oral education an illustration of mistaken views of
laymen_

Nowhere is the validity of this distinction between education as a
public business and education as an expert professional service brought
out more clearly than in an analysis of the public discussion of the
moral work of the school. How frequently of late have those unacquainted
with the special nature of the school proclaimed the moral ends of
education and at the same time demanded direct ethical instruction as
the particular method by which they were to be realized! This, too, in
spite of the fact that those who know best the powers and limitations of
instruction as an instrument have repeatedly pointed out the futility of
assuming that knowledge of right constitutes a guarantee of right doing.
How common it is for those who assert that education is for social
efficiency to assume that the school should return to the barren
discipline of the traditional formal subjects, reading, writing, and the
rest! This, too, regardless of the fact that it has taken a century of
educational evolution to make the course of study varied and rich enough
to call for those impulses and activities of social life which need
training in the child. And how many who speak glowingly of the large
services of the public schools to a democracy of free and self-reliant
men affect a cynical and even vehement opposition to the
"self-government of schools"! These would not have the children learn to
govern themselves and one another, but would have the masters rule them,
ignoring the fact that this common practice in childhood may be a
foundation for that evil condition in adult society where the citizens
are arbitrarily ruled by political bosses.

One need not cite further cases of the incompetence of the lay public to
deal with technical questions of school methods. Instances are plentiful
to show that well-meaning people, competent enough to judge of the aims
and results of school work, make a mistake in insisting upon the
prerogative of directing the technical aspects of education with a
dogmatism that would not characterize their statements regarding any
other special field of knowledge or action.

_A fundamental understanding of moral principles in education_

Nothing can be more useful than for the public and the teaching
profession to understand their respective functions. The teacher needs
to understand public opinion and the social order, as much as the public
needs to co