DS OF INSTRUCTION

III

THE MORAL TRAINING FROM METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

The principle of the social character of the school as the basic factor
in the moral education given may be also applied to the question of
methods of instruction,--not in their details, but their general spirit.
The emphasis then falls upon construction and giving out, rather than
upon absorption and mere learning. We fail to recognize how essentially
individualistic the latter methods are, and how unconsciously, yet
certainly and effectively, they react into the child's ways of judging
and of acting. Imagine forty children all engaged in reading the same
books, and in preparing and reciting the same lessons day after day.
Suppose this process constitutes by far the larger part of their work,
and that they are continually judged from the standpoint of what they
are able to take in in a study hour and reproduce in a recitation hour.
There is next to no opportunity for any social division of labor. There
is no opportunity for each child to work out something specifically his
own, which he may contribute to the common stock, while he, in turn,
participates in the productions of others. All are set to do exactly the
same work and turn out the same products. The social spirit is not
cultivated,--in fact, in so far as the purely individualistic method
gets in its work, it atrophies for lack of use. One reason why reading
aloud in school is poor is that the real motive for the use of
language--the desire to communicate and to learn--is not utilized. The
child knows perfectly well that the teacher and all his fellow pupils
have exactly the same facts and ideas before them that he has; he is not
_giving_ them anything at all. And it may be questioned whether the
moral lack is not as great as the intellectual. The child is born with a
natural desire to give out, to do, to serve. When this tendency is not
used, when conditions are such that other motives are substituted, the
accumulation of an influence working against the social spirit is much
larger than we have any idea of,--especially when the burden of work,
week after week, and year after year, falls upon this side.

But lack of cultivation of the social spirit is not all. Positively
individualistic motives and standards are inculcated. Some stimulus must
be found to keep the child at his studies. At the best this will be his
affection for his teacher, together with a feeling that he is not