THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



AUGUST, 1894. 



THE CHAOS IN MORAL TRAINING. 



BY JOHN DEWEY, 



PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY. 



IN teaching undergraduates in the subject of ethics, I have been 

 impressed with the need of getting the discussion as near as 

 possible to what is going on in the minds of students themselves. 

 Although ethics is the most practical of the philosophic studies, 

 none lends itself more readily to merely technical statement and 

 formal discussion. It is easy to forget that we are discussing the 

 actual behavior, motives, and conduct of men, and substitute for 

 that a discussion of Kant's or Mill's or Spencer's theory of ethics. 

 It seems to me especially advisable to get in some contact with 

 the practical, and accordingly largely unconscious, theory of moral 

 ends and motives which actually controls thinking upon moral 

 subjects. One is, however, considerably embarrassed in attempt- 

 ing this. As any one knows who has much to do with the young, 

 their conscious thoughts in these matters, or at least their state- 

 ments, are not fresher, but more conventional, than those of their 

 elders. They are apt to desire to say the edifying thing, and the 

 thing which they feel is expected of them, rather than express 

 their own inner feelings. Moreover, some points have been so 

 much discussed that any direct questioning upon them is apt to 

 bring forth remnants of controversies that have been heard or 

 read, secondhand opinions, an argumentative taking of sides, 

 rather than to evoke the spontaneous and native attitude. Among 

 other devices for eliminating or at least reducing these disturbing 

 factors the following method was hit upon : To ask each student 

 to state some typical early moral experience of his own, relating, 

 say, to obedience, honesty, and truthfulness, and the impression 



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