698 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



EDUCATION AND ETHICS. 



ONE of the most serious questions of 

 the present day is as to where and 

 how adequate moral instruction is to be 

 imparted to the rising generation. In 

 the olden time there was no question as 

 to the full responsibility of the home 

 aided by the Church for the moral train- 

 ing of the child. School education was 

 obtained with more or less diflBculty, 

 and, when a child was sent to school, 

 the connection between school and home 

 was close. The parent paid for the teach- 

 ing, and master and parent worked as a 

 general thing on the same moral lines. 

 Nowadays, owing to the vast extension 

 of popular education through the agency 

 of the State, and the abolition of all 

 direct payment of school fees, there is 

 a severance of the former relation be- 

 tween home and school, and the moral 

 interests of the children seem to be slip- 

 ping to the ground between two stools. 

 The State takes from the parent nearly 

 all initiative in regard to the education 

 of the cliild, and does so much that the 

 parent is easily led to imagine that it 

 does everything — that it teaches the 

 principles of right conduct no less than 

 the rules of grammar and arithmetic, 

 and practices the young in virtue as sys- 

 tematically as in handwriting. How far 

 this is from being really the case any 

 one can learn on inquiry ; but the vague 

 assumption that it is the case, or ought 

 to be the case if it is not, does a great 

 deal, we are persuaded, to diminish the 

 sense of parental responsibility. 



From the side of religion many pro- 

 tests have been made against the pres- 

 ent system of popular education. The 

 clergy of the different churches can not 

 help thinking that at least the more im- 

 portant doctrines of the Christian faith 

 should be officially taught ; and they 

 draw most discouraging pictures of what 

 the moral future of the youth of this 



country will be if their counsels are not 

 heeded. All sound and successful moral 

 teaching, they contend, must repose up- 

 on a basis of theology, and to confine 

 ethical teaching to the region of the nat- 

 ural is to deprive it of all warrant, of all 

 authority, of all coercive power. If these 

 views were correct, it would be difficult 

 to see how the weakness of our schools 

 on the moral side could ever be reme- 

 died ; for notliing is more certain than 

 that any attempt to teach theology in 

 them would be predestined failure. The 

 people (or some people) will pay for 

 theology in the pulpit, but they are not 

 willing to pay for it in the schools, and 

 have shown in most unmistakable ways 

 that they do not want it there. The 

 question, then, is: Shall all attempts at 

 moral teaching in the public school be 

 abandoned, seeing that it can not be ad- 

 ministered as an adjunct of theology ; or 

 shall a brave effort be made to give it 

 an independent status of its own and a 

 fair chance to show what it can accom- 

 plish when conducted on purely natural 

 lines? The latter is the decision that 

 some earnest minds have come to, and 

 we have at this moment before us a 

 book produced for the express purpose 

 of aiding the good cause. This work, 

 published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin 

 & Co., bears the title Conduct considered 

 as a Fine Art, and consists of two essays 

 written in response to a call from the 

 American Secular Union for " the best 

 essay, treatise, or manual adapted to aid 

 and assist teachers in our free public 

 schools ... to thoroughly instruct chil- 

 dren and youth in the purest principles 

 of morality without inculcating relig- 

 ious doctrine." Mr. N. P. Gilman, who 

 writes the first half of the book, and 

 whose essay bears the special title of 

 The Laws of Daily Conduct, shows very 

 plainly how unnecessary it is in dealing 

 with children to do more than illustrate 



