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About The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip. (Portland, Or.) 1923-1927 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1923)
March, 1923 Character Building in Education A Forceful Argument in favor of Making the Moral Education of the American Youth of Equal Importance to the Intensely Practical and Scientific Education Governing Our Present Educational System By Edward O. Sisson I O OTHER age of the world has made such demands upon character as does the age in which we live. We talk about the sterling qualities of our Puritan an cestors and mourn over a supposed de cadence of moral fibre in our days, for getting that the colonists was virtuous by necessity, frugal through lack of the materials of luxury, free from the vast avarice of our time because there were no financial fields to furnish the requisite opportunity and temptation. He was of fered the hard choice between industry and starvation, and endurance was thrust upon him by his very situation in the wilderness. It means no derogation of his place of honor in our memory, and of his value as a national ideal, to say that the character which sustained him in his primitive environment might break down in complete failure under the stress of modern temptation. In short, it is hard er to be good today than it was in the time of Miles Standish and John Win throp, and we can hope for conduct equal to theirs only by grace of character even stronger. Effective character includes intelli gence to know the right, and the will to do it; on both of these the modern world lays new burdens. We live in a far more complex environment than did our fore fathers, for we have left the simple paths where instinct was a sufficient guide for conduct, and are now dwelling in a world of man’s own creation, where instinct is not at home, and where prob lems can be solved only by the highest intelligence. Our social philosophy is based upon that of the Greeks; but what a contrast exists between our social state and theirs! Their great political scient ist declares that a state could not be con ceived to embrace so many as a hundred thousand people. What would he have thought of cities inhabited by millions, gathered into states which in turn are combined into a nation nearly a thou sandfold larger than his extreme limit? And are we not today watching the first clear beginnings of the world-state, the poet-prophet’s “federation of the na tions, the parliament of man?” With this enormous increment of mere size in political units has come corresponding increase in complexity of structure and operation. Their intelligence of thought ful men stands aghast at the problems knocking at our doors—tariff and finance, conservation, race-conflicts, law-making and enforcement, administration of na tion, state, and municipalities. The very I clash of disagreement among honest ¡thinkers concerning social questions [proves the difficulty of the riddles Ithrust upon us by our day. Most serious and menacing of all perhaps are ques- N 13 THE WESTERN AMERICAN tions of industry of which the earlier world knew little. Greece and Rome and mediaeval Europe kept these perplexities under the surface by a system of slavery or rigid caste; it is only in modern times that the Encleadus of human labor has succeeded in throwing off so much of the superincumbent Etna as to let the upper world of thought and intelligence be come vividly aware of his existence, and of the promise and the menace of his upward struggle. There is need, then of a new socio moral intelligence to grasp the new com plexities of the world in which we live. “Who is my neighbor?” is a harder ques tion now than it was in olden times: then a man dealt face to face with men he knew and easily realized that his deeds fell on their heads as well as on his own. Nowadays employer and em ployee, buyer and seller, especially pro ducer and consumer, are too often cut off from each other by a gulf of separa tion which leads naturally to mutual ignorance, indifference, and even to hatred. Long and devious are the chan nels through which the product of indus try circulates in its way from the pain ful and often degrading labor of produc tion, to the comfortable consumer, who at first perhaps does not know whence comes his ease and luxury, and later, when wedded to his comforts, does not care; or at least cares too little to face squarely his relation to his far-off and unknown neighbor. Never before in hu man history has it been so true that no man liveth unto himself, but never has it been so easy to lose sight of the truth. Besides the new demands made by the modern world upon social and moral in telligence, there are new strains upon the will itself. The very abundance and variety of the products of art and man ufacture render the old fundamental ideal of self-control more difficult than ever. The senses are solicited by stimuli unknown to the ancients; and every part of our world is flooded with the products of all other parts through the unlimited reach of modern commerce. It almost iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiimiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiHiini-f Ask Your Dealer | for the following brands I Manufactured in Portland Mt. Hood Overalls Mt. 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