XV
THE TEACHING OF ETHICS
Interest in the study of ethics determined by the aim of instruction
Nowhere does academic tediousness work a more dire mischief than in the teaching of ethics. It is bad to have students forever shun the best books because of poor instruction in literature; the damage is worse when it is the subject of moral obligation which they associate with only the duller hours of their college life. Not that the aim of a course in ethics is to afford a number of entertaining periods. The object rather is to help our students realize that here is a subject which seeks to interpret for them the most important problems of their own lives present and to come. Where this end is kept in view, the question of interesting them is settled. A sincere interpretation of life always takes the interest when once it is grasped that this is what is really being interpreted.
Viewpoint in the past
The procedure in the past (and still quite common) was to introduce the subject by way of its history. A book like Sidgwick's History of Ethics was studied, with supplements in the shape of the students' own reading of the classics, or lectures, with quotations, by the teacher. That this method was frequently of much service is undeniable. Teachers there are with rare gifts of inspiration who can put freshness into any course which ordinary teachers leave hopelessly arid. But this should not blind us to the fact that certain modes of procedure are in general more likely to be fruitful than others.
The business of right living the aim of ethics teaching
These methods depend upon the aim; and the aim, we venture to hold, should be eminently practical. The content of ethics is not primarily a matter of whether Kant's judgments are sounder than Mill's or Spencer's. Its subject is human life and the business of right living: how should people—real people, that is, not textbook illustrations—live with one another? This is the essential concern of our subject matter, and in it our student is intimately and practically involved. Charged with the fact, he may deny the impeachment. He refuses to worry over the merits of hedonism versus rigorism, the distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, or the claim of ethics to be called a science. Ethics, that is, as an intellectual discipline through the survey of historic disputations is indeed remote from the concerns that touch his life. But all the time there is no subject of greater interest when approached from the side of its bearing on practical problems. Consider the earnestness with which the student will discuss with his friends such questions as these: What sense is there in a labor strike? Is a conscientious objector justified in refusing military service? Why should any one oppose easy divorce laws? May a lawyer defend a rogue whom he knows to be guilty? Can one change the nature with which he was born? Is violence justified in the name of social reform? If what is right in one age or place is wrong in another, is it fair to object when moral laws are broken? If a practice like prostitution is common, what makes it wrong?
These do not sound like the questions likely to receive a welcome hearing in the classroom; but it is precisely upon the interest in such topics as these that the course in ethics should build; for its subject is right living, a matter in which the student may indeed be assumed to feel a genuine concern. If the questions that he wants answered are not all as broad in their significance as the foregoing, there are others of a more immediate personal kind which arise in his life as a student, as a friend, as a son and brother, problems in which standards of fair play and "decency" are involved, and upon which it may be taken for granted that he has done some thinking, howsoever crude. These interests are invaluable. Out of them the finer product is to be created in the shape of better standards, higher ideals, and habits of moral thoughtfulness, leading in turn to still better standards and still worthier conduct. The course in ethics should be practical in the sense that both its starting point and its final object are found in the student's management of his life.
Illustrations of the problems of right living