professional duties, in respect to moral and intellectual culture
In the first place, teachers, as a class, have a higher idea of their
professional duties, in respect to moral and intellectual culture. Many
of them are permanently established in their schools. They are persons
of character in society, with positions to maintain, and they are
controlled by a strong sense of professional responsibility to parents
and to the public. It has been, to some extent, the purpose and result
of Teachers" Associations, Teachers" Institutes, and Normal Schools, to
create in the body of teachers a better opinion concerning their moral
obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the
changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue.
For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled
by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild
measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in
morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now
boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such
claims were common a quarter of a century ago. The change that has been
wrought is chiefly moral, and in its influence we find demonstrative
evidence of the moral superiority of the schools of the present over
those of any previous period of this century. Before we can comprehend
the moral work which the schools have done and are doing, we must
perceive and appreciate with some degree of truthfulness the changes
that have occurred in general life within a brief period of time. The
activity of business, by which fathers have been diverted from the
custody and training of their children; the claims of fashion and
society, which have led to some neglect of family government on the
part of mothers; the aggregation of large, populations in cities and
towns, always unfavorable to the physical and moral welfare of children;
the comparative neglect of agriculture, and the consequent loss of moral
strength in the people, are all facts to be considered when we estimate
the power of the public school to resist evil and to promote good. If,
in addition to these unfavorable facts and tendencies, our educational
system is prejudicial to good morals, we may well inquire for the human
agency powerful enough to resist the downward course of New England and
American civilization. To be sure, Christianity remains; but it must, to
some extent, use human institutions as means of good; and the assertion
that the schools are immoral is equivalent to a declaration that our
divine religion is practically excluded from them. This declaration is
not in any just sense true. The duty of daily devotional exercises is
always inculcated upon teachers, and the leading truths and virtues of
Christianity are made, as far as possible, the daily guides of teachers
and pupils. The tenets of particular sects are not taught; but the great
truths of Christianity, which are received by Christians generally, are
accepted and taught by a large majority of committees and teachers. It
is not claimed that the public schools are religious institutions; but
they recognize and inculcate those fundamental truths which are the
basis of individual character, and the best support of social,
religious, and political life. The statement that the public schools are
demoralizing must be true, if true at all, for one of three reasons.
Either because all education is demoralizing; or, secondly, because the
particular education given in the public schools is so; or, thirdly,
because the public-school system is corrupting, and consequently taints
all the streams of knowledge that flow through or emanate from it. For,
if the public system is unobjectionable as a system, and education is
not in itself demoralizing, then, of course, no ground remains for the
charge that I am now considering.
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