occur, learning to do things that should be done, learning to make useful articles, learning, in short, to live satisfactory children's lives, and then, when a little older and more mature, could take up seriously the subjects that must be studied from books, if this revolution could be wrought in our educational adjustment, it would work a revolution equally startling in the effectiveness of our schools, in training wise, well equipped, well informed, skillful, intelligent, and competent citizens, with a zealous desire for further education throughout life.

CHAPTER XXIX

MORAL TRAINING

The Need Recognized. There is a very general demand that the schools do more than they have done for the moral training of pupils. The demand is as vague as it is general. The one hopeful feature is the evidence that people appreciate the need. However unwillingly, they are compelled to admit that the agencies heretofore depended upon to train the young in the principles and practice of good conduct are not sufficient for present-day conditions. The chief of those agencies are the home and the church.

One of the unhappy social tendencies of this age of quick changes appears to be away from the oldfashioned home, as the center and source of ideals and inspiration. Many of those who in former times would have been homemakers have other more absorbing aims. The conditions of life in large cities, especially among the poor, in many instances render the secluded, selfcentered home impossible. Very large numbers of future citizens necessarily spend their childhood and youth without the sheltering care, the blood-group inspirations of that best of all institutions, the American home, as we of the older generation understand it. Even in the better homes there is little of the old-time definite moral training. Father is too busy; mother is too much

cumbered with many cares," bridge, suffrage, missionaries, to attend to it.

Even the church does not and under present conditions cannot cover the field. It is sufficient to note the vast numbers of families that never go to church. Certain large and populous organizations regard the church as in the main hostile to their interests. Unjust as this attitude is, it yet excludes the members of these organizations and their families from the moral training offered by the church, — which is our only point here.

The school, on the other hand, is universal in its reach. Practically all children come under its influence. Hence those who see the great gaps left by the older agencies more and more look to the school to fill them.

Certainly, if we have not some agency, to train the youth to lives of virtue, we are in a parlous state. Matthew Arnold's oft-quoted remark that “conduct is threefourths of life" seems rather an understatement than an overstatement. Conduct really is practically all of life, the sum and the flower of all attainments, all growth, all experience, and if, after years of training in school, in the home, and in society at large, boys and girls in large numbers are immoral, or even unmoral, in their conduct, something is altogether wrong. If the old agencies fail in this respect, some new agency must be found, or civilization is doomed. All this, however, merely states the problem and helps very little in its solution.

Fundamental Questions. Certain fundamental questions must be answered unless we are to blunder along in the familiar American way:

First, what do we mean by morality?

Second, how far and by what measures can youth be trained to morality?

Third, what is the function of the school in giving such training? How far may it go, safely and legitimately? Fourth, the above questions being determined, how are our schools, as at present manned and organized, to go about the task?

In a single chapter, naturally, it is impossible to give more than brief answers to these questions.

Distinction between Morals and Morality. The first question involves a fundamental distinction too commonly ignored by those people who call for courses in moral training, with the calm assurance that they are sufficient to make children upright. I refer to the distinction between the principles of conduct resting upon a foundation of character and a superficial conformity to conventional moral standards. This distinction, which may be called that between morality and morals, is not imaginary. It is real. Many a person is conventionally moral, even "pious," who yet lacks moral principle or true morality. The occasional lapses into open dishonesty of people of this type simply show that although there was outward conformity to convention, there was no real morality, no real antagonism to wrongdoing, and when temptation arrived, moral disaster followed.

This is quite different from hypocrisy, or the conscious doing of wrong while professing right. It goes far deeper than that. These people have believed themselves good, just as others have believed them good, because they conformed to the prevailing code of morals. They did not themselves know that they were bad at heart. A part of the trouble at least was in their alleged moral training.

They had been trained to believe that goodness consisted in obeying rules.

On the other hand, some of the greatest and best have openly and purposely defied the moral conventions of their times. Jesus shocked the conventionally good people of his time by breaking the Sabbath laws and in many other ways. Perhaps his greatest battle was against the confusion of morality with conventional morals. The Pharisees, who received his keenest shafts, were not worse than other people. They were simply the conventionally good, who cared only for the "outside of the cup and platter." The bearing of this distinction upon the subject in hand is simply this, that most of the moral training suggested for schools has to do solely with externals. It looks toward conventional morals and not toward fundamental morality. Let me say here that I am not attacking conventional morals. For the average person there is no safe course open other than to follow them. It is only for the prophet or the wise independent thinker to modify them. But they are not to be confused with the real thing, which is sound character.

Essentials of Morality. The essentials of morality are properly cultivated feelings, leading to wise choices, a will trained to make such choices in obedience to right feeling, and sound moral judgment as a guide to action, the balance wheel of conduct; in other words, a well trained controlling conscience approved by moral judgment. If moral training is really to accomplish the desiredresults, it must aim at this higher goal. Otherwise the training, however elaborate and extensive, will do more harm than good, because, while it may develop a certain