p. 8 | SCIENCE OF CONDUCT

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 8, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 23.

SCIENCE OF CONDUCT.

Prof. T. O. Crawford, superintendent of schools for Alameda County, Cal., has written an able article for distribution at the St. Louis Exposition. It is designed to set forth the advantages of the schools of the county, but the following extract is of such general application that it is worthy of general consideration:—

Character is the end of education. Building character is the work of education. Society as it exists to-day, is the product of right and wrong. Wrong is right—twisted.

Wrong, in many cases, arises from ignorance. A better knowledge of right would have made a better standard in society. Children often do wrong because of ignorance. They are now suffering, not for their sin, but from ignorance. We do not blame such. They were unfortunate through lack of knowledge. If the right be not known, how shall the wrong be avoided? How shall the right be known, if not taught? The duty of teaching the right is more imperative than that of teaching to avoid the wrong. The one forms character, which wills and does the right, the other urges against the wrong. Formation of character takes away the necessity of re-formation of habit.

The teacher is the antithesis of the jailor. If there is a building force of right, opposed to the destructive force of wrong, it is the duty of every teacher to lend a hand in putting that force of right into operation. Every influence emanating from the teacher should be one of construction, hence we assign to such the duty of teaching the facts and laws of right conduct.

It is true that instruction does not, immediately, change mental states; but where right, or twisted right, is to be the result of that which surrounds one, it becomes the duty of those who, in a large measure, make the surroundings, to see that these shall “build up for righteousness.” The teacher is the most potent factor in character building. What “teacher says” is final. The influence of dress, of speech, of voice, of carriage, of manner, is of transcendent importance. The minds of the pupils are like the sensitive plates in the camera, on which the object is imaged with wonderful accuracy. If the teacher would see gentleness, she must be gentle; if she would teach punctuality, she must be on time; if she would see the plant of patience, she must sow the seed.

Children must not only be taught what is right, but they must also do what is right. It is possible for teachers to breathe into a school a spirit of honor, usefulness, and honesty that shall control every new pupil that enters the school. This spirit will put down vulgarity, slang, profanity, impurity, slander, tattling, lying, and meanness.

Character is formed by training and by teaching. Bad habits can be changed only by a repetition of right sayings and of right doings, and it is in these that training consists.

There are two points which are worthy of further consideration by the thoughtful:—

1. It is a sad thing that it should be said “the teacher is the most potent factor in character building.” We are not disputing Professor Crawford; this may be so, but ’tis sad ’tis so. Where are the mothers and fathers whose influence should be strong enough to mould and hold the child, and to mould and rear the teachers of to-day? It is inexpressibly sad that the greater part of the work of moral training, the greatest need in character building, must be left to the teacher.

2. It is even more inexpressibly sad when so many of these teachers are, by insinuation and suggestion and positive teaching, breaking down the very foundations of moral conduct,—faith in the religion of the Bible—Christianity. Take away the religious basis, and you take away the moral basis. The artificial, esthetic ethics may remain like beautiful ferns and flowers in frost work, but the fierce heat of temptation will melt them, and human nature, as restrained by vital faith in a God of love and righteousness and justice and mercy, will fail and fall as it has always failed and fallen under the merely ethical systems of the past.

There are earnest Christian teachers yet, many of them, we are constrained to believe, who, like Mr. Crawford, prefer a righteous character to a brilliant intellect. But the trend of popular education is downward in faith, in the Bible and Christianity, and therefore the trend is downward morally.