Moral education

“ In these ways he is organising his desires with reference to some relatively permanent and comprehensive aim. The great purpose of moral education is to encourage the organisation of desires under some worthy end. Right desires are as important for the child as true knowledge. It has been said, and with much truth, that the great aim of all education is to teach men and women to desire the right things. ”

“ On such a basis, moral education is inevitably reduced to some kind of catechetical instruction, or lessons about morals. Lessons 'about morals' signify as matter of course lessons in what other people think about virtues and duties. ”

“ As the physical instructor ought to know something about physiology and hygiene, so the moral educator ought to have some acquaintance with the principles of ethics. The moral educator ought to have, as one of his qualifications, some knowledge of the laws that govern the growth of character, the grounds on which our judgments of right and wrong ought to be based, and the great ends to which human life and work ought to be dedicated.
The opponents of moral education often expect far too much from it. They expect that it will make boys and girls better. ”

“ But when we approach the subject with an express view to moral culture, we must cross the field of emotional association in general by a new track.
The newly-appointed professors of the theory of education are perhaps not yet fully aware that, when they venture upon the troubled arena of moral education, they will not be able to evade the long-standing question. What is the moral faculty? ”

“ For instruction, theoretical and practical, as distinguished269 from education, masters are no doubt necessary. But moral education will be left entirely to women, until the time arrives for systematic teaching of moral science in the years immediately preceding majority. Here the philosopher is necessary. But the chief duties of the philosopher lie with adults; his aim being to recall them, individually or collectively, to principles impressed on them in childhood, and to enforce the right application of these principles to special cases as they may arise. ”

“ Education must make it its first aim to awaken in the pupil a sensitiveness to spiritual and ethical distinctions which knows that nothing is in its own nature morally insignificant or indifferent, but shall recognize, even in things seemingly small, a universal human significance. But, yet, in relation to the highest interests of morality or the well-being of society, the pupil must be taught to subordinate without hesitation all that relates exclusively to his own personal comfort or welfare for the well-being of his fellow-men, or for moral rectitude. ”

“ Every parent who restrains his child from the commission of a wrongful act, or approves its conduct when praiseworthy, does so in recognition of the importance of moral education. Every individual who uses his influence to keep others from evil associations, or who commends a noble or kindly act, thus manifests his appreciation of the necessity of moral or ethical culture. ”

“ This education of the feelings, moral education, is too delicate and personal a matter for a teacher to undertake trusting to his own resources. Children are not to be fed morally like young pigeons with predigested food. ”

“ The second great series of studies, the natural sciences, come in to support the moral aims, while the personal example and influence of the teacher, and the common experiences and incidents of school life and conduct, give abundant occasion to apply and enforce moral ideas.
That the other justifiable aims of education, such as physical training, mental discipline, orderly habits, gentlemanly conduct, practical utility of knowledge, liberal culture, and the free development of individuality will not be weakened by placing the moral aim in the forefront of educational motives, we are convinced. ”

“ There as elsewhere a cruel universe combined to crush a child. As though three or four vigorous brothers and sisters, with the best will, were not enough to crush any child, every one else conspired towards an education which he hated. From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics, and economy; ”

“ 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. ”

“ Character is more than intellect, love is more than knowledge, religion is more than morality; and a great heart brings us closer to God, nearer to all goodness, than a bright mind. Education is essentially moral, and the intellectual qualities themselves, which we seek to develop, derive their chief efficacy from underlying ethical qualities upon which they rest and from which they receive their energy and the power of self-control. Inequality of will is the great cause of inequality of mind; and the will is strengthened by the practice of virtue, as the body by food and exercise. ”

“ But, nevertheless, the whole period of high-school work should be a contribution to the end of moral character. Let us get rid, at the outset, of the idea that a moral life is a mechanical obedience to rules and conventionalities, a cut-and-dried affair, a matter that lies in but one province of our nature, a formalism, and learn that the whole being, its purposes and activities, the heroic impulses and the commonplace duties lie within its circle. Everything a man is and does, learns and becomes, constitutes his moral character. ”

“ The whole school curriculum should contribute to moral development. Whatever of intellect, emotion, and will is exercised in a rational field expands the soul normally. The pursuit of studies with the right spirit, and with regard for the activities and relations incidental thereto, is moral growth. Studies awaken rational interest, cultivate habits of industry, are devoted to the discovery of truth, reveal important relations of the individual to society, and present the purest ideals of the race. ”

“ Himself sensitive and humane, having suffered as a child from the tyranny of adults, he demands the tenderest care and sympathy for children, a patient study of their characteristics, a gentle, progressive leading of them to discover for themselves rather than a cramming of them with facts. The first moral education should be negative,--no preaching of virtue and truth, but shielding from vice and error. ”

“ The fact is that education has a narrow and perilous path to travel in moral lessons of every sort, a path between a dull and critical analysis of differences in moral standards and moral practice in the ages from which we have come and a wholesale commendation of people who would be haled before our modern courts for disobedience to laws were they to reappear upon our streets. The need for stimulation of the ethical imagination is so great, however, that we must dare this perilous path and master its difficulties. ”

“ WE, desiring to improve public morals, must begin by reforming the heart of man; and in order to reform the heart of man, it is necessary first of all to place education upon a sound basis.
When man comes into being between Heaven and Earth, there are certain moral obligations in his daily life, which are for the learned and simple alike; to seek after the mysterious and to practice strange arts is not to follow the example of the wise and the worthy. ”

“ In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which are so much more important than all others, are also the most complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to completeness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which form an indispensable part of any true account of my education. ”

“ Teachers who are interested in this phase of pedagogy will do well to study the science of ethics. Not that it will much aid them directly in school work, but it will at least give them a more comprehensive and definite notion of the field of morals and perhaps indicate more clearly where the materials of moral education are to be sought, and the leading ideas to be emphasized. ”

“ I wish here to call attention to one of the most controverted questions connected with popular education, because it brings out very clearly the impossibility of keeping moral education distinct from intellectual instruction. ”

“ The school is a small community, in which many immature wills are combined in such a way as to prevent one from standing in the way of another, while each helps all and all help each. For the pupil learns more by seeing the efforts of his fellows at mastering the lesson than he does by hearing the teacher's explanations. In order to secure concert of action, the semi-mechanical moral habits of regularity, punctuality, silence, and industry are insisted on. Moral education is not accomplished by lectures on morals so much as by a strict training in moral habits. ”

“ At this age the moral part of education will wisely confine itself to laying a foundation of good habits, to the careful exclusion of all evil communication and the deadly contagion of wicked example. ”

“ He should look for the good even in the spoilt and vicious pupil, and should try to bring it to light, no matter how many weeds may have sprung up alongside of it. For all subsequent moral education must start from this point. ”

“ By the expression "moral education" we mean an education which tends to make a social being of an individual who is by nature extra- or anti-social. It presents two aspects which may be paralleled with the education thus far treated and which we call "intellectual education." ”

“ When Education is good, no point of morality will be reckoned of more importance than the distribution of Praise and Blame; no act will be considered more immoral than the misapplication of them. They are the great instruments we possess for ensuring moral acts on the part of our Fellow-creatures; and when we squander away, or prostitute those great causes of virtue, and thereby deprive them of a great part of their useful tendency, we do what in us lies to lessen the quantity of Virtue, and thence of Felicity, in the world. ”

“ The possibility of sound moral education depends upon the presumption that if the foundations of character are well and truly laid during school life, by the habitual doing of virtuous actions in those departments of life which are open to the child, the character in after-life will naturally express itself in conduct which reveals these virtues in any situation in which it may find itself. ”

“ Education, the second means by which the moral ideal is defended, is not identical with social progress, by which the moral ideal is itself changed, but is the individual progress included within each definite moral ideal. Education and progress are, however, inseparably bound together, in that education goes hand in hand with punishment, and in that it leads to the discovery of new ideals. ”

“ Let us not then attempt a better method than God has sanctioned; and in our intercourse with the young, let us not only deter them from the commission of evil by the fear of disfavour or the rod, but let us also incite them to virtue, by the hope of approbation and of a future reward.
3. In our enquiry into the practical working of the moral sense, we found, not only that there were motives of action employed for encouraging the pupil to virtue, and for deterring him from vice; but we found also, that these motives referred chiefly to God, to a future judgment, and to eternity. ”

“ The school as it is looks first after its discipline, and next after its instruction. Discipline concerns the behavior, and instruction concerns the intellectual progress of the pupil. That part of moral education which relates to habits of good behavior is much better provided for in the school than any part of intellectual education. ”

“ The Inner and the Outer.—Since morality is concerned with conduct, any dualisms which are set up between mind and activity must reflect themselves in the theory of morals. Since the formulations of the separation in the philosophic theory of morals are used to justify and idealize the practices employed in moral training, a brief critical discussion is in place. It is a commonplace of educational theory that the establishing of character is a comprehensive aim of school instruction and discipline. ”

“ But if the above definition be just—if whatever concerns our development, or the formation of any part of our character, physical, intellectual, social or moral, is education—then it must follow that there are two kinds of education, bad and good. All persons, places and things, which affect us (and what does not affect us?) and influence us, for good or for evil, must educate us. ”

“ The pupil may get an erroneous impression as to the relative importance of the lessons, practice, and performance demanded of him, and so be betrayed into the belief that he is essentially perfect when these demands are satisfied.
19. For this reason alone, if others were wanting, it is necessary to combine moral education proper, which in everyday life lays stress continually on correct self-determination, with religious training. The notion that something really worthy has been achieved needs to be tempered by humility. ”