THE MORAL FACTOR IN EDUCATION WM. H. P. FAUNCE, PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY, PROVIDENCE, R. I. Over every true school might well be inscribed the sentence which we find in Genesis: "Let us make man." That great purpose, anterior to creation, lies behind all the work of the teacher. Teaching is a species of creation. The writer of Genesis little knew how much was involved in the making of man. He conceived the process as needing only a handful of dust and a day of twenty-four hours. Now we know that the making of man means millenniums: the slow climbing from dust to crystal, from crystal to plant, from plant to infusoria, from infusoria to mammal, from mammal to Moses and Dante and Shakespeare. But as each student repeats and epitomizes the history of the race, each involves a fresh creative process, and all true teaching has behind it the basal purpose of the world: "Let us make man." man. To make a muscular marvel- a Samson or a Sandow-is not to make To make a prodigious memory by conning Chinese classics for generations is not to make man. To produce a logical mechanism, a mere reasoning faculty, by sacrificing to it all the rest of human nature, is not to produce a man. To produce, as the output of an educational system, shrewd manipulators, abnormal geniuses, like Machiavelli in political life or Barney Barnato in commercial life, is not the object of our work. We cannot allow any part of the pupil's nature to atrophy in order to produce a dazzling prodigy. We aim to make full-orbed menmen of keen senses, trained intellect, warm hearts; men rich in imagination and emotion; men of power to resolve, to initiate, to administer, to achieve; power to see swiftly, judge accurately, decide immediately, to love deeply and hate persistently, and grow forever-men such as all the past of human history now should culminate in producing. But the fact is that for the past few centuries we have tried in our schools to produce minds rather than men. We have given our whole strength to mentality, often ignoring the physical basis on the one side, and the entire gamut of desire and volition on the other. Modern psychology makes the will central in human nature. To possess a will active, and active on the side of righteousness, is more than to carry in one's head all tongues, ancient and modern, or to be familiar with all the sciences of the world. Just as the old political economy dealt with an imaginary "economic man," who had only slight resemblance to the true, so our schools have often dealt with a supposed learning and remembering man, only a fragment of the true man. We have thought of the educated man as one who knows certain things, regardless of how he feels or what he does. But no mere knowledge ever yet guaranteed an education. The educated man is, above all, one who controls his own powers, and controls them for righteous ends. Encyclopædic knowledge with a They may not be w intrusts Th to br tear N F weak will George Eliot has pictured in Doctor One of edge with an evil will Goethe has pictured in Mephistopheles. them is less than human, the other is more. our modern training that we can to the Greeks such a being was said: defense. .... We think of education, It is a severe indictment of while I conceive of an educated bad man, inconceivable. As Mr. Bosanquet has on the whole, as an intellectual process, as a When we compare the ancient Greek education with our own, whether primary or secondary, as a training of the whole man, we are surprised to find ourselves put on our be known. The Greek thought of it on the whole as a moral process; or, rather, he would process of learning a number of things, each of which on separate grounds is necessary to not have understood you if you had asked him which of the two he thought it to be. machines. We, alas! understand perfectly the divorce between intellect and character, between mind and conscience, between learning and doing; but the Greeks could not conceive such a separation as possible. Plato and Aristotle shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation and shall condemn it; for they aimed everywhere at the production of moral human beings, and we have aimed at making learning and remembering But our ideal is changing-thank heaven! The idea of self-activity has in many quarters displaced the immorality of passive reception. The idea of action as the method of learning has been embodied in our manual training. We begin to perceive that the end of education is volition—as Kant said: "The only good thing in the universe is a good will." But how shall we embody these new perceptions of truth in our present school and college life? How shall we moralize education? 1. The first requisite is character in the teacher. When Emerson's daughter wrote to him about her choice of studies, he answered: "It matters not so much what you study as with whom you study." A small man cannot cast a great shadow. A teacher cannot do work at a higher level than that of his own interior life. No formal instruction in moral duties can ever have one-thousandth part of the influence which steadily flows from a teacher by nature magnanimous and steadfast. Especially is character in the teacher indispensable in dealing with very young pupils, for they depend almost wholly on example and contagion. To force little children into moral philosophy, into analysis of their own mental states or their deeds, is to produce insufferable prigs. Emphatically true is it of children: "Theirs not to reason why." Introspection, self-scrutiny in childhood, is abnormal and dangerous. Abstract virtue they should never consider. Goodness they should know, not as a quality, but as an incarnation. Hence a teacher of rich, large, generous spirit, noble by instinct and righteous by training, is the best possible code of law and the only true treatise on moral philosophy for little children. "O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule And in thine own heart let them first keep school." In dealing with older pupils, the need of character in the teacher is hardly less. The graduates of our secondary schools and colleges, when they come to talk over the old days spent in study, always speak first, not of the buildings in which they studied, not of the formal lessons, but of the character of their instructors. That is obviously the thing which makes the deepest impression on the student mind. A college alumnus forgets everything else sooner than he forgets the personality of his instructors. And as we all look back in life, we see that the best our teachers did for us was to incarnate before our eyes the simple, homely virtues which are the warp and woof of noble living. Marcus Aurelius opens his Meditations one of the best books in the world for a modern student with striking tributes of this kind: acter. From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and à manly char From Apollonius I learned freedom of will and undeviating steadiness of purpose and how to receive from friends what are esteemed favors, without either being humbled by them or letting them pass unnoticed. From Alexander, the grammarian, I learned to refrain from fault-finding. From Maximus I learned self-government and not to be led aside by anything, and to do what was set before me without complaining. As our colleges increase in size, one of the greatest problems is how to preserve this priceless touch of soul on soul. A university whose faculty are all specialists of high repute, absorbed wholly in advancing human knowledge, may do much to widen the domain of science, but may do little or nothing in the making of men. And if it is not prepared to aim at the molding of character, it ought frankly to abandon undergraduate instruction. Here is a consideration demanding attention from every father who has son or daughter to educate. But in our secondary schools the power of personality still has full play. The head of an excellent. secondary school need envy no college president. Such a head-master is one of a great fraternity of noble spirits; he is the heir of Arnold and Thring and Quick; he is a true leader in the progress of the world. 2. But the moral power of a teacher is exerted largely thru the administration of a school. The whole arrangement of a building, the conduct of school affairs, the method by which pupils enter and leave a room, their attitude in study and in recitation - the entire management of a school constitutes an atmosphere in which the pupil's life is to unfold. One of the graduates of Brown University was employed during his entire. course to ring the bell for recitation about seven or eight times a day. He now declares that the best thing he received from his college course is the habit of regularity and punctuality derived from four years of bellringing. When a school is administered in the spirit of impartiality and justice, it is giving indirect instruction in rights and duties. Candor and honesty in personal intercourse means love of truth in the pupil. Kindness and courtesy in manner means refinement of spirit inculcated in the best possible way. Neatness of attire, erectness of position, grace of personal carriage- these things produce the self-respect without which virtue is impossible. Regularity of habit and attention to method enable a pupil to pass over much of his life to the region of the automatic, and so leave him free to make fresh acquirement. The spirit of pettiness and fussiness in school administration, the exaltation of the trivial, and the nagging of pupils by martinets dressed in a little brief authority, may produce serious nervous disorders in children, and must produce a narrowing of horizon and a contraction of spirit. The generous, magnanimous teacher who daily lives in touch with the great souls of all time, who is constantly fed by literature and art and science, and who never loses the forest in the trees, is creating unconsciously an atmosphere so genial and vernal that all the souls in the room feel, like the very clods in the month of June, "a stir of might, An instinct within that reaches and towers." Just because the human personality is a growth and not a manufactured article, this indirect approach to its moral life is far more valuable than any didactic pressure. In carving a granite column which lies cold. and passive under the chisel, we need the direct blow on blow which shall shatter the surface into the desired shape. But in training a vine or a blossoming shrub, nothing is gained by pulling the branches or untwisting the tendrils or forcing open the buds. We must approach the plant life by moistening the roots, by bathing the leaves in light, by nourishing the soil, and then letting nature do the rest. A great sermon might be preached to teachers from the text: "The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself." The student's nature is not a foe to be subdued, but a friendly power to be understood and directed. In the right atmosphere the innate moral forces come to the front and reinforce the teacher's word. In such an atmosphere the pupil will learn to abhor cramming as an essential falsehood, will learn the necessity of leisure in order to grow, will shrink from all exhibition per se, and will love knowledge for the sake of richer, deeper life, and not for the sake of rewards of any kind. Where the moral tone is lofty, the school will unitedly seek to be rather than to seem, will wish to possess rather than to display, and will have a self-respect and poise and deliberation which will disdain superficial smattering, and will know the thing in itself. The teacher who "paints the thing as he sees it for the God of things as they are" will find that he is teaching both painting and godliness as no art manuals and no theistic treatises could possibly do it. In such a school the great moral laws of the world outside will be the laws of the school world inside. Class morals will be impossible. The idea that the student code of conduct is separate from that of the rest of humanity, and that the high-school pupil or college freshman is superior to the laws which bind the clerk in the store or the commercial traveler, will vanish, and the great moral currents of the world will flow thru the entire life of the school. To recur again to our masters, the Greeks, they had no ten commandments to teach their pupils, their religious sanctions were feeble compared with ours, and they could not enforce duty by any clear vision of the life to come. Yet their education was so serious and noble, so essentially bound up with moral action, that at the age of seventeen or eighteen, when a young man received the soldier's spear and shield in the presence of the magistrates, he took the memorable oath of the Ephebi: I will not dishonor my sacred arms; I will not desert my fellow-soldier by whose side I shall be set; I will do battle for my religion and my country, whether aided or unaided. I will leave my country not less, but greater and more powerful, than she is when committed to me; I will reverently obey the citizens who shall act as judges; I will obey the ordinances which have been established, and which in time to come shall be established, by the national will; and whosoever would destroy those ordinances I will not suffer him, and I will do battle for them whether aided or unaided; and I will honor the temple where my fathers worshiped: of these things the gods are my wit nesses. Can the average American youth take that oath and keep it? And if he cannot, is it not irrelevant, if not impertinent, for him to offer as a substitute a certain amount of Greek, Latin, and mathematics? 3. Briefly we may advert to the moral culture of athletic sports. That there are moral dangers in athletics none can deny. Especially when great notoriety is given to those who participate, when the contest is chiefly for gate-money, when professionalism creeps in and life is degraded to livelihood, then the result of athletics is a relaxation of moral fiber and a confusing of standards. But when pursued in legiti mate ways, modern athletic contests not only develop the physical powers, as do gymnastics, but they develop certain moral qualities which exclusive attention to mental development has led us to ignore. Our ever popular games of football and baseball develop a power of quick observation and decision, a self-reliance, and at the same time a subordination of personal advantage to the common good, a spirit of obedience to authority and spontaneous co-operation, and a score of other qualities which are essential in the social order. The spirit of fairness in competition developed in sport may be easily transferred to the industrial The willingness to face heavy odds on the gridiron may be carried into the field of battle. The spirit of generosity to a defeated arena. |