CHAPTER X

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.