Can We Teach Morality in Schools?

12 May 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play.

CENTERING:

“I read the writings of Ezekiel in the Bible.” He’s a poet.” He puts words in God’s mouth, as so many poets do.” Ezekiel’s god says “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” And I will put my spirit within you”.

I read these words of Ezekiel’s , and I wonder what it would be like.” What would it be like, to have within me the heart and spirit of God – what would that be like?”

I feel the strange sensation of returning to my world with a new heart”.” I walk along a busy street.” The usual crowds are everywhere and I look at them, to my astonishment, in a strangely different kind of way.” They’re no longer a moving impersonal background.” They look like dozens, hundreds of sacred creations.” The sight of them awakens thoughts and feelings quite different from the ones I am accustomed to.

I go to the hike and bike trail, and as I ride my bike, I look at trees and birds, at clouds and animals and all of nature with a different kind of vision.” It seems, somehow, more miraculous.” It seems, somehow, more miraculous.” At home, at work, I look at people I dislike and see myself reacting differently.” The same thing happens with the people toward whom I formerly felt neutral.” And I realize, to my surprise, that I am different even with the ones I love.

I notice that with this new heart I am strong in situations that I formerly avoided.” Sometimes my heart dissolves in tenderness; sometimes it burns with indignation.” The loan of this heart of God makes me oddly independent: I do not cease to be attached to many things, but the clinging disappears.

Then to my alarm, this new heart and spirit steer me into situations that get me into trouble.” I find myself more interested in confrontation than comfort.” I say things that antagonize.

Finally I come back to the presence of God to give him back his heart.” It was exciting being fitted with the heart and the spirit of God.” But I know I am not ready for it yet.” I still need to protect myself a little.

But even as I take my poor heart back I know that I will be a different person from having felt, if only for a moment, what it meant to have within me a heart, a mind, and a spirit worthy of God.” (Adapted from Anthony deMello, ‘the Hazard,” pp. 62-64 in Anthony deMello, by William Dych, S.J.)

What would it be like to spend a day or a week filled with the heart and the spirit of God?” Would it change the way you see yourself? treat others? think of the world, and of life?” What would it be like: for a day, for a week, for as long as you could bear it?

SERMON: “Can we teach morality in schools?”

— I have heard a conservative described as a liberal who has been mugged.” I have a new understanding of that this week.” My bicycle was stolen from my car rack this Tuesday while I was having a dinner meeting with our church’s Executive Committee.” And a few months ago, I had a small Sony mini-CD recorder, a Nikon camera and a black leather bag taken out of my office.” Both times, I felt angry and violated.

— But it didn’t make me feel more conservative.” It made me miss, even more, the liberal humanities education that our students used to receive but receive no longer.” It made me miss the teaching of morality in public schools, and to teach morality in a pluralistic society like ours, it has to be a liberal curriculum.” I miss that.” No, it won’t stop theft.” But it could help.

— How do we teach morality, in public schools or anywhere else?” In our culture, as in almost all cultures, we have relied mostly on women to teach children a moral sensitivity.” We may wish things were more equal.” And there certainly are men who play a very big role in the moral education of children.” But traditionally, teaching character and morality to children has been the job assigned to women, both as mothers and as public school teachers.

— The best way to teach morality and character seems to be through stories.” That’s how Aesop’s fables did it 2600 years ago.” And some scholars think that Aesop, who traveled a lot, got his stories during travels to India, from an even older Indian collection known as the Panchatantra, animal fables that read a lot like Aesop’s .

— Learning that made me wonder how Indian parents teach their children morality and decent behavior, so I went to a website about Indian parenting ((www.IndianParenting.com).” Sure enough, most of the pictures were of women, and almost every link on this site was to a source for classic Indian stories: the Panchatantra, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Jataka tales, the full text of the tales of the 1001 Arabian nights, and whole collections of Indian and Hindu fairy tales.”

— We teach morality and character development through stories, because stories give us situations and characters we can identify with and remember easily.” It may be hard to remember that steady persistence pays off better in the long run than unsustained spurts of energy, but everybody can remember the story of the tortoise and the hare.”

— That’s also how we taught morality and character development in America’s public schools, when we still did it: through stories, poems, fairy tales and essays on character, to give kids a picture of how decent and honorable people were to live.” In fact, besides teaching basic vocabulary and literacy, that’s what public education was about: teaching American children how to become people with reliable morality and good character.

— From 1836 to the 1920s, American children were educated and their character was shaped partly through the famous McGuffey Eclectic Readers.” This was a set of six books, graded for young children through teen-agers.” The books used poems, stories, pictures and essays to teach the kids spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation, and proper word usage.” But always, the eclectic readings were teaching them what we expect from decent people. It’s hard to realize just how influential these books were.” Over 122,000,000 sets of them were sold, and most passed through the hands of a half dozen school children during their lifetimes.” In the South, the only book that sold more copies than the McGuffey Readers was the Bible. The moral values most stressed by the Readers were honesty, industry, courage, kindness, courtesy, and obedience.

— I had never read any of these until this week while working on this sermon, and probably most of you have never read any of them either.” So I want to read you a few excerpts from those old readers.” Next week, in the second part of this topic, I’ll suggest other stories that might be used in public schools to teach the moral lessons we need today.” But today, I want to expose you to some of the moral teachings so important in our nation’s history that you, like me, may not have been aware of.

1. First is an adaptation of biblical materials, though with quite a sobering spin.” It is not the way you’d expect reflections on the Bible to read.” This piece is called “Vanity of life,” written by an 18th century German (Johann Gottfried von Herder, 1744-1803), listen to the tone and message of some of this reading for American schoolchildren a hundred years ago:

-Man, born of woman, is of a few days, and full of trouble; he comes forth as a flower, and is cut down; he flees also as a shadow, and continues not.

-the tree has hope, if it is cut down, it may become green again”” But man dies, and his power is gone; he is taken away, and where is he?

-till the waters waste from the sea, till the river fails and is dry land, man lies [dead in the earth], and rises not again.” Till the heavens are old, he shall not awake, nor be aroused from his sleep.” If a man dies, shall he live again?

“You contend with us till we fall.” You change our countenance, and send us away.” Though our sons become great and happy, yet we know it not; if they come to shame and dishonor, we perceive it not.

This isn’t happy-face baby talk designed only to make children feel special.” This is heavy stuff.” This is treating children like people who can and are expected to grow up into serious and aware adults, thinking about life at deep and honest levels.”

2. Next is just one paragraph, written to describe ‘the character of the Puritan fathers of New England” – which was the character we expected of our children and our citizens:

— One of the most prominent features which distinguished our forefathers, was their determined resistance to oppression.” They seemed born and brought up for the high and special purpose of showing to the world that the civil and religious rights of man – the rights of self-government, of conscience, and independent thought – are not merely things to be talked of and woven into theories, but to be adopted with the whole strength and ardor of the mind, and felt in the profoundest recesses of the heart, and carried out into the general life, and made the foundation of practical usefulness, and visible beauty, and true nobility”.

3. Another surprise as I read through these old Readers was that both men and women writers were used, and writings by women weren’t included as tokens.” These readings were chosen for quality, not gender or quotas.” Here is a piece written by Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-1864), who was writing just before the Civil War.” Notice how naturally she mixes masculine and feminine genders, as she teaches her readers that now is the time to bring forth our noble and courageous character.” One of America’s hallmarks has always been that we worship the present and future more than the past.” This piece, called ‘the Present,” is one of the writings that taught us this:

Do not crouch today, and worship the dead past, whose life is fled.” Hush your voice in tender reverence; crowned he lies, but cold and dead: for the Present reigns, our monarch, with an added weight of hours; honor her, for she is mighty! Honor her, for she is ours!”

see the shadows of his heroes girt around her cloudy throne; every day the ranks are strengthened by great hearts to him unknown; noble things the great Past promised, holy dreams, both strange and new; but the Present shall fulfill them; what he promised, she shall do.

She inherits all his treasures, she is heir to all his fame, and the light that lightens round her is the luster of his name; she is wise with all his wisdom, living on his grave she stands, on her brow she bears his laurels, and his harvest in her hands.

Coward, can she reign and conquer if we thus her glory dim?” Let us fight for her as nobly as our fathers fought for him.” God, who crowns the dying ages, bids her rule, and us obey, – bids us cast our lives before her, bids us serve the great Today.

To me, these readings are arresting.” They have a different feel, and are trying to shape children into a different kind of adults, than I think we’re trying to do today.

4. The McGuffey Readers were known for their opposition to war, and I have one paragraph from many anti-war readings for you.” But this seems a good place for another reading from the 19th century, one especially appropriate for today.” This is the original Mother’s Day Proclamation written in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian.” It comes as a surprise to many that Mother’s Day didn’t begin as a concession run by florists and restaurant operators, but it didn’t.” It began after the Civil War as a women’s anti-war movement.” Here’s the original proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

“Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.

“We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.” It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace,

And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

Mother’s Day has changed a lot, hasn’t it?” Now here is the paragraph from the McGuffey Reader.” It is played in the same key:

War is the work, the element, or rather the sport and triumph of death, who here glories not only in the extent of his conquests, but in the richness of his spoil.” In the other methods of attack, in the other forms which death assumes, the feeble and the aged, who at best can live but a short time, are usually the victims; here [the victims] are the vigorous and the strong.” It is remarked by the most ancient of poets, that in peace, children bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children”.

5. Then there was a story, very typical of these books, about a boy who had been given a shiny new silver dollar for New Year’s (this was before the custom of giving Christmas presents was introduced by America’s merchants in the late 19th century).” While thinking about what wonderful things he could buy with it – a dollar went a lot farther in those days – he got in a snowball fight with some friends, and accidentally broke the window in a nearby house.” He ran, with all the other boys.” But later, he couldn’t live with that.” He knew he had done something wrong, and decent people don’t live like that.” So he went up to the man’s house, confessed he had broken the window, and gave the man his shiny new dollar to replace it.” As he walked home, he felt good, because he had done the right thing.” He had heard in school for years how decent people behave and today, for the first dramatic time, he had become one.” When he got home and his father asked him what he bought with his new dollar, he told his father the whole story.” “Ah,” said the father, “then you should go look inside my hat.” The boy did, and found two silver dollars there.” The man had come to his father, telling him what a fine and honest boy he had, and had given back the dollar and added another one for his honesty.”

6. Finally, a poem from the First McGuffey Eclectic reader, written for young children.” The first four lines are still famous, but I had never heard the whole poem, or the point it is making for these young children.” The poem is called “Mary’s Lamb.” This lesson (XLIV) teaches 32 new words, spelling, use and pronunciation.” But hear what else the poem is teaching besides words:

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow,

and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.

He went with her to school one day – that was against the rule ”

It made the children laugh and play, to see a lamb at school.

So the teacher turned him out, but still he lingered near,

and waited patiently about, till Mary did appear.

And then he ran to her, and laid his head upon her arm,

As if he said – I’m not afraid – you’ll keep me from all harm.

“What makes the lamb love Mary so?” the eager children cry;

“O Mary loves the lamb, you know,” the teacher did reply.

“And you, each gentle animal to you, for life, may bind,

and make them follow at your call, if you are always kind.”

This is how morality was taught in our public schools in the United States for a century.” It seems a long time ago.”

Next week I’ll tell you some stories I think we could use today to teach morality and character in our schools.” But do you see what we are trying to do?” We are looking for the words and the ways to fulfill old Ezekiel’s poetic dream of so very long ago.” We seek to remove hearts of stone, replace them with hearts of flesh, and fill ourselves and our children with the legitimate heir to what was once called the spirit of God.

What would it be like?” What might we, our children and our country be like, if such a miraculous transformation could happen?” It is worth pondering – for at least a week.