JOHN DEWEY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The author has drawn freely upon his essay on _Ethical PrinciplesUnderlying Education_, published in the Third Year-Book of The NationalHerbart Society for the Study of Education. He is indebted to theSociety for permission to use this material. 

The Riverside PressCAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTSPRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 

CONTENTS

 INTRODUCTION I. THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL II. THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY III. THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS OF INSTRUCTION IV. THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE COURSE OF STUDY V. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION

_Education as a public business_

It is one of the complaints of the schoolmaster that the public does notdefer to his professional opinion as completely as it does to that ofpractitioners in other professions. At first sight it might seem asthough this indicated a defect either in the public or in theprofession; and yet a wider view of the situation would suggest thatsuch a conclusion is not a necessary one. The relations of education tothe public are different from those of any other professional work. Education is a public business with us, in a sense that the protectionand restoration of personal health or legal rights are not. To an extentcharacteristic of no other institution, save that of the state itself, the school has power to modify the social order. And under our politicalsystem, it is the right of each individual to have a voice in the makingof social policies as, indeed, he has a vote in the determination ofpolitical affairs. If this be true, education is primarily a publicbusiness, and only secondarily a specialized vocation. The layman, then, will always have his right to some utterance on the operation of thepublic schools. 

_Education as expert service_

I have said "some utterance, " but not "all"; for school-mastering hasits own special mysteries, its own knowledge and skill into which theuntrained layman cannot penetrate. We are just beginning to recognizethat the school and the government have a common problem in thisrespect. Education and politics are two functions fundamentallycontrolled by public opinion. Yet the conspicuous lack of efficiency andeconomy in the school and in the state has quickened our recognition ofa larger need for expert service. But just where shall public opinionjustly express itself, and what shall properly be left to expertjudgment?

_The relations of expert opinion and public opinion_

In so far as broad policies and ultimate ends affecting the welfare ofall are to be determined, the public may well claim its right to settleissues by the vote or voice of majorities. But the selection andprosecution of the detailed ways and means by which the public will isto be executed efficiently must remain largely a matter of specializedand expert service. To the superior knowledge and technique requiredhere, the public may well defer. 

In the conduct of the schools, it is well for the citizens to determinethe ends proper to them, and it is their privilege to judge of theefficacy of results. Upon questions that concern all the manifolddetails by which children are to be converted into desirable types ofmen and women, the expert schoolmaster should be authoritative, at leastto a degree commensurate with his superior knowledge of this verycomplex problem. The administration of the schools, the making of thecourse of study, the selection of texts, the prescription of methods ofteaching, these are matters with which the people, or theirrepresentatives upon boards of education, cannot deal save with dangerof becoming mere meddlers. 

_The discussion of moral education an illustration of mistaken views oflaymen_

Nowhere is the validity of this distinction between education as apublic business and education as an expert professional service broughtout more clearly than in an analysis of the public discussion of themoral work of the school. How frequently of late have those unacquaintedwith the special nature of the school proclaimed the moral ends ofeducation and at the same time demanded direct ethical instruction asthe particular method by which they were to be realized! This, too, inspite of the fact that those who know best the powers and limitations ofinstruction as an instrument have repeatedly pointed out the futility ofassuming that knowledge of right constitutes a guarantee of right doing. How common it is for those who assert that education is for socialefficiency to assume that the school should return to the barrendiscipline of the traditional formal subjects, reading, writing, and therest! This, too, regardless of the fact that it has taken a century ofeducational evolution to make the course of study varied and rich enoughto call for those impulses and activities of social life which needtraining in the child. And how many who speak glowingly of the largeservices of the public schools to a democracy of free and self-reliantmen affect a cynical and even vehement opposition to the"self-government of schools"! These would not have the children learn togovern themselves and one another, but would have the masters rule them, ignoring the fact that this common practice in childhood may be afoundation for that evil condition in adult society where the citizensare arbitrarily ruled by political bosses. 

One need not cite further cases of the incompetence of the lay public todeal with technical questions of school methods. Instances are plentifulto show that well-meaning people, competent enough to judge of the aimsand results of school work, make a mistake in insisting upon theprerogative of directing the technical aspects of education with adogmatism that would not characterize their statements regarding anyother special field of knowledge or action. 

_A fundamental understanding of moral principles in education_

Nothing can be more useful than for the public and the teachingprofession to understand their respective functions. The teacher needsto understand public opinion and the social order, as much as the publicneeds to comprehend the nature of expert educational service. It willtake time to draw the boundary lines that will be conducive to respect, restraint, and efficiency in those concerned; but a beginning can bemade upon fundamental matters, and nothing so touches the foundations ofour educational thought as a discussion of the moral principles ineducation. 

It is our pleasure to present a treatment of them by a thinker whosevital influence upon the reform of school methods is greater than thatof any of his contemporaries. In his discussion of the social andpsychological factors in moral education, there is much that willsuggest what social opinion should determine, and much that willindicate what must be left to the trained teacher and school official. 

THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL

I

THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOL

An English contemporary philosopher has called attention to thedifference between moral ideas and ideas about morality. "Moral ideas"are ideas of any sort whatsoever which take effect in conduct andimprove it, make it better than it otherwise would be. Similarly, onemay say, immoral ideas are ideas of whatever sort (whether arithmeticalor geographical or physiological) which show themselves in makingbehavior worse than it would otherwise be; and non-moral ideas, one maysay, are such ideas and pieces of information as leave conductuninfluenced for either the better or the worse. Now "ideas aboutmorality" may be morally indifferent or immoral or moral. There isnothing in the nature of ideas _about_ morality, of information _about_honesty or purity or kindness which automatically transmutes such ideasinto good character or good conduct. 

This distinction between moral ideas, ideas of any sort whatsoever thathave become a part of character and hence a part of the working motivesof behavior, and ideas _about_ moral action that may remain as inert andineffective as if they were so much knowledge about Egyptian archæology, is fundamental to the discussion of moral education. The business of theeducator--whether parent or teacher--is to see to it that the greatestpossible number of ideas acquired by children and youth are acquired insuch a vital way that they become _moving_ ideas, motive-forces in theguidance of conduct. This demand and this opportunity make the moralpurpose universal and dominant in all instruction--whatsoever the topic. Were it not for this possibility, the familiar statement that theultimate purpose of all education is character-forming would behypocritical pretense; for as every one knows, the direct and immediateattention of teachers and pupils must be, for the greater part of thetime, upon intellectual matters. It is out of the question to keepdirect moral considerations constantly uppermost. But it is not out ofthe question to aim at making the methods of learning, of acquiringintellectual power, and of assimilating subject-matter, such that theywill render behavior more enlightened, more consistent, more vigorousthan it otherwise would be. 

The same distinction between "moral ideas" and "ideas about morality"explains for us a source of continual misunderstanding between teachersin the schools and critics of education outside of the schools. Thelatter look through the school programmes, the school courses of study, and do not find any place set apart for instruction in ethics or for"moral teaching. " Then they assert that the schools are doing nothing, or next to nothing, for character-training; they become emphatic, evenvehement, about the moral deficiencies of public education. Theschoolteachers, on the other hand, resent these criticisms as aninjustice, and hold not only that they do "teach morals, " but that theyteach them every moment of the day, five days in the week. In thiscontention the teachers _in principle_ are in the right; if they are inthe wrong, it is not because special periods are not set aside for whatafter all can only be teaching _about_ morals, but because their owncharacters, or their school atmosphere and ideals, or their methods ofteaching, or the subject-matter which they teach, are not such _indetail_ as to bring intellectual results into vital union with characterso that they become working forces in behavior. Without discussing, therefore, the limits or the value of so-called direct moral instruction(or, better, instruction _about_ morals), it may be laid down asfundamental that the influence of direct moral instruction, even at itsvery best, is _comparatively_ small in amount and slight in influence, when the whole field of moral growth through education is taken intoaccount. This larger field of indirect and vital moral education, thedevelopment of character through all the agencies, instrumentalities, and materials of school life is, therefore, the subject of our presentdiscussion. 

THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY

II

THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY

There cannot be two sets of ethical principles, one for life in theschool, and the other for life outside of the school. As conduct is one, so also the principles of conduct are one. The tendency to discuss themorals of the school as if the school were an institution by itself ishighly unfortunate. The moral responsibility of the school, and of thosewho conduct it, is to society. The school is fundamentally aninstitution erected by society to do a certain specific work, --toexercise a certain specific function in maintaining the life andadvancing the welfare of society. The educational system which does notrecognize that this fact entails upon it an ethical responsibility isderelict and a defaulter. It is not doing what it was called intoexistence to do, and what it pretends to do. Hence the entire structureof the school in general and its concrete workings in particular need tobe considered from time to time with reference to the social positionand function of the school. 

The idea that the moral work and worth of the public school system as awhole are to be measured by its social value is, indeed, a familiarnotion. However, it is frequently taken in too limited and rigid a way. The social work of the school is often limited to training forcitizenship, and citizenship is then interpreted in a narrow sense asmeaning capacity to vote intelligently, disposition to obey laws, etc. But it is futile to contract and cramp the ethical responsibility of theschool in this way. The child is one, and he must either live his sociallife as an integral unified being, or suffer loss and create friction. To pick out one of the many social relations which the child bears, andto define the work of the school by that alone, is like instituting avast and complicated system of physical exercise which would have forits object simply the development of the lungs and the power ofbreathing, independent of other organs and functions. The child is anorganic whole, intellectually, socially, and morally, as well asphysically. We must take the child as a member of society in thebroadest sense, and demand for and from the schools whatever isnecessary to enable the child intelligently to recognize all his socialrelations and take his part in sustaining them. 

To isolate the formal relationship of citizenship from the whole systemof relations with which it is actually interwoven; to suppose that thereis some one particular study or mode of treatment which can make thechild a good citizen; to suppose, in other words, that a good citizen isanything more than a thoroughly efficient and serviceable member ofsociety, one with all his powers of body and mind under control, is ahampering superstition which it is hoped may soon disappear fromeducational discussion. 

The child is to be not only a voter and a subject of law; he is also tobe a member of a family, himself in turn responsible, in allprobability, for rearing and training of future children, therebymaintaining the continuity of society. He is to be a worker, engaged insome occupation which will be of use to society, and which will maintainhis own independence and self-respect. He is to be a member of someparticular neighborhood and community, and must contribute to the valuesof life, add to the decencies and graces of civilization wherever he is. These are bare and formal statements, but if we let our imaginationtranslate them into their concrete details, we have a wide and variedscene. For the child properly to take his place in reference to thesevarious functions means training in science, in art, in history; meanscommand of the fundamental methods of inquiry and the fundamental toolsof intercourse and communication; means a trained and sound body, skillful eye and hand; means habits of industry, perseverance; in short, habits of serviceableness. 

Moreover, the society of which the child is to be a member is, in theUnited States, a democratic and progressive society. The child must beeducated for leadership as well as for obedience. He must have power ofself-direction and power of directing others, power of administration, ability to assume positions of responsibility. This necessity ofeducating for leadership is as great on the industrial as on thepolitical side. 

New inventions, new machines, new methods of transportation andintercourse are making over the whole scene of action year by year. Itis an absolute impossibility to educate the child for any fixed stationin life. So far as education is conducted unconsciously or consciouslyon this basis, it results in fitting the future citizen for no stationin life, but makes him a drone, a hanger-on, or an actual retardinginfluence in the onward movement. Instead of caring for himself and forothers, he becomes one who has himself to be cared for. Here, too, theethical responsibility of the school on the social side must beinterpreted in the broadest and freest spirit; it is equivalent to thattraining of the child which will give him such possession of himselfthat he may take charge of himself; may not only adapt himself to thechanges that are going on, but have power to shape and direct them. 

Apart from participation in social life, the school has no moral end noraim. As long as we confine ourselves to the school as an isolatedinstitution, we have no directing principles, because we have no object. For example, the end of education is said to be the harmoniousdevelopment of all the powers of the individual. Here no reference tosocial life or membership is apparent, and yet many think we have in itan adequate and thoroughgoing definition of the goal of education. Butif this definition be taken independently of social relationship we haveno way of telling what is meant by any one of the terms employed. We donot know what a power is; we do not know what development is; we do notknow what harmony is. A power is a power only with reference to the useto which it is put, the function it has to serve. If we leave out theuses supplied by social life we have nothing but the old "facultypsychology" to tell what is meant by power and what the specific powersare. The principle reduces itself to enumerating a lot of faculties likeperception, memory, reasoning, etc. , and then stating that each one ofthese powers needs to be developed. 

Education then becomes a gymnastic exercise. Acute powers of observationand memory might be developed by studying Chinese characters; acutenessin reasoning might be got by discussing the scholastic subtleties of theMiddle Ages. The simple fact is that there is no isolated faculty ofobservation, or memory, or reasoning any more than there is an originalfaculty of blacksmithing, carpentering, or steam engineering. Facultiesmean simply that particular impulses and habits have been coördinated orframed with reference to accomplishing certain definite kinds of work. We need to know the social situations in which the individual will haveto use ability to observe, recollect, imagine, and reason, in order tohave any way of telling what a training of mental powers actually means. 

What holds in the illustration of this particular definition ofeducation holds good from whatever point of view we approach the matter. Only as we interpret school activities with reference to the largercircle of social activities to which they relate do we find any standardfor judging their moral significance. 

The school itself must be a vital social institution to a much greaterextent than obtains at present. I am told that there is a swimmingschool in a certain city where youth are taught to swim without goinginto the water, being repeatedly drilled in the various movements whichare necessary for swimming. When one of the young men so trained wasasked what he did when he got into the water, he laconically replied, "Sunk. " The story happens to be true; were it not, it would seem to be afable made expressly for the purpose of typifying the ethicalrelationship of school to society. The school cannot be a preparationfor social life excepting as it reproduces, within itself, typicalconditions of social life. At present it is largely engaged in thefutile task of Sisyphus. It is endeavoring to form habits in childrenfor use in a social life which, it would almost seem, is carefully andpurposely kept away from vital contact with the child undergoingtraining. The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in sociallife. To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart fromany direct social need and motive, apart from any existing socialsituation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by goingthrough motions outside of the water. The most indispensable conditionis left out of account, and the results are correspondingly partial. 

The much lamented separation in the schools of intellectual and moraltraining, of acquiring information and growing in character, is simplyone expression of the failure to conceive and construct the school as asocial institution, having social life and value within itself. Exceptso far as the school is an embryonic typical community life, moraltraining must be partly pathological and partly formal. Training ispathological when stress is laid upon correcting wrong-doing instead ofupon forming habits of positive service. Too often the teacher's concernwith the moral life of pupils takes the form of alertness for failuresto conform to school rules and routine. These regulations, judged fromthe standpoint of the development of the child at the time, are more orless conventional and arbitrary. They are rules which have to be made inorder that the existing modes of school work may go on; but the lack ofinherent necessity in these school modes reflects itself in a feeling, on the part of the child, that the moral discipline of the school isarbitrary. Any conditions that compel the teacher to take note offailures rather than of healthy growth give false standards and resultin distortion and perversion. Attending to wrong-doing ought to be anincident rather than a principle. The child ought to have a positiveconsciousness of what he is about, so as to judge his acts from thestandpoint of reference to the work which he has to do. Only in this waydoes he have a vital standard, one that enables him to turn failures toaccount for the future. 

By saying that the moral training of the school is formal, I mean thatthe moral habits currently emphasized by the school are habits which arecreated, as it were, _ad hoc_. Even the habits of promptness, regularity, industry, non-interference with the work of others, faithfulness to tasks imposed, which are specially inculcated in theschool, are habits that are necessary simply because the school systemis what it is, and must be preserved intact. If we grant theinviolability of the school system as it is, these habits representpermanent and necessary moral ideas; but just in so far as the schoolsystem is itself isolated and mechanical, insistence upon these moralhabits is more or less unreal, because the ideal to which they relate isnot itself necessary. The duties, in other words, are distinctly schoolduties, not life duties. If we compare this condition with that of thewell-ordered home, we find that the duties and responsibilities that thechild has there to recognize do not belong to the family as aspecialized and isolated institution, but flow from the very nature ofthe social life in which the family participates and to which itcontributes. The child ought to have the same motives for right doingand to be judged by the same standards in the school, as the adult inthe wider social life to which he belongs. Interest in communitywelfare, an interest that is intellectual and practical, as well asemotional--an interest, that is to say, in perceiving whatever makes forsocial order and progress, and in carrying these principles intoexecution--is the moral habit to which all the special school habitsmust be related if they are to be animated by the breath of life. 

THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

III

THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

The principle of the social character of the school as the basic factorin the moral education given may be also applied to the question ofmethods of instruction, --not in their details, but their general spirit. The emphasis then falls upon construction and giving out, rather thanupon absorption and mere learning. We fail to recognize how essentiallyindividualistic the latter methods are, and how unconsciously, yetcertainly and effectively, they react into the child's ways of judgingand of acting. Imagine forty children all engaged in reading the samebooks, and in preparing and reciting the same lessons day after day. Suppose this process constitutes by far the larger part of their work, and that they are continually judged from the standpoint of what theyare able to take in in a study hour and reproduce in a recitation hour. There is next to no opportunity for any social division of labor. Thereis no opportunity for each child to work out something specifically hisown, which he may contribute to the common stock, while he, in turn, participates in the productions of others. All are set to do exactly thesame work and turn out the same products. The social spirit is notcultivated, --in fact, in so far as the purely individualistic methodgets in its work, it atrophies for lack of use. One reason why readingaloud in school is poor is that the real motive for the use oflanguage--the desire to communicate and to learn--is not utilized. Thechild knows perfectly well that the teacher and all his fellow pupilshave exactly the same facts and ideas before them that he has; he is not_giving_ them anything at all. And it may be questioned whether themoral lack is not as great as the intellectual. The child is born with anatural desire to give out, to do, to serve. When this tendency is notused, when conditions are such that other motives are substituted, theaccumulation of an influence working against the social spirit is muchlarger than we have any idea of, --especially when the burden of work, week after week, and year after year, falls upon this side. 

But lack of cultivation of the social spirit is not all. Positivelyindividualistic motives and standards are inculcated. Some stimulus mustbe found to keep the child at his studies. At the best this will be hisaffection for his teacher, together with a feeling that he is notviolating school rules, and thus negatively, if not positively, iscontributing to the good of the school. I have nothing to say againstthese motives so far as they go, but they are inadequate. The relationbetween the piece of work to be done and affection for a third person isexternal, not intrinsic. It is therefore liable to break down wheneverthe external conditions are changed. Moreover, this attachment to aparticular person, while in a way social, may become so isolated andexclusive as to be selfish in quality. In any case, the child shouldgradually grow out of this relatively external motive into anappreciation, for its own sake, of the social value of what he has todo, because of its larger relations to life, not pinned down to two orthree persons. 

But, unfortunately, the motive is not always at this relative best, butmixed with lower motives which are distinctly egoistic. Fear is a motivewhich is almost sure to enter in, --not necessarily physical fear, orfear of punishment, but fear of losing the approbation of others; orfear of failure, so extreme as to be morbid and paralyzing. On the otherside, emulation and rivalry enter in. Just because all are doing thesame work, and are judged (either in recitation or examination withreference to grading and to promotion) not from the standpoint of theirpersonal contribution, but from that of _comparative_ success, thefeeling of superiority over others is unduly appealed to, while timidchildren are depressed. Children are judged with reference to theircapacity to realize the same external standard. The weaker graduallylose their sense of power, and accept a position of continuous andpersistent inferiority. The effect upon both self-respect and respectfor work need not be dwelt upon. The strong learn to glory, not in theirstrength, but in the fact that they are stronger. The child isprematurely launched into the region of individualistic competition, andthis in a direction where competition is least applicable, namely, inintellectual and artistic matters, whose law is coöperation andparticipation. 

Next, perhaps, to the evils of passive absorption and of competition forexternal standing come, perhaps, those which result from the eternalemphasis upon preparation for a remote future. I do not refer here tothe waste of energy and vitality that accrues when children, who live solargely in the immediate present, are appealed to in the name of a dimand uncertain future which means little or nothing to them. I have inmind rather the habitual procrastination that develops when the motivefor work is future, not present; and the false standards of judgmentthat are created when work is estimated, not on the basis of presentneed and present responsibility, but by reference to an external result, like passing an examination, getting promoted, entering high school, getting into college, etc. Who can reckon up the loss of moral powerthat arises from the constant impression that nothing is worth doing initself, but only as a preparation for something else, which in turn isonly a getting ready for some genuinely serious end beyond? Moreover, asa rule, it will be found that remote success is an end which appealsmost to those in whom egoistic desire to get ahead--to get ahead ofothers--is already only too strong a motive. Those in whom personalambition is already so strong that it paints glowing pictures of futurevictories may be touched; others of a more generous nature do notrespond. 

I cannot stop to paint the other side. I can only say that theintroduction of every method that appeals to the child's active powers, to his capacities in construction, production, and creation, marks anopportunity to shift the centre of ethical gravity from an absorptionwhich is selfish to a service which is social. Manual training is morethan manual; it is more than intellectual; in the hands of any goodteacher it lends itself easily, and almost as a matter of course, todevelopment of social habits. Ever since the philosophy of Kant, it hasbeen a commonplace of æsthetic theory, that art is universal; that it isnot the product of purely personal desire or appetite, or capable ofmerely individual appropriation, but has a value participated in by allwho perceive it. Even in the schools where most conscious attention ispaid to moral considerations, the methods of study and recitation may besuch as to emphasize appreciation rather than power, an emotionalreadiness to assimilate the experiences of others, rather thanenlightened and trained capacity to carry forward those values which inother conditions and past times made those experiences worth having. Atall events, separation between instruction and character continues inour schools (in spite of the efforts of individual teachers) as a resultof divorce between learning and doing. The attempt to attach genuinemoral effectiveness to the mere processes of learning, and to the habitswhich go along with learning, can result only in a training infectedwith formality, arbitrariness, and an undue emphasis upon failure toconform. That there is as much accomplished as there is shows thepossibilities involved in methods of school activity which affordopportunity for reciprocity, coöperation, and positive personalachievement. 

THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE COURSE OF STUDY

IV

THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE COURSE OF STUDY

In many respects, it is the subject-matter used in school life whichdecides both the general atmosphere of the school and the methods ofinstruction and discipline which rule. A barren "course of study, " thatis to say, a meagre and narrow field of school activities, cannotpossibly lend itself to the development of a vital social spirit or tomethods that appeal to sympathy and coöperation instead of toabsorption, exclusiveness, and competition. Hence it becomes an allimportant matter to know how we shall apply our social standard of moralvalue to the subject-matter of school work, to what we call, traditionally, the "studies" that occupy pupils. 

_A study is to be considered as a means of bringing the child to realizethe social scene of action. _ Thus considered it gives a criterion forselection of material and for judgment of values. We have at presentthree independent values set up: one of culture, another of information, and another of discipline. In reality, these refer only to three phasesof social interpretation. Information is genuine or educative only in sofar as it presents definite images and conceptions of materials placedin a context of social life. Discipline is genuinely educative only asit represents a reaction of information into the individual's own powersso that he brings them under control for social ends. Culture, if it isto be genuinely educative and not an external polish or factitiousvarnish, represents the vital union of information and discipline. Itmarks the socialization of the individual in his outlook upon life. 

This point may be illustrated by brief reference to a few of the schoolstudies. In the first place, there is no line of demarkation withinfacts themselves which classifies them as belonging to science, history, or geography, respectively. The pigeon-hole classification which is soprevalent at present (fostered by introducing the pupil at the outsetinto a number of different studies contained in different text-books)gives an utterly erroneous idea of the relations of studies to oneanother and to the intellectual whole to which all belong. In fact, these subjects have to do with the same ultimate reality, namely, theconscious experience of man. It is only because we have differentinterests, or different ends, that we sort out the material and labelpart of it science, part of it history, part geography, and so on. Each"sorting" represents materials arranged with reference to some onedominant typical aim or process of the social life. 

This social criterion is necessary, not only to mark off studies fromone another, but also to grasp the reasons for each study, --the motivesin connection with which it shall be presented. How, for example, shouldwe define geography? What is the unity in the different so-calleddivisions of geography, --mathematical geography, physical geography, political geography, commercial geography? Are they purely empiricalclassifications dependent upon the brute fact that we run across a lotof different facts? Or is there some intrinsic principle through whichthe material is distributed under these various heads, --something in theinterest and attitude of the human mind towards them? I should say thatgeography has to do with all those aspects of social life which areconcerned with the interaction of the life of man and nature; or, thatit has to do with the world considered as the scene of socialinteraction. Any fact, then, will be geographical in so far as it has todo with the dependence of man upon his natural environment, or withchanges introduced in this environment through the life of man. 

The four forms of geography referred to above represent, then, fourincreasing stages of abstraction in discussing the mutual relation ofhuman life and nature. The beginning must be social geography, the frankrecognition of the earth as the home of men acting in relations to oneanother. I mean by this that the essence of any geographical fact is theconsciousness of two persons, or two groups of persons, who are at onceseparated and connected by their physical environment, and that theinterest is in seeing how these people are at once kept apart andbrought together in their actions by the instrumentality of the physicalenvironment. The ultimate significance of lake, river, mountain, andplain is not physical but social; it is the part which it plays inmodifying and directing human relationships. This evidently involves anextension of the term commercial. It has to do not simply with business, in the narrow sense, but with whatever relates to human intercourse andintercommunication as affected by natural forms and properties. Political geography represents this same social interaction taken in astatic instead of in a dynamic way; taken, that is, as temporarilycrystallized and fixed in certain forms. Physical geography (includingunder this not simply physiography, but also the study of flora andfauna) represents a further analysis or abstraction. It studies theconditions which determine human action, leaving out of account, temporarily, the ways in which they concretely do this. Mathematicalgeography carries the analysis back to more ultimate and remoteconditions, showing that the physical conditions of the earth are notultimate, but depend upon the place which the world occupies in a largersystem. Here, in other words, are traced, step by step, the links whichconnect the immediate social occupations and groupings of men with thewhole natural system which ultimately conditions them. Step by step thescene is enlarged and the image of what enters into the make-up ofsocial action is widened and broadened; at no time is the chain ofconnection to be broken. 

It is out of the question to take up the studies one by one and showthat their meaning is similarly controlled by social considerations. ButI cannot forbear saying a word or two upon history. History is vital ordead to the child according as it is, or is not, presented from thesociological standpoint. When treated simply as a record of what haspassed and gone, it must be mechanical, because the past, as the past, is remote. Simply as the past there is no motive for attending to it. The ethical value of history teaching will be measured by the extent towhich past events are made the means of understanding thepresent, --affording insight into what makes up the structure and workingof society to-day. Existing social structure is exceedingly complex. Itis practically impossible for the child to attack it _en masse_ and getany definite mental image of it. But type phases of historicaldevelopment may be selected which will exhibit, as through a telescope, the essential constituents of the existing order. Greece, for example, represents what art and growing power of individual expression standfor; Rome exhibits the elements and forces of political life on atremendous scale. Or, as these civilizations are themselves relativelycomplex, a study of still simpler forms of hunting, nomadic, andagricultural life in the beginnings of civilization, a study of theeffects of the introduction of iron, and iron tools, reduces thecomplexity to simpler elements. 

One reason historical teaching is usually not more effective is that thestudent is set to acquire information in such a way that no epochs orfactors stand out in his mind as typical; everything is reduced to thesame dead level. The way to secure the necessary perspective is to treatthe past as if it were a projected present with some of its elementsenlarged. 

The principle of contrast is as important as that of similarity. Becausethe present life is so close to us, touching us at every point, wecannot get away from it to see it as it really is. Nothing stands outclearly or sharply as characteristic. In the study of past periods, attention necessarily attaches itself to striking differences. Thus thechild gets a locus of imagination, through which he can remove himselffrom the pressure of present surrounding circumstances and define them. 

History is equally available in teaching the _methods_ of socialprogress. It is commonly stated that history must be studied from thestandpoint of cause and effect. The truth of this statement depends uponits interpretation. Social life is so complex and the various parts ofit are so organically related to one another and to the naturalenvironment, that it is impossible to say that this or that thing is thecause of some other particular thing. But the study of history canreveal the main instruments in the discoveries, inventions, new modes oflife, etc. , which have initiated the great epochs of social advance; andit can present to the child types of the main lines of social progress, and can set before him what have been the chief difficulties andobstructions in the way of progress. Once more this can be done only inso far as it is recognized that social forces in themselves are alwaysthe same, --that the same kind of influences were at work one hundred andone thousand years ago that are now working, --and that particularhistorical epochs afford illustration of the way in which thefundamental forces work. 

Everything depends, then, upon history being treated from a socialstandpoint; as manifesting the agencies which have influenced socialdevelopment and as presenting the typical institutions in which sociallife has expressed itself. The culture-epoch theory, while working inthe right direction, has failed to recognize the importance of treatingpast periods with relation to the present, --as affording insight intothe representative factors of its structure; it has treated theseperiods too much as if they had some meaning or value in themselves. Theway in which the biographical method is handled illustrates the samepoint. It is often treated in such a way as to exclude from the child'sconsciousness (or at least not sufficiently to emphasize) the socialforces and principles involved in the association of the masses of men. It is quite true that the child is easily interested in history from thebiographical standpoint; but unless "the hero" is treated in relation tothe community life behind him that he sums up and directs, there isdanger that history will reduce itself to a mere exciting story. Thenmoral instruction reduces itself to drawing certain lessons from thelife of the particular personalities concerned, instead of widening anddeepening the child's imagination of social relations, ideals, andmeans. 

It will be remembered that I am not making these points for their ownsake, but with reference to the general principle that when a study istaught as a mode of understanding social life it has positive ethicalimport. What the normal child continuously needs is not so much isolatedmoral lessons upon the importance of truthfulness and honesty, or thebeneficent results that follow from a particular act of patriotism, asthe formation of habits of social imagination and conception. 

I take one more illustration, namely, mathematics. This does, or doesnot, accomplish its full purpose according as it is, or is not, presented as a social tool. The prevailing divorce between informationand character, between knowledge and social action, stalks upon thescene here. The moment mathematical study is severed from the placewhich it occupies with reference to use in social life, it becomesunduly abstract, even upon the purely intellectual side. It is presentedas a matter of technical relations and formulæ apart from any end oruse. What the study of number suffers from in elementary education islack of motivation. Back of this and that and the other particular badmethod is the radical mistake of treating number as if it were an end initself, instead of the means of accomplishing some end. Let the childget a consciousness of what is the use of number, of what it really isfor, and half the battle is won. Now this consciousness of the use ofreason implies some end which is implicitly social. 

One of the absurd things in the more advanced study of arithmetic is theextent to which the child is introduced to numerical operations whichhave no distinctive mathematical principles characterizing them, butwhich represent certain general principles found in businessrelationships. To train the child in these operations, while paying noattention to the business realities in which they are of use, or to theconditions of social life which make these business activitiesnecessary, is neither arithmetic nor common sense. The child is calledupon to do examples in interest, partnership, banking, brokerage, and soon through a long string, and no pains are taken to see that, inconnection with the arithmetic, he has any sense of the social realitiesinvolved. This part of arithmetic is essentially sociological in itsnature. It ought either to be omitted entirely, or else be taught inconnection with a study of the relevant social realities. As we nowmanage the study, it is the old case of learning to swim apart from thewater over again, with correspondingly bad results on the practicalside. 

In concluding this portion of the discussion, we may say that ourconceptions of moral education have been too narrow, too formal, and toopathological. We have associated the term ethical with certain specialacts which are labeled virtues and are set off from the mass of otheracts, and are still more divorced from the habitual images and motivesof the children performing them. Moral instruction is thus associatedwith teaching about these particular virtues, or with instilling certainsentiments in regard to them. The moral has been conceived in toogoody-goody a way. Ultimate moral motives and forces are nothing more orless than social intelligence--the power of observing and comprehendingsocial situations, --and social power--trained capacities of control--atwork in the service of social interest and aims. There is no fact whichthrows light upon the constitution of society, there is no power whosetraining adds to social resourcefulness that is not moral. 

I sum up, then, this part of the discussion by asking your attention tothe moral trinity of the school. The demand is for social intelligence, social power, and social interests. Our resources are (1) the life ofthe school as a social institution in itself; (2) methods of learningand of doing work; and (3) the school studies or curriculum. In so faras the school represents, in its own spirit, a genuine community life;in so far as what are called school discipline, government, order, etc. , are the expressions of this inherent social spirit; in so far as themethods used are those that appeal to the active and constructivepowers, permitting the child to give out and thus to serve; in so far asthe curriculum is so selected and organized as to provide the materialfor affording the child a consciousness of the world in which he has toplay a part, and the demands he has to meet; so far as these ends aremet, the school is organized on an ethical basis. So far as generalprinciples are concerned, all the basic ethical requirements are met. The rest remains between the individual teacher and the individualchild. 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION

V

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION

So far we have been considering the make-up of purposes and results thatconstitute conduct--its "what. " But conduct has a certain method andspirit also--its "how. " Conduct may be looked upon as expressing theattitudes and dispositions of an _individual_, as well as realizingsocial results and maintaining the social fabric. A consideration ofconduct as a mode of individual performance, personal doing, takes usfrom the social to the psychological side of morals. In the first place, all conduct springs ultimately and radically out of native instincts andimpulses. We must know what these instincts and impulses are, and whatthey are at each particular stage of the child's development, in orderto know what to appeal to and what to build upon. Neglect of thisprinciple may give a mechanical imitation of moral conduct, but theimitation will be ethically dead, because it is external and has itscentre without, not within, the individual. We must study the child, inother words, to get our indications, our symptoms, our suggestions. Themore or less spontaneous acts of the child are not to be thought of assetting moral forms to which the efforts of the educator mustconform--this would result simply in spoiling the child; but they aresymptoms which require to be interpreted: stimuli which need to beresponded to in directed ways; material which, in however transformed ashape, is the only ultimate constituent of future moral conduct andcharacter. 

Then, secondly, our ethical principles need to be stated inpsychological terms because the child supplies us with the only means orinstruments by which to realize moral ideals. The subject-matter of thecurriculum, however important, however judiciously selected, is empty ofconclusive moral content until it is made over into terms of theindividual's own activities, habits, and desires. We must know whathistory, geography, and mathematics mean in psychological terms, thatis, as modes of personal experiencing, before we can get out of themtheir moral potentialities. 

The psychological side of education sums itself up, of course, in aconsideration of character. It is a commonplace to say that thedevelopment of character is the end of all school work. The difficultylies in the execution of the idea. And an underlying difficulty in thisexecution is the lack of a clear conception of what character means. This may seem an extreme statement. If so, the idea may be conveyed bysaying that we generally conceive of character simply in terms ofresults; we have no clear conception of it in psychological terms--thatis, as a process, as working or dynamic. We know what character means interms of the actions which proceed from it, but we have not a definiteconception of it on its inner side, as a system of working forces. 

(1) Force, efficiency in execution, or overt action, is one necessaryconstituent of character. In our moral books and lectures we may lay thestress upon good intentions, etc. But we know practically that the kindof character we hope to build up through our education is one that notonly has good intentions, but that insists upon carrying them out. Anyother character is wishy-washy; it is goody, not good. The individualmust have the power to stand up and count for something in the actualconflicts of life. He must have initiative, insistence, persistence, courage, and industry. He must, in a word, have all that goes under thename "_force_ of character. " Undoubtedly, individuals differ greatly intheir native endowment in this respect. None the less, each has acertain primary equipment of impulse, of tendency forward, of innateurgency to do. The problem of education on this side is that ofdiscovering what this native fund of power is, and then of utilizing itin such a way (affording conditions which both stimulate and control) asto organize it into definite conserved modes of action--habits. 

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

This involves training on both the intellectual and emotional side. Onthe intellectual side we must have judgment--what is ordinarily calledgood sense. The difference between mere knowledge, or information, andjudgment is that the former is simply held, not used; judgment isknowledge directed with reference to the accomplishment of ends. Goodjudgment is a sense of respective or proportionate values. The one whohas judgment is the one who has ability to size up a situation. He isthe one who can grasp the scene or situation before him, ignoring whatis irrelevant, or what for the time being is unimportant, who can seizeupon the factors which demand attention, and grade them according totheir respective claims. Mere knowledge of what the right is, in theabstract, mere intentions of following the right in general, howeverpraiseworthy in themselves, are never a substitute for this power oftrained judgment. Action is always in the concrete. It is definite andindividualized. Except, therefore, as it is backed and controlled by aknowledge of the actual concrete factors in the situation in which itoccurs, 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 notact upon his judgment. There must not only be force to insure effort inexecution against obstacles, but there must also be a delicate personalresponsiveness, --there must be an emotional reaction. Indeed, goodjudgment is impossible without this susceptibility. Unless there is aprompt and almost instinctive sensitiveness to conditions, to the endsand interests of others, the intellectual side of judgment will not haveproper material to work upon. Just as the material of knowledge issupplied through the senses, so the material of ethical knowledge issupplied by emotional responsiveness. It is difficult to put thisquality into words, but we all know the difference between the characterwhich is hard and formal, and one which is sympathetic, flexible, andopen. In the abstract the former may be as sincerely devoted to moralideas as is the latter, but as a practical matter we prefer to live withthe latter. We count upon it to accomplish more by tact, by instinctiverecognition of the claims of others, by skill in adjusting, than theformer can accomplish by mere attachment to rules. 

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

Just in so far as the present school methods fail to meet the test ofsuch questions moral results must be unsatisfactory. We cannot securethe development of positive force of character unless we are willing topay its price. We cannot smother and repress the child's powers, orgradually abort them (from failure of opportunity for exercise), andthen expect a character with initiative and consecutive industry. I amaware of the importance attaching to inhibition, but mere inhibition isvalueless. The only restraint, the only holding-in, that is of any worthis that which comes through holding powers concentrated upon a positiveend. An end cannot be attained excepting as instincts and impulses arekept from discharging at random and from running off on side tracks. Inkeeping powers at work upon their relevant ends, there is sufficientopportunity for genuine inhibition. To say that inhibition is higherthan power, is like saying that death is more than life, negation morethan affirmation, sacrifice more than service. 

(_b_) We must also test our school work by finding whether it affordsthe conditions necessary for the formation of good judgment. Judgment asthe sense of relative values involves ability to select, todiscriminate. Acquiring information can never develop the power ofjudgment. Development of judgment is in spite of, not because of, methods of instruction that emphasize simple learning. The test comesonly when the information acquired has to be put to use. Will it do whatwe expect of it? I have heard an educator of large experience say thatin her judgment the greatest defect of instruction to-day, on theintellectual side, is found in the fact that children leave schoolwithout a mental perspective. Facts seem to them all of the sameimportance. There is no foreground or background. There is noinstinctive habit of sorting out facts upon a scale of worth and ofgrading them. 

The child cannot get power of judgment excepting as he is continuallyexercised in forming and testing judgments. He must have an opportunityto select for himself, and to attempt to put his selections intoexecution, that he may submit them to the final test, that of action. Only thus can he learn to discriminate that which promises success fromthat which promises failure; only thus can he form the habit of relatinghis purposes and notions to the conditions that determine their value. Does the school, as a system, afford at present sufficient opportunityfor this sort of experimentation? Except so far as the emphasis of theschool work is upon intelligent doing, upon active investigation, itdoes not furnish the conditions necessary for that exercise of judgmentwhich is an integral factor in good character. 

(_c_) I shall be brief with respect to the other point, the need ofsusceptibility and responsiveness. The informally social side ofeducation, the æsthetic environment and influences, are all-important. In so far as the work is laid out in regular and formulated ways, so faras there are lacking opportunities for casual and free socialintercourse between pupils and between the pupils and the teacher, thisside of the child's nature is either starved, or else left to findhaphazard expression along more or less secret channels. When the schoolsystem, under plea of the practical (meaning by the practical thenarrowly utilitarian), confines the child to the three R's and theformal studies connected with them, shuts him out from the vital inliterature and history, and deprives him of his right to contact withwhat is best in architecture, music, sculpture, and picture, it ishopeless to expect definite results in the training of sympatheticopenness and responsiveness. 

 * * * * *

What we need in education is a genuine faith in the existence of moralprinciples which are capable of effective application. We believe, sofar as the mass of children are concerned, that if we keep at them longenough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We arepractically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility ofanything like the same assurance in morals. We believe in moral laws andrules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set offby themselves. They are so _very_ "moral" that they have no workingcontact with the average affairs of every-day life. These moralprinciples need to be brought down to the ground through their statementin social and in psychological terms. We need to see that moralprinciples are not arbitrary, that they are not "transcendental"; thatthe term "moral" does not designate a special region or portion of life. We need to translate the moral into the conditions and forces of ourcommunity life, and into the impulses and habits of the individual. 

All the rest is mint, anise, and cummin. The one thing needful is thatwe recognize that moral principles are real in the same sense in whichother forces are real; that they are inherent in community life, and inthe working structure of the individual. If we can secure a genuinefaith in this fact, we shall have secured the condition which alone isnecessary to get from our educational system all the effectiveness thereis in it. The teacher who operates in this faith will find everysubject, every method of instruction, every incident of school lifepregnant 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 citizenship 3. School life should train for many social relations 4. It should train for self-direction and leadership 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 passive individual absorption 2. The positive inculcation of individualistic motives and standards 3. The evils of competition 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 constituent 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 Principal. 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 Establishing 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. ATWOOD'S The Theory and Practice of the Kindergarten. BAILEY'S Art Education. BETTS'S The Recitation. COOLEY'S Language Teaching in the Grades. DOUGHERTY'S How to Teach Phonics. EARHART'S Teaching Children to Study. EVANS'S The Teaching of High School Mathematics. FAIRCHILD'S The Teaching of Poetry in the High School. FREEMAN'S The Teaching of Handwriting. HALIBURTON and SMITH'S Teaching Poetry in the Grades. HARTWELL'S The Teaching of History. HAWLEY'S Teaching English in Junior High Schools. HAYNES'S Economics in the Secondary School. HILL'S The Teaching of Civics. JENKINS'S Reading in the Primary Grades. KENDALL and STRYKER'S History in the Elementary School. KILPATRICK'S The Montessori System Examined. LEONARD'S English Composition as a Social Problem. LOSH and WEEKS'S Primary Number Projects. PALMER'S Self-Cultivation in English. RIDGLEY'S Geographic Principles. RUEDIGER'S Vitalized Teaching. SHARP'S Teaching English in High Schools. STOCKTON'S Project Work in Education. SUZZALLO'S The Teaching of Primary Arithmetic. SUZZALLO'S The Teaching of Spelling. SWIFT'S Speech Defects in School Children. TUELL'S The Study of Nations. WILSON's What Arithmetic Shall We Teach?

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY