Education 249 



in these days we are accustomed to see elsewhere cultivated. 

 Moses was not only a teacher of religion and morality; he 

 was governor and lawmaker and judge and health officer. 

 But we have ceased to look for all these faculties in one 

 authority, and as we have cared for education in other 

 sciences, so should we care for education in Morality and 

 Law. 



Some of the energy and time given to the making of laws 

 should be diverted to the duty of teaching them to those 

 who are expected to obey, and especially to teaching their 

 rightness, and their foundation in a purpose useful and 

 beneficial to the law-abiding citizen. 



It is not just to those who have few to advise them that 

 they should be presumed to know the laws. They are 

 entitled to be informed; that is to say to be taught, and it 

 is amazingly negligent that a community which wishes its 

 members to live in obedience to law, should fail to take the 

 most obvious first step toward that end, which is to explain 

 to its children what that law is, and why it is. A course in 

 morality in the lower grades and a brief course in the edicts 

 of the criminal and civil codes, in the upper grades of the 

 public schools, would save much of the expense incurred 

 for police and justice and jails. 



It is becoming more and more apparent that jails and 

 the fear of jails do not succeed in reforming wrongdoers 

 and do not successfully deter the juvenile delinquents who 

 will soon become mature criminals. It is clear that some 

 other system of prevention of crime is urgently needed. 



Everything indicates that the remedy is education in 

 morality imparted to the children in their earliest lessons. 



