2. Unless some organization (such as the Parents' Association) is formed between the home and the school, it is impossible for the teachers to keep any hold of former or even of past pupils. Too much technical and clerical work required of teachers of today. Too much centralization of management.

3. Over-pressure of clerical and routine work on principals and teachers shuts out the opportunity to follow up the influence gained in the classroom by continuance of interest and friendship. It seems sometimes as tho the days were spent in "paying tithes of mint and anise and cummin and omitting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith."

4. Either time should be given to teachers, or special agencies formed to keep up connection between schools and parents.

5. A clerk should be employed in each large building. My experience is that if I keep my clerical work up I must neglect visiting my pupils.

Less than 10 per cent. signified anything like satisfaction concerning the

matter.

The question was asked whether it would strengthen the moral influence of the school to give more responsibility to the elder pupils in the maintenance of discipline, and to this question 65 per cent. answered in the affirmative and 35 per cent. in the negative.

With almost no exception there was an expression of earnest desire to beautify the school surroundings and to emphasize in every possible way recreation and school games.

As to the value of formal addresses to pupils by teachers and others, 81 per cent. were in favor of this method of inspiring higher ideals, and 19 per cent. were opposed.

Asked as to what encouragement should be given parents to take a personal interest in the school, with a view to closer relations between the school and home, 83 per cent. expressed themselves strongly in favor of parental associations or some such organizations, while 17 per cent. doubted their value, or told of unfortunate experiences in connection with them.

There was no opposition on the part of anyone to school journeys, visits to places of educational interest, vacation schools and holiday camps, when these undertakings could be successfully carried out.

Regarding the organization of old scholars' clubs, alumni associations and the like, 75 per cent. spoke in their favor, and 25 per cent. felt that they were not productive of much good, or else were beyond the range of possibility for the ordinary teacher.

The following question was not universally answered, but seemed to deserve careful consideration from a number:

Should steps be taken to make the continuation classes and night schools more effective in their training for citizenship?

In regard to this I quote as follows:

Such courses would not only fit the students better for the work they are to do, thus enabling them to earn better wages and to raise the standard of life, but it would also be of benefit to the community as they would have a greater earning capacity. In a moral way, it would be of benefit because it would take these young people away from the streets

in the evenings where they learn all kinds of evil and get into lazy and vicious habits, which hurt them all their lives. I believe our present laws should be so amended as to require pupils who leave school before the age of sixteen to take a certain amount of evening work each week up to the age of sixteen, in public or private schools.

As we sum up these reports, taking into our range of vision the schools of this and foreign countries, we note certain facts which stand out boldly and are full of significance.

1. The deep interest which teachers the world over are taking in the problem of moral training thru the agency of the public school.

2. The almost universal opinion that the strongest influence in the development of character is to be found in the personality of the teacher.

3. The agreement on the part of the large majority that every study and every school duty, including the organization of the student body, should be effective in the work of moral training.

4. The hesitation and distrust shown toward systematic moral instruction, based upon a syllabus, wherever this plan has not been tried. (This applies to the greater part of the schools.) On the other hand, the universally favorable attitude of those teachers who have had experience in this method of instruction.

5. The general agreement that direct moral instruction, if it be timely and wise, is of great ethical value.

6. The high regard shown for Bible lessons and religious exercises by those who make use of them, and the intense opposition expressed by those who are unaccustomed to their use.

7. As a corollary of the preceding, the marked tendency on the part of all teachers to be conservative, to believe in their own methods, and to doubt the value of anything different.

8. The general condemnation of the American home and social life as a hindrance to the teacher in the development of student character.

What then shall be our conclusion of the whole matter? This, perhaps: The problem of moral education, whose far-reaching importance no one can overestimate, demands for its wise solution an awakened church, inspiring with religious ideals the souls of its youth; unselfish homes, consecrated to their God-given mission of caring for the children; and last, but not least, the everpresent public school, whose corporate life, courses of study, student organizations, and physical surroundings shall each and all play their silent tho wellplanned part in the development of moral character, and whose teaching force, with minds open to conviction, shall serve in love, in justice, in faith in things unseen, in reverent devotion to their high calling, and in conscious recognition of the tremendous power for moral training which is ever active thru the personality of the teacher.

SOME EXPERIMENTS IN MORAL EDUCATION

FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF WISCONSIN, MADISON, WIS.

Among the memorabilia preserved at the Elmira Reformatory is a letter from a convict to the director which reads: "Please let me join the class in ethics. I think ethics is my weak point." If by ethics we mean not conduct, as perhaps our convict did, but reasoned thought upon the issues of life, then decidedly ethics is the weak point of the school curriculum of the United States. This is not because of any want of interest in the subject on the part of the leaders in education, at least during the past half-decade. We are all coming to recognize more and more that our schools must train directly for life; that character is the most important thing in the world; and that mere intellectual training does not necessarily have any considerable moral influence, and in fact often results in the grafting upon the wolf of the qualities of the fox. We are beginning to lose, also, some of our smug self-satisfaction at the moralizing agencies which we already employ. We have been wont in the past to point with a smile of pride to the influence of the discipline of the school, and of the character of the teacher. These, especially the latter, we shall indeed never cease to value as not merely of the highest importance in themselves, but as the foundation for everything else that we can do. But a more careful observation and the application of higher standards are showing us that these things are not enough. For in spite of them the output of the schools is, from the moral point of view, usually mediocre and sometimes worse. These facts we teachers are beginning to recognize, and we are vaguely feeling that we must bestir ourselves.

We vaguely feel that we must bestir ourselves, yet almost nothing is accomplished. Why? I suppose it is because we do not see our way, we do not know exactly what to do, and are afraid of doing the wrong thing. In consequence we do nothing, falling back indolently upon the example of the teacher, and the word dropped incidentally during the course of a recitation. Excellent, and indeed indispensable, these things, I repeat, to avoid being misunderstood, but, I insist, hopelessly inadequate to the seriousness of the conditions confronting us.

In view of this situation I wish to ask your attention for a few minutes this evening to one or two devices for moral education that are so simple that it will be self-evident that they can be used, and to one or two others whose practicability and value have been demonstrated by experience. And I want to appeal to you to introduce some one of these into your schools; or, if you have worked out something that seems better to you, to try that even if it does not appear to you as beyond all criticism. Let us not wait until we can see the entire length of the road before us; let us not stop to argue with our own fears or the skepticism of anyone else; let us settle the problem of the possibility of systematic moral training and instruction by putting it to the only

possible test, the test of experience. There is indeed a time for thought and discussion. We do not want to be like the Irishman riding by furiously on horseback, who didn't know where he was going, and only knew he was going at a terrible pace. But the time has come when bare speculation on this subject has accomplished about all it can; and what we have to do now is to get to work. To work, then, I say. And since in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom, let those of you who are willing to join the ranks of the workers make arrangements to meet around a table at least once a year, say at the meetings of the state teachers' associations, to compare, and perhaps, thru a secretary, record your experiences. Soon means will be found for a broader comparison and synthesis, perhaps at the meetings of the National Association, and thru these means and thru reports, thru journal articles and otherwise, a system of moral education, truly national in scope and character, will arise. It will be national in character because it will not be forced upon an unprepared people from above by some minister of education, as in France. It will be the product of the minds of those who are in close contact with the people whom they are training and instructing. Hence, whatever blunders may be made at first, in the end it will speak directly and unequivocally to the national conscience.

What, then, shall we do, you ask? I answer that there is so much which can be done that you can select one out of several radically different methods, and then, as time goes on, you can introduce another and another if you wish, until you are employing all the varied agencies which are requisite for the attainment of the best results. If you are of the active type yourself you will find it easiest to begin by training your pupils in self-control, obedience to the common will, and mutual helpfulness by means of one of several different systems of pupil self-government. There is the school city, for instance, which has recently been described in several magazines. Better still, I think, is the system of class-prefects or tribunes. One boy and one girl are chosen by each class from its own membership, and these are responsible for the order and decorum of the class, and all of them collectively, for the order and decorum of the school as a whole, and that, not merely during the recitation period, but on the playground, and even in the hours of going to and coming from school. But what is even more important, this system can be used by a wise principal for developing a spirit of mutual helpfulness. Remarkable results have been obtained in this way. For example, the life of one school which I know where this work was for several years carried on was as unlike that of the public school which I attended in my youth-a school community which was probably as good as the average, but which was a hotbed of almost unbridled individualism—the one, I say, was as different from the other as the material civilization of today is different from that of a generation ago. This method of character-building can be employed successfully with pupils from the sixth grammar grade on thru the senior class of the high school.

But good as this is, it is not enough. In order to get the best results it

must be supplemented by direct and systematic work in the classroom. The first method I would suggest is to bring your pupils into contact with lives and movements that will awaken by contagion aspirations for the best things. Arrange that there shall be a course in your school in which, once or twice a week, the biographies of the heroes of our national life shall be studied. Make your pupils acquainted with Franklin, Washington, Garrison, Robert E. Lee, and Lincoln; and, of our own generation, with such men as Jacob A. Riis and Walter Reed, who sacrificed his life in demonstrating the relation of the mosquito to the spread of yellow fever. Good biographies for young people are rare. For this reason I have made a bibliography of the subject with the help of one of the chief authorities in the United States on young people's literature. I shall be glad to send it to any teacher who cares to apply for it. The class may be conducted by having the pupil read a paper on a portion of the life of the person selected, in which everything that can be found in an encyclopedia will be rigorously excluded, and an attempt will be made to get a clean-cut picture of the man's character and his contribution to the higher life of his time. Of many of these men there exists a brief biography; of the lives of the remainder sketches can be found in one place or another. These should be read by all members of the class, so that the presentation of the paper may be followed by a general discussion. In these days of political and industrial corruption, what a breath of mountain air to learn of the reception accorded by Franklin, Washington, and the other Revolutionary leaders, to the repeated corrupt overtures made to them in the early years of the American Revolution by the British Government! In the end they could have had anything they chose to demand; but they stood firm like a rock. Henry IV of France called Plutarch his conscience; and we Americans have in the annals of our own country our own Plutarch, a record of men and women of the same race with ourselves, going and coming in the same kind of a world, whose lives can thrill us and our children like a trumpet call.

Such a course might well be supplemented by a study of the movements that are going on about us to make the world a better place to live in, and man a better person to live with. In order to give human interest you may identify each with some person with whom it is especially connected. Thus the movement for governmental control of corporations may be identified with ex-Presisident Roosevelt; the work for our colonies, especially the Philippines, with President Taft; the conservation of our national resources with Mr. Pinchot; the fight against child labor with Mrs. Florence Kelley; and the reform of juvenile delinquents with Judge Lindsey. These are mentioned merely as a suggestion, for there are many more. For materials send your pupils to the magazines, among which stand pre-eminent for such purposes the World's Work, the Outlook, or the Independent, and the Survey, the journal which till very recently bore the misleading, because too narrow, title, Charities and the Commons. This last is published by the Charity Organization Society of New York.