MORALS IN OUR SCHOOLS.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 138, 19 April 1879, Page 3

MORALS IN OUR SCHOOLS.

(From the ‘ New York Tribune.’) Education in its true sense—to amplify President Chudhonrne’s sentence — is not the cramming of certain facts and rules into the hard little head of young Adam —it is the training that shall make his mind and moral nature malleable for the work of life ; that shall cultivate honesty as well as mathematical capacity, truthfulness as well as linguistics ; that shall send the boy out to his labour with a clean soul as well as a clever head. The teacher, who goes to Lis work with a sense of its immense importance, with a realisation of his obligation to something higher than a Board of Education—such a teacher holds a tremendous power in heart and voice. In heart we say—for it is the practical Christianity that moves to good living and thinking that is wanted, rather than that cut-and-dried morality of a third-rate-dogmatist. A child may be given an upward bent with a single sentence coming in a happy moment, but that sentence must be a thing of spirit ; never mind the form. We do not advocate long moral sermons in the schools ; but let there be a constant current of quiet instructions in the thing that go to make men and women true, honest, and high-minded. Fifteen minutes, for instance, could well be spared from a day’s German instruction, if they went to make two or three boys feel keenly that cruelty, of which there is far too much in schools, was a stupid sneaking thing. Not long ago in a Western school a boy received such a savage and merciless treatment from his mates that he 4pted-a day or two after from his injuries. What sort of education is it that does not teach children to feel themselves degraded hy mortality hke this ? It is folly to leave all moral training to home and parents ; the hours in which a child comps under those influences are more than balanced by the hours of schools and play. Instruction in good living, if it be not continuous like daily bread and sunshine, is of small account ; and instruction in good living given constantly, with licartfelt sincerity and kindness, is what children especially need to receive from their teachers. ■■What shall it profit a hoy if he leaves c'-FW skilled in figures, but untaught W Vic s manly honour that would make

him an upright man of business ? Or a girl with her gramrner and her rhetoric, if she has not learned to speak the words of truth, of unselfishness, of Christian charity ?