378 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the future will be sociological ; that the supremacy which has 

 been accorded to the physical sciences will be transferred to 

 sociological studies/' * The tendency is certainly in this direc- 

 tion. It is seen in the methods employed and in the character of 

 the work done in the kindergarten, in the comparatively fruitless 

 efforts to extract moral lessons from subjects already taught, in 

 the use now being made of the story and myth in literature, in 

 the making of text-books with a view to moral impression, in the 

 provision made for manual training, and in the preference shown 

 by the Committee of Fifteen for " an objective and practical basis 

 of selection of topics for the course of study, rather than the sub- 

 jective basis so long favored by educational writers." f All this 

 is in response to a demand that our schools must do something 

 more than to cultivate brain power. They must also guide it. 

 All possible means must be utilized in meeting this demand ; but, 

 in our judgment, it can be more fully met through sociological 

 studies than through all the means and methods now employed. 

 This line of study can, without doubt, be made the vehicle for 

 effective moral impression. 



Apart from the ethical character of this new science, which 

 renders it superior to all other subjects for ethical purposes, it pos- 

 sesses two very important advantages which disarm two classes of 

 objectors to ethical instruction. One class is composed of those 

 who say that we can not teach ethics, because that means religious 

 instruction. This objection falls to the ground through the sepa- 

 ration of ethics and religion, which this new science assists in 

 establishing. Siuce this is so, and since the ethical codes of all 

 parties interested in the schools are substantially the same, and 

 since there is no hope that the state will ever provide for religious 

 instruction, may we not hope that on this ethical ground which 

 sociological studies furnish, a compromise may be effected 

 through which something may be accomplished in the schools 

 of vastly greater importance to humanity than any degree of 

 manual training, or even of purely intellectual development ? 

 Those who are opposed to religious instruction would not be los- 

 ing their case, since ethics is not religion. All who desire reli- 

 gious instruction would, from their point of view, be gaining their 

 object in part, since they include ethics in religion. To no party 

 would this be a sacrifice of principle. 



The second class of objectors declare that direct moral in- 

 struction would be abortive; that all moral impression must 

 be made indirectly. This is an assumption to which the facts 

 of experience are opposed. However, without stopping to argue 



* Prof. Fulcomer, Lecturer in Chicago University. 

 f Report of Committee of Fifteen. 



