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International Education Series

EDITED BY

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL.D.

_Volume XXI._


THE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES.

12mo, cloth, uniform binding.

THE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES was projected for the purpose of
bringing together in orderly arrangement the best writings, new and old,
upon educational subjects, and presenting a complete course of reading
and training for teachers generally. It is edited by W. T. HARRIS,
LL.D., now United States Commissioner of Education, who has contributed
for the different volumes in the way of introductions, analysis, and
commentary. The volumes are tastefully and substantially bound in
uniform style.

_VOLUMES NOW READY_:


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     Vol. XX.--ROUSSEAU'S EMILE. By W. H. PAYNE. Price, $1.50.

     Vol. XXI.--ETHICAL TRAINING IN SCHOOLS. By FELIX ADLER.

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_Circular, describing the volumes more in detail, mailed to any address
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New York: D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.




INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES

THE MORAL INSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN

BY
FELIX ADLER

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1892


COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
AT THE APPLETON PRESS, U.S.A.




EDITOR'S PREFACE.


Moral education is everywhere acknowledged to be the most important part
of all education; but there has not been the same agreement in regard to
the best means of securing it in the school. This has been due in part
to a want of insight into the twofold nature of this sort of education;
for instruction in morals includes two things: the formation of right
ideas and the formation of right habits. Right ideas are necessary to
guide the will, but right habits are the product of the will itself.

It is possible to have right ideas to some extent without the
corresponding moral habits. On this account the formation of correct
habits has been esteemed by some to be the chief thing. But unconscious
habits--mere use and wont--do not seem to deserve the title of moral in
its highest sense. The moral act should be a considerate one, and rest
on the adoption of principles to guide one's actions.

To those who lay stress on the practical side and demand the formation
of correct habits, the school as it is seems to be a great ethical
instrumentality. To those who see in theoretical instruction the only
true basis of moral character, the existing school methods seem sadly
deficient.

The school as it is looks first after its discipline, and next after its
instruction. Discipline concerns the behavior, and instruction concerns
the intellectual progress of the pupil. That part of moral education
which relates to habits of good behavior is much better provided for in
the school than any part of intellectual education.

There is, however, a conflict here between old and new ideals. The
old-fashioned school regarded obedience to authority the one essential;
the new ideal regards insight into the reasonableness of moral commands
the chief end. It is said, with truth, that a habit of unreasoning
obedience does not fit one for the exigencies of modern life, with its
partisan appeals to the individual and its perpetual display of grounds
and reasons, specious and otherwise, in the newspapers. The unreasoning
obedience to a moral guide in school may become in after life
unreasoning obedience to a demagogue or to a leader in crime.

It is not obedience to external authority that we need so much as
enlightened moral sense, and yet there remains and will remain much good
in the old-fashioned habit of implicit obedience.

The new education aims at building up self-control and individual
insight. It substitutes the internal authority of conscience for the
external authority of the master. It claims by this to educate the
citizen fitted for the exercise of suffrage in a free government. He
will weigh political and social questions in his mind, and decide for
himself. He will be apt to reject the scheme of the demagogue. While the
old-fashioned school-master relied on the rod to sustain his external
authority, he produced, it is said, a reaction against all authority in
the minds of strong-willed pupils. The new education saves the
strong-willed pupil from this tension against constituted authority, and
makes him law-abiding from the beginning.

It will be admitted that the school under both its forms--old as well as
new--secures in the main the formation of the cardinal moral habits. It
is obliged to insist on regularity, punctuality, silence, and industry
as indispensable for the performance of its school tasks. A private
tutor may permit his charge to neglect all these things, and yet secure
some progress in studies carried on by fits and starts, with noise and
zeal to-day, followed by indolence to-morrow. But a school, on account
of its numbers, must insist on the semi-mechanical virtues of
regularity, punctuality, silence, and industry. Although these are
semi-mechanical in their nature, for with much practice they become
unconscious habits, yet they furnish the very ground-work of all
combinations of man with his fellow-men. They are fundamental conditions
of social life. The increase of city population, consequent on the
growth of productive industry and the substitution of machines for hand
labor, renders necessary the universal prevalence of these cardinal
virtues of the school.

Even the management of machines requires that sort of alertness which
comes from regularity and punctuality. The travel on the railroad, the
management of steam-engines, the necessities of concerted action,
require punctuality and rhythmic action.

The school habit of silence means considerate regard for the rights of
fellow-workmen. They must not be interfered with; their attention must
not be distracted from their several tasks. A rational self-restraint
grows out of this school habit--rational, because it rests on
considerateness for the work of others. This is a great lesson in
co-operation. Morals in their essence deal with the relation of man to
his fellow-men, and rest on a considerateness for the rights of others.
"Do unto others," etc., sums up the moral code.

Industry, likewise, takes a high rank as a citizen's virtue. By it man
learns to re-enforce the moments by the hours, and the days by the
years. He learns how the puny individual can conquer great obstacles.
The school demands of the youth a difficult kind of industry. He must
think and remember, giving close and unremitting attention to subjects
strange and far off from his daily life. He must do this in order to
discover eventually that these strange and far-off matters are connected
in a close manner to his own history and destiny.

There is another phase of the pupil's industry that has an important
bearing on morals. All his intellectual work in the class has to do with
critical accuracy, and respect for the truth. Loose statements and
careless logical inference meet with severe reproof.

Finally, there is an enforced politeness and courtesy toward teachers
and fellow-pupils--at least to the extent of preventing quarrels. This
is directly tributary to the highest of virtues, namely, kindness and
generosity.

All these moral phases mentioned have to do with the side of school
discipline rather than instruction, and they do not necessarily have any
bearing on the theory of morals or on ethical philosophy, except in the
fact that they make a very strong impression on the mind of the youth,
and cause him to feel that he is a member of a moral order. He learns
that moral demands are far more stern than the demands of the body for
food or drink or repose. The school thus does much to change the pupil
from a natural being to a spiritual being. Physical nature becomes
subordinated to the interests of human nature.

Notwithstanding the fact that the school is so efficient as a means of
training in moral habits, it is as yet only a small influence in the
realm of moral theory. Even our colleges and universities, it must be
confessed, do little in this respect, although there has been of late an
effort to increase in the programmes the amount of time devoted to
ethical study. The cause of this is the divorce of moral theory from
theology. All was easy so long as ethics was directly associated with
the prevailing religious confession. The separation of Church and
State, slowly progressing everywhere since the middle ages, has at
length touched the question of education.

The attempt to find an independent basis for ethics in the science of
sociology has developed conflicting systems. The college student is
rarely strengthened in his faith in moral theories by his theoretic
study. Too often his faith is sapped. Those who master a spiritual
philosophy are strengthened; the many who drift toward a so-called
"scientific" basis are led to weaken their moral convictions to the
standpoint of fashion, or custom, or utility.

Meanwhile the demand of the age to separate Church from State becomes
more and more exacting. Religious instruction has almost entirely ceased
in the public schools, and it is rapidly disappearing from the
programmes of colleges and preparatory schools, and few academies are
now scenes of religious revival, as once was common.

The publishers of this series are glad, therefore, to offer a book so
timely and full of helpful suggestions as this of Mr. Adler. It is hoped
that it may open for many teachers a new road to theoretic instruction
in morality, and at the same time re-enforce the study of literature in
our schools.

W. T. HARRIS.

WASHINGTON, D.C., _July, 1892_.




PREFATORY NOTE.


The following lectures were delivered in the School of Applied Ethics
during its first session in 1891, at Plymouth, Mass. A few of the
lectures have been condensed, in order to bring more clearly into view
the logical scheme which underlies the plan of instruction here
outlined. The others are published substantially as delivered.

I am deeply conscious of the difficulties of the problem which I have
ventured to approach, and realize that any contribution toward its
solution, at the present time, must be most imperfect. I should, for my
part, have preferred to wait longer before submitting my thought to
teachers and parents. But I have been persuaded that even in its present
shape it may be of some use. I earnestly hope that, at all events, it
may serve to help on the rising tide of interest in moral education, and
may stimulate to further inquiry.

FELIX ADLER.




CONTENTS.


INTRODUCTORY LECTURES.
                                                                  PAGE
   I. The Problem of Unsectarian Moral Instruction                   3

  II. The Efficient Motives of Good Conduct                         17

 III. Opportunities for Moral Training in the Daily School          27

  IV. The Classification of Duties                                  37

   V. The Moral Outfit of Children on entering School               47


PRIMARY COURSE.

  VI. The Use of Fairy Tales                                        64

 VII. The Use of Fables                                             80

VIII. Supplementary Remarks on Fables                               96

  IX. Selected Stories from the Bible                              106

   X. The Odyssey and the Iliad                                    146


GRAMMAR COURSE.

LESSONS ON DUTY.

  XI. The Duty of acquiring Knowledge                              169

 XII. Duties which relate to the Physical Life and the Feelings    185

XIII. Duties which relate to Others (Filial and Fraternal Duties)  202

 XIV. Duties toward all Men (Justice and Charity)                  218

  XV. The Elements of Civic Duty                                   236

 XVI. The Use of Proverbs and Speeches                             245

XVII. Individualization of Moral Teaching                          249


APPENDIX.

      The Influence of Manual Training on Character                257




INTRODUCTORY LECTURES.




I.

THE PROBLEM OF UNSECTARIAN MORAL INSTRUCTION.


It will be the aim of the present course of lectures to give in outline
the subject-matter of moral instruction for children from six to
fourteen or fifteen years of age, and to discuss the methods according
to which this kind of instruction should be imparted. At the outset,
however, we are confronted by what certainly is a grave difficulty, and
to many may appear an insuperable one. The opinion is widely held that
morality depends on religious sanctions, and that right conduct can not
be taught--especially not to children--except it be under the authority
of some sort of religious belief. To those who think in this way the
very phrase, unsectarian moral teaching, is suspicious, as savoring of
infidelity. And the attempt to mark off a neutral moral zone, outside
the domains of the churches