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"By the special day exercises we may greatly strengthen the impressions made by our history and literature lessons, and we may set before the children grand ideals of patriotism, courage, loyalty, good living, and true ambition.” *

Third, seize incidental opportunities for the ethical use of certain studies in the curriculum, like literature and history. In literature, store the minds of pupils with choice memory gems, let the pupils make their individual books of favorite quotations, lay bare the springs of human character in the persons of prose and poetry, exciting admiration for the noble qualities and scorn of the mean. I shall long remember the moral tonic of a visit once made to a class in Shakespeare in the Cambridge English High School. In history the deeds and the destinies of men are a plain tale. With a little judicious attention here the boy may be led to make his choice of heroes for himself before the pressure of the world's temptations is upon him.

If you really wish to help a moral truth in young minds so that it shall be influential in determining conduct, the way is not by "line upon line and precept upon precept," but in the form of a story. If you learn the pictorial and imaginative art of telling a story well, you will not need to point its moral. The truth in this attractive form will wing its own way to the open heart of children and youth.

Fourth, prefer the co-operative to the individualistic methods of work. Let groups of pupils construct some complex piece together, visit points of historic, scientific, or commercial interest together, and enjoy school excursions. Develop the community sense through stimulation and exercise-to become. truly social is to become moral. Among the mightiest indirect agencies for cultivating the will are school pride, good public opinion in school, the approbation of respected leaders of their fellows. Win the strong leaders for a fine school esprit de corps, and the rest will follow. The school is really a vast social instrument, capable of moralizing most of the plastic individuals under its influence.

Fifth, substitute positive for negative rules. To tell what to * Miss Gowdy, Special Days in School, Minneapolis, 1902.

do is preferable to telling what not to do. Avoid particularly a list of prohibitions. The boy's syllogism on this subject runs somewhat as follows: what is not prohibited is permitted; this thing is not prohibited, therefore this thing is permitted. The thing in question may be had, but its absence from the list seems to him an excuse for doing it. The negative list itself is provocative of the very things it would prevent; it fills the minds of pupils with things wrong to do; so filled, according to the psychological principle of ideo-motor action, the mind tends to perform the forbidden thing. It is like the sensational newspaper, that fills the minds of its readers with ideas of things unworthy of imitation while those very ideas tend to act themselves out.

Sixth, let us adapt the school rules to the stage of growth of the will. The grammar school pupil lives essentially in the world of the concrete. For such, definite and uniform com

mands should be given. "Get this lesson well to-morrow" is better than the general direction, "Be studious." With high school pupils it is another matter. They are beginning to live in the world of the abstract. For such, a few clear positive and general maxims are best, leaving them to make their own application. "Take care of yourselves till you show me that you cannot do so" is the spirit of discipline that should actuate every secondary school. Where no responsibility is placed upon pupils, no self-control may be expected from pupils. The question whether the private school is a better training ground for character than the public school is often mooted. Without discussing this question I will simply observe that the public schools have the greater opportunity for the use of the principle of responsibility, if they will seize it.

Seventh, the administration of discipline in the school should be as nearly absolutely just and righteous as attainable. Such a discipline must be utilized as will commend itself to the moral sense of all good pupils. Its execution should be uniform, without fear or favor, and tempered with kindness. The disciplinary atmosphere should develop and not hamper the pupils' sense of justice. This inherent sense of justice embodied in the life of the school is the best friend of the disci

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plinarian, if he will get and keep in touch with it. In no place, not even in a prison or in a camp, is discipline more important than in a school, yet its presence should not be conspicuous. In the last analysis, when the discipline of force has failed, the discipline of kindness is victorious-such is the humanity of even the hardest hearts.

Eighth, in the education of the will be sure to utilize the V moral values of intellectual standards and interests. Keep up a boy's intellectual interest and work and you tend to keep up his morals. Let him lose his intellectual interests and be content with second or third rate attainment, and his morals likewise tend to drop. Develop permanent intellectual interests; they will occupy and steady the will. Pupils doing less than their best, and receiving nevertheless the unqualified approval of their teacher, are being trained immorally. As President Tucker has said: "You may have the immoral scholar, or you may have the immoral believer. But the morality of the intellect is not the least among the guarantees of general morality." "The morality of the intellect" is an idea

to keep.

In the ninth place, the training of the teacher for his professional work should include the subjects of ethics and sociology and economics. The teacher's perpetual, private self-preparation should include careful reading on these matters. Such training alone permits the teacher to make pertinent connections between class-room questions and social life situations. The great trouble is and has been the divorce of the school and life. The immoral financial, political, social leaders to-day were once in school, but their schooling did not quite succeed in connecting itself with practical morality. The school is not alone sufficient for these things, but it is essential that it make its best moral connection with present day life. We require teachers to be of good moral character; they ought also to know the elements of social morality.

From these ways of educating the will that appear to me practical, I now pass to certain impractical and mistaken views

* Is Modern Education Capable of Idealism? The Congregationalist, June 6, 1903.

of moral training. The first one is to make an impression instead of securing an expression. Not fine thoughts alone, nor warm feelings alone, are the stuff of which character is made. To give right thoughts, to arouse right feelings, are necessary, but not sufficient. To secure action is the great thing. The right thought and the fine feeling must always go over into conduct. Character is the set of connections between mental states and conduct. And often the deed must be done, especially with young children, when the right thought cannot be comprehended and the fine feeling cannot be aroused.

Second, it is a basic mistake in moral training to fail to foster the desirable instincts. The instincts are our native, and so unlearned, connections between mental states and conduct. Their influence in life is hardly second to what we acquire through learning, experience and training. At first the instinct is vague in its expression. Through pleasurable associations it becomes habitual in its action. The group of instincts, the inherited nervous mechanism, is the original equipment of will with which all organisms begin life. To neglect instinct is to begin too high up in moral training. The teacher may profitably gather from the books on psychology and child study * a list of the ordinary human instincts, note their appearance in the actions of children, and provide fitting material upon which the desirable ones may act. It is impractical in moral training to neglect this capital which nature has provided for us.

In the third place, it is a mistake to suppose you can break a fully formed habit in a child by a severe punishment. Habits are not wiped out that way. They represent real growth or sets of the nervous system. It is immeasurably better to form right habits first than to try to root out bad ones already formed. If a bad habit is present, its elimination is a slow process of forming an antagonistic habit, by redirecting attention, the use of new and absorbing interests, perhaps a change of scene, aided no doubt by such unpleasant associations as may be coupled with the wrong habit. The essential way of ridding life of bad things is filling life with good things.

Fourthly, it is surely a mistake to suppose we can lead our *e. g., Kirkpatrick, Fundamentals of Child Study.

The will of puare unwilling to There can never

pupils to become what we are not ourselves. pils cannot be fashioned by teachers who sanctify themselves for their pupils' sakes. be in America any religious test in the selection of teachers for the public schools. This is well. But it is ardently to be hoped that school boards everywhere will pay increasing attention to the moral and religious character of young untried teachers, so that by a perfectly natural process of social selection the teaching force of the country shall become increasingly moral and spiritual. There is no heavier responsibility than that which rests upon the teaching profession of organizing the mind and soul of every young generation. For its task the profession needs a sense of the moral order of our world, of the value of human life, of respect for all men and their opinions, of reverence for the beautiful and the true, and of friendship with the Father of the Great Teacher.

Then, finally, the most practical thing of all we can do in the formation of character is to enlarge our conception of our vocation. Whether we will or no, however we shrink back from assuming the weighty responsibility, the true teacher is really an incarnation for his pupils, their truth in life, the participator in their immaturity and imperfection that they may share the measure of his maturity and perfection. Teaching is not a matter of assigning lessons, hearing recitations, recording marks, setting examinations, and recommending promotions, it is not even simply a process of thinking; it is really a mode of living. The teacher is among his pupils as their embodied truth, even as God redeems the world by putting his life into it and taking its life up into his own. Teaching is the divine process of life-sharing.

In the tenth of his Esthetic Letters, Schiller writes these burning words: "Then I would say to the young disciple of truth and beauty, who would know how to satisfy the noble impulse of his heart, through every opposition of the century, I would say, give the world beneath your influence a direction toward the good, and the tranquil rhythm of time will bring its development. You have given it this direction if, as teacher, you elevate its thoughts to the necessary and eternal."

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