A brief course in the teaching process

by George D. Strayer

13. Why has the teacher a right to demand hygienic conditions in the schoolroom?

14. Why has the community a right to demand good health as a prerequisite for teaching?

15. How might teachers hope to secure hygienic conditions for children in their homes?

16. If a schoolroom needs redecorating on account of improper lighting, or a new heating and ventilating plant, and the school board does not supply these necessities, how would you hope to secure such improvements?

CHAPTER XIV
MORAL TRAINING

Character building must always be recognized as a most important function of the school. It is a mistake to divorce the intellectual training of children from growth in morality. If our country demands increased industrial intelligence, the training of men and women for leadership in manufacture, trade, and commerce, much more must it demand citizens of sterling character. Industrial and intellectual supremacy can mean nothing to a nation unless righteousness prevails both in public and in private life. The idea that the schools of our democracy are to train for citizenship has always been interpreted to mean an education which will fit for a life of service to the best interests of humanity. The fact that religious instruction, as such, is barred from our schools, does not mean that we are as a people irreligious, much less that we undervalue the significance of the moral training of our children.

School conditions offer advantages for moral training, even though the overemphasis on intellectual attainments may at times seem to give the teacher little opportunity for work in this direction. The fact of a group of children who may learn to work together, to help each other, to respect each other’s rights, to serve the best interests of the whole group, in fact a situation which demands just those virtues which are demanded in society outside the school, makes the school in some respects an ideal situation for training in morality. Of course it is possible that the demand for intellectual attainment may so occupy the mind of the teacher that she will resort to repression in order to get results in habits and knowledge. It is true, too, that the curriculum may be so narrow as to give less opportunity than might be desired for the type of activity which best lends itself to the development of social virtues. But if adverse conditions hinder somewhat the work of the teacher, they cannot deny a very important place to the school in the formation of character.

The increased responsibility of the school for the moral training of children becomes apparent at once when the influence of the home and the church of to-day are contrasted with the strength which these institutions once possessed. Regret it as much as we may, neither home nor church is as potent in the development of morality as they once were. Before the dominance of the factory system the boy or girl who participated in the activities of the home gained in appreciation of necessity for coöperation and in understanding of his responsibility to the group in a way that is denied the modern child. To be a party to those industries through which food was secured, clothing obtained, and shelter provided meant the exercise of all of the social virtues. It was fitting under such a régime that the school should devote itself largely to the tools of learning. But under our present conditions the demand is insistent that the school provide, in some measure, through its curriculum, its organization, and by means of its methods of instruction, for the development of the attitude of responsibility, and that positive morality which places a premium upon doing good.

Let us inquire still more closely concerning the conditions under which moral training must be effected in the school. First of all there is the fact of heredity. The children with whom we work are different by nature, and nothing that we can do will make them all alike. Then, too, there is the added factor of training before the school age. Many children come to school with bad habits and low ideals. The one thing that every teacher ought to realize as fundamental in moral training is the fact that differences in children must be met by a corresponding difference of appeal on the part of the teacher.