Moral ideas always have a
concrete basis or origin. Some companion with whose feelings and
actions you are in close personal contact, or some character from
history or fiction by whose personality you have been strongly
attracted, gives you your keenest impressions of moral qualities. To
begin with abstract moral teaching, or to put faith in it, is to
misunderstand children. In morals as in other forms of knowledge,
children are overwhelmingly interested in personal and individual
examples, things which have form, color, action. The attempt to sum up
the important truths of a subject and present them as abstractions to
children is almost certain to be a failure, pedagogically considered.
It has been demonstrated again and again, even in high schools, that
botany, chemistry, physics, and zoology can not be taught by such brief
scientific compendia of rules and principles--"Words, words, words," as
Hamlet said. We can not learn geography from definitions and map
questions, nor morals from catechisms. And just as in natural science
we are resorting perforce to plants, animals, and natural phenomena, so
in morals we turn to the deeds and lives of men. Columbus in his
varying fortunes leaves vivid impressions of the moral strength and
weakness of himself and of others.
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