Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/492

 476 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and this only rests the time-honored policy of founding social order on a system of education.

Most, though not quite all, of the moral possibilities that lie in education are bound up in some way or other with the power of suggestion. There is, first of all, the training received in school or on playground from mingling with other children on a footing of equality. " All the ways of men," says Goldsmith, " are practiced in a public school in miniature." In this micro- cosm the too obstreperous ego gets a wholesome dressing down. There is formed a habit of moderating one's claims, of respecting others' rights, and of hitting upon those moral solutions known as "justice," which is most precious for the larger society of the adult. Closely related to this is the training to self-control and the habit of obedience to an external law which are given by a good school discipline. Another gain lies in the partial substi- tution of the teacher for the parent as the model upon which the child forms itself. Copy the child will, and the advantage of giving him his teacher instead of his father to imitate is that the former is a picked person, while the latter is not. Childhood is, in fact, the heyday of personal influence. The position of the teacher gives him prestige, and the lad will take from him sugges- tions that the adult will accept only from rare and splendid personalities. The committing of education to superior persons lessens our dependence on magnetic men. It is a way of economizing Savonarola or Wesley or Phillips Brooks.

We must allow an effect to the continual impact of precept. Whether as the master's exhortation, as oft-quoted injunction, as memorized text, or as schoolroom motto, a persistent sugges- tion as to conduct, provided it really strike the attention and be brought home by illustration and instance, ought to count for something. The mere droning or dinning of maxims is perhaps vain, but that which is really taught certainly tends to sink in. The present contempt for such direct methods of impressing the will is an accident, due to the fact that the reigning skepticism usually cuts for the man the bands in which precept has bound the child. Let us not forget that the immemorial device of stationary societies to preserve their ancient order has been to