Moral Training.

PRIN. J. C. R. JOHNSTON, Allegheny, pa.

PON no other element in a child's education does his happiness and the happiness of those socially related to him so closely depend as upon his morals. As such is the case, it is of prime importance that a true conception of the pedagogical problem should obtain among those who have to do with the education of the young.

At the outset we must draw a clear distinction between moral instruction and moral training. There exists an erroneous belief that the moral welfare of the child can be secured by instruction in moral science. At least almost all our conscious efforts are along that line. But the truth is that moral instruction is only a minor factor in the problem. The prisons are full of people whose moral instruction has been true, but whose moral education is, nevertheless, imperfect.

The only conscious and systematic moral teaching is instruction, and while it is a minor factor it is still worthy of careful attention. The conscience of the child must be enlightened if it is to be a reliable monitor. But at the best it is repressive and negative; it warns us off forbidden ground, but it does not direct us as to the right. We must not confuse the peace that follows the yielding to its warning with the assurance of right doing. It is but the pleasant effect of reaction after pain, or the sense of danger escaped; it is not directive, but pressive.

While example is important, it can hardly be classed as conscious effort. For instance, a good example is not set solely, or even mainly, for the effect upon the observer. Its principal purpose is the benefit to the author. We are sensible of the fact that its value depends upon the attitude of the child and upon his power to draw conclusions. The best example is of no educational value in the absence of the child, and its value educationally varies directly as the attitude of the child. A perfect attitude on the part of the child renders example needless, and a wrong attitude renders it useless.

Still the case is not hopeless, nor to be determined by chance. As there is a predisposing cause of physical health and of physical disease, so there is a predisposing cause of moral health and of moral disease. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in the one case as in the other. If the wise physician can detect the symptoms of incipient disease, so we can treat moral ills before they bear fruit. The proper time to deal with the murderer is in childhood.

All the

Every child is born with certain active tendencies. vices and virtues of his ancestors, whether they were evident or not, are potent for purposes of transmission to posterity. When the final accounts are balanced it will be found that many children have descended from respected murderers, thieves, etc. We may cheat the civil law, but not the law of heredity.

These two sets of propensities in the child require distinct treatment. The evil tendencies must be repressed and the good nurtured. Many things are of great aid which, on the surface, seem devoid of moral significance. It is here that the conscience does its work. It warns the child away from danger. But it is a fine tool, and can be easily dulled. It will not bear overworking.

Happily there is a most efficient aid at hand. Evil depends for its power on the attractive force of immediate pleasure. This attractive power varies inversely as the square of the distance. The child is in slavery to senses and impulses. It has not developed high potentiality. It cannot resist the charm of immediate pleasure. This is the critical stage in the child's moral career. The value of remote good is no aid, because this value depends for its charm upon reflection and conception of remote end. Every child grasps at the "streaked and speckled spheres of falsehood"; he must learn by experience, supplemented by reflection, the value of the cubes of truth. It is the wise man that "foreseeth the evil and hideth himself," while the simple "pass on and are punished."

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It is at this stage that counter-attraction becomes "a very present help in time of trouble." The busy boy is not exposed to the sway of impulse. His energies are devoted to some end. Almost any end will serve the purpose. The important thing

in the escape from the sway of impulse is to rob proximate pleasures of the power they derive from attention on the part of the child. Free the bird from attention to the charm of the serpent and it is safe.

But the case is even more hopeful. If negative counterattraction and restraint of conscience are so helpful in aiding the growth of good tendencies, how much more so is the positive culture of the conditions of moral health?

A high potential volition is the condition of moral action. It restrains the impulses, and stores up energy of will to be regularly expended on rational lines. The cause of nearly all the unwise and foolish actions in the world is lack of reflection, not positive wrong intention. Men drift into evil step by step. But wise actions presuppose clear ideas of the end of action. Emerson's star is a good hitching post by virtue of the clear idea of ends sought, and the culture of the will through seeking them. It is just this dynamic power of rational action that we want in morals; a weak, flabby will can never be a safeguard to a child. Of course the remoteness of the end is a matter relative to the stage of the child's development. It requires as much volition for a child to "keep his cake" that he may have it at recess as for a patriot to die for his country.

Like common sense, morality is not the result of direct instruction, but is the result of habits of mind and of body. Manual work is ideal in its influence on habits. Here clear ideas of ends must precede all doing. Impulse soon leads to failure,—failure that can be seen and felt. As the conception of end becomes more complex, the volition is extended over a greater period, and the interest of the child is projected to the end sought, the very conditions of wise moral action.

A child whose conscience is aided by even negative freedom from the slavery of impulse has a fair chance against vice; but the child whose conception of future states is clear, and whose volition is trained to a high potential state, is master of the field; vice has no weak spot on which to fix.

Seven Year Course of Study: If These Things be True-A Question.

HENRY SABIN, DES MOINES, IA.

N old New England minister was accustomed to close his sermons in these words, "If these things be true." I thought of them when I read Superintendent Greenwood's articles upon

a seven years' course as preparatory to the high school. What puzzles me most is that in all the common school branches he insists that there shall be no abridgment work.

When Superintendent Soldan suggests that for a ward school one text-book in geography is sufficient—and I think Soldan is right—he objects, and insists that both the primary and advanced books are essential.

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In the matter of arithmetic he is equally determined that there must be no abridgment. To use his own words, With reference to arithmetic, I am equally positive that the course should not be abridged, and furthermore that no necessity exists for curtailing it." He states with considerable energy that the Kansas City course is a "strong threebook course, besides all the new fads practiced in Chicago and elsewhere." I own that this last statement surprises me. I was in hopes to find that some of the things useless had been eliminated from his shortened course.

We must look further for the desired information. The really most important innovation is found in his methods. of teaching English grammar and composition. Children in the third grade, he thinks, can be made to study words and sentences with the same degree of intelligence and understanding as they study natural objects. In the fourth grade they can be made to grasp the essential functions, use, and syntactical structure of the English paragraph and sentence. This is what we usually call technical grammar, the introduction of which is generally deferred until the child enters the seventh grade. Nothing, however, is here omitted,

as Reed and Kellogg's English Grammars, including the Higher Lessons in English, have been in use in the ward schools for twenty years. If this amount of work in English is well done, and we willingly admit that Superintendent Greenwood is good authority, then we have a new and convincing argument against the prolific use of meaningless language lessons in the lower grades, and in favor of introducing English grammar at a much earlier period than is customary in most schools. To me this seems the most sensible suggestion in this paper.

The charge here is that in the course for grades below the high school, at least one year is entirely wasted; in many schools it is two years. More than this is true. Not only is one year's time thrown away, but when a child is allowed to take eight or nine years to accomplish the work of seven, he necessarily forms bad habits of application, fails in concentration of study, and becomes indolent, if not actually lazy. And worst of all, these habits follow him into business life.

Now it seems to me that, if these charges are well founded, we are fully justified in coming into court and asking that Superintendent Greenwood furnish us a "bill of particulars." Let him state definitely what he considers essentials and what non-essentials in our present course of study for grammar schools.

I am not particularly concerned as to what effect this shortening the grammar school course will have upon the high schools. In my opinion we are paying altogether too exclusive attention to high school work, in proportion to the number of pupils who enter upon that grade. It is a far more serious question which concerns the future of the pupils whose schooling must end with the grammar grade. This Kansas City course may not be a "bob-tail" course, but there is in it an element of hurrying and rapidity which does not conduce to solid mental growth. There are some things more to be dreaded than a "bob-tail" course, and the spirit which would do the entire work of eight or nine years in six or seven is one of them. The element of time is not the most important element in the child's education by any means.