leave conduct uninfluenced for either the better or the worse. Now “ideas about morality” may be morally indifferent or immoral or moral. There is nothing in the nature of ideas about morality, of information about honesty or purity or kindness which automatically transmutes such ideas into good character or good conduct.
This distinction between moral ideas, ideas of any sort whatsoever that have become a part of character and hence a part of the working motives of behavior, and ideas about moral action that may remain as inert and ineffective as if they were so much knowledge about Egyptian archæology, is fundamental to the discussion of moral education. The business of the educator—whether parent or teacher—is to see to it that the greatest possible number of ideas acquired by children and youth are acquired in such a vital way that they become moving ideas, motive-forces in the guidance of conduct. This demand and this opportunity make the moral purpose universal and dominant in all instruction—whatsoever the topic. Were it not for this possibility, the familiar statement that the ultimate purpose of all education is character-forming would be hypocritical pretense; for as every one knows, the direct and immediate attention of teachers and pupils must be, for the greater part of the time, upon intellectual matters. It is out of the question to keep direct moral considerations constantly uppermost. But it is not out of the question to aim at making the methods of learning, of acquiring intellectual power, and of assimilating subject-matter, such that they will render behavior more enlightened, more consistent, more vigorous than it otherwise would be.
The same distinction between “moral ideas” and “ideas about morality” explains for us a source of continual misunderstanding between teachers in the schools and critics of education outside of the schools. The latter look through the school programmes, the school courses of study, and do not find any place set apart for instruction in ethics or for “moral teaching.” Then they assert that the schools are doing nothing, or next to nothing, for character-training; they become emphatic, even vehement, about the moral deficiencies of public education. The schoolteachers, on the other hand, resent these criticisms as an injustice, and hold not only that they do “teach morals,” but that they teach them every moment of the day, five days in the week. In this contention the teachers in principle are in the right; if they are in the wrong, it is not because special periods are not set aside for what after all can only be teaching about morals, but because their own characters, or their school atmosphere and ideals, or their methods of teaching, or the subject-matter which they teach, are not such in detail as to bring intellectual results into vital union with character so that they become working forces in behavior. Without discussing, therefore, the limits or the value of so-called direct moral instruction (or, better, instruction about morals), it may be laid down as fundamental that the influence of direct moral instruction, even at its very best, is comparatively small in amount and slight in influence, when the whole field of moral growth through education is taken into account. This larger field of indirect and vital moral education, the development of character through all the agencies, instrumentalities, and materials of school life is, therefore, the subject of our present discussion.
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