2 COLORADO COLLEGE STUDIES. 



enough to fashion even the majority of these thirteen million 

 pupils into citizens in whom righteousness shall be the con- 

 trolling element; and there is no reason for thinking that it 

 will be in the immediate future. 



The home comes much nearer meeting the need; but 

 doubtless Mr. G. H. Palmer's statement is correct, in his 

 article Can Moral Conduct be Taught in Schools? "The 

 home," he says, " which has hitherto been the fundamental 

 agency for fostering morality in the young, is just now in 

 sore need of repair. We can no longer depend upon it alone 

 for moral guardianship. It must be supplemented, possibly 

 reconstructed." It still does, and always will, train the choice 

 few for leadership; but after enumerating the homes in which 

 the best that was in Puritanism still is the controlling ele- 

 ment, and those that develop morality by means of the self- 

 respect engendered by intellectual and aesthetic culture, — in 

 fact, all those in which high ideals predominate, — there is 

 still left a vast number where self-seeking is the main principle 

 of life. If to the number of children in these latter homes 

 are added the thousands who exist with scarcely any trace of 

 home life to shelter them, we shall be forced to admit that 

 there would be a moral crisis if the public school were not 

 doing its beneficent work. 



The question still awaits us, however. What is the public 

 school system achieving for public morals? 



Just at present there is a movement in various quarters to 

 introduce instruction in the theory of morals into even the 

 lower grades of the schools; but no one seems to be sure that 

 this will not produce self-conscious prigs, or encourage morbid 

 introspection rather than sturdy morality. But all are agreed 

 that it is the function of the public schools — not to say of all 

 schools, for that matter — to produce what .some one calls 

 " unconscious rectitude " in these thirteen million children. 

 All appear to believe that development of morality is essen- 

 tial, and few that the teaching of mere ethical theories will 

 be of much value. 



The problem involves, then, the study of the system as a 

 system from the standpoint of practical morality, to see if it 



