Page:An introduction to ethics.djvu/141

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AN INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS.

sentiments. The value of conduct is partly estimated in terms of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness and misery.

§5. Conduct and the School. It is often maintained that the life of the child in school is highly artificial, and that the ordinary school curriculum affords little opportunity to the child to develop qualities of character that it will need in later life. According to this argument, the child's character at school issues in departments of conduct which are quite other than those which express its life in the outer world. Now, there are, of course, obvious differences between the life that the child lives in school and the life that he lives outside and will live after his school-days are over. And in spite of all that has been done and advocated by Froebel and Montessori—to mention only two names—to minimise this difference and secure for the child a more natural school-life, it is certain that, from the nature of the case, school-life must continue to differ in some respects from the rest of the child's life. But it does not follow that the conduct of the child in school is something so utterly different from the rest of its conduct that the training it receives in school will have no influence on the formation of its character as a whole. On the contrary, if we train children in those aspects of conduct which manifest themselves in the life of the class-room or playing-fields, that training should normally influence the development of the character as a whole. Thus, even those departments of conduct which are not touched by ordinary school-life will be affected by the training received in school, for that education will influence the whole character,