These resolutions, to be worth anything morally, must rest on that theoretical judgment whereby the pupil through examples comes to distinguish between better and worse in willing. As long as his judging lacks clearness, energy, and completeness, his resolutions are without a foundation in his mind and heart. They are hardly more than memorized words.
When, on the other hand, the theoretical judgment has become interwoven with the totality of interest growing out of experience, social intercourse, and instruction, it creates a warm affection for the good wherever found, an affection which influences not only all of the pupil’s efforts of will, but also the manner in which he assimilates what instruction and life henceforth offer.
[150.] Finally, in order to fortify moral decisions, we must avail ourselves of the assistance derived from the logical cultivation of maxims, from the systematic unification of the same, and from their constant application in life.
Here the organic connection between character growth and the formation of habits of reflection becomes apparent; training is, therefore, obviously unable to accomplish its work except in conjunction with instruction.
As soon as a pupil gets a clear notion that a presented ideal of conduct promotes the true realization of his own being, he is in a position to acquire an interest in reaching that ideal. An end, hitherto remote, comes nearer, so that it begins to exercise influence upon the conduct that leads to it. Convention, appeal, or even compulsion from without, are now reinforced by the good resolutions arising from the pupil’s own subjective states. Here we see the interaction of intellectual and emotional capacities. The intellect perceives relations, thus bringing into consciousness a new ideal; this distant end is mediated inasmuch as desire or feeling impels the pupil to enter upon a course of conduct whose stages lead to the ideal goal.[15]
[15] See Dewey, “Interest as Related to Will,” reprint by the National Herbart Society for 1899, pp. 15–16.
[ CHAPTER V
Helps in Training]
[151.] The function of training does not consist, it is true, in always restraining and meddling; still less in ingrafting the practices of others to take the place of the pupil’s self-activity. Nevertheless, refusal and permission are so much a part of training that the pupil becomes far more dependent through training than mere government could make him. In government a few rules may be enforced very strictly, while in other respects the boy is left to himself; in training a similar relaxation of vigilance is scarcely ever permissible. Only the strongest grounds for confidence in a pupil would justify such a course.