Character Development
REVIEWS AND CRITICISM.
- Author:
Charles Keen Taylor. Phila.: The John C. Winston
Company, 1913. Pp. 241. Illus.
It has been generally understood that the function of the public schools is to receive children as so much raw material at the age of five, or six, or seven, and after working them over, to let them go at fourteen, prepared to make their way and become in time full-fledged citizens of the republic. Many criticisms, destructive and constructive, have been offered, some reflecting upon the finished (or half finished) product, others directed to factors of waste in the process. It has remained for Mr. Charles Keen Taylor,?not the efficiency engineer, but the educator of like surname,?to devise a plan for correlating the various departments of the public school system, making them work together for the best development of the children, and reducing the waste which always results from scattered and duplicated efforts. Not only has Mr. Taylor planned the work, he has carried it out, first in a small and tentative way, then on a larger and more substantial scale, in connection with the elementary schools of Philadelphia, but on funds privately subscribed. In several cities of the west and middle west Mr. Taylor’s plan is being adopted and pushed with enthusiasm by administrators of school affairs. How long it will take the more conservative cities of the east to enter upon a course of action involving so radical a revision of their traditions, is a matter which the public may observe with patience tinged with amusement. That the reorganization contemplated by Mr. Taylor,?or some procedure sufficiently resembling it,?will come about, seems inevitable It is demanded by considerations of civic economy.
“The status of a nation,” remarks Mr. Taylor, “depends upon the character of its people rather than upon their knowledge of the parts of speech and of arithmetical complexities. … A school system, to make a scheme of moral education or character development really effective, should be provided with what might be termed a Department of Moral Education, which would be under a director whose work it would be to so correlate the different phases of the system that they would work together for the same end, instead of going at it independently and often at cross purposes… . The director should have a good working knowledge of practical child psychology, or he should have an expert child psychologist as an adviser, so that each subject to be studied could be discussed and finally given to children at the proper stage of mental development, and in amethod best suited to their natural characteristics?that is, the characteristics natural to them at that time… . The departments of medical examination, physical training, and recreation should work closely together. The phj’sical training staff should have at hand the results of the medical and physical examination of every child, and suit their exercises directly to the needs of the children. The department of recreation should see to it that through interest in recreation and sports the children are encouraged to follow the advice of the physical training representatives. The departments of physical training and medical inspection should supply trained nurses and lecturers to aid in branches of the work carried on under the general name of domestic science; for the latter subject should include practical home hygiene, the care of infants, and the like, and should be given to the girls of the lower grades… . The girls who need real domestic science the most are those who must leave school at fourteen… . The recreational department should aid the domestic science department by teaching through recreation facts helpful to future housewives. The class-room work in ethics should help all the other branches by showing their ethical significance to the children. And so it is that each one of the various branches which go to make moral education should help the others?and co-operate with them with great increase of efficiency as a result.”
After the introductory chapter from which these quotations have been taken, Mr. Taylor outlines a course in character training, proceeding year by year from the six and seven year olds in the first grade, to adolescents of fourteen or fifteen. He starts the little people thinking by asking them, “Why do you come to school?” This opens an informal discussion chiefly by the children with tactful guidance by the teacher. Stories are told to bring out desired points. As the discussion progresses from day to day, the topics of punctuality, obedience, respect, cleanliness, “mine and thine,” truth, courage, kindness, are talked about, to the advantage not only of behavior but also of clear thinking and fluent speaking. In the next year the general subject of good manners is broached, and the principle of honesty is developed from the previous lessons on truth and “mine and thine.” At nine years the idea of government is approached through a comparison of the dangerous conditions among which savages live, on the one hand, and on the other hand the privileges enjoyed by dwellers in a civilized community, with police, fire protection, good sanitation and the like. In this grade also Mr. Taylor takes up the application of sewing, manual training, nature study, and games to the development of character.
The chapter for twelve years contains some very interesting suggestions, notably the planning and drawing of an “ideal city” and the keeping of citizenship notebooks, in which the children write anything of importance which they may learn concerning cities in general and their own city in particular, or in which they may paste clippings on these subjects. At thirteen years vocational guidance is undertaken. Co-operation is secured by organizing the boys into groups or clubs, to look into the various occupations toward which they feel most drawn, and to talk over the information collected.
Upon the moot point of sex hygiene Mr. Taylor has very wholesome opinions. Throughout the course in character training the children have been led to admire and to strive for sound, clean, well grown bodies. “In the series of lessons thus far,” says Mr. Taylor in the chapter on thirteen years, “there is no direct teaching of sex hygiene. But there is much that will reach this matter indirectly, and perhaps no less strongly for that. The physical development work as outlined for the boys can be used as an opening wedge, and in fact it has acted strongly against the formation and continuance of the bad habits of boyhood. With the girls the work of the housekeeping center, and particularly the actual work with infants, aided by the talks given in the so-called ‘baby classes,’ also make strongly for clean living… . Such direct sex hygiene teaching as there should be before, say the age of fifteen, should be given almost if not quite individually, fitting the teaching to the individual needs.”
The volume concludes with a reading list of books for children, a chapter on “The Health of the Child,” and a bibliography on character and allied topics. There is no index. A captious reader could of course find numerous minor flaws in the book, besides this omission of an index. The work would be rendered more easily adaptable for the grade teachers by whom it will chiefly be used, if a syllabus were added, giving a summary of the lessons for each grade, with cross references to show how topics are continued from year to year, and how one topic grows out of another.
The severest criticism that could be brought against the course of training for which Mr. Taylor’s book stands, is that it tends to make constant and paramount the already common mental habit of Americans, to label every action as positively right or positively wrong. It is altogether lacking in the sense,?shall one call it the sense of humor??which knows when to say, “It doesn’t matter.” Nevertheless, the book is a capital one in its way, and that way is much like the fine old way of the Greeks, who educated their sons and daughters to citizenship by a training in the care of the body, the use of the mother tongue in debate, and the exercise of the imagination to appreciate the rights and feelings of others.
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