Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/455

 ETHICAL INSTRUCTION IN SCHOOL AND CHURCH 435

opinion, and therefore of public opinion, is the sense of the right and wrong, the fine and the ignoble.

The present educational disciplines of our schools provide for the development of intellectual strength ; strength that, uncon- trolled by ethical convictions, makes likely the more serious per- sonal and party conflicts. A trained leader can create a party on a platform inimical to national well-being. Incidentally our schools tend to create an ethical homogeneity, because the teach- ers are personally exemplars of common ideals, and the schools are, from necessity, miniature communities. But the national need justifies a thorough ethical discipline in the public schools. Individuals relinquish a purely self-centered life-struggle, and group into nations, and sacrifice for national existence, because by means of a group-centered struggle many goods are obtainable for the individuals which could not be secured by purely individual effort. The nation, our nation, a republic, by adding an ethical discipline to the public schools, and producing a greater degree of homogeneity of ethical ideals, could strengthen itself to increase the chances of popular contentment and happiness. Individuals would gain in two ways by this ethical homogeneity.

(i) Personal worth is a large factor in securing happiness for the individual. This factor would be influenced by an efficient ethical discipline. A street car contained a company of ladies and gentlemen whose sense of the obligations of cleanliness prescribed that their bodies should emit no offensive odors. A laborer right from his work, a gentleman at heart, took a seat, and was disgusted and hurt by having the gentleman sitting next to him move out of smell. The conductor and laborer exchanged glances of sympathy : they did not understand that the laborer was at fault, but considered the gentleman a snob. In any com- munity there are hundreds of men and women who fail to gain desired recognition and attention from their neighbors, and fail because of personal unworthiness. They are intellectually worthy, but have not the conduct that makes them attractive, interesting, respected, and loved. In an essential they are below the group into which they want to socialize, and in marriage,