G. A. Johnston

“ The teacher must be so penetrated with the ethical nature of his task, and so governed in all he does by the ethical aim of his vocation as giving life and significance to all he teaches and all he does, that he cannot fail to mould the thoughts of his pupils to those high conceptions of duty, justice, humanity, and religion, which are the bond of society and the sole guarantee of its stability and progress. ”

“ The personality of the teacher is centred in his sense of vocation. A reasoned enthusiasm for education and a conviction of its value, a firm faith in goodness and in the possibilities of training in goodness, lofty ideals which repeated disappointment and failure cannot shatter, and a whole-hearted loyalty to the cause to which he has dedicated his life—these, and nothing less than these, are the essential qualities of the teacher who hopes to exercise an influence on the development of character. ”

“ It supplies motives for conduct, it is an incentive to action, and, though it is never completely realised, it is the source of all man's moral endeavour. Such an ideal, loyalty to which is suffused with a passionate enthusiasm for the good and the true, is rarely found in one who has not been influenced by the church. Religious ideals are not only more intense and dynamic than others, they are also more comprehensive. A noble enthusiasm for humanity organises a man's life as a whole, and inspires his every thought and deed to be serviceable to its comprehensive ends. ”

“ The child learns much from the conversation that takes place in the family circle, his curiosity is stimulated, he asks questions, acquires information, and begins to take up an attitude to life. But, since the influence of the family may not be a good one, the family may also become the foster-mother of many of the vices. The early nurture that we receive in the family is probably a more potent influence for good or evil than anything else in our lives. The family teaches the preciousness of mutual affection and the value of common purposes and ideals. ”

“ Moral education should seek to secure that the child not only knows what is right and what is wrong, but that he learns to love what is good and hate what is evil. In the struggle of the moral life we should not merely know what we fight for, but should love what we know. ”

“ The family as a whole shares the joys and sorrows of any of its members: an injury to one is felt as an injury to all; if one brings disgrace upon himself, it is a disgrace to the family as a whole; if one wins success and honour, the whole family rejoices, not merely because of its pride in him, but because it feels that some at least of the credit belongs to it.
In the family the reciprocal relation of rights and duties becomes clearly manifest. The relation between parents and children is one of mutual responsibility. ”

“ But an operative ideal is firmly founded in the bedrock of things as they are. Yet it recognises that this is not the best of all possible worlds, and it is convinced that all moral progress consists in the attempt to attain an ideal goal. The ideal is itself the force which demands loyalty to its claims, and which directs the whole process of the moral life. ”

“ Very different views have been taken of the proper relation of the state to its individual citizens. In our own day two main views frequently come into conflict. On the one hand an extreme individualism is asserted, on the other hand is preached an extreme socialism. On the one hand there is an insistence on the rights of the individual, on the other the rights of the state are emphasised. The settlement of the controversy between socialism and individualism is one of the gravest and most pressing moral tasks which face the twentieth century. ”

“ But the state, the family, and the church still exercise an indispensable educative influence on various departments of conduct; and from the point of view of education it is unwise for the school to try to arrogate to itself the complete control and education of childhood. It must be recognised that all the institutions have their proper contribution to make to the education of the young; and whatever experiments we make in education we should be careful that the school does not encroach upon the educational functions proper to the other institutions and most efficiently performed by them. ”

“ Individualism emphasises the rights which the individual possesses in the state and against the state. It assumes that the individual has, to start with, a large stock of natural rights, rights to live, to work, to enjoy the produce of his work, to perform his function without molestation from other individuals or from the state itself. In particular, individualism asserts the right of liberty. Liberty, it maintains, is a natural right, and every encroachment of the state upon the private freedom of its individual citizens must be resisted to the last. ”

“ But the best teacher is the first to recognise that the school cannot do everything. While the concentration of the school on moral education does give special power to its work, it is, after all, only one of the institutions by which the child is influenced; and it is only when it is leagued with the others that it performs its own proper functions most effectively. In particular, the school looks to the church for assistance in the task of inspiring children with noble ideals, and furnishing them with a real driving power towards good. The religious spirit may be present in the school ”

“ The family has evolved towards a real community of will and spirit by granting more rights and privileges to wife and children. The extension of rights to members of the family other than the father has greatly increased the complexity of family life, but, while it leaves more room for conflict and discord within the circle, it also provides immensely enhanced opportunities for the formation by the younger members of the family of a real common will with united interests and a social consciousness. ”

“ Have these institutions succeeded in raising the general level of character and improving the general conditions of life? Can we indulge any sure and certain hope that the work of education will be increasingly fruitful? ”

“ True optimism does not refuse to look facts in the face, nor does it indulge in futile day-dreams. It recognises the evil and misery in the world, it is conscious of ignorance and failure and sin, but it believes that its ideals are capable of being progressively realised in the world as it is. The optimistic man is perfectly courageous: optimism has been called "the horizon of courage." ”

“ It is often very difficult for the child to find any way in which his help will be of real use to the family, and it is consequently often very difficult for him to conceive the common purposes of the family. The community of will and purpose in the modern family is as real as ever it was, but because it is now so purely spiritual a thing, it is harder for the child to recognise its reality. ”

“ Morality and Social Institutions. The moral life is essentially a social life. In the moral life, no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself. The earliest experience of the child is constituted by its association with other persons. The possibility of good moral conduct depends on the fact that men and women associate with one another, with a view to some end which is conceived as common and regarded as desirable, not as a private advantage, but as a public benefit. The good that is sought is a common good. ”

“ One party holds that the ends of moral education are most effectively promoted by moral instruction, the other that moral education, to be of any value, must be either primarily or wholly moral training. The aim of moral training is to help the child to form good habits of conduct; moral instruction seeks to give the child right ideas about conduct. Moral training insists that the important thing in life is that the child should as a matter of fact act rightly. Moral instruction claims that the child should not only act rightly, but should know why he acts rightly. ”

“ It is a voluntary society, and a man may be a member of it or not, as he pleases. A man not merely chooses to be an adherent of some particular religion, and a member of some particular denomination, he chooses whether or no he will be connected with any religious society at all. But participation in the activities of all the other institutions is obligatory. The child must be a member of some family, and a national of some state; and when he is old enough he must go to some school. The family, the school, and the state are institutions under whose influence he is bound to come. ”

“ Such an optimism is peculiarly necessary to us as teachers. For, though in no profession is it possible to have higher ideals, in none is it easier to be content with low ones. When we see how very inadequately some of those who cherish lofty ideals of their vocation succeed in fulfilling its tasks, and when we have ourselves conspicuously failed in achieving the great results for which we had hoped, we are very apt to "lose heart," become pessimistic and cynical, and decide to rest content with doing the minimum of work and securing mediocre results. ”

“ The state, it is maintained, should delegate the use of these means of production to individuals and groups of individuals justly and equitably; but the state itself should undertake all measures of great social importance, in order to ensure that they be carried out for the benefit, not of any one class or section of the community, but of the citizens as a whole. Socialism magnifies the office of the state and extends the range of its activities.
However lofty the ideals of such a socialism, it is apt to be defective or positively mischievous in practice. ”

“ Bather it implies the willingness of the individual to realise his own ideals by acting in accordance with the laws which he as a citizen may have helped to pass, which he supports by his loyal obedience to them, and which, so far from infringing upon his liberty of action, alone make it possible. The state is not, as extreme individualism implies, an alien power external to the individual and constraining his obedience by force of compulsion: it is a community of which he is a member, having a common will with which his will may be at one. ”

“ This comprehensive aim cannot be realised unless the teachers are dominated by a conviction that the purpose of the school is an ethical one, and that they are fulfilling their vocation truly only in so far as they are helping their pupils to become upright members of the community in which they live, and worthy citizens of the country to which they belong. And they cannot do that unless they are themselves men and women of character, whose conduct corroborates the lessons they attempt to teach. ”

“ Every man has the right to choose his vocation, but the duty is laid upon every man to fulfil that vocation to the best of his ability. Thus, both rights and duties are involved in the fulfilment of vocation in the state. The individual has a right to follow some worthy occupation in the state; but he is under an obligation to render good service in that vocation. The state is under an obligation to provide its citizens with opportunities of finding worthy callings and working in them ”

“ They share the same joys and feel the same griefs. They seek common ends whose realisation is made possible only by a common life which involves mutual self-sacrifice. The authority of the family used to be centred legally in the father. To him belonged absolutely all the property of the family; and he possessed the right of life and death over its members. But gradually it was realised that the will of such a family was not really a common will, and its purposes were not directed to the attainment of really common ends. ”

“ These aspects of moral education have already been dealt with at length, and we mention them again only to emphasise that in all these ways the growing self of the child is undergoing moral training.
The moral training of the child is furthered by the corporate life of the school of which he is a pupil. Though "corporate life" has a very vague sound, and would be very difficult to define, it exercises an influence that is all the more pervasive because it so often operates subtly and imperceptibly. The corporate life of the school is part of the child's social environment. ”

“ In the past, the church has deserved well of the world for the loyal service it has animated; and to-day more than ever before we need to learn the lesson it has to teach. Such ideals as those of "humanitarianism" or "social service," noble as they are, have conspicuously failed, when divorced from religion, to elicit any considerable wealth of loyal service. ”

“ For such an optimism means a refusal to acknowledge defeat, it involves a conviction that human nature is infinitely capable of improvement, and it is inspired by faith and hope that, if loyal service be rendered, failure will not always be its meed. ”

“ On the one hand, the mind is passive and receptive in so far as it allows the melody of a piece of music or the beauty of a landscape to impress it; but active and re-creative in so far as it seeks to express the melody it has heard or the composition it has read or the beauty it has seen—to express them in beautiful sounds or lines or colours. These studies are morally valuable, not merely because they educate eye and ear and mind and will, but because they educate them not disproportionately but harmoniously. ”