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
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