And, notwithstanding the tone of the reports to which I have called
attention, and notwithstanding my firm conviction that many moral
defects are found in the schools, I am yet confident that their moral
progress is appreciable and considerable.
In the first place, teachers, as a class, have a higher idea of their
professional duties, in respect to moral and intellectual culture. Many
of them are permanently established in their schools. They are persons
of character in society, with positions to maintain, and they are
controlled by a strong sense of professional responsibility to parents
and to the public. It has been, to some extent, the purpose and result
of Teachers' Associations, Teachers' Institutes, and Normal Schools, to
create in the body of teachers a better opinion concerning their moral
obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the
changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue.
For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled
by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild
measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in
morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now
boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such
claims were common a quarter of a century ago. The change that has been
wrought is chiefly moral, and in its influence we find demonstrative
evidence of the moral superiority of the schools of the present over
those of any previous period of this century.
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