In concluding this portion of the discussion, we may say that our conceptions of moral education have been too narrow, too formal, and too pathological. We have associated the term ethical with certain special acts which are labeled virtues and are set off from the mass of other acts, and are still more divorced from the habitual images and motives of the children performing them. Moral instruction is thus associated with teaching about these particular virtues, or with instilling certain sentiments in regard to them. The moral has been conceived in too goody-goody a way. Ultimate moral motives and forces are nothing more or less than social intelligence—the power of observing and comprehending social situations,—and social power—trained capacities of control—at work in the service of social interest and aims. There is no fact which throws light upon the constitution of society, there is no power whose training adds to social resourcefulness that is not moral.
I sum up, then, this part of the discussion by asking your attention to the moral trinity of the school. The demand is for social intelligence, social power, and social interests. Our resources are (1) the life of the school as a social institution in itself; (2) methods of learning and of doing work; and (3) the school studies or curriculum. In so far as the school represents, in its own spirit, a genuine community life; in so far as what are called school discipline, government, order, etc., are the expressions of this inherent social spirit; in so far as the methods used are those that appeal to the active and constructive powers, permitting the child to give out and thus to serve; in so far as the curriculum is so selected and organized as to provide the material for affording the child a consciousness of the world in which he has to play a part, and the demands he has to meet; so far as these ends are met, the school is organized on an ethical basis. So far as general principles are concerned, all the basic ethical requirements are met. The rest remains between the individual teacher and the individual child.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION
V
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION
So far we have been considering the make-up of purposes and results that constitute conduct—its “what.” But conduct has a certain method and spirit also—its “how.” Conduct may be looked upon as expressing the attitudes and dispositions of an individual, as well as realizing social results and maintaining the social fabric. A consideration of conduct as a mode of individual performance, personal doing, takes us from the social to the psychological side of morals. In the first place, all conduct springs ultimately and radically out of native instincts and impulses. We must know what these instincts and impulses are, and what they are at each particular stage of the child’s development, in order to know what to appeal to and what to build upon. Neglect of this principle may give a mechanical imitation of moral conduct, but the imitation will be ethically dead, because it is external and has its centre without, not within, the individual. We must study the child, in other words, to get our indications, our symptoms, our suggestions. The more or less spontaneous acts of the child are not to be thought of as setting moral forms to which the efforts of the educator must conform—this would result simply in spoiling the child; but they are symptoms which require to be interpreted: stimuli which need to be responded to in directed ways; material which, in however transformed a shape, is the only ultimate constituent of future moral conduct and character.
Then, secondly, our ethical principles need to be stated in psychological terms because the child supplies us with the only means or instruments by which to realize moral ideals. The subject-matter of the curriculum, however important, however judiciously selected, is empty of conclusive moral content until it is made over into terms of the individual’s own activities, habits, and desires. We must know what history, geography, and mathematics mean in psychological terms, that is, as modes of personal experiencing, before we can get out of them their moral potentialities.
The psychological side of education sums itself up, of course, in a consideration of character. It is a commonplace to say that the development of character is the end of all school work. The difficulty lies in the execution of the idea. And an underlying difficulty in this execution is the lack of a clear conception of what character means. This may seem an extreme statement. If so, the idea may be conveyed by saying that we generally conceive of character simply in terms of results; we have no clear conception of it in psychological terms—that is, as a process, as working or dynamic. We know what character means in terms of the actions which proceed from it, but we have not a definite conception of it on its inner side, as a system of working forces.
(1) Force, efficiency in execution, or overt action, is one necessary constituent of character. In our moral books and lectures we may lay the stress upon good intentions, etc. But we know practically that the kind of character we hope to build up through our education is one that not only has good intentions, but that insists upon carrying them out. Any other character is wishy-washy; it is goody, not good. The individual must have the power to stand up and count for something in the actual conflicts of life. He must have initiative, insistence, persistence, courage, and industry. He must, in a word, have all that goes under the name “force of character.” Undoubtedly, individuals differ greatly in their native endowment in this respect. None the less, each has a certain primary equipment of impulse, of tendency forward, of innate urgency to do. The problem of education on this side is that of discovering what this native fund of power is, and then of utilizing it in such a way (affording conditions which both stimulate and control) as to organize it into definite conserved modes of action—habits.
(2) But something more is required than sheer force. Sheer force may be brutal; it may override the interests of others. Even when aiming at right ends it may go at them in such a way as to violate the rights of others. More than this, in sheer force there is no guarantee for the right end. Efficiency may be directed towards mistaken ends and result in positive mischief and destruction. Power, as already suggested, must be directed. It must be organized along social channels; it must be attached to valuable ends.