The test comes only when the information acquired has to be put to use. Will it do what we expect of it? I have heard an educator of large experience say that in her judgment the greatest defect of instruction to-day, on the intellectual side, is found in the fact that children leave school without a mental perspective. Facts seem to them all of the same importance. There is no foreground or background. There is no instinctive habit of sorting out facts upon a scale of worth and of grading them.
The child cannot get power of judgment excepting as he is continually exercised in forming and testing judgments. He must have an opportunity to select for himself, and to attempt to put his selections into execution, that he may submit them to the final test, that of action. Only thus can he learn to discriminate that which promises success from that which promises failure; only thus can he form the habit of relating his purposes and notions to the conditions that determine their value. Does the school, as a system, afford at present sufficient opportunity for this sort of experimentation? Except so far as the emphasis of the school work is upon intelligent doing, upon active investigation, it does not furnish the conditions necessary for that exercise of judgment which is an integral factor in good character.
(c) I shall be brief with respect to the other point, the need of susceptibility and responsiveness. The informally social side of education, the æsthetic environment and influences, are all-important. In so far as the work is laid out in regular and formulated ways, so far as there are lacking opportunities for casual and free social intercourse between pupils and between the pupils and the teacher, this side of the child’s nature is either starved, or else left to find haphazard expression along more or less secret channels. When the school system, under plea of the practical (meaning by the practical the narrowly utilitarian), confines the child to the three R’s and the formal studies connected with them, shuts him out from the vital in literature and history, and deprives him of his right to contact with what is best in architecture, music, sculpture, and picture, it is hopeless to expect definite results in the training of sympathetic openness and responsiveness.
What we need in education is a genuine faith in the existence of moral principles which are capable of effective application. We believe, so far as the mass of children are concerned, that if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of anything like the same assurance in morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set off by themselves. They are so very “moral” that they have no working contact with the average affairs of every-day life. These moral principles need to be brought down to the ground through their statement in social and in psychological terms. We need to see that moral principles are not arbitrary, that they are not “transcendental”; that the term “moral” does not designate a special region or portion of life. We need to translate the moral into the conditions and forces of our community life, and into the impulses and habits of the individual.
All the rest is mint, anise, and cummin. The one thing needful is that we recognize that moral principles are real in the same sense in which other forces are real; that they are inherent in community life, and in the working structure of the individual. If we can secure a genuine faith in this fact, we shall have secured the condition which alone is necessary to get from our educational system all the effectiveness there is in it. The teacher who operates in this faith will find every subject, every method of instruction, every incident of school life pregnant with moral possibility.
Outline
1 THE MORAL PURPOSE OF THE SCHOOLMoral ideas and ideas about moralityMoral education and direct moral instruction
2 THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITYThe unity of social ethics and school ethicsA narrow and formal training for citizenshipSchool life should train for many social relationsIt should train for self-direction and leadershipThere is no harmonious development of powers apart from social situationsSchool activities should be typical of social lifeMoral training in the schools tends to be pathological and formal
3 THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS OF INSTRUCTIONActive social service as opposed to passive individual absorptionThe positive inculcation of individualistic motives and standardsThe evils of competition for external standingThe moral waste of remote success as an endThe worth of active and social modes of learning
4 THE SOCIAL NATURE OF THE COURSE OF STUDYThe nature of the course of study influences the conduct of the schoolSchool studies as means of realizing social situationsSchool subjects are merely phases of a unified social lifeThe meaning of subjects is controlled by social considerationsGeography deals with the scenes of social interactionIts various forms represent increasing stages of abstractionHistory is a means for interpreting existing social relationsIt presents type phases of social developmentIt offers contrasts, and consequently perspectiveIt teaches the methods of social progressThe failure of certain methods of teaching historyMathematics is a means to social endsThe sociological nature of business arithmeticSummary: The moral trinity of the school
5 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATIONConduct as a mode of individual performanceNative instincts and impulses are the sources of conductMoral ideals must be realized in personsCharacter as a system of working forcesForce as a necessary constituent of characterThe importance of intellectual judgment or good senseThe capacity for delicate emotional responsivenessSummary: The ethical standards for testing the schoolConclusion: The practicality of moral principles
Interest and Effort in Education
I. Unified Versus Divided Activity
II. Interest As Direct And Indirect
III. Effort, Thinking, And Motivation
IV. Types Of Educative Interest
V. The Place Of Interest In The Theory Of Education
Introduction
It is a pleasant privilege to present the following monograph to the profession and the public, for there is no discussion which is more fundamental to the interpretation and reform of current teaching than this statement of the functions of interest and effort in education. Its active acceptance by teachers would bring about a complete transformation of classroom methods. Its appreciation by the patrons of the schools would greatly modify current criticism of the various programs
