THE ETHICAL MATERIAL.
There is a wide difference, so far as method is concerned, between setting forth the moral to a tale in an explicit way and allowing children to express their judgments upon concrete facts of conduct. The latter is all that should be attempted. In the reaction from formal moral instruction there is danger of going to the other extreme and neglecting it entirely.
The vital element in literature—its ultimate raison d’etre—is its ethical import. It constitutes the ethical medium. It gives each child the benefit of the experience of the race. The duty of the school to give occasion for the exercise of ethical judgments is greater than its duty to train the merely intellectual judgment. For the one determines what is good or bad, the other what is real or unreal. Right conduct is of more importance than mere knowing.