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with that of the employer. Why do workers often become oppressors when they themselves become employers? What is the difference between demanding a redress of your grievance and making a moral demand? What makes the cry of fraternity as uttered by the workers repugnant to those who otherwise would accept fraternity as an ideal?

How would you formulate the ideal for the vocational life of the factory worker? Apply it to other vocations — journalism, law, teaching. Sum up the ideal rewards of work.

Make tentative definitions of liberty, rights, duty, justice.

- and many more furnishes occa

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Each of the questions mentioned above will occur in the course of the discussion sion for extended considerations that call upon the student for scholarly gathering of facts, for close thinking, and not least for reflection upon his own experiences and volitions. Other problems will suggest themselves. It is obvious how the interest of the student in prison reform, for example, can be employed in like manner as a motive to searching reflection upon questions of moral responsibility. The principle that punishment should be a means of awaking in the offender the consciousness of a self which can and should hold itself to account despite the magnitude of its temptations is of special usefulness, in the years when a broadening altruism (and we might add, a tendency to self-pity) is likely to lead to loose notions of personal obligation.

The use of a textbook is a minor matter. To prevent the courses from running off into mere talk — and even ethics ethics teach classes are not averse to "spontaneous" recitation on their own part or to monologues by the teacher a textbook may be required, with, let us say, monthly reports or examinations. So much depends, however, upon the enthusiasm of the instructor that here particularly recommendations can be only of the most general kind. Some of the most effective work in this subject is being done by teachers who forget the textbook for weeks at a time in order to push

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home a valuable inquiry suggested by an unforeseen prob-
lem raised in the course of the discussion. Others use
no textbooks at all. Some outline the year's work in a
series of cases or problems with questions to be answered
in writing after consulting selected passages in the classics
or in current literature or in both.1 This method has the
advantage of laying out the whole year's work beforehand
and of guaranteeing that the student comes to the class-
room with something more than a facility in unpremedi-
tated utterance. It is generally found to be of greater in-
terest because it follows the lines of his own ordinary
thinking first the problem and then the attempt to find
the principles that will help to solve it.
More important than any of these details of technique
is the need of helping the student to clarify his thinking by
engaging in some practical moral endeavor. The broaden-
ing and deepening of the altruistic interests is a familiar
feature of adolescent life. The instructor in ethics, in the
very interest of his own subject, is the one who should take
the lead in encouraging these expressions, not only because
of the general obligation of the college to make the most
of aptitudes which, neglected in youth, may never again
be so vigorous, but also because of the truth in Aristotle's
dictum that insight is shaped by conduct. Hence the work
in ethics should be linked up wherever possible with student
self-government and other participation in the management
of the college, and with philanthropies like work in settle-
ments or in social reform groups or cosmopolitan societies.
For the students of finer grain it is eminently worth the
trouble to form clubs to intensify the spirit of the members
by activities more pointedly directed to the refining of
human relationships. They might engage in activities in
which the task of elevating the personality is specially
marked, that is, in problems which have to do with mutual
1 Professor Sharp of Wisconsin has found this method so serviceable
that he has interested many teachers in his state and elsewhere in
using it with high school students for purposes of moral instruction.
See A Course in Moral Instruction for High Schools," by F. C.
Sharp; Bulletin, University of Wisconsin.

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Peculiar
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usual test
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interpretation—e.g., black folk and white, foreign and native stocks in America, delinquents and the community, immigrant parents and unsympathetic children. They might organize clubs for one or more of these purposes, for discussing intimately the problems of personal life, for public meetings on the ethics of the vocations and on the more distinctly ethical phases of political and international progress. Such organizations can be made to do vastly more good for their members then the average debating society, with its usual premium on mere forensic skill, or the fraternity, with its encouragement of snobbishness. The wholesome thing about the spirit of fraternity should be set to work upon some such creative activities as we have mentioned. Not only does the comradeship strengthen faith in right doing, but these practical endeavors offer a notable help to the deepening, extending, and clarifying of that interest in moral progress without which there can be none of the intelligent leadership for which our democracy looks to its colleges.

To test how far the subject has been of value to the student is unusually difficult. His interest in the discussions is by no means an unfailing index. There are those who may be both eager and skilled in the intellectual combat incidental to the course but whose lives remain untouched for the better. The worthier outcome is hard to trace. It is quite possible for the teacher to take credit for the instilling of an ideal whose generation was due to some agency wholly unknown, perhaps even to the student himself. On the other hand, the best results may take years for overt appearance. In the nature of the case, their more intimate expressions can never be recorded.

Moreover, students vary in the force of character which they bring with them to the study. A lad whose home training has been deficient may take more time than the best teacher can give in order to reach the degree of excellence to which others among his classmates ascend more quickly. Or a lad whom the course has moved with a desire to take up some philanthropic endeavor may hesitate to pursue

it through lack of the necessary gift or failure in selfconfidence. The forces which enter into the making of character are so complex, including as they do not only acquisitions of new moral standards, but temperamental qualities, early training, potent example, physical stamina, dozens of accidental circumstances, that it is unfair to use the tests applicable, let us say, to a course in engineering. Hence we must be beware of testing the value of the work by immediate results. Something may be gathered by having the students write confidentially what they think the course has done for them and where it could be improved. This they can do both at the end of the course and years later when time has brought perspective. But tests are of minor importance. The ethical shortcomings of our time, the constant need of our students for ever finer standards, convey challenge enough. Even though the obvious results fall short of our hopes, we can make the most of our resources with every assurance that they are amply needed. Are young men more likely to be the better for setting time aside to obtain with the help of an earnest student of life a clearer insight into the prin ciples of the best living? If they are, the courses are justified, even though some who take them can show little immediate profit.

Ethical Culture School, New York

HENRY NEUMANN, PH.D.

Place of psychology in the curricu

lum

The introductory course to

not voca

HIST

XVI

THE TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY

re

ISTORICALLY, as an offshoot, and rather a cent offshoot, from philosophy, psychology has been under the care of the department of philosophy in colleges and universities, foreign as well as American, and has been taught by professors concerned in part with the courses in philosophy. Though this state of affairs still obtains to a considerable extent, the tendency is undoubtedly towards allowing psychology an independent position in the organization and curriculum of the college. In recent appointments, indeed, the affili ation of psychology with education has frequently been emphasized instead of its affiliation with philosophy, for the professional applications of psychology lie more in the field of education than elsewhere. As a required study, our science is more likely to find a place in the college for teachers than in the college of arts. But, on the other hand, the applications to medicine, business, and industry are increasing so rapidly in importance as to make it logical to maintain an independent position for the science. Only in an independent position can the psychologist be free to cultivate the central body of his subject, the "pure as distinguished from the applied science; and, with the multiplication of practical applications, it is more than ever important to center psychological teaching in the person of some one who is simply and distinctively a psychologist.

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For a similar reason, psychologists are wont to insist that the introductory course in their subject, no matter for what be general, class of students, with general or with professional aims, should be definitely a course in psychology as distinguished from educational or medical or business psychology. Illustrative material may very well be chosen with an eye to the special interests of a class of students, but the gen

tionally

applied psychology

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