INING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY

II

THE MORAL TRAINING GIVEN BY THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY

There cannot be two sets of ethical principles, one for life in the
school, and the other for life outside of the school. As conduct is one,
so also the principles of conduct are one. The tendency to discuss the
morals of the school as if the school were an institution by itself is
highly unfortunate. The moral responsibility of the school, and of those
who conduct it, is to society. The school is fundamentally an
institution erected by society to do a certain specific work,--to
exercise a certain specific function in maintaining the life and
advancing the welfare of society. The educational system which does not
recognize that this fact entails upon it an ethical responsibility is
derelict and a defaulter. It is not doing what it was called into
existence to do, and what it pretends to do. Hence the entire structure
of the school in general and its concrete workings in particular need to
be considered from time to time with reference to the social position
and function of the school.

The idea that the moral work and worth of the public school system as a
whole are to be measured by its social value is, indeed, a familiar
notion. However, it is frequently taken in too limited and rigid a way.
The social work of the school is often limited to training for
citizenship, and citizenship is then interpreted in a narrow sense as
meaning capacity to vote intelligently, disposition to obey laws, etc.
But it is futile to contract and cramp the ethical responsibility of the
school in this way. The child is one, and he must either live his social
life as an integral unified being, or suffer loss and create friction.
To pick out one of the many social relations which the child bears, and
to define the work of the school by that alone, is like instituting a
vast and complicated system of physical exercise which would have for
its object simply the development of the lungs and the power of
breathing, independent of other organs and functions. The child is an
organic whole, intellectually, socially, and morally, as well as
physically. We must take the child as a member of society in the
broadest sense, and demand for and from the schools whatever is
necessary to enable the child intelligently to recognize all his social
relations and take his part in sustaining them.

To isolate the formal relationship of citizenship from the whole