Page:The Teacher's Practical Philosophy.djvu/8

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iv
PREFACE

ate and Professional Schools connected with our Universities, has not been productive, as it should be, of the right sort of men and women to conduct safely and wisely and righteously the affairs of Church and State. And there has been of late, and there still is, much discussion — some of it faultfinding and criminatory — over questions of causes and remedies, and over the general problem of whether our recent movements have been pro- gressive or retrograde. Into this discussion it is not the purpose of this book to enter. Its pur- pose is, the rather, to emphasize the personal and moral elements as those which, broadly understood, must be relied upon to secure the needed improve- ments, if improvements are needed and are to be secured at all. The author believes that the lack of discipline, through moral and religious motives and in accordance with moral and religious ideals, in the home-life, in school and in college, and in society at large, is the prime source of all our national evils so far as they are connected with the educative processes as now in vogue. He also be- lieves that these evils are very deep and large at the present time, and will be most difficult to cure or even greatly to abate under existing conditions such as those with which the individual teacher can not readily cope. But whether his belief and feel- ings of foreboding connected with it are justified or not, it can scarcely fail to come true that any