Instruction might also be effectively given through talks and lectures, illustrated often, by competent specialists, upon the physiological effects of common vices, such as drunkenness, gluttony, etc. The elder boys and girls could be thus taught separately, by one of their own sex, the laws of purity and their bearings on life. In these and other ways a quite sufficient amount of ethical instruction might be secured, without any radical change in the present system of our public schools. To this might possibly be added, for the advanced pupils, some systematic instruction in the nature and authority of ethical principles, and their relation to conventional morality, by some specially qualified teacher, if such instruction could be given without raising dogmatic issues. II. Training. Miss Peabody once said, in happy paradox, that we "learn goodness by being good." To make children good even for awhile, to establish during a portion of each day a rule under which they shall conform to the laws of right conduct-this is the best way of causing them to learn goodness. Training is more important than instruction in ethics. Habits are the molds into which the plastic spirit is to be run, shaping it into noble character. Much is even now being done through the discipline of our public schools. The children come under a system of law which they cannot ignore, change nor defy; which rewards their obedience and punishes their disobedience. This alone, to the children of lawless homes, is an immense boon. Obedience, which Kant held to be the fundamental virtue, is rigidly enforced. Punctuality, cleanliness, and other simple virtues, are drilled into the nature. Good manners are enjoined. The effort needful to master the daily lessons is a training of the will-the central force of character. The spur of the "marking" rouses ambition, energy, "go-aheadativeness," which are at least antiseptics to the lower forms of vice. These, with the other factors of character-training, count for much. But with these good elements there are commingled influences by no means wholesome. Self-love is a powerful motor, but a dangerous one. Nature uses it to begin her work of development, but hastens to outrank it by a nobler motor. It is doubtless needful to goad children with this spur; but a sparing use should be made of it, or we shall have men and women sensitive to no finer impulses. There is a grave danger in the reckless appeal to the selfish instincts made by the prevalent system of ranking and rewarding pupils. Good work comes to be done not for the work's sake, nor for the sake of others, nor even for the sake of one's own improvement; but solely for the name and fame, the position and profit that it brings. We thus train the oncoming generations for the same unhappy struggle after self-advancement that is now eating into public spirit in the State, into purity in society, and into honor in the business world. In our impatience for intellectual results, we are thus sacrificing character upon the altar of knowledge. The punishments of our present system, as its rewards, are seriously faulty. They need to be made less physical and more moral, less arbitrary and more natural, less tyrannous and more just. Suspicion, espionage, and fear are demoralizing influences. "To be found out" comes to be the definition of "wrong." Scholars establish a code of schoolmorals, as is well known to be the case in some schools,-and count it no wrong to cheat the master, or even to lie directly to him. Children need to be thrown, as far as possible, upon their honor; and always to be treated respectfully, until they have forfeited this right. Truthfulness and self-respect are seminal virtues, at all costs to be cherished in the young. The experience of prison reformers might give some valuable hints in the right use of punishment. The great specialists in penology have made of it a new and divine instrument in the training of character. Perhaps the most important change to be made in the discipline of our public schools is in the introduction of higher motivities. Merit must be rewarded and faults must be punished, but rewards and punishments alike need to be lifted to a higher plane. What these higher motivities are can be better seen by a morning spent in a true kindergarten than from pages of writing. The little ones are trained there in true morality, fellow-feeling, brotherliness, justice, kindliness, love. Froebel has embodied in the beautiful culture of the kindergarten the essential spirit of ethics. When the kindergarten comes to be made the basis for our public-school system, the most important years will be rescued for a wise moral training a training which will fashion the being aright from the start, and which, we may hope, will gradually shape the school that shall rest upon it to its nobler type of character-culture. - Self-government ought certainly to be the aim to which all moral education should look, and ought to be developed, as far as possible, in school years. As a means to this end, it might be worth while to feel along in the direction taken by certain notable experiments in education.* The great English schools have long made the Sixth Form responsible for the order of the rest of the school. The school established by the Messrs. Hill (Rowland Hill was one of the brothers) entrusted the entire charge of the order to the boys themselves. The superintendent of one of our own Houses of Refuge achieved marvels among boys, formerly "amenable only to the harshest discipline," by throwing the community gradually upon its own self-government; so that at last he did away with all watchmen, and left all cases of discipline to be decided by a jury of the boys. The schools of a republic might with especial propriety experiment carefully in this direction. The principles of ethics might be interestingly and effectively studied by the elder scholars in "courts," before which actual or supposititious cases of alleged wrong-doing could be brought for trial, the scholars acting as jury and as lawyers. Thus the child-conscience could be exercised and instructed in the rights of person and property; upon the ethics of lawabidingness, of truthfulness, of intemperance, of strikes, etc. Mr. MacMullen, who in his own school tried this experiment, tells how he found one-fifth of his boys at one time defending "prompting," "two of them very shrewdly and ingeniously," and a large number defending the rightfulness of robbing orchards. One of our private schools in New England tried successfully the experiment of a stated assembly, like the Senate or the House of Representatives of the United States; in this character the school-debates were carried on upon questions of social and political importance, familiarizing the boys' minds with the forms of our government, and interesting them in public affairs, while training them in the self-control of courteous discussion. Public spirit might be nurtured by interesting observances upon the great national holidays: Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, Fourth of July, etc. Societies might be formed among the children, looking to the cultivation of temperance and thrift. In some of the French schools savings societies have been introduced with marked benefit. If an afternoon were devoted The pamphlet prepared and issued by Mr. MacMullen, 1262 Broadway, Self-government in Schools." on 66 once a week to such court and congress and society sessions, the results might be very valuable in the characters of the children. A library of well-selected literature in each school could be made a powerful adjunct in the culture of character. Books and papers are, after all, the chief educators. And here the children pursue an elective course. To teach them to choose wisely those silent masters who are to mold their lives, is one of the best services to be rendered them. For lack of such training, they patronize the host of demoralizing teachers who await them on the news-stands, and who teach them from sensational tales and tainted novels. In nothing is a guiding hand more needed than in the friendship of books. All would never follow such guidance, and none might follow it wholly; but many could be influenced by it; and, if the coöperation of parents was secured, the present ravenous consumption of low literature might be checked, and a better taste formed. There is no safeguard against a bad taste equal to the creation of a good taste. A workshop in each school would be another valuable annex. Our present divorce between intellectual and manual education is fruitful of moral ills. It robs the hand-worker of that interest in his labor which it could and should yield him, and of the safeguards it might throw around him in the human hunger for "more life and fuller." It unfits the mass of those who are graduated from our Common Schools for the common works of the mass of mankind, in all lands and ages; while it fails to fit them for the "genteel" pursuits to which they aspire, and in which only the superior minds can hope to succeed; and so crowds our cities with men and women for whom life is one prolonged and precarious struggle, with temptation ever yawning below them. "To dress it and to keep it"-so ran the charge of the Divine Educator to the first pupil, in the childgarden of the Eden legend. There is that in character which handicrafts alone seem to develop. Alike then for their indirect and their direct bearings on character and conduct, the introduction of manual training is of prime importance in the development of our Public School system. III. Atmosphere. In the growth of the plant, atmospheric conditions are of at least coëqual importance with the nature of the seed sown and the kind of culture bestowed upon it. That subtle omnipotence, the ethical atmosphere of a school, must be looked after by the guardians of our youth. There are schools which are charged with potent influences of goodness in which the children breathe-in virtue. Of all that goes to form such atmospheric conditions, three factors may be mentioned. The opening exercises may charge the air with ethical ozone, and create the spiritual temperature in which conscience buds and blooms. Music is of especial value to this end. The authorities upon education, from Plato to Froebel and Goethe, emphasize the function of music in moral education.* It rouses and guides the feelings in any desired direction; and, when well used, charges the soul with pure passion, and molds the dispositions; and, by daily repetitions, its vibrations write the laws of noble life in the very tissues of the body. There is no one instrumentality so potent in spiritual influences. The wise master holds in it the wand with which he can touch the natures of his children, wakening responsive echoes, and keying the school to the right pitch. We are but beginning to realize its educational possibilities. At present it is used partly as a recreation, and partly as one more accomplishment to be acquired. We must learn how to use it in the fashioning of plastic character. Personal influence remains always the last and most vital formative power in the atmospheric influences of a school. The schools that have been most noted for the culture of character, have always had a noble man or woman at the core of their wise systems. Arnold made Rugby. Some vital personality makes every school which makes men. We cannot hope to secure geniuses or saints for all our Peoples' Schools. They are not needful. We can, however, secure in hosts of our schools, as we have secured in many of them, men and women of high * "Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul graceful of him who is rightly educated. . . . . And also because he who has received this true education of the inner being, with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over, and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, will justly blame and hate the bad, now, in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute her as a friend."-Plato: "The Republic." Book III., $402. (Jowett.) "Song is the first step in education; all the rest are connected with it, and attained by means of it. . . . . What religious and moral principles we lay before our children, are communicated in the way of song."-Goethe: "Wilhelm Meister's Travels;" chapter 10. |