MORAL TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7329, 15 February 1902, Page 5

MORAL TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.

Writing in an English magazine, Mr P. J. Gould makes a strong appeal for moral •teaching in schools. " Our schools," he says, " aim at producing calculators, newspaper readers, wood-carvers and 1 cooks instead of cCsixades. We send the children out uneducated in the highest sense ; they become employers, employed, competitors, but they have no deep sense of human history, human needs and human unity." Therefore, he -would have them given an ethical education, "so that they may feel responsible towards each other amd feel that neighbourly conduct is the most important thing in life." * An ethical lesson Mr Gouldl defines as "a conversation' -with) girls and boys in w3uch the teaoher strives to impart a clear idea- of some human duty, and to make it interesting by story, fable, poetry, music, picture or any other assistance which he can devise." Such, lessons, he contends, should be given daily, and every lesson should follow naturally on the previoivs one. Thus, day after day for several weeks together the teacher might illustrate the idea of justice. But the lessons should in no sense be theological. The ultimate object of this ethical teaching should be to lead children to an understanding of the real meaning of democracy, the principle that is, that each one has to answer for his conduct to society, and that the only worthy life is that which serves the commonwealth. Self-government and temperance in all things would form the subject of one series of lessons ; truthfulness and the love of truth, not merely the avoidance of lying, could be taught in another series ; and kindness, with illustrations from the history of hospitals and lifeboaits and; all institutions of human mercy, in another. So all the ideas expressed in the word humanity, self-respect, sincerity, pity, honesty, justice, co-operation, fraternity and the rest, might be dealt with in turn. Moral teaching is not absolutely neglected in the schools as it is, but there is no system about it. The instruction is haphazard, the teacher drawing a moral from a casual reading lesjson. Mr Gould's idea is that the moral lesson should be the important one, a"hd 'history and literature could be used or read to illustrate the subject. This would be better, ho thinks, Ijhan any BiWe ( reading or theological teaching. j ,