Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

WHAT MORAL EQUIPMENT MAY THE COMMUNITY REASONABLY DEMAND OF THE GRADUATES

OF THE COMMON SCHOOLS?

MR. WALTER H. SMALL, A. M.

SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

The common schools are public property; public or community rights in these schools are inherent and incontestable. It is their right to receive, for every dollar invested, a dollar's worth of return in the mental and moral development of the boys and girls whom they edu

cate.

The early New England school was founded on the Bible and the catechism. Education was to be, "not only in good literature, but sound doctrine." None could be instructors "that have manifested themselves unsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and not giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ." They must be certified to by the minister of the town, in which the school was located, and also by the ministers of the adjoining towns. In 1717 Connecticut schools became parish schools, and in New Hampshire they were permissive. The reading-books were the Psalter, the Testament, and the Bible; the church dominated the school. Examination in the catechism in school on Saturday, examination in the Sunday sermon on Monday, not to mention the Monday school flogging for the Sunday church misdemeanors, proves the close relation between the two. It was not until after these dependent colonies became free and independent states that it was thought necessary to incorporate into the law any allusion to moral training. That law in this commonwealth makes it the duty of all instructors, from the president of Harvard University to the teacher in the lowest school, "to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth, committed to their care and instruction, the principles of piety and justice, and a sacred regard for truth; love of their country, humanity, and universal benevolence; sobriety, industry, and frugality; chastity, moderation, and temperance." Then they are to "endeavor to lead their pupils as their ages and capacities will admit." The essence of this law is to be found in other states.

The dissolution between church and school was reluctant. The catechism did not fully disappear until about 1850. Since then there has been a growing impression that moral education in the schools has

been decadent, and the question contained in the subject of this paper has arisen periodically. In 1888, a committee of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association made an extensive report on this subject, which was hopefully optimistic, though not overconfident. Dr. Hall, in his recent book on adolescence, says, "Although pedagogues make vast claims for the moralizing effect of schooling, I cannot find a single criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school." There are all degrees of opinion between these two.

The subject naturally divides itself into three considerations: I. The problem and its conditions; II. Means of treatment; and III. Reasonable results.

I. The Problem. The problem of the elementary schools is to take children from the entrance age of six years to the age of graduation, fourteen or fifteen, and give them the foundations on which to build during the next ten years. Habits do not become fixed during this elemental period. They are the products of the years immediately beyond. The closing years of the elementary school period form the most dangerous in child-life. At that age there is greater tendency to crimes and immoralities than at any other future period. This is the age when dormant faculties spring into being, and primitive impulses rage in the blood. School truancies largely occur between eleven and fourteen. The elementary school must give such tendencies and initial velocities as will carry them over and beyond the danger lines.

The problem of the elementary school is to sharpen the moral vision to such an extent that the incorrigibility of the two years im mediately following graduation may be lessened; that the social virtues may be recognized; that regularity, punctuality, obedience, rights of others, bodily cleanliness, knowledge of physical self, truthfulness, honesty, manliness, self-reliance, courtesy, in fact, all that tend toward correct habits and correct living may be implanted.

II. Means of Treatment. Moral teaching must be continuous. In elementary school work it must be largely incidental, suggestive. At this age didactic teaching is neither forceful nor fruitful. The school atmosphere should be full of good influences. It should be an environment created with a distinct end in view. The tone must be moral. The school building and its equipment has much to do with this. The old-time schoolhouse invited the "jack-knife's carved initials." It equally invited the immoral expressions and pictures, limnings of the grosser minds. They have not wholly disappeared to-day, but they are less common because, of the better buildings and better

surroundings. The best modern sanitary conditions have reduced to the lowest terms the loss of modesty occasioned by the old-time public exposure, and lessened the opportunity of vile lessons from vile companions.

Next comes the opportunity from the curriculum. Scientists maintain that in the life of every child we have embodied all the changes which nations have passed through from savagery to present intelligence, and those things which have influenced national character will influence individual character. Music, drawing, reading, give abundant opportunities for this development. Good school music elevates the taste, tints and tinges character.

For the sake of his future relations with other people, of his recognition that the individual must be merged into the community, school rules and their enforcement are necessary, that he may gain self-control, and be obedient to law voluntarily. The enforcement of these rules has greatly changed in recent years. To-day, discipline is a training of the will, the great mainspring of human progress. It is teaching individual self-control; it is teaching recognition of individual rights, as compared with the rights of the community, the school; it is teaching obedience to those rights through force within, not without; it is a doctrine of leadership. The spirit is trained, not broken, until habits, the product of the will, are formed on right principles, tend towards right growth, and ripen into wholesome manhood and womanhood.

Buildings, equipment, studies, and rules are of little avail, unless under the administration of a strong personality. There needs to be in the schoolroom the spirit that rejoices over the one sinner that repenteth. There needs to be the spirit of faith in the final result. This is not found in the little soul. Teachers must be broad enough, and strong enough, to imprint themselves on their pupils in a broad, strong way. Here is the great responsibility of the community. They should see that the teachers, to whom they intrust their children, are men and women of clear eye, clear brain, clean blood and clean character, living examples of goodness, of truth, and of purity, but warmblooded, warm-hearted, virile, forceful. The danger to-day is that this standard of the elementary school teacher will not be maintained. Already, other interests are drawing them away from the schools, until there is the possibility that they may fall into the hands of "young girls and feeble men." When this comes true, the product will be young and feeble, and the flow of the current is in that direction.

What right has any community to expect that a young woman,

1

getting a weekly wage of from $3.60 to $7.70 for the fifty-two weeks of the year, shall be a mental guide, a spiritual adviser, and a moral headlight, of strong compelling personal magnetism, a guide unto their feet, and a light in the darkness? Yet, these figures represent the extremes of over twenty communities, and there are hundreds like them.

Every boy, from twelve years up, should come under the influence of a vigorous, virile, whole-souled man, who has grown up through a vigorous, tempestuous boyhood. He wants guidance, counsel, fellowship, leadership. He has no use for sermonettes, or pleadings or tears. The average woman teacher has trouble at this point, because she does not understand the physical turmoil through which the boy is passing, and because she is emotional, unjudicial in temperament, and lacks the knowledge gained only through experience. The teachers for this period of the elementary school life cost money, and this the average community refuses to furnish.

Reasonable Demands. With these means, what reasonable demands may the community make upon the elementary schools for the solution of the problem? The right of expectation depends on two pointsknowledge of the physiological and psychological natures of the pupils of common school age, and the condition of the community finances in support of the schools. The community has the habit of looking for finished products from the common school. The products are still elemental, embryonic, formative. The belief in infant conversion and in infant damnation, whether it be in religion or morals, has not wholly disappeared from the land. It is this infant belief which still inclines communities to expect too much from the elementary schools. The community is inclined to judge everything from its own adult standpoint; it is inclined to believe that its yardstick is the one which it brought from the elementary school, when, in point of fact, it was only then a foot-rule, which has grown into the yardstick with maturer years. It is not a fair standard of measure for boys and girls. The community has the right to demand of elementary schools, if they are properly housed, properly equipped with good working tools, and a strong teaching force, a fair solution of the problem, that pupils shall graduate with a common moral standard, with a clear conception of moral obligations, and with their tendencies in right directions. They have no right to demand that these pupils shall have the fixity of purpose which develops in the secondary school age, nor that all graduates shall have these conceptions and tendencies. Not all are law-abiding, either in school or in the community. Neither

have they any right to demand that these schools shall do the work which belongs primarily to the home or church; nor have they any right to demand that poor teachers and poor equipment shall produce complete results. They have the right to demand that the soil shall be prepared, the seed planted, cared for, nourished, but if the soil prove stony ground, if the tares spring up and choke in later years, they have no right to charge this as a fault of the elementary schools. The elementary schools have none of the pleasures of the harvesters. They may see the tendencies change, asperities soften, irregularities grow toward regularities, but the full fruition is not theirs; theirs is only the hope that the fruit may not blight in the bud.

« ForrigeFortsæt »