EDUCATION AND MORALS
The source of much of our interest in public education is concern for
our neighbors’ morals. This is doubtless why in America we commonly
think of adult education as something which should exist for other
people rather than for ourselves. We are a nation of moral reformers.
Education is often proposed as an alternative to moral legislation.
There is an increasing demand for more effective moral education in the
public schools.
When the educator becomes an “uplifter” the moral interest is always
a little forced and education suffers. Moral enthusiasm, when it is
enthusiasm for the good of others, tends to make of education a species
of organized charity. Seek education for yourself and it is the search
for the good life. From ancient times men have sought knowledge that
they might become better judges of good and evil. To one who is seeking
to know what is good, all popular moral conventions, taboos, and
alleged divine commandments become proper subjects of study, criticism
and possible revaluation. Moral education is not mere drill in the ways
of the herd. The good man’s first duty, as Professor Erskine says, is
to be intelligent. Good intentions alone do not enable a man to judge
wisely or behave well. The prevailing idea that one can be at the same
time good and stupid has strongly influenced our education. Moral
education becomes moralizing. The phrase “ethical culture” is either
tautological or it is a contradiction in terms.
If we were each more genuinely interested in our education there would
be much less talk about morality and less occasion for such talk. The
moralist is as a rule the person with a lower middle-class mind, who
insists upon calling general attention to his own dilemmas. Mediocrity
makes parade of virtue a claim to superiority, presenting a picture of
itself as the likeness of the good man. Goodness is defined in negative
terms. The good man is he who observes the “thou shalt not,” not he
who can do the rare and difficult thing. It is in the localities where
there is least artistic appreciation or intellectual curiosity or
cosmopolitan spirit, the places where people have nothing with which to
occupy their minds, that we find the strongholds of “morality.” Where
education prevails, people learn to behave themselves as a matter of
wisdom and good taste. Those who are sufficiently practiced in the art
of living to be able to observe the common decencies without always
“watching their step,” may sometimes look up from the ground and take a
broader view.
Much of the ethical instruction which is given in school is both
bad education and bad morals. Those colleges in which there is most
talk about “education for character” are as a rule those which most
patently fail as educational institutions. The instructor tends to
“protest too much.” The attitude of authority discourages the spirit of
search and criticism. Popular prejudice is intrenched. Non-essentials
are over-emphasized. Crowd-mindedness, rather than independence of
judgment, prevails. Every crowd persuades itself that it is vindicating
the right and justifies its behavior with fine moral sentiments. The
student in school is made susceptible to catchwords and is prepared
to become the typical crowd man of the future. To this end he is
given “ideals,” that is, he is taught to worship certain words such as
“justice,” “purity,” “brotherly love.” Instead of learning to enquire
what such words mean when applied to concrete situations, he is led
to believe that he possesses the realities for which they stand when
he has an attitude of adoration for the words. Henceforth, he can,
without using his brains, be always right even in matters where he
knows nothing, by the trick of seeing in each practical problem a moral
issue. It is in this manner that the majority is always right in a
democracy. If you question its wisdom, you are put in the position of
one who attacks its moral ideals. From the first day in school on, the
child is drilled in cant and in deference to prevailing public opinion.
He is brought up in an atmosphere of sex morality by a stupid and
shame-faced policy of expurgation and censorship, the assumption being
that apparent ignorance is “purity.” A student in a woman’s college
preparing to become a teacher of English literature, elected a course
in the eighteenth century novel, and after listening to the lectures,
she felt it her duty to look over some of the books. Unable to find
the works of Fielding in the library, she inquired of the instructor
where she could secure a copy of “Tom Jones.” The instructor replied,
“Heavens, child, you are not going to _read_ it!” This is perhaps an
extreme case, but it illustrates much of the influence of morals upon
the education of the young.
Is the student to acquire the virtue of patriotism? Then he is not
to be shown the full force of the example of those who have resisted
tyranny, but must have his head filled with a glorified version of
his country’s history. Is he to learn respect for law? He is not
equipped with principles which enable him to discriminate between
wise and foolish legislation. His teachers and preachers tell him that
law is divine and must be obeyed because it is the law. After three
generations and more of such education, we have a population in which
moral independence is decidedly on the wane. The statute book, not
private judgment, becomes the guide to conduct, and the Federal courts
the safeguard to morals. Open protest against official invasion of
individual rights gives way to furtiveness and evasion. Moral training
which does not encourage critical examination of popular ideas of what
is right and good, does not tend to make men better, but only of one
mind.
Popular suspicion of intelligence and the belief that one may be good
and do right without it, is carried over into the field of education.
Moral education becomes a special kind of education. It is thought that
there is a “moral knowledge” which is different from other knowledge.
The attempt is made to train character as if character did not include
intelligence. Education, then, intent upon character, distrusts
intelligence. The moral interest results in routine drill in current
precepts and values, not in the awakening of moral responsibility.
Professor Dewey says,
“Morals are often thought to be an affair with which ordinary
knowledge has nothing to do. Moral knowledge is thought to be a
thing apart, and conscience is thought of as something radically
different from consciousness. This separation, if valid, is of
special significance for education. Moral education in school is
practically hopeless when we set up the development of character as
a supreme end, and at the same time treat the acquiring of knowledge
and the development of understanding, which of necessity occupy the
chief part of school time, as having nothing to do with character. On
such a basis, moral education is inevitably reduced to some kind of
catechetical instruction, or lessons about morals. Lessons ‘about
morals’ signify as a matter of course lessons in what other people
think about virtues and duties. It amounts to something only in the
degree in which pupils happen to be already animated by a sympathetic
and dignified regard for the sentiments of others. Without such a
regard, it has no more influence on character than information about
the mountains of Asia: with a servile regard, it increases dependence
upon others, and throws upon those in authority the responsibility
for conduct. As a matter of fact, direct instruction in morals has
been effective only in social groups where it was a part of the
authoritative control of the many by the few. Not the teaching as
such but the reënforcement of it by the whole régime of which it was
an incident made it effective. To attempt to get similar results
from lessons about morals in a democratic society is to rely upon
sentimental magic.”
I do not see how it is possible to isolate moral education as a special
discipline and have either a liberal education or a sound sense of
moral values.
In institutions of higher learning, “Moral Philosophy” or the “Science
of Ethics” is sometimes thought to be training in morals. It is so
only to the extent that such study is itself good education. I find
that many students have the same experience that I had with my college
course in Ethics. I took up the study believing that at last I should
learn what is right and how to do it. I soon discovered that I had
entered upon the driest and least practical course of study offered in
the college. Insofar as I could see there was nothing in Ethics that I
could turn to for advice about any of the problems of my own conduct.
I understand that in some institutions the students’ demand for advice
has resulted in courses of ethics which consist of case studies. No
doubt the opinions of the students and the instructor concerning
certain hypothetical dilemmas of conduct are very interesting. But as
Plato would say, such study is made up of “opinion,” not “knowledge.”
It is doubtful if such discourse ever results in modifying behavior.
“Pure” ethics consists of _a priori_ arguments about the teachings of
philosophy concerning such abstract concepts as the moral judgment, the
nature of the Good, the idea of Duty in general, not of my particular
duties. Such study may be good training in logic, but it has no more to
do with conduct than has formal logic, and not as much as mathematics,
for one may apply the principles of mathematics to concrete problems.
Perhaps the greatest gain for the student from such study is the
discovery that philosophers do not agree upon any one system of morals,
and that in strict logic we do not know what we mean by our moral
generalizations. The more universal an ethical concept is, the more
it exists wholly within and for reason, the less is it a deduction
from experience and the less use is it as a guide to behavior. Ethics,
as moral philosophy, is not a descriptive study of the customs and
practices of people, or of what things men in diverse times and places
have held to be good or evil, right or wrong; this is anthropology.
It is not the study of the mental processes of judging or of forming
habits or of that quality of actual experience which men call good;
this is psychology. Ethics, moreover, is not a scientific study of the
means of accomplishing any good whatsoever; for this at once leads out
of pure ethics into economics, mechanics, medicine, etc. Pure ethics is
pure logic applied to ultimate concepts _about_ morality in general.
It is the “formulation of the Good as it would hold for all possible
worlds,” a kind of speculation or contemplation. Its good does not
exist in experience anywhere; it is metaphysical and exists only for
philosophizing. Hence ethic, strictly speaking, is concerned with ends
not with means, and the ends are not experienced, they are only thought
about. As an example of such an approach to morals, there is Kant’s
Categorical Imperative, from the consideration of which everything
concrete, empirical, personal is removed.
I quote some typical passages from the discussion of the teaching of
ethics in a contemporary Journal of Philosophy,
“The task of moral philosophy is, by analysis of the moral judgments
men actually make, to arrive at clear notions about obligation,
rights, good, punishment and the like. And the point of honor, the
chastity of the philosopher’s mind, should be never to suffer his
genuine moral judgments to be warped in deference to his theory. For
that is to poison the wells of truth. All that is valuable in ethics
is formal....
“Finally, it may be asked, has then moral philosophy no practical
value? I think its prime value is purely speculative,--the supreme
interest of the topic for thoughtful minds and its importance for
metaphysics. But, like everything else, it has its effects. I think
it is, when studied in its purity, an unrivalled mental training.
I believe that the more (apart from casuistry) we reflect on the
nature of the moral law the more we are likely to reverence it.
And lastly I think that nearly every human being does and must to
some extent philosophize. We are all apt to form crude principles,
as that morality consists in keeping the law, or obeying the ten
commandments, or realizing our selves, or seeking the common
good. And then we are apt pendantically and priggishly to distort
our genuine moral judgments in accordance with these inadequate
generalizations. Moral philosophy criticizes such formulas and shows
that they are either untrue or circular. Either self-realization
means realizing the _right_ part of the self or it is not always
right. Promoting the “common good” either means bringing about those
satisfactions which moral reason judges _ought_ to be brought about
(e. g., those which are _just_ or of a _higher_ value) or it is not
always right. And so a truer moral philosophy releases us from the
false dogmatisms which may, though usually they do not, corrupt our
practise....
“On the other hand, members of my class actually approached me, as if
I were a father-confessor, for the solution of special problems in
conduct!”
In the following quotation from the same Journal, a different view is
expressed. The author believes that ethics is sometimes concerned with
the practical problems of conduct, but admits that this inclusion of
practical interests results in some ambiguity and confusion.
“Conceding that there is a science of ethics that does not teach us
either to be good or that we ought to be good any more than logic
teaches us how to think or that we ought to think, or esthetics
teaches us how to appreciate beauty and that we ought to love it,
there yet remains the question, is there a legitimate place in
philosophical education for a science of ethics which frankly does
not disclaim a “practical” interest? Is there a science of ethics
that is “practical” in something more than the Protagorean sense of
supplying instruction in “how to manage our homes in the best way,
and to be able to speak and act the best in public life?” (Such
instruction might well encourage sophistry and the casuistry of which
Professor Carritt speaks.) Is there, in other words, a science of
ethics which is “practical,” not in the sense of telling the pupil
what moral decisions to make, but in cultivating the ἔρως φιλοσοφίας
which would render possible well-considered choices? If there is not
a place for such a science, it seems hardly forthright or consistent
to perpetuate the ambiguity. If there is a legitimate place for
it, it is the duty of moral philosophers to terminate the present
ambiguity by explaining it. We can scarcely afford to laugh at or
deny it.”
The relation of morals to education is to be found neither in special
discipline and habit formation in the effort for character apart from
intelligence, nor in drill in the logic of an _a priori_ science. When
moral training is made a special interest set off from other aims of
education, it defeats itself. There is no such thing as a moral good
separate from other goods. A moral good is simply the best choice among
the conflicting goods of experience, actual or possible. As James said,
the good is that which satisfies a desire. _A priori_, every desire
should be satisfied, since considered in itself it is a demand for a
satisfaction. But since desires are in conflict, choice is necessary.
The good deed is the right thing to do, or the right way of doing it.
All education if it is really education is moral education. It is
because people do not grasp this fact that futile efforts at special
moral training are made in which the connections with education are
artificial and extraneous. Thus the pursuit of knowledge is shorn of
its significance for conduct, and morals is divorced from intelligence.
As Professor Dewey says,
“A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the
failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable
in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development,
culture, social efficiency, are moral traits--marks of a person
who is a worthy member of that society which it is the business of
education to further. There is an old saying to the effect that it
is not enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something.
The something for which a man must be good is capacity to live
as a social member so that what he gets from living with others
balances with what he contributes. What he gets and gives as a human
being, a being with desires, emotions, and ideas, is not external
possessions, but a widening and deepening of conscious life--a more
intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of meanings. What
he _materially_ receives and gives is at most opportunities and
means for the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither
giving nor taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in
space, like the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline,
culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of
character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share
in such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means to
such a life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such
education is the essence of morals.”
Moral behavior is not only social. It is also _intelligent_ behavior.
An act has moral significance when the performance shows _insight_ into
the situation. An action done under compulsion or without understanding
has no moral value. A machine may behave very correctly but it is not
a moral being. An act has moral meaning to just the extent that its
author grasps the implications of the situation in which he must act
and is guided by consideration of the results. An act is judged, not as
moralists would have it, merely by the intention, but by its results.
It is the aim of education to develop the insight and foresight and
breadth of vision which make it possible for an individual to take
responsibility for the results of his behavior. The greater the
intelligence, the more nearly does the consideration of an act approach
the estimate of the total result. Thus _the aims of education and
morals are the same_;--the good life in so far as it may be attained by
intelligent choice and behavior.
Men have long sought to reconcile the true and the good. But what they
have sought to reconcile were as a rule mere _ideas_ about the true
and the good. It is not as logical abstractions that the true and the
good are one, but in the recognition that the really wise act is the
good deed. It is in this sense that wisdom is virtue--in the sense
that virtue is wisdom. But the objection will be made that educated
men are sometimes clever rascals who are only the more evil for all
their knowledge. I do not think I beg the question when I say that such
men are not wise but merely clever. Nor do I mean that good conduct
is merely a matter of reasoning and calculating. No one denies that
desire and instinct and purpose are involved. But if I am not mistaken
it is generally recognized that education and morals alike have
something to do with training and controlling these aspects of human
nature. Intelligence is not mere intellect. It is the whole man wisely
directing himself with respect to his environment and its alternatives.
From one age or locality to another fashions in behavior patterns
change. These fashions seem to be important at the time they hold
sway. People confuse them with morals. Efforts are sometimes made by
reformers to introduce innovations similar to those which designers
of clothing each season create in haberdashery. A liberal journal in
New York recently published a series of articles dealing with “The New
Morality.” But morality is neither new nor old. Rules of conduct which
can be made mere matters of style are applicable chiefly to actions the
results of which are unimportant. Such rules have really very little
moral value. They constitute, however, the customs or folkways which
prevail at a given time. Conformity in such matters is required by the
herd. Often this requirement is the only reason for observing certain
rules; the opposite course would be just as good. It is with respect to
such matters that education has the effect of liberating the individual
and improving morals. It breaks the hold of the taboo, makes it
possible to discriminate between the important and the unimportant and
leads to the formation of principles based upon consideration of the
results of behavior. The differences in conduct that count are those
between stupid deeds and well-considered deeds. Intelligence takes into
account the fact that no action of man can be isolated and judged apart
from its place in the social environment, and its effects both for the
author and for his human relationships. Long ago Aristotle showed that
each of our virtues unless intelligently exercised tends to extreme and
to become a vice. A virtue is what it does, not what it feels like to
its possessor. Much is said today about the necessity of loyalty. There
can be no social stability without it; but there is probably no more
serious social menace than unintelligent loyalty.
Men persist in ascribing to their moral principles a sanctity,
a sublimity, which makes them appear to have an independent and
eternal existence and to be ends in themselves. I believe this to
be a superstition. In what respect is a moral principle more to be
reverenced than a principle of mechanics? To worship Duty in general
is simply to make a god out of a human generalization. The “rightness”
about which men grow eloquent exists simply as the implications of the
concrete situation in which an act is performed. As the ability to
grasp such implications improves, principles of conduct are employed
which are relevant to the situation. I spoke of insight into the
situation toward which action is taken as being alike essential to
education and to the moral judgment. He whose conduct is regulated by
his own insight and by principles which are relevant to the situation
at hand is a morally responsible being, and to the degree that a man
assumes responsibility for his conduct, he reveals the quality of his
education. Those who seek to avoid responsibility substitute for their
own insight rules of behavior which have as their basis something that
lies outside the demands of the situation where the behavior takes
place. Judge your conduct by this other, outside something and ignore
the lessons written in the results of your deed, and you cease to learn
anything from your behavior; your education in this direction has come
to a stop.
Education frequently comes to such a halt when moral teaching is
carried on as part of religious instruction. There is a common belief
that religion is the real basis of morals. I think this belief has
its source in the fact that religious institutions in the past, being
by nature conservative, have sought to perpetuate the folkways. The
church is a form of social organization and has its own interest in
maintaining among its members certain standards of behavior. Often
it has been the only existing agency for the instruction of the
young. Most religious systems carry with them certain commandments
and precepts the keeping of which they secure by means of promises of
future reward or threats of punishment. Since both the precepts and the
religious beliefs and ceremonies have evolved together out of primitive
man’s ideas of divine authorship and authority, men do not see that
the basis of morals lies in social necessity--the need for mutual
adjustment among men. The church’s preëmption of the field of morals is
allowed to stand long after its squatter rights in other fields--art
industry, science, etc.--have been challenged. We forget that religion
was once thought to be the basis of all the interests of civilization,
so that naturally the moral interest came under its sway.
It is obvious that every society, whatever be its religion, must
develop its moral codes as men learn to live together. In the community
everyone is part of the environment of everyone else, and each must
adjust himself to such a human environment. Adjustment is impossible
if there is no order in the environment. Hence from the beginning
certain habits and customs have existed which make it possible for men
to predict to some extent what their neighbors will do. These habits
and customs are the primitive morals which it is the task of wisdom
to inquire into and revalue and gradually improve or discard, and
substitute intelligently considered means and ends.
When moral precepts are presented in the form of divine commandments,
morality is merely obedience; it consists in keeping the commandments,
not in acting according to the demands of the situation. The problems
of the control of behavior are solved in advance, and the solutions
learned by repetition and memory drill. If I act in strict obedience
to a divine command, the results of my deed are not my affair. The
responsibility for the result is upon the deity. I can ignore, in
fact, should ignore, the lessons of experience and of conduct. The
commandment does not require of me any insight into the situations in
which I act. I have no moral responsibility. People whose conduct is
guided by such morality have committed many outrageous deeds and have
with good conscience closed their eyes to the terrible consequences
of their behavior. From the standpoint of their education, they are
children; they have never yet attained the age of moral responsibility.
It is in matters of moral education that the infantile attitude of
mind which religion preserves in the adult life of the race becomes a
serious obstacle to a liberal education.
Again there is a tendency to disregard the consequences of my acts if
I seek, as many moderns do, to make a religion of morality itself. It
is often said, religion is a life, the religious man is the good man.
“My religion is the Golden Rule,” or some other rule. It all depends on
what you mean. If you mean that in a vague sort of way you try to be
good and that a certain moral earnestness is religion enough for you,
very well, but you have not said much. Thomas Paine said, “To do good
is my religion.” But I am not sure he added much to his good will by
styling it a religion. He might as well have said, “I desire very much
to do good.” So do all right-minded people, the difficulty comes when
we try to find out what specifically we mean by doing good.
Again it is said there is “salvation by character,” but one does not
possess a character. One either is or is not a character. One does
not become a character as a result of routine moralizing or of mere
conformity to conventional standards. President Wilson is quoted as
saying, “There is no more priggish business in the world than the
development of one’s character.” Run away from the man who would be
good to you in order to develop his character. Do the thing that in
your best judgment is the thing to do under the existing circumstances,
do it as well as you can, watch what happens and learn your lesson from
it, and if you _are_ a character you will not go far wrong.
In all behavior, he who takes responsibility takes chances. There
are those who demand moral certainty. They imagine an absolute good,
a universal principle of right and duty, to be the elemental law of
the universe. Duty is sublime, the Moral Law is God. People persuade
themselves that their adoration of this impersonal god develops in them
the “moral will,” when in fact its function is to provide them with a
fictitious sense of security. I think the ethical philosophy of Kant
is motivated by this wish for security, rather than by an interest
in morals as such. He seeks a good which is to be possessed merely by
thinking it, a maxim which is universally valid. But if I have such a
maxim, assuming that it can be made applicable to any concrete problem
of conduct, then all I need consider is whether I have acted according
to the rule. Here again I need not be concerned about the results of my
behavior. It is not the consequences of my act that show it to be right
or wrong. My deed is right if it is the act of the moral will.
Another method of escaping moral responsibility is to run with the
crowd. The crowd never considers consequences; it is bent upon
vindicating its principles at any cost. It is anonymous; in it the
individual may not be held to account. The crowd is not the same as
the multitude; it is a distinct phenomena of social psychology. We
all have in our natures certain anti-social impulses. The crowd is
a sort of pseudo-social environment in which these impulses are not
inhibited but are indulged with mutual moral approval. All crowds
profess to be devoted to some moral ideal. Their moral idealism is
mere self-justification and pretext for letting oneself go. It is
a weapon useful in partisan strife; it puts the opposition in the
wrong and justifies hostility. Hence public questions tend to become
moral issues, and the attempt to understand the situation gives way
to righteous indignation toward anyone who witholds approval of the
crowd’s aims and methods.
And the crowd strives to hold its members in line. Conformity to its
ways and standards is required of all, and becomes an end in itself.
One does things because others do them. The crowd man is shocked by
the unconventional because it is unusual. His ideas of right and
wrong, which he thinks he has by _a priori_ intuition or moral sense,
are merely those which prevail in his set or parish. The average
man’s conscience, which seems to him to be an infallible moral guide
and which he holds to be sacred and personal, is little more than a
reflection of herd opinion. And as men become marshalled in the mass
movements of present-day society, they tend more and more to submit the
control of conduct to the “public conscience” and to leave less and
less to private judgment. _There is no judgment but private judgment._
The public conscience is a creature of emotional instability. It is
characterized by periodic obsessions similar to those of mania. It will
remain utterly indifferent to glaring evil and every appeal to it is
unheeded; then all of a sudden perhaps over a trifle, or an unconfirmed
rumor, it is stirred to the highest pitch of excitement. It has a
“cause” and for a time is occupied with nothing else. All realities
are thrown out of perspective. The cause is vindicated regardless of
consequences; it is carried triumphant at the head of a procession
of human wreckage, bitterness and folly. As soon as the mischief is
complete, the cause is abandoned. Men begin to “come to,” and public
conscience sleeps until the next episodic attack.
It is precisely in regard to matters which most deeply stir the public
conscience that the educated man will be on his guard. He will not
be easily bullied into surrendering his private judgment to public
opinion. He will not permit the big words of herd morality to scare him
away from the consideration of cold facts. Before a man can think for
himself, he must have learned to think at all. There is only one sound
method of moral education. It is in teaching people to think.