Augustine Hickey, "To Train for the Formation of Good Habits" (1916)

[277] The subject assigned for this discussion promises nothing new nor anything hitherto undiscovered in the field of educational endeavor. Nevertheless, a brief consideration of habit formation is opportune and helpful. It should lead to reflection and should stimulate to conscientious effort toward the attainment of the natural and necessary consequence of effective teaching. Children well taught have formed good habits. Their energies and activities have been intelligently directed; their ability to do things well is the pride of the teachers and the glory of the system responsible for this admirable condition. All successful teachers have realized the crowning satisfaction of their work. They have seen graduates go forth from school trained to earnest industry and application, devoted to study, accurate in their acquired knowledge, and eager to approach those ideals of virtue which the teacher held out before them. these graduates have passed from the school's influence bearing splendid proof of the excellent quality of its educational aims and methods.

Because habit formation stands in direct and intimate relationship to good teaching, the evident lack of necessary habits in the individual is a serious reflection on the character of his early training. Unfortunately indeed, the school's chief purposes are not always attained. Success does not follow on every effort. The acknowledgment of failure is the first step in the study of its more obvious causes.

[278] Two boys graduate from the same school, having advanced together through the entire course of instruction and discipline. After twenty years one has become a captain of industry, the other is enrolled among disciples of ease. Ability and opportunity alone do not explain this success and this failure. Their associates have discovered more subtle differences. The man who has prospered is thoroughly honest, reliable, industrious, accurate, a clear thinker, strong and purposeful in his methods. The other, with the same preliminary training, possesses few of these desirable qualities and accomplishes little or nothing.

Why this strange but marked contrast? It is clear at first sight that one man is strong and masterful in the use of his natural ability, while the other is a waster of his gifts of mind and will. Can we attempt to fix responsibility? It is but fair to divide it. The individual must carry his own share. Yet honesty, industry, power of observation, mental accuracy and determination, are the normal results of careful and intelligent training of mind and will. And it is precisely the function and the duty of the teacher and the school to increase the power and capacity of the individual by developing in the faculties those qualities which make for strength and efficiency.

Call education what you will, it is infinitely more than the bare imparting of knowledge and the crowding and cramming of a receptive memory. Education aims to develop and strengthen all the faculties. This development and strength is secured only by the well-directed use and exercise, which in the very nature of man leads to the formation of good intellectual and moral habits.

Habit can be described as an aptitude and facility for doing certain things in a certain way. This aptitude is acquired and becomes a controlling factor in life through the exercise of the natural human tendency to repeat acts of body, mind, and will. Each individual feels this inclination in varying degrees and is forced to recognize in it the source of his permanent qualities and characteristics. Each human act leaves its impression on the mind and will. Each movement made carries with it a disposition to repeat that movement. Physiologists say "the organism tends to the mode in which it is exercised." Psychologists affirm "that the mind in the presence of an object tends to recall [279] other objects associated at one time or another with the object in view. This association of ideas tends to recur in the original manner and order of presentation."

Personal experience offers ample proof of the truth of these principles and urges the necessity of attention and study of this most significant fact. For what comes of this tendency? The process is simple and evident. Each repeated act strengthens the inclination to reproduce that act and continued repetition inevitably results in an established and definite course of action. This is habit—the quality which increases the power of the faculties, for it lessens materially the need of conscious effort in action. What is said and done frequently is said and done easily in a spontaneous and automatic manner. The capacity of bringing actions under the influence of habit is a great blessing of Divine Providence. It is for this precise reason that the commonplace activities of life require the expenditure of little energy because they are simplified and well ordered through frequent recurrence. Without the assistance of habit, man could make but little progress, for his entire interest and attention would be absorbed in the trivial duties of the hour, and he would have neither time nor strength for further achievement. The habit capacity is a great source of power to the individual. It is to the mind and will what muscle is to the human body. It develops readily and rapidly by use and exercise until it becomes a dominating force manifesting itself in every phase of human activity.

The proper development of the habit capacity in the child should become the center of interest of the successful tteacher [sic]. Since no task is ever intelligently undertaken without some compelling motive, the teacher in the classroom must realize clearly the necessity and importance of this special work. The children seated before her are there to be trained. The results of this required training are best measured in the number and kind of desirable aptitudes and capacities developed in the mind and will. Good aptitudes are good habits. They constitute abiding standards by which to gauge the effectiveness of the teaching and training in one particular school or in a great educational system.

In the formation of habit, attentive repetition is the one substantial [280] means to the desired end. Repetition unenlivened by interest and attention is of absolutely no value in the process. Much of the drill work in the grades is a step backward for this reason. The children are neither interested in the task nor attentive to the details, and carelessness and indifference inevitably result. During the attentive repetition of the act, the teacher is quick to note exceptions and to correct them at once. No mistake is allowed to escape unnoticed. By this means accurate repetition is secured and the single acts are being organized in the proper manner. Interest and attention are constantly sustained by worthy incentives and clever teaching devices. The need and value of skill, the duty of the child to cooperate, the brilliant prospect of success, are general motives to be constantly applied. Position in class, marks and prizes, are school inducements always available and helpful to keeping pupils interested and attentive.

The teacher must remember that while kindness and sympathy are most attractive qualities, she must be strong and insistent in forming habits. Too often weeks and weeks of repetition and practice are wasted when a little additional perseverance would have accomplished wonders. Habits are not acquired in a day. In fact, no general rule can be established as to the amount of time and repetition required. The nature of the action, the temperament of the individual, are helps or hindrances in the work. Yet with the great majority of pupils, unswerving fidelity to attentive repetition will develop the capacity to do a certain thing with the maximum of correctness and the minimum of effort.

Many subjects of the elementary school curriculum offer abundant material for habit formation. In writing, spelling, arithmetic, reading, there are numerous unchanging elements over which the child must acquire that skill which comes only from habit. In presenting these lessons, the teacher need only apply with spirit and perseverance the rules and methods laid down for habit formation. But the responsibility of the school and the teacher cannot end here. Skill in writing, spelling, and arithmetic, does not represent the highest purpose of educational work. There are certain general qualities of mind and heart which the elementary school should develop and strengthen. [281] Educators differ and dispute over questions of curriculum, method and problems of administration, but all agree that true education should lead to the development of certain definite and permanent intellectual and moral habits. Can these desirable habits be easily enumerated? The list is indeed long, for it should include all the qualities required in the making of a perfect man. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to select and emphasize one habit or another which the school as a unit should set itself to form in all the pupils. If each member of the teaching staff realized a particular need common to all the children of the school, and used every opportunity and lesson to insist on the development of this special quality, the results after seven or eight years would be truly astonishing. Cooperation in purpose and action is the secret of success. When the school selects a definite aim and purpose and every teacher works diligently in that direction, then some results must surely be achieved. How shall the school make a selection? The choice rests on a very positive basis. What habits do our children really need? Where are they weak? Where must they be made strong? In reply to these queries, let it be clearly stated that the Catholic school is advancing nearer to its highest purposes in proportion as it develops in children a love of knowledge, the power to think clearly and accurately, and an abiding devotion to the interests of God and His holy Church.

The sum total of knowledge retained is not the surest standard by which to measure educational results. This statement may seem strange in view of present-day tendencies to increase indefinitely the number of subjects taught in elementary schools. Every year, additional requirements are added to the curriculum with apparently little attention to the retentive capacity of the young mind. Yet thinking men lament the fact that our typical American is neither student, book lover, or seeker after knowledge. He is satisfied with a most superficial acquaintance with things and can arrive at a conclusion from very meager premises. Does not this fact sadly reflect the quality of training given in the school? Does it not seem that teachers are presenting mere facts of knowledge rather than developing a love of knowledge for its own sake? In some respects this condition is hard [282] to explain. The book is the storehouse of knowledge, and children are surrounded by a multitude of books. But there seems to be a positive defect in the way these books are used. Children are not trained to realize the value of a good book, and to enjoy the study of the inspiring and beautiful truths it contains. Too often perhaps, the book is in some measure to blame. The school must carefully select interesting and helpful material and supply it in abundance. The reading lesson should never become a mere mechanical exercise, but a delightful period spent in the pleasant and gratifying work of learning of people, places, and things. Children should be encouraged to read at home and to describe what they have read. Industry in this particular should always be rewarded in a special manner. If a love of good reading were carefully cultivated in every classroom, then surely a most necessary and much needed habit would be formed in the children who enjoy the priceless advantage of united efforts to that purpose. One teacher for one year may succeed to a certain extent, but enduring results will be obtained only by the active cooperation of all the teachers who have, at any time, a part in the training of the child. To form the habit of reading, to instill a love of knowledge, is to develop a capacity which will be a strong safeguard in difficulty and a source of supreme pleasure and satisfaction in after years. 

To make the love of knowledge effective, children must be trained to think clearly. Hazy, indefinite ideas are a positive hindrance in every enterprise. In teaching even the youngest children, no word should pass unexplained, no rule half understood. The pupils should be encouraged to look for the reasons behind the process and never to be content until they have grasped them. Rote recitation and memory lessons of rules and definitions not comprehended, make the pupil imagine that the has ideas, when as a matter of fact, he knows only words. A sure proof of clear thinking is clear expression. Teachers can apply this test frequently and by it measure correctly their progress in developing the power to think clearly.

Accuracy in word and action is intimately associated with the power to think clearly. If a man is never satisfied until the idea in his mind is distinct and plain, then he is easily accurate in his [283] speech and his manner of action. Yet on all sides carelessness and slovenliness in pronunciation and articulation, spelling, and mathematical calculation are causing daily annoyances and often-time, serious consequences. In the commercial life it is the man who is noted for accuracy who wins respect and advancement. It is not easy task to make all children accurate. Since they need the habit, let the school spare no effort to develop it. If a graduate goes forth from a Catholic school a clear and accurate thinker, anxious to learn, he has received a splendid preparation for the duties, responsibilities and problems of life.

The Catholic school has far more solemn and serious obligations than these. The purpose of the religious school is to develop habits of thought and action which will make the practice of religion a second nature to man. Our schools are expected to train pupils to an ardent love of religion and to a whole-hearted service to God. Each prayer in school, each lesson in religion, each hymn, each visit to the church, must become a well-forged link in the golden chain which is to keep creature and Creator in closest union all through life. In this connection, let it be remembered that mere repetition does not suffice. Interest and attention in daily religious practices is the element needed to weld them into habit. Surely Catholic education has done this service, for the flourishing condition of religion in places where schools exist is convincing proof of abundant success in this particular. May Catholic schools continue to train to these essential religious habits of mind, heart, and will, and may the crowning glory of the cause always be the ever-increasing number of loyal graduates eager and ready to think and act in strict accordance with teachings of the Church of Christ on earth.

The great general advantage of all training in habit formation is the personal advantage to the individual child. In forming good habits, he is developing himself. For habits of all varieties are acquired by a countless number of acts of the free will. Each voluntary effort of the will increases the power of the mainspring of human action. The making of good habits is the making of the strong determined will. It is the will that makes character and character makes the man. The making of men is the task of the Catholic educator. The more he studies his [284] opportunities and problems, the heavier does responsibility weigh down upon him. But this very responsibility brings its own consolations. In every effort to form a good habit, to strengthen the will, and to build character, the Catholic teacher receives all possible inspiration from the wonderful promise of Holy Writ, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it."

DISCUSSION

Brother E. Felix, F. S. C., Rock Hill College, Maryland: To the mind of the thoughtful teacher, the problem of habit must ever be one of great importance and one demanding much attention and serious study. Whether it be considered from a standpoint of physiology or one of pure psychology, we cannot fail to recognize that habit is a vital factor of great moment in developing and shaping the character of the growing child. Indeed, some authors go so far as to say that education is merely a bundle of habits. We may not be willing to endorse this statement on its face value, but we cannot deny that there is much truth in the assertion.

This morning we have listened with much attention to the discourse prepared by Father Hickey on this topic, in which he has given us some general notions on habit formation, together with practical consequences which flow therefrom. On an occasion like this we do not expect to hear a complete scientific exposition of all the elements that enter into the intricacies of habit-building, nor a long array of statistics and other details which have been prepared by specialists in experimental psychology. These are very useful, and will be studied with much profit by teachers in their research work. But for our present purpose it will be sufficient to confine our attention to one or two salient features of Father Hickey's paper which have an immediate bearing on our work as educators.

The first, and most obvious fact in connection with habit formation, and really its one underlying principle is, that habits are formed and retained only by countless repetitions of the acts to which we wish to become habituated. This is a matter of daily experience. Notice the wonderful dexterity, precision, and almost mechanical accuracy with which your graduate at the piano executes very difficult compositions. What is all this, if not the expression of a well-formed, complex habit? Making all due allowances for talent and natural aptitude, must we not ascribe this remarkable coordination of movements, this correlation of the faculties of mind and body to careful, painstaking, constant, remorseless practice,—day after day, week after week, for months and years? It is said that great masters, such as Liszt, Spohr, Paderewski, [285] practised [sic] as long as ten hours a day. Accept whatever theories you will, to explain the mental and physical phenomena involved in the process,—theories biological, neurological, psychological,—for us this fact remains evident: keeping everlastingly at it brings about the desired result. If this maxim be accepted as the keynote of all habit formation, the following laws are deduced as a natural sequence:

(a) An action, or series of actions, to become habitual, must be practiced faithfully and unremittingly, at regular intervals, until it becomes almost automatic. As Father Hickey observes, the time required for the acquisition of a useful habit depends largely upon the temperament and natural dispositions of the subject. But as far as their pupils are concerned, teachers must insist on continuous practice up to the very last day of the child's school term. An observation made by the Reverend writer of the paper calls for special notice here. He reminds us that, as in all other educational work, cooperation among the teachers of a school on a determinate course of action and the number and quality of habits to be inculcated, is essential. This is quite true. It would be of little use for a child to be habituated by one teacher to walk and stand erect, to keep his desk neat and in order, to dress himself with care and attention, if the next teacher would allow the child to fall into careless and slovenly ways. The same may be said of punctuality, personal cleanliness, sincerity, and all other habits that constitute the training of a well-bred Christian child.

The second law of habit formation follows as a necessary corollary to the first: (b) We must allow no opportunity of cultivating a desirable habit to pass by without profiting by it. To insure this, all the tact, prudence and skill of a resourceful teacher must be brought into action; advantage  must be taken of every occasion of practicing a useful habit, and every step that would hinder its progress must be checked. An example: You wish to cultivate the habit of correction English expression in your pupils; a very desirable habit, indeed. To be logical, systematic and, incidentally, to be successful, you should correct every ungrammatical expression that comes to your notice; not only in the recitations of your scholars, but in their conversation and written work as well; in short, whenever and wherever correction can suitably and profitably be given. I do not wish to anticipate the author of the paper which is to follow, but let me state, in passing, that we have here a clear illustration of the advantages of habitual practice, when compared with merely theoretical instruction. You may strain every effort to explain the principles of English composition, and have the children able to recite verbatim the rules of syntax with their numerous following of exceptions; but what boots it all if their actual use (or abuse) of the mother-tongue, in their daily intercourse, is at variance with the lessons they memorized so faithfully? Not until the use of good English is a habit, not until it becomes part and parcel of their ordinary language can they truly be [286] said to have learned it well. Teachers of the primary grades may think it futile to correct a child's grammatical mistakes on the ground that he is not yet able to understand the reasons for the correction. This would be a grave error. The faulty habits which the child would thus acquire would grow with him, and it would be all the more difficult to eradicate them in later  years. All this demands attention and persevering effort, but it is the sine qua non of success.

But where shall we find the incentive, where the necessary motive power to sustain the continuous effort which is so essential to habit formation? Of what use will it be to me merely to know that I must practice, in season and out of season, in order to learn penmanship, arithmetic, phonography, typewriting, or any other useful art to any degree of proficiency, unless I can bring myself to put this knowledge into a practical form? To do this requires a strong, energetic, determined will; not a half-hearted, impulsive, vacillating will, that attempts to do wonders by fits and starts, but one that is based on a clear conviction of the necessity or utility of the end to be attained, and fortified by an ambition to accomplish that end. This is all the more true in the case of good habits, with which we are chiefly concerned this morning. Habits of ease, of indulgence, of listlessness, will make their appearance as spontaneously as do weeds in a garden; but he who would uproot these noxious growths and replace them by the hardier plants of virtue, must apply himself to the task with a diligence that is proof against difficulties, and an energy that cannot be thwarted by temporary reverses.

But should we expect to find such a well-developed will power in a child? This is the critical point of the whole subject under discussion; and, in carefully considering it, the teacher will find how closely the question of habit formation is bound up with the professional duties of his state. Among the many children under his care he will find wills of various degrees of development. It is one of his principal obligations to perfect these wills as far as this lies in his power. It is in the cultivation of the will that the Catholic teacher differentiates himself from the mere instructor and pedagogue. it is his special mission, and at the same time, his privilege and his glory, to train not only the intellect to see the beauty and attractiveness of virtue, but also the heart and the will to love and to practice it. For virtue, be it remembered, is not constituted of an occasional good act, but it is essentially the habit of doing good. Now, if oft repeated acts lead to habits, good habits, in turn, make for character. And this, in substance, is the object of the lifework of the Catholic educator: to broaden the mind, to mould [sic] the heart and to cultivate the will of his disciples, and thereby lay deep and broad and strong the foundations of the sterling character of truly Christian ladies and gentlemen.

Rev. P. J. McCormick, Ph. D., Catholic University, Washington, D. C.: I think that the various habits which we desire the school to form in [287] children have been very well enumerated by Father Hickey and Brother Felix. Both speakers have also indicated the importance of the subject of habit-formation from the viewpoint of training—educative training. They have shown that it is the chief work of the school, and no doubt we agree with them. Another phase of the subject might be here suggested for the purposes of discussion, and this refers more particularly to the manner or method of habit-formation.

For purposes of convenience we may divide habits into intellectual, moral and physical. The school purposes to form the child in all; little, however, is done for his physical formation. Unfortunately, the program does not provide for that very important division of habits. We are chiefly engaged, as a matter of fact, with intellectual and moral. We may further say that the intellectual habits are comprehended quite well by the term "habits of study," and the moral habits by the term "habits of conduct."

Assuming that this is the duty of every teacher to form such habits in their children, my point is that special care should be taken to form them early. It devolves upon the primary teachers as a peculiar task to form correct habits of study and conduct in the child from the beginning of his school career. Formation is better, more economical of energy, and safer as a process than reformation. The right habit should go before and if possible prevent the wrong taking root or becoming secure. Early formation, then, and correct formation should be the effort in a special sense of the first teachers of the children.

The school should attempt to form habits of study from the time the child takes up his first tasks. The teacher's office is to see that the right conditions are present for this formation. He should see, for example, that interest is present. No child can study without it, or without the problem or the question it assumes to be present. The center of interest, we know, is always a problem of some kind. The child must be looking for something, must have a difficulty or a question to concern him, and it is the teacher's work to see that he has. Merely assigning a lesson to study is not enough. The teacher must make the proper introduction for it, arouse the child's curiosity, stimulate his imagination, or in some way prepare his apperceiving powers for the new matter. This means that study has to be supervised, directed, and controlled by the teacher, if the act is to be correct, and if eventually the right habit is to be acquired.

Similarly is the process pursued on the moral side. In our Catholic schools we have the best moral doctrine and the best moral practices to use in our work of habit-formation. In moral matters it is the motive that counts, and I think that the peculiar work of the teacher here is to see that the child acts from the right motives. He should know why, for example, he is obedient, or faithful in his duties, why he is charitable or unselfish, in order that his motives will be built up, so to speak, into those principles of conduct which are at the base of character-formation and conduce to right living.

I would then repeat that in my belief the all-important task of the teacher is to see that habits are formed early on the intellectual and moral side, and that these habits are correct.

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Source: Rev. Augustine F. Hickey, "To Train for the Formation of Good Habits—A Real Problem in School Management," Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 13, no. 1 (Nov. 1916): 277–288.

John Wise, SJ, "Liberal Education: Three Facts of History Concerning the Liberal Arts" (1948)

[8] There are three facts which stand out from history, when one investigates the nature of the liberal arts. The first striking fact is that science is an historical and essential component, and a basic part of the liberal arts. To speak about a college of arts and sciences is the same thing as to speak about a college of the liberal arts. To speak about a liberal education is the same as to speak about education in the arts and sciences. Thus the humanities, humane studies, are only part of a liberal arts education; the other part consists in the quantitative studies, mathematics and the natural sciences.

That this contention is historically true is easily seen from the time of the Greeks when Aristotle wrote not only on poetry and rhetoric, and spoke definitively on laws of grammar and logic, but was also the father in many lines of nature study and of the study of the human body, nature's wonder. He pondered the physical world and universe, the soul and its thought and will, human society and ethical conduct, and the Supreme Being. Even Plato, more literary and idealistic than Aristotle, was not only a humanist but also a mathematician, as were many of his followers. The balance of the trivium and quadrivium, exemplifying moderation in all things, was often remarkable in Greece. In Rome, however, the balance fell off, and if Romanitas had science, it might not have perished; but with a Greek genius for the real observation of nature, cataloguing of fact, and venture on hypothesis, it would have ceased to be Romanitas. Its own genius was rule and law. This is bequeathed to the newborn Church.

The lack of science, therefore, in the early Middle Ages and before the Renaissance of the twelfth century, was not Christian but Roman. Christian vitality was as ready to assimilate Greek science fed to it by the Arabs as it was to make its own the Roman sense of order. This Renaissance of the twelfth century, its inherited and even creative science has been revealed with sufficient fullness by the work of Charles Homer Haskins, Lynn Thorndike, and Christopher Dawson. The sources of modern science are medieval as well as Greek, St. Thomas in particular contributing to empirical method by the place he assigns in knowledge to sense observation and material being. The more immediate genesis of modern science, which is not dealt with here, receives nevertheless the best commentary of its value and rapidity from the actual stage of scientific progress dazzling the eyes of the living.

Modern science is the modern subject of the quadrivium. Scientific knowledge depends less on history than does literature and philosophy. Boyle's law, that the volume of gas varies inversely with the pressure, does not need the personalized expression of Shakespeare's "coil of mortal care" to make it a law or to make it intelligible. 

Contrary to the "Great Books" system at St. John's, mathematics and science need not emphasize historical genesis, but can specialize in modern syntheses and experiment with to-day's apparatus. Laboratory work and mathematical problems make for accurate observation, orderly procedure, careful classification, and justified conclusion. These are benefits from the study of the sciences besides the knowledge of nature and vocational and professional preparation. Without the quadrivium, the liberal arts abandon their historical inclusion of both the arts and sciences; they become less qualitative when they cease to be quantitative, because they know less about God and man when they forget nature.

If it is understood that the quadrivium as well as the trivium is historically essential to the liberal arts, and that therefore the modern scientist can advocate a liberal education, and that a liberally educated man can and should advance the natural sciences, a second historical fact concerning the liberal arts can be noted. This fact concerns the difficult point of the relationship of mental training and character training. It can be said without hesitation that mental training is the immediate end of a liberal education. A liberal education aims primarily, as Cardinal Newman would teach us, at mental training, which means the ready ability of a vigorous mind as well as a balanced fund of knowledge. In other words, mental training does not merely mean a keen intellect but also 

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There must be something rottenly wrong with education itself. So many people have wonderful children and all the grown-up people are such duds. Chesterton

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The only dominating influence in the school and the college must be that of truth. Maritain

a content of truth, with a good grasp of essential reality, God, man and nature. The liberal arts include, therefore, science and nature study, and also the study of man in the humanities, literature and philosophy. That basic and liberal theology must underlie education in the trivium and the quadrivium goes without saying, for God is the creator of both man and nature, and the ultimate causality and finality of man and nature must be investigated. Now such an investigation is essentially theology.

But even with such an understanding of mental training as including both content, and the ability to use such content, the relationship to will training and character training is not yet fully clear. Seneca tells us that the liberal arts do not give virtue, but prepare the mind to receive virtue. They give good ideals and broad experience, as is evidenced in history and literature. But besides these good ideals, which the will is still free to resist, character training, the formation of good moral habits and the aid of divine grace must be considered.

The question of the relationship of a liberal education to character training, to the good of the whole man, his final destiny, is most profoundly treated in Cardinal Newman's essay on The Idea of a University. "Knowledge is an end in itself," but it is not man's end. Knowledge must be an instrument of virtue. The higher education goes, the closer must be the Church, because the benefits of a liberal education are the most excellent in the line of human achievement and yet are the most capable of perversion. To a liberal education must be added a moral education. That is why the Church founded universities. The great mother universities of the West are Christian and the idea of a university is Christian.

When once it is realized that the high attainment of liberal culture is the greatest in the line of human endeavor, it can readily be seen that it is important to realize the relationship of such mental culture to sanctity. Mental culture can exist with or without sanctity, as in St. Basil or in Julian the Apostate, who went to the same school, or in the many litterateurs and savants, whom Newman notes are more inclined to indifference in religion than to the practice of religion. This is because they make knowledge not only an immediate end in itself as fulfilling the needs of the intellect, but also an ultimate end in itself as fulfilling the needs of the whole man; whereas the whole man must not only know God but love Him. The relationship of liberal culture to sanctity is the most important point discussed by Newman in his Idea of a University and he most clearly shows that knowledge must be intended for the good of the whole man and that faith fulfills knowledge and does not frustrate it, and that sanctity must make knowledge real, and turn it into wisdom.

A third fact of history concerning the liberal arts is that the basically human idea of self activity is thoroughly Christian and is not a new discovery, as we might be led by some writers to believe. In confirmation of this statement, it will be helpful, perhaps, just to quote three passages from representatives of Christianity, bridging centuries of time. As for St. Augustine:

We are led to learning in two ways: by reason and by authority. Authority is first in time, reason is first in importance. For it is one thing to proceed in doing, and another to esteem in desire. And thus, though authority seems more healthful for the unlearned many, reason excels in the cultured . . . And those who are content with authority alone, and expend their efforts on good morals and holy desires, condemning the liberal arts or not being up to them, I do not see how they can be really happy among mortal men, though I believe with unshakable faith that they will be free and happy to the greatest extent in the next life, who have lived best here.

St. Augustine develops to almost embarassing [sic] length his explanation of what he means by the exercise of the mental abilities, "to exercise the soul and for the student to sharpen the keenness of his mental vision" by the self-activity of his own reason.

St. Thomas Aquinas compares the teaching and learning process to the work of a physician:

Just as a person may be cured in a twofold manner through the operation of nature alone or through nature with the aid of medicine, so there is a twofold manner of acquiring knowledge, the one when the natural reason of itself comes to a knowledge of the unknown, which is called discovery, the other when someone extrinsically gives aid to the natural reason, which is called instruction.

 Discovery is the higher process, since it requires more native genius, but instruction excels in that the teacher has the knowledge as a whole and explicitly, and "can lead to knowledge more quickly and easily than anyone can be led by himself," whereas the pupil "knows the principles of knowledge only in generality." The verbal and oral symbols of books and of teaching are, moreover, closer to the mind, as having already come from thought and reasoning, whereas the student's own labor would be endless without the work of other men. 

Knowledge is therefore inductive, psychological and maieutic, as well as deductive, logical and authoritative. In either case it must be applied and digested. The benefits of both types of knowledge would be endangered by over-emphasis on either. What the student discovers for himself will last longer because of a greater association of phantasms and experience. Even when the teacher has to take the lead, since the student cannot do all, the presentation should be clear, vivid and associated with the student's own work.

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A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. I shall not fret about the loam if somewhere in it a seed lies buried. The seed will drain the loam and the wheat will blaze. [Antoine de] St. Exupery

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It must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural . . . man, therefore, fallen from his original estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural condition of adopted son of God. Pius XI

In the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, self-activity, as stated by a late Father General, is essential to the spirit and method of Jesuit teaching. This statement of Father Martin in 1893 only repeats the "exercise one's self," daily practice of speaking and writing, and the development of the talents, so often mentioned in the Ratio. This self-activity applies not only to knowledge, but also to virtue, for one must "learn along with letters the habits worthy of Christians."

It is interesting to approach the study of the liberal arts from a historical angle. The collective thinking of great men can be wrong, but it is not often wrong. When they tell us that the study of God, man and nature must be used for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, they speak true. They lead us to the most notably human activities, namely, those exercised and manifested in liberal culture.

Science is part of liberal culture, and grows with it. Character can be aided by liberal culture, when such culture is acquired by men of good will. But liberal culture is such a valuable weapon that one needs to be closer to God to use it right. Then his mental power exercises itself for the good of the human race, and the atomic age can dawn for human good.

---

Source: John E. Wise, SJ, "Liberal Education: Three Facts of History Concerning the Liberal Arts," Georgetown University Alumni Magazine 1, no. 3 (Spring 1948): 8–10.

Sr. Mary Ruth, "The Curriculum of the Catholic Woman's College in Relation to the Problems of Modern Life" (1916)

 [106] The first step in defining what the woman's college ought to do is to state its primary aims, because they should direct us in the choice of the various subjects of study. The nature of the means, which in the present educational problem is the curriculum, is largely determined by the nature of the purpose to be attained. Social and industrial changes are making great demands upon the college for suitable preparation for life. The striking lack of educational standards by which the effectiveness of college training is judged, urges a consideration of what is the fundamental task of the woman's college.

Christianity has lost much of its vitality in the world since it has been taught through books. In the olden time when knowledge of Our Lord, of His Heavenly Father, and of His Blessed Mother, were taught by word of mouth and by mystery plays, God and His saints were very real to their followers who willingly, even gladly, suffered all things to prove their love of [107] Him. Again, in the olden time when morals were taught by word of mouth, by example, and by morality plays, all intimately related to God the Creator and Saviour [sic] and sanctifier of men, the priests and other teachers, whether in the missionary field, or at home among their own people, even though according to modern standards quite unlearned in science and art, were able to lift themselves and their followers to higher and higher planes of Christian life and civilization. Since we have undertaken to make the knowledge of God an academic subject, however, knowledge of Him has become in great measure memorized statements that have little or no influence upon our daily lives. To a large proportion of civilized men, Christ is a myth like William Tell. To-day [sic] because the love of God no longer dominates men's lives, we have a world war, nations battling against nations, and the spectacle of the powerful ruler of a so-called Christian nation decorating a man for writing a hideous "Chant of Hate."

The first aim, then , of the woman's college is to make its students real Christians; lovers and followers of a real Christ. Both consciously and unconsciously we imitate those whom we love; we do what we think will please them, and we develop along the lines of their development, and grow to become like them. Christ's life on earth was a life of love and service of man. If our students love Christ, they, consciously or unconsciously imitating Him, will also love and be eager to serve those with whom they associate in their daily lives, not only their families, but their communities, and thus their country. While the woman's college is inspiring its students with a love of Our Lord and of His Blessed Mother and the saints, it will make sure in their minds and hearts the relation between that love and the love of His children and the desire to serve Him through serving them.

The second aim of a Catholic woman's college, therefore, is to fit its students to serve God through serving the community in which they live. This directs our attention to the vocational aspect of education which at the present time is the dominant feature of all educational discussion. In the Catholic woman's college this is a vocational problem correlated in no way with [108] the training for a money-making occupation; rather it is the problem of giving preparation for the life that the student will lead after she leaves college, and making that lifework the basis of her preparation. The real vocational motive is to be construed as one which stimulates and enables the student to acquire not only the knowledge for, but the art of living the purposeful life which she thinks she is fitted by capacity and taste to lead after her college course is finished, thereby making her a contributing member of society and giving her a positive value in the social equation. the power of a worthy purpose to create and maintain interest and to stimulate study, is of supreme importance in college as in high school and, indeed, in all education. The desire for preparedness to meet one's life-task is the best stimulus to seek the requisite training for it.

The term, problems of modern life, stamps the subject of our discussion as a sociological question, and requires an understanding and an appreciation of present conditions of society. Upon a surface view we are immediately confronted with a multitude of problems of modern living, each of which has its claims. But back of them all, because it lies at the basis of all, and towering above them all, is the vitally important problem of the home. It needs no argument to establish this thesis. What everyone agrees to needs no discussion. Upon the home, its spirit and training, depend those fundamental attitudes of a man or woman that control all the relations of life.

In order that this Section of the Catholic Educational Association may be a constructive force in the educational betterment of our Catholic women's colleges, the vital topic, the relation of the curriculum of the Catholic woman's colleges to the problems of modern life, has been proposed for our discussion. We can do little more in the first meeting than to bring the subject before the consideration of our college teachers for an analysis of conditions, with the hope of making it a matter of continuous study, observation, experiment and discussion, to be checked by follow-up work which should judge of the value of the education by its functioning in later life; that is, by the degree of success attained by our students, measured by their own standards of ethics. Finally, in order to make the study widely profitable, [109] we should make reports of our findings, giving to all the benefit of the experience of each. Then shall we awaken inquiry into the relative values of subjects of the curriculum to equip the college young woman for the efficient home, and stimulate experiment to discover these values. Then also shall we realize the potentiality of this Section of the Association as an agency in constructing an educational plan to conserve the ideals of the home, to raise those ideals to a higher level and to furnish training in household management, thus to safeguard the home by laying under contribution to that end the intellectual and ethical instruments of the curriculum.

The far-reaching industrial and social changes of the nineteenth century brought in their train momentous changes which have affected no institution so profoundly as the home. In less than thirty years new machinery has virtually revolutionized industrial methods, removing one industry after another to the factory, until at the present time nearly all the clothing is made in the factory, the tailor shop, or the modiste-studio; much of the food is prepared in the packing house, the canning-factory, the bakery, and the delicatessen store. Instead of knitting the stockings and making the dresses and aprons at the family fireside, the woman of the house places the order, and lo! the ready-made garment is at the door. Instead of making the bread, she, or her maid telephones and the bread is delivered fresh for dinner. Instead of moulding [sic] candles, she touches a button and the carbon filaments radiate light. There is no escaping the fact that physical conditions affect and greatly modify human relations and the sense of spiritual obligations. When food and clothing were prepared in the home, the members of the family were identified with the various processes and were associated in the work. This identity of aim and cooperation of service was the basis of organization upon which the solidarity of the home depended. The home was the industrial unit. Stern necessity was the creator and the custodian of the home spirit. Its compelling force in keeping the members of the common tasks, working in common and sharing in common, was effective in building deep relationships of the home and developing the [110] altruistic ideals, leading selfish human nature to exercise itself in unselfishness, thereby preparing itself for social obligations.

The principle of solidarity is fundamental to society. There can be no national spirit, no world spirit, without the loyalty which depends for its vitality upon the tap-root of solidarity. This root, because those primary relationship which are its essence can be formed only during the plastic years of childhood, must have its beginning in the home.

It cannot be expected that there will be any reversion to the old industrial system. The old-time home with its numerous industries will never return. More of its already nearly depleted activities will be taken over by the factories. A change and readjustment to the new conditions is inevitable. The relationships of the family must be strengthened by some other means than work. We must find some substitute for work to conserve the home as the center where may be formed those ties of affection which are the sources of the deepest joys of life. Dr. Andrews says in Education for the Home:

"Strength and satisfaction in the home relationships form a prime problem. The breaking down of the family bond is to be overcome by strengthening that bond, by enriching the home experience of the individual, child and adult alike. . . . Our education for the home will be a sorry thing indeed if it concerns simply the household arts of cooking, sewing, and household care unless it teaches us the art of 'family building', of home-making, of living in families in such ways as to bring increasing personal satisfaction as the years go."[1]

The "enrichment of home experience" in the sense of cementing family bonds was furnished by the mutual service required in providing the comforts of life. There is a deep truth in Pestalozzi's statement, "It is the social side of parental solicitude that makes environmental influences themselves of spiritual value, contributing thereby to the higher intellectual and emotional life. The stocking which the mother knits before her son's eyes has a deeper significance in his education than the one he buys at the shop or puts on without knowing where it came from."[2] [111] This concrete expression of the value of work in moulding the child's deepest sentiments is an argument for some other agency in the absence of work as a substitute to develop unselfish family relationships.

The present crisis in the decadence of the home tests our capacity to adapt the curriculum and training to the new conditions. The new factor to reckon with is the leisure of the members of the family. Practically, for both men and women, the hours of leisure have been doubled. This has been done for women by the transfer of industries and by fixing the maximum number of hours which women may work in stores and factories. The hours of men have been proportionally shortened. The sixteen-hour day has been shortened to an eight-hour day. The office hours from nine o'clock until five leave long stretches of leisure. Whether we like it or not, the solution of the problem lies in enriching the home experience, by organizing the leisure of the home and making it by its very attractiveness a compelling force to accomplish the solidarity of the home. It may not have the same unifying effectiveness as work. It is a less tangible, less insistent influence, and therefore will require finer art and more careful preparation on the part of the home-makers to make it an integrating force. There is a daily challenge to the woman of the home to make it an enriching experience.

"The home of the future must be cultured. . . . The companionship in the work of their hands that husband and wife have lost, they must find again in the cultivation of their minds and hearts. The home of the future must breathe a charm so potent that it will gather to its bosom each evening the dispersed and weary toilers of the day. The home of the future must be the sanctuary of life and the dwelling-place of love; the mind must find in it room to grow in all the realities of truth and beauty; its atmosphere must be that of refinement and culture; beauty must cover it with her mantle and courage must protect it with his shield. . . . Woman must preserve the home of the future. She must preserve in it the sacred fires of religion and culture. Through it she must save man from materialism and from the worship of the golden calf. She must build a home in which he will find rest from his toil, consolation in his sorrow, strength to battle with temptations, courage in the midst of disaster, and companionship in the highest aspirations [112] of his soul," says Dr. T. E. Shields, in The Education of Our Girls.[3] 

 These words written in 1907 have application to-day not less than a decade ago. This consideration invests leisure with extraordinary importance as a constructive force of society. "The girl problem or the boy problem is inherently a leisure-time problem," says Montague Gammon.[4] What inference must we make as to our duty in this vitally important matter?

Our home-makers must catch the purpose and appreciate the value of leisure in saving the home. To develop in young women a consciousness of their duty toward the home, to see and to use the golden opportunity that leisure offers them to make the home a center of happiness, to help them to accomplish in some measure the vital union of theory and practice in the fine art of living, this is our basis of orientation. Dr. Andrews says, "A new vocational emphasis is in the older education as well as in the education called vocational, and the home is to be one of the beneficiaries of this changed point of view."[5] Home must be such a pleasant place that it will lay hold upon the affection and loyalty of every member of the family. It should compete successfully with the club house, the dance hall, the billiard room, the vaudeville theatre [sic], and the amusement park. The home should be so attractive that when the man of the house leaves his office or place of business, he will take the most direct way to reach it, and the adolescent boy and girl will from pure choice spend their evenings in the family circle. The attitude of the members of the family toward their home is a reasonable basis for the evaluation of its potency as a constructive force in their lives. To strengthen home-mindedness then, is the vital task that lies before us. It is the problem that the Catholic woman's college should address itself to, and readjust the curriculum so that the various subjects with their resources and interests may develop in the students with appropriate attitude and ideals. The present group system which obtains generally in the college and regulates the course of a student [113] makes easy the conditions of such an achievement. Indeed Dr. A. W. Harris, ex-president of Northwestern University, says, "Of a hundred girls more than eighty will become home-makers; they constitute so large a group with a common life business that special studies and methods adapted to their needs may fairly be required of all."[6] The selection of studies to attain this aim should hold high place in our purposes and be the object of our best thinking and investigation. Would that an educational prophet might arise and name the subjects which would contribute most effectively to this end! The movement for scientific measurement of educational results is slowly gaining ground and it is challenging the methods of education; but even though we had reliable standards of measurement, anything like a scientific rating in the measurement of training for home-making could be made only after the lapse of years.

The results of the present education as given in the woman's college shows that woman has been educated away from the home. Miss Addams says, "Modern education recognizes woman quite apart from family or society claims, and gives her the training which for many years has been successful for highly developing a man's individuality and forcing his powers for independent action."[7] The woman's college has not emphasized the conservation and enrichment of home life. Instead of stressing the fine values of home companionship, it has emphasized the possibilities of community service, woman's opportunities of club membership, and the obligations of a wide social nature, with the result that many women have acquired a false perspective of their duties. The woman's college has pointed with pride to the fact that its entrance requirements were the same as those of men's colleges. The Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1916 shows that there are eighty-four colleges with an attendance of 19,179 undergraduates to which men are not admitted. This does not exhaust the number of such colleges, as there are some not rated in this report. They have all modeled their curriculum closely upon that of men's colleges.

Inasmuch as women perform different functions from men, [114] it is logical that some preparation be made for the tasks that fall to their lot. So far we have given very little attention to working out lines of distinct instruction especially adapted to woman and her God-given work in the home. The Association of Inter-Collegiate Alumnae have felt the need of such adjustment, and at their convention in New York in 1911, the principal subject of discussion was the possibility of adding to the curriculum subjects of special value to women. Hygiene, biology, and sociology were the subjects in greatest favor. It requires no extended study to see that we must do more than merely train the intellect. Our aim is not to educate the students to find delight in reading Browning in solitude. The study of higher mathematics and an analytic study of the Greek dramatists are not best adapted to develop that quality of character which is most needed in home-making. For the woman in the home, culture is not to be valued as a personal acquisition as such, but merely as a development of her personality to make her effective in the service of others.

Socialization of education is a new term injected into the educational vocabulary. The changes in the curriculum of schools indicate a shifting of emphasis from knowledge in itself to its purpose in terms of group interest and group development, and mutual interrelations of the group. Nowhere has this principle greater application than in preparing our students for future homes. A measurement of the success of her college education, therefore, is not the measure of her capacity for happiness; rather it is the measure of how far she actualizes the fine, rare ideals of womanhood in the home. Dr. Andrews says, "The home as a conservative institution has been slow to receive educational attention, but its vital interests make education for the home second to none in importance." To formulate a curriculum with such an objective must from the nature of the case be a long task. It is very difficult to evaluate subjects. We know that the finest values elude all measurement. We cannot conclude that each subject of the curriculum has a specific service as a "life value." Such an inference Mr. Van Piper says would be like saying that, "If a course in mathematics is a prerequisite for a given course in physics, then [115] each chapter in mathematics is a prerequisite for some corresponding chapter in physics. Everybody knows there is never any such correlation of part to part. . . . There would be much essential matter in the mathematics which could not be sanely omitted, yet which would find no specific application in the physics proper. In a precisely  parallel way there may easily be phases in a preparatory training school which still are not, as such, anticipatory of any corresponding demands in adult life."[8]

There is no way of arriving at a determination of the "life values" of different studies. It is difficult to determine the value of those studies which have been tried out in the curriculum for ages; new subjects will have to be tried out and their effects noted in the efficiency of the real home-maker. Moreover, all the other subjects, however well planned, are inadequate without vital religion which should be both the root and the flower of the curriculum. Faith in God the Creator, and trust in His providence whereby He feeds and clothes and shelters His children and "opens His hand to supply the wants of every living creature," and a personal love of our Divine Saviour Who is our model of loving service, will inspire the spirit of loving service and self-devotion. True religion begets character. Let pulsating, practical religion permeate the daily life of the students and it will inspire them to serve others. The subjects of the curriculum will equip them to execute that which religion prompts them to do.

One important principle which is fast gaining ground is that there should be correlation between the curriculum and the normal experience of the student. Education must be brought into intimate relation with life in the twofold aspect of work and leisure, both of which should be put on an educational basis. Economy and efficiency of effort which is the objective of training in household management, contributes to the leisure which we have seen is to be used purposefully to enrich the home. The woman of the future must appreciate the value of leisure and employ it systematically for moral ends. Broadly [116] speaking, the equipment of the home-maker has a twofold aspect, practical and cultural, or according to Dr. Andrews' distinction, household management and home-making. The ends are efficiency and cultured personality. The home-maker should know how to organize household activities. Mrs. Willard, who discovered domestic economy as a subject of instruction, said, "It is believed that housewifery might be greatly improved by being taught, not only in practice, but in theory. There are right ways of performing its various operations, and there are reasons why those ways are right." Both the facts and the principles of household management the home-maker should know. This scientific knowledge will furnish economy and efficiency of effort, thereby increasing the leisure time. Denatured drudgery is a significant term which connotes both the lessening of the work and the glorifying it with the home-making motive.

Home economics, therefore, should occupy a large place in the differential curriculum planned for the home-maker. This is a complex, comprehensive subject including a wide range of material and its courses of instruction should be both technical and cultural. It is defined by the American Home Economics Association, Baltimore, Md., [sic] as the study of the economic, sanitary, and aesthetic aspects of food, clothing, and shelter as connected with their selection, preparation, and use by the family in the home, or by other groups of people. It lays under contribution the subjects of art, history, anthropology, sociology, aesthetics, economics, physiology, hygiene, mathematics, physics, and biology.[9] This subject should be placed on an equality with any science, political or social, and given a dignity and an importance accorded to any of the sciences. It should give the student an acquaintance with the rational ways of conducting the household; cultivate good taste and judgment of clothing values, artistic and economic; it should give such training as would guarantee freedom from such a dismal domestic failure as "Mrs. Hamlyn, who, with an A. M. from the State University, was always in trouble with her servants; the meals were irregular [117]; the table not appetizing; her house in disorder and her children absolutely undisciplined," according to Dr. Shields.[10]

We should stress with emphasis the social sciences, and stress equally the importance of their philosophical principles being in accord with the principles of faith. According to Dr. Andrews's judgment, sociology should be studied from a threefold view-point [sic]: (a) General sociology, giving the origin and development of civilization and the structure and function of present institutions; (b) Domestic sociology, dealing specifically with the origin, development, structure and functions of the family and the home as a human institution; (c) A study of the practical movement for general social betterment. A study of sociology, however, will not create or nourish the spirit which appreciates those finer, rarer interests of the home, but it will make the student understand the significance of the courses in home economics in their relation to modern problems, and the young woman who understands the home in relation to the larger life of which it is a part, will approach all problems of home economics with a deeper appreciation of their connection with the realities of life. Home economics must get its point of view from sociology. The center of interest of sociology is the relation of individuals to each other. This adjustment of personal relation depends chiefly upon spiritual conditions. Habits, purposes, and ideals of life affect profoundly these relations. This fact makes apparent the value of psychology in the curriculum. If we could make home economics a branch of applied psychology with the creation of an ideal home and family as its great purpose, the study would give not only academic instruction and expansion of mental outlook, but it would furnish an insight into experience to see the interrelations of physical problems with the spiritual aspects of human life.

A basis of Catholic philosophy is essential in the curriculum of the Catholic woman's college. We look to religion for the Christian ideal, and the inspiration and grace to advance toward it. Moreover, philosophical principles may be appreciated with [118] precision and yet be ineffective as a practical guide to conduct. Morality depends upon good will rather than upon knowledge, yet the moral nature is rational and requires a rational account of duty. Especially is a grasp of the underlying principles of true philosophy necessary to point out the fallacies in the theories proposed by some secular philanthropists and modern sociologists, between which and the principles of Catholicism there is "an essential and irreconcilable antagonism." From the field of philosophy it is practicable to derive a great deal of material vitally helpful to the Catholic woman's college alumna, yet it is important to keep insistently in consciousness the fact that we are preparing her to safeguard the home, not to take the chair of philosophy in college. A study of logic will help her to think correctly. A course in Introduction to Philosophy is recommended to give an acquaintance with the principles of scholastic philosophy, and as far as may be accomplished to cultivate the power of philosophical criticism. This is especially important in view of the widespread materialistic philosophy which interprets all human living in economic terms, the logical outcome of which we are reaping in the present world war [NB: WWI]. The aim here should not be to give the student complete knowledge of the evolution of idealism from Descartes to Hegel, nor of empiricism from Bacon to Mill, nor of pragmatism, as purely a matter of philosophical knowledge, but to give her an insight into the essential philosophical truths that she may be able to discover the principles underlying the method of a social movement and judge of its truth or falsity.

The study of ethics is of paramount importance. Especially is this true at the present time when the prevalent ethical standard is the humanitarian standard, and altruism and social efficiency are regarded as ends in themselves, and social welfare, as the end of conduct from which all moral values are derived. It is evident that to discover the principles of humanitarianism in its methods of social service, which are popular and appealing and to a great degree praiseworthy, a knowledge and an appreciation of the grounds of moral obligation and of the essential importance of right motives are necessary. But the Catholic woman must discriminate between the system of morality based [119] on the ideal of the service of humanity and the system that recognizes that the universal order is the expression of the divine will to which the individual is obliged to conform his conduct, and that one essential factor of his conduct is the service he owes his neighbor. Moreover, with the increasing worldliness and unrestrained love of pleasure, the trend of the time toward the standard of utilitarianism as the determinant of moral values, and toward hedonism which ignores all moral values, it is important to know the true criterion of conduct; to see that although morality has its independent root in the rational nature, yet ultimately it has the same source as religion; namely, the Infinite Good; that both are connected with the end of man and that the sphere of each is penetrated by the principles of the other.

At the present time when our country should be aglow with patriotic fervor, the study of Christian ethics will give the scientific basis of patriotism and show that it is a virtue and a sacred duty. Here we shall find the principle calling upon the Catholic woman to make the sacrifices which the present crisis requires; to simplify her way of life; to do without luxuries, even to deprive herself of daily comforts, and to accept all the privations that she may have to endure, and thus become a sharer of the soldier's sacrifice. To be specific: To encourage the young woman to economize in the preparation of food and to prevent all household waste (here we note the close correlation between ethics and household economics); to be willing to stifle the instinct to conform to fashion even to wearing a gown of last year's style; to substitute simple social functions for the elaborate receptions and theatre parties; in a word, to forego every superfluity, imbued as she should be with the feeling that it is the duty of every woman to do all in her power to help her brother called to the front.

In the forefront of subjects that furnish mental culture are the foreign languages. The tendency of the current educational scheme away from Greek is manifested widely. Within the last few years there has been a shift of emphasis also from the study of Latin. Meanwhile, the discussion regarding the theory of general discipline continues. Besides the value of whatever [120] "transfer" of general powers which does take place, the study of Latin is valuable as a means of preparation for the acquisition of a Romance language, as well as for its direct bearing upon the study of English. Prof. A. F. Lange, dean of the School of Education, University of California, says, "Just because it is so radical in the specific disciplines it can be made to furnish (the results of which are transferable, at least to things that are human), Latin as an educational means has virtues that other subjects have not." In addition to this two-fold reason of "general" and "specific disciplines" is the value of the content of the Latin masterpieces studied. Archbishop Spalding says, "The educational value of classics does not lie so much in the Greek and Latin languages as in the type of mind, the sense of proportion and beauty, the heroic temper, the philosophic mood, the keen relish for high enterprise, and the joyful love of life which they make known to us." Granted that in this factor the Latin classics are greatly surpassed by the Greek, yet the possibilities in this regard inherent in the study of the language form an additional reason why we would retain the Latin in the curriculum of the woman's college. The modern languages enjoy an increasing popularity as subjects which will function in the daily life. Either French or German should be a part of the education of every college alumna; she should have not only a reading knowledge, but a certain conversational facility in the language.

For the development of the intellectual and aesthetic quality of mind, we would emphasize the liberalizing value of literature with the caution to avoid academic-mindedness. The tendency has been to intellectualize everything taught in order that the student might know for the sake of knowing. Perhaps there has been too little conscious attempt to teach this subject in a manner that emphasizes and fixes in the student's mind right attitudes towards life and to develop fine appreciation and high ideals of womanhood. This will require the study of literary embodiments of their ideals.

History which we have been wont to rank next to literature as a culture study, is being displaced in a measure by the social sciences on the plea that according to present standards it is [121] overloaded with material which is not of substantial worth in realizing the present aim of education. The Catholic woman's college, however, cannot afford to lessen the emphasis upon the history of the Christian centuries.

Music should be included in the curriculum, not so much to enable the home-maker to furnish beautiful music as means of entertainment; the victrola [NB: brand of wind-up phonograph; also generally refers to any wind-up phonograph] of to-day enables us to hear the pianist's conception executed perfectly; to hear Godowski, not as Godowski really plays, but better,—as Godowski would wish to play, by enabling him to become his own best critic and to correct his own execution. The study of music is most valuable for its cultural effect. For the same reason art should be studied. The culture value of both music and art in developing appreciation of the fine arts and in cultivating the emotional side of one's nature is preeminently high. In adding to the power of the rational enjoyment of leisure they are significant studies.

Emphasis should be given especially to the cultivation of the speaking voice, both for its effect upon others and for its reaction upon one's own state of mind. A querulous voice is a powerful excitant of domestic scenes. On the other hand, a cultivated voice under control has a value that would be difficult to exaggerate. It acts effectively upon others and reacts upon one's self. Mr. Arnold Bennett says in his volume, The Human Machine, that ninety-nine per cent of all daily friction is caused by mere tone of voice. "It is a curious thing that an agreeable tone artificially and deliberately adopted will influence the mental attitude almost as much as the mental attitude will influence the tone. If you honestly feel resentful against some one, but having understood the foolishness of fury, intentionally mask your fury under a persuasive tone, your fury will at once begin to abate." It is of supreme importance that the curriculum should offer an opportunity for this element of cultural equipment.

For a large number of our students, the greatest value of their college education should come from both increased knowledge and deepened sympathy and insight. The aim is not to make literati, but to encourage the students to combine with [122] school activities and social experience the art of home-making and an appreciation of womanly ideals. Socialization of the student is the educational watchword of to-day; that is, to give the student the view that right conduct rather than knowledge is the ultimate aim of education.

The policy of the Catholic woman's college in the solution of this radically vital problem of modern life, the safeguarding of the home, reflects the spirit and judgment of the Catholic Church. It should stress the cultivation of that phase of college life both in curricular studies and in extra curricular activities which is best fitted to develop and strengthen the personal life which Dr. Andrews says "education for the home is ultimately to furnish." Our students should be of the intellectual-moral êlite [sic]. Historically, culture has meant that body of knowledge which individuals use in their leisure. We would not reconstruct the concept, but we would effect a rapprochement between the college curriculum and the normal experience so that the studies will function in the daily lives of the students from the standpoint of our present social organization, the basis of which is the home. Adapting the Catholic woman's college to the needs of its students and readjusting it to present conditions, will be the sign and the expression of our appreciation of, and our response to, the needs of present environment.

To summarize: The great problem of modern life is the saving of the home. As a real home, it is going and partly gone. The "downfall of the home" is a current theme of discussion. In the past, the home was preserved by the solidarity that work creates, but work has been greatly eliminated, and even the hours of men's labors are shortened by half. Therefore, the solidarity of the home as created and preserved by work is gone. Solidarity of another kind is the solution of the problem. What solidarity? There is only one—the solidarity of an organized leisure. If woman is to be a home-maker, the enrichment of the home by the systematic use of leisure becomes her real life-career. How to organize leisure is the heart of our problem. Woman must be educated, not to find her delight as a solitary with her books as her best companions, but in the center of the home where she must make herself and her home [123] so attractive as to charm the home folk; so that her husband will hasten from his place of business and her sons and daughters will hasten from school, all to join the home-circle. Are we educating our students for that at present? Will Greek and higher mathematics train the woman for this? We are educating woman away from the home. Culture has for its aim, or rather the school has for its aim in giving culture, to fit woman to shine in public, to lead in club work, and to take part in platform speaking. We, of the Catholic woman's college, know our aim. We must educate woman for organized leisure. How? It will take a long time to work out the system. The method is as yet only tentative, but we must keep the aim steadily in view; work and try out plans, and as far as they succeed, adopt them, mindful all the time that the inspiration of the best initiative and the dynamic of that self-sacrifice and devotion without which home would be but a hostelry, is the spirit of religion which invests ordinary duties with an extraordinary dignity and which is the rootage [sic] and the fruitage of home life and of all worthy social life.

DISCUSSION

Mary A. Moloy, A. M., Ph. D., College of Saint Teresa, Winona, Minnesota: In appreciation of Sister Ruth's beautiful paper I will say that I sincerely trust that she outlines what may be possible in our women's colleges in the not too distant future.

In general, as far as graduates of schools go, undoubtedly eighty out of one hundred girls find their places in the home. With college graduates, however, it is different. From statistics gathered some years since from colleges granting degrees to women, we find that only thirty-three per cent of college women graduates find their place in the home. Can we at the present ignore the claims of the sixty-seven per cent who may wish to pursue work other than that bearing directly on the home?

We are not saying that this attitude of women pointing away from the home is as it should be. We merely see it as a condition with which we have to reckon. Women are restless in this generation. They are taking their places side by side with men in political, economic, sociological and pedagogical fields. We do not say that this is as it should be but the fact is not to be overlooked. If a young woman wishes to become a specialist in higher mathematics, in the classics or in history or sociology, is her ambition legitimate? Shall we let her go from our keeping [124] to seek the training she desires where the boldest and the saddest doctrines advanced in philosophy since the organization of the faculty of liberal arts are made part of her course?

Let us give her mathematics, the classics, history, even the professional courses in law and medicine, in the safe and holy atmosphere of the Catholic college. Let the mathematics, the classics, the science, be so full, so thorough, so advanced, that for the mere secular branches alone she can nowhere find them more thoroughly and carefully presented. Let us give her what she wishes of secular learning that is legitimate, and thus save her to the Catholic faith through the philosophy that she will learn from us to interpret correctly and in terms of eternal truth, her theory of science, her practice in sociology or her interpretation of history. This is quite in accord with the practice of the Church in all times. There has never been a legitimate demand on the part of men or women that she has not magnificently provided for.

It is the ultimate business of the Catholic college to educate women out of their restlessness back again into the home.

It has been said that the home is a vanishing institution, but we must change all this. The home has been turned out into the street and the paved road has invaded the cloister. But souls are to be saved by the hundreds and it is not a matter of supererogation but a sacred imperative duty to rescue the flower of our Catholic young womanhood from the education that will prove to be their undoing. We must bend every available energy to enable our young women to take their places side by side with the women of the times in every line of legitimate endeavor in which women are engaged. Let us not forget that in the first centuries of our era there were Christians in the very palaces of the Caesars and we know to what glorious purpose.

The Catholic college for women in America has a magnificent opportunity to regenerate the times. Can we afford to side-step the issue, be blind to its appeal and fail in the supreme work that as Catholic educators we are called upon to do?

Rev. J. H. Ryan, D. D., St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, Ind.: It would be difficult, indeed, to exaggerate the value of the learned and timely paper, "The Curriculum of the Catholic Woman's College and the Problems of Modern Life." The author not only appreciates the conditions existing in our colleges for women, but what is more important, possesses a vision of the future status of women in American society and of the means of preparing them for their work. She emphasizes two points which to my mind are of fundamental import. First, the Catholic woman's college is for the education of women—rather an obvious statement, yet one constantly lost sight of by educators. No one denies that women can follow, and very successfully, the courses outlined for men in college and university, but the question is not, can they, but ought they? It was a foolish pride which prompted educational authorities to lay [125] down identical courses for men and women, ignoring all the physiological and psychological differences between the sexes. Let us go back to what the ideal of the woman's college ought to be—a womanly woman. Secondly, the Catholic woman's college is Catholic; that is, its ideals, its methods, its spirit, are imbued with Catholic truth and tend to the production of ideal Catholic women. If the college is false to either of these ideals, its raison d'etre ceases then and there.

Before discussing in particular the curriculum of our women's colleges and its bearing on the problems which concern Catholic women to-day, a word of suggestion may not be out of place. There is altogether too much formality in our teaching; too much book work, note-taking, memorizing, and that especially in the cultural subjects. There is too little correlation of thought and action. Education must not be divorced from life; they are in reality one and the same thing, viewed from different angles. If there is one place where we would look for and expect dynamism in education it is in the colleges for women. Men readily throw off the evil effects of a formalistic training by contact with a vital, strenuous world, but the lives of women are more sheltered and guarded, and they have not the opportunities of so readily correcting false impressions absorbed during college days.

The author of the paper under discussion realizes the new orientation in woman's education. She demands, and for excellent reasons, that it be socialized more and more in order to meet the conditions and requirements of modern life. The industrialism of the last century has indeed wrought great changes in the home, and therefore in the lives of women with respect to the home. And not only have the old conceptions of the home been changed; the very outlook of women on life itself has been marvelously transformed. Women, and especially college women, do not look upon marriage to-day as the end-all of their existence. Statistics from secular colleges will bear out this statement. Unfortunately there are no statistics available for our Catholic women's colleges, though I see no reason why the same conclusion should not be true of them as well. Then, women to-day are becoming more and more independent economically. Over seventy-five per cent of the graduates of Catholic women's colleges go either into the professions or into business. In the majority of cases, it is true, this is merely temporary occupation. Industry, therefore, has not only changed the home; it has worked a revolution in women themselves and in their attitude toward life.

Woman's education ought to be socialized, but can that be done by the mere addition of "social studies" to the present curriculum? Will the super-imposition of sociology, political economy, domestic science, on cultural subjects, develop a woman capable of appreciating the needs of the times and of doing her part in meeting its demands on her? To my mind an altogether different emphasis is necessary. The home-making studies must not be dragged along as so many step-children; [126] they are real children, the heirs of the future. They must be stressed and emphasized. They must be given the place of honor in the curriculum. A new curriculum is so necessary as a change in emphasis, a reorganization of the old curriculum and a new correlation of its parts, with insistence placed on those subjects which will prepare our women not only "to make a living" as someone has said, "but also to make a life." This change would be vital, it is true, but not so radical as it might seem at first thought. An ideal curriculum would be one in which, during the freshman and sophomore years, social, scientific, and home-making studies would be in the ascendancy, not neglecting, however, the study of the languages. For example, a young woman, in addition to religion, English, and a language, might elect from the courses in logic, psychology, child-psychology, physiology, chemistry, biology, or domestic science, and care of children and the sick, during two years. This plan would also allow for the continued study during the whole college course of any subject, vocational or cultural, in which the student was interested. The freshman and sophomore years, therefore, would prepare a woman for her position in after-life, would teach her the subjects every woman ought to know, together with one or two courses which meet the demands of her individual talent or taste. The last two years ought to be divided between subjects which bear directly or indirectly on her future work, or which represent a secondary taste in the individual. In these latter years emphasis should be placed upon ethics, history, civics, and sociology. But someone may ask, "What about the cultural, what about the development of personality?" I answer that there is a culture of the sciences as well as a culture of art, or of history, or of literature. Culture is not a thing apart, is not a thing fastened on the mind; it is rather the flowering of qualities inherent in one's personality, which can be obtained by scientific courses as well as through the medium of language study.

Again, and this is a point not touched upon in the paper under discussion, in the process of socializing woman's education, great insistence must be placed upon the health of our students. It is manifestly and statistically false, that college life injures the health of women students. Four years of college have built up many a youthful body. In this matter of physical education, the college has a clear and distinct duty toward not only its students, but towards the State and the race as well. Army examining boards have been loud in their complaints of the physical deficiencies found in the mass of American men. Is the physical condition of our women any better? I think not. Gymnasium work should be made a curricular study in our colleges, and credit given for the same. Two hours of physical training weekly is little enough,—but this minimum ought to be exacted of every woman student. Whether physical training is to be more and more individualized, (and this is the present-day tendency), according to the special weaknesses and defects of each girl, or whether it is to take other directions, is a question that [127] may fairly be left to the faculty of each institution to solve. The necessity, however, of putting every convenience in the way of our women to make their bodies strong, healthy, and robust, is a duty which cannot be overlooked, and should not be shirked. For the woman of the future, a healthy body is as necessary as a sound mind.

Religion must hold first place in a Catholic college for women. A four years' course in Christian Doctrine, (this subject is vitally necessary, as so many of our young women matriculate from public high schools), Church history, Bible study, and ethics, taught in the manner and after the spirit noted by the author, cannot fail to produce lasting results. The atmosphere of our colleges, the lives of the instructors, are such that the translation of religion from theory to fact is constantly kept before the eyes and the minds of the student body in a manner not possible anywhere else. Let me bear my humble testimony to this fact, namely, that there is one thing in which our Catholic woman's college will never fail—in turning out strong, pure, upright, Catholic women.

The author mentions art and music as curricular helps in aiding women to meet the problems of modern life. Both art and music, it is true, have a professional value, but where their place is and should be in the socializing of female education, is difficult for me to perceive. I wish to voice a vigorous and emphatic protest against, not the retention of music and art in the curriculum of a woman's college, but against the undue prominence sometimes given to them, and especially to music. The following reasons prompt this assertion: First, they are of little or no practical value in after-life; secondly, the author mentions that mechanical inventions do better than any individual can ever hope to do; thirdly, they take up time, to the detriment both of the individual and of the college itself, which ought to be devoted to real college work. Were a college woman to attempt to carry "double music," voice culture, and one instrument,—entailing ten or twelve hours a week for instruction and practice, the result would be unfortunate and spell inefficiency. The curriculum of the present-day college is so full, as it stands, that one cannot afford to lose so many hours every week for music or art. To the difficulty, that our woman's colleges are not endowed, and therefore depend financially on music and art to meet the expenses of the institution as a whole, I have and know no reply. My sole contention is that neither the college curriculum nor the problems of modern life demand so much time as is now given to music and art.

In conclusion, may I thank the author for her illuminating paper, and publicly express my conviction that as long as we have such learned and devoted Sisters as she, teaching in our institutions, little or no fear need be had that our colleges are failing in their duty, either towards the present or coming generation of women.

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Footnotes:

1. U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin 1914, No. 36, p. 20

2. Educational Writings, edited by J. A. Green, Views and Experiences, p. 162

3. P. 280.

4. Report of the Com. of Education 1916, p. 447

5. Op. cit. p. 7

6. "The Future Education of Women," The Youth's Companion, May 31, 1917

7. Democracy and Social Ethics, p. 83

8. School and Society, "On Radicalism in Education," May 5, 1917, p. 524

9. Cf. Syllabus of Home Economics, 1913

10. The Education of Our Girls, p. 210-21

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Source: Sister Mary Ruth, OSD, "The Curriculum of the Catholic Woman's College in Relation to the Problems of Modern Life," Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 14, no. 1 (Nov. 1917): 106–127.

Joseph Wehrle, "Education for Character Formation" (1921)

[198] In addressing myself to a consideration of the question proposed for discussion, character formation, which at the present day is exciting so much interest, eliciting so much discussion and on which in these meetings so many and such excellent papers have been read, it may not be amiss to preface that this paper makes no pretensions to a thorough and exhaustive treatment of the subject; it is as limited by time allotment as the subject is broad in phases of treatment. A general view of character formation in Catholic schools in contradistinction to the procedure of the secular system of education was suggested and adopted.

Education connotes efficiency. Character formation is the acid test of efficiency. At the present day there seems to be on the market a surplus of educational methods of forming character which collapse when subjected to the pressure of life's stern realities. Too often the child proudly marches forth from the school with a neatly beribboned certificate tucked under his arm. His talents augur success in life; his certificate guarantees it. The rugged air of outside life, however, soon refutes the one and disproves the other. The claim in attempted explanation is immediately advanced that the training in school was not at fault; it was admirably adapted, it is argued, to the formation of a sterling character. But the failure to measure up to the test of real efficiency belies such claim. The fact remains that there was no real character there.

Character in general is personality viewed in the light of conduct. In a more restricted sense it stands for the assemblage of man's acquired moral qualities grafted into his natural temperament. Both nature and experience cooperate in its production. Nature endows newly created rational life with intellectual and moral qualities, dispositions and tendencies that vary with the [199] individual. This fund of endowments includes susceptibilities for responding to external influences and potentialities for developing in various ways. On the other hand, the part of character that is acquired by experience or nurture is by no means inconsequent. Concomitantly with the advent of reason, personal will and the force of motives enter a contest for mastery and the contention continues without truce until death appears on the hotly contested field and drops the truncheon. "Each solicitation conquered, each impulse to immediate gratification resisted by building habits of self-control, goes to form a strong will and the stronger a man's will grows, the greater the facility with which he can repress transitory impulses, and the more firmly can he adhere to a course once selected in spite of obstacles." The natural qualities, dispositions and tendencies, therefore, disciplined by a strong will, have as a resultant a character that is admirable, worthy of imitation and in general a testimonial to the soundness of the system of training involved in its production. Mere conformance to external observances and conventions of the day, or merit and worth as our present none too good world estimates them, are frequently but erroneously taken for character. Real character as often makes its habitat in those unapproved by the world as it is found wanting in those whom the world apotheosizes. It finds expression in simple conformity to the laws of God and man, in an approach, namely, the nearer the better, to the ideal and perfect character, the God-Man.

The process of formation of a sterling character as far as time and effort are concerned comes under the same rules as the attainment of proficiency in any of the arts and sciences. "Art is long and life is short", the sage of old declared; so also character is the crown of long and tedious application to the formation of habits that become a second nature. In various lines of human endeavor, mastery is obtained only by dint of practice — by going over the subject-matter again and again. No amount of study, however great, is of any avail. Practice and practice alone confers the palm of victory. In history, for instance, study and study alone is the open sesame to its storehouse of facts. The process of formation of a sterling character is a synthesis of [200] both; in its production, the inclusion and importance of study and practice, of storing the mind with an abundance of good, sound principles of action and actually expressing them in conduct, are very marked. The reason lies in the interdependence existing between the will and the intellect. The intellect gives light to see what we are doing and the will strength to do it. The operations of both are essential for the performance of any work; the intellect in its capacity of seeing, knowing and understanding and the will in its capacity of putting forth effort, striving and achieving. "Without will, the intellect would be a vain and useless power of seeing visions and dreams; without intellect, the will would be a blind force struggling in darkness, beating the air." The intellect points out the course of action or duty and the will can brace itself to the task of fulfilling it or it can follow a course of action the very opposite in end and merit or, again it can remain in a dormant or lethargic state, refusing to act at all. Both will and intellect are necessary but the will is the more necessary of the two, for the direction of life's course, shaping of destiny and fashion and mould  [sic] of conduct are determined by it. The basic element, therefore, of character is strength of will; while the soundness and practical nature of the principles stored in the intellect and the assistance and inspiration of God's grace are highly important factors in its formation.

Formation of character, in so far as the intellect is concerned, demands that the guiding principles of life, learned at school and at the mother's knee, be sound and good. A non-Catholic writer says:

"Many parents act upon the principle that it is of no importance what may be the morals or sentiments entertained by a teacher, providing there is no immorality exhibited before the pupils and no attempt to inculcate principles deemed erroneous. But no opinion could be more untrue and practically dangerous. His teachings and his examples will be insensibly influenced by the doctrines he holds, and there will occur a thousand ways in which the pupil will comprehend the view and feelings of the preceptor; and these views will not have the less influence, from the fact that he makes no direct effort to impress them upon the pupils' mind. A direct effort of this kind would put the learner on his guard; but the other plan allays all fear and the poison silently and imperceptibly works."

[201] In many cases parents must answer the indictment of inculcating in their children's minds false principles or of failure to inculcate any at all. The conviction seems to have generally crept in that all responsibility for the mental, moral and even physical development of the child devolves on the school. Education of offspring is the essential, primary object of matrimony and indeed those parents are sadly recusant of their God-imposed duty who sit supinely by and exercise no supervision over their children's training or who, which is still worse, inculcate false principles by the laxity of their lives. If either of these two sources of supply is contaminated or runs dry, all attempts on the part of others at formation of character are in grave danger of proving abortive. Fortunately, the system of training in Catholic schools precludes the possibility of arraignment on the former charge. The principles for which the system stands are the eternal principles of Catholic truth and the teachers are God's own servants. The default of parents in their duty presents an obstacle often insurmountable; regular contact of teachers and parents, however, in many cases proves a very efficacious remedy.

Religion must be the feature of the program. Preparation for life, that is, the formation of a strong sterling character, in view of the existence of God and all it entails, that provides for the temporal prosperity alone of man, that relegates to other spheres the consideration of eternity, that divorces religion from secular advancement, fails by a half, if not entirely. It writes no prescription for the ills consequent on the defection of our first parents; it may have an abhorrence for excesses and enormities of evil but at the most is able to engender in the mind a natural tendency toward rectitude of life, which, however, proves altogether inadequate when the issues involves an eternal supremacy of good or evil; it, in fine, takes no cognizance of God or the laws of God which are interwoven through every branch of knowledge and human endeavor. Preparation worthy of the name occupies itself with the things of time and eternity; it qualifies the individual for the full attainment of the ends of those two perfect societies, Church and State; it provides for all lines of human endeavor but never independently of ethical principles; it prevents the perversion of knowledge to unhallowed [202] and vicious ends by toning it down and permeating it with the love of God and neighbor; it, while bringing out innate virtue and latent powers and moulding them into a form that makes for success in secular pursuits, stamps on the whole the impress of an accountability to be rendered beyond the grave for the proper or improper use of the Master's talents. It, in short, lays down the foundation, provides those good and sound principles of life, which are a conditio sine qua non for the formation of a sterling Christian character.

Quotations from profane authors are helpful but too much importance should not be attached to them. Passages from God's own book, The Imitation of Christ, lives of the saints, etc., have a prior claim to consideration. Nothing can supply their place. St. Ignatius, an adept in the art and science of the spiritual life, strongly recommended the Imitation to his confreres, while his manners, words and actions were fairly a dramatization of it. These books or some of theme were the treasury from which the saints drew their inspiration, and surely their value is none the less great to-day. Also, where in the files of history can we find more admirable and sterling characters than the saints who modeled themselves after Him who was like them in all things, sin excepted? How surprisingly few of the great names of history stand for real character! Many names, synonymous with phenomenal intellectual capacity and achievement or surpassing genius, are inscribed on history's rosters but how many are besmirched by excesses and vices that are as deplorable as foreign to the make-up of real character! The records of models, such as the saints, quicken and perpetuate in youth a spirit of emulation and to-day, more than ever before, the principles that actuated them and adorned their exemplary lives are of great importance in the education of youth. Youth must have ideals; it must have an image in its mind of noble character. Acts and conduct should conform to that image in the same way in which our forefathers in the faith strove to reflect in their lives the life of Christ and thus render themselves worthy of the appellation, Christian, which is Alter Christus.

It is well here to mention that the youthful mind may set up for imitation a model of screen celebrity or notoriety, the fanciful [203] creation of some questionable writer or some other hero by popular vote of the day. The baneful influence of the screen and cheap novel will always be with us and must be counteracted. A love for the reading and studying of good books must be fostered; Catholic books, especially lives of great and good men, must receive their due quota of attention. Finally, the school must enlist the cooperation of the home.

Of primal importance in the formation of character is the practice or art of right living, the art of giving expression to the good and sound principles stored in the intellect. These principles are not imparted merely for themselves; they are not their own reward. The motivating principle of their impartation is conduct. The natural order of things is reversed if such knowledge elicits no practical expression, if it has no bearing on right conduct. The mind may be a veritable thesaurus of sacred and profane lore, but unless this same lore radiates on human actions a positive influence for good, its very existence cannot be justified. Better by far no erudition than that which fails of expression in the all-important drama of life. The desideratum or objective, then, is not merely the impartation of principles, sound and good and with a potentiality for influencing conduct in the right line, but rather their conversion into an actuating force for good. They are not to be restricted to the influence they exert upon the will. The reason of their existence is to superinduce by long uninterrupted practice of virtue upon the soul, habits that characterize the friend of God and heir of heaven.

That such habits might be formed the will must submit to judicious and methodical exercise for nature gives but the disposition for the formation of habits. They are acquired by the repetition of similar acts. Each act placed leaves a determination or inclination for like acts, many of which are required for the formation of a habit. By resisting the passions the powers of the will against the passions are gradually increased and a certain disposition for eliciting similar actions against their allurements is induced. If on the contrary the passions are indulged the powers of the will for resisting them are weakened and the inclination toward the object of the passions waxes stronger. The [204] oftener similar acts are repeated the greater becomes the inclination and facility for placing such acts.

Important in the formation of habits is the constant discipline of school life. The rules and laws laid down for observance, regular and punctual attendance, performance of tasks at home, etc., have a value beyond that of the ends immediately intended. They are excellent disciplinary measures for the will and important steps toward its acquiring power of control over itself. Truly, the pupils might chafe under the restraint they occasion and put forth with reluctance the effort their observance demands, but this is the best proof of their efficacy. Exercises of the will, like all species of training, exact a real effort, and the sooner the realization comes home to the child that life is serious and that all the valuable things of life lie buried in difficulties and are unearthed only by dint of hard, determined, persistent effort, the more rapidly will the development of a strong will advance. It would be a profound mistake to follow the present-day tendency of exacting the least possible effort or application on the part of the pupil. The discard of the difficult and unpleasant in favor of the easy and pleasant is a risky departure from the time-honored procedure of the past and a course that is more of an obstacle than a help toward the development of a strong will. Later life will be fraught with many trials, severe tests of even a sterling character; onerous duties, demanding more than a modicum of strength and perseverance will have to be performed; impediments will be encountered and will have to be removed by unflagging effort. The necessity of a strong, resolute will successfully to cope with life's future problems is patent to all, but transferring the burden of work from the pupil to the teacher is certainly not a means to that end.

The duties, sacrifices and penances that our religion imposes upon us are exercises of paramount importance. The frequentation of the sacraments of penance and Holy Eucharist is the chief and most fruitful exercise. Through it a wholesome, moral atmosphere is created; a high standard of living is maintained and the mighty truths of our holy religion are kept alive in the intellect and find expression in the will. God's grace, won through [205] them, inspires and strengthens the will and aids it to do its work well. Hence it follows that training of the will should be a natural process for Catholics. But the self-restraints involved in and consequent on religious practices are not in accord with the natural inclinations of man; hence, his metamorphosis into a creature of deeply rooted religious practices must begin with the awakening of reason and be the principal object of education. Reiterated efforts are in constant demand in religious practices and in this consists its special value in will training. Isolated acts amount to little. Our religion calls for yearly, weekly and daily duties, often hard and severe, it is true, but, nevertheless to be performed. The will submits to the rule and order demanded by religion and in doing so absorbs something of order and regularity in operating. In the school, therefore, too much importance cannot be attached to the task of seeing that the pupils are practical Catholics and of encouraging the backward and stimulating those prone to relax to renewed effort. This, in conjunction with the exemplification of religion's transforming power in the lives of the teachers, the consecrated servants of God, is a potent factor in the training of the will.

It is imperative that there be a reasonable supervision and constant encouragement if results are to be forthcoming. Children seem to be of the sanguine temperament or of a combination of several types of temperament of which the sanguine is a component. Great enthusiasm is manifested in the beginning but it soon cools and unless stimulated is in danger of going out. Parish societies, sodalities or confraternities are often found of value in bracing up drooping spirits. Again, the home conditions may offset all that the school attempts. I would suggest as a remedy parent-teacher associations. The minor evils of school life can to a large extent be corrected through them and in different cases even the major evils respond to the treatment. A large part of the lack of cooperation of the home with the school is due, in my opinion, to ignorance of the real value of school work.

In summing up this delineation of the subject, for the time allotment restricts it to a delineation, the Catholic system, putting faith before prosperity, virtue before riches, occupies the position of vantage in the formation of real, sterling character. The [206] natural and supernatural motives it proposes are an antidote to every possible form of human frailty; moreover, centuries have tried the system and failed to find it wanting because its procedure is drawn entirely from the life and teachings of the greatest possible real character, the God-Man.

Discussion

Rev. P. M. Stief: We have here a very pertinent problem, and I desire to emphasize particularly the practical aspects of it, for Dr. Wehrle has dealt very capably with the theory but had little opportunity, necessarily, to expand the practical features.

It seems to me—and I believe you will agree—that our Catholic system of education, with all its conscientious and self-sacrificing teachers, with all its aims centering in the education of the whole man, body and soul, for this life and the next, is missing a cog somewhere. I don't want to seem over-critical, but I cannot see that we are turning out young men and women of sterling religious character in as great numbers as we should expect. I don't mean to say that we are not doing better in this matter than other, non-religious, schools; but, in my experience at least, I have noticed that while a large proportion of the boys and girls who leave our schools yearly are of solid character, yet there are all too many who are not a credit to us. These latter seem to fall largely into two opposite classes: those who are too timid, too docile, too weak-kneed, almost too cowardly, I would say; and those who, on leaving us, soon throw to the winds all respect for law and decency, who have little regard for God or His Church and are a living disgrace to the school that reared them.

Wherein then lies our failure? Religion, we are all convinced, is a most powerful agency in character-building. The fault must be with us and our methods. Is it possible that we are not making the proper use of religion in our teaching the young? Is it possible that religion is too much wrapped up with the rules and routine of school life? Or is it that we are regarding it as a separate study, tacked on to the secular branches, when it should really permeate, illumine and ennoble all other studies by means of skillful correlation? Is it possible that our teachers, in their own lives, are so absorbed with the cultivation of supernatural virtues, to the exclusion of the natural virtues and motives? For these latter, because they seem more tangible to people destined to live in the world and not in the cloister, can often be very helpful. I say this, of course, with all due respect for things supernatural, which I am sure we will not neglect. But do we strive, by all good pedagogic means, to instill in the children a knowledge of such natural virtues as reverence, pity, self-respect, sincerity, square-dealing, sympathy, candor, etc.? And [207] do we help them and urge them to practice these even now in their lives? They may show deep respect to the priest and Sisters, or even to Sister X who depends on her personality or the religious garb for her discipline, but do they show a like reverence for their parents or for others in authority outside the classroom? They may apologize to us for a wrong done, but will they be honorable enough to "make up" with a schoolmate whom they may have injured? In character training, as in other branches of education, knowledge plus practice make for success. And we will do well to seek out situations—even invent some—that will give our students practice in the virtues we wish to inculcate.

Law, as Father Wehrle points out, is of course basic in character formation. Our pupiles should comprehend well the meaning and significance of divine law and that all human laws, ecclesiastical, civil, social, derive their force and power from the divine law; that, therefore, duty regardless of consequences must be our standard of conduct, as well in the early grades as in later life. But what attitude toward the "reign of law" do we inspire in our pupils? Do they not look on it as a bugaboo, an external hardship, something to be evaded if possible? Do we show them, in season and out, that laws are for our good, that the Commandments given to Moses on Sinai were a blessing from God, leading the human race, which had wandered far afield, back to Him and to real happiness even in this world?

As regards the will, which is also a basic factor here, the theory of which Father Wehrle has shown, I will make one observation which not all of you may agree with, and I shall be glad to hear your opinions. I think we depend too much on the external acts of religion, for instance, bows, genuflections, set-times for prayers, compulsory attendance at daily Mass, the group practice for children's confessions, etc. Whilst all these practices are invaluable in that they develop habits which make the performance of religious duties somewhat easier in later life, yet they may, and doubtless often do, become meaningless and automatic, unless they are made to strengthen the will and thereby to develop real will-habits that are so necessary if our men and women are to do the right things at all times and under all circumstances.

This desideratum is not reached by mere repetition of acts, mere routine. When our boys went into the war camps and, under military discipline, were forced to adopt regular habits—rising and retiring early, wearing sensible army shoes—many people said, "When they are mustered out we will have boys trained to take proper care of their health and strength." But somehow it didn't happen. They now keep later hours, if anything, and the pointed toe is still the most popular mode in footwear. 

The real volitional habits are developed by the "free performance of duty as understood under the law of right and wrong." It must be a free performance; and right here I think we probably make a mistake in our school practice. Perhaps we hedge in our children on all sides with too [208] many rules and too much routine. We are safeguarding the children certainly—for the present and while they are with us; we may be encouraging good habits; but we must make sure to strengthen the will and to lay the foundation for character. We need to give our pupils more scope for free choice and the exercise of self-control. Full supervision and control by the teacher are probably necessary in the first grade. But from then on there should be an ever increasing freedom in our classes until, at the end of the eighth grade, we can turn out our boys and girls into the world—if necessary—and feel confident that they already know what liberty is and have the power to use it rightly.

One thing more and I have done. It is not enough that we gradually lesson our restraint and routine. We must stimulate desire—desire to do one's duty regardless of consequences, and a real desire (born of love for, and understanding of, our holy religion) to stand forth before the world as sound, practical, fearless Catholics, a glory to God, a credit to their Church and to our schools. What finer type of character could we desire?

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Source: Rev. Joseph J. Wehrle, "Education for Character Formation," Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 18, no. 1 (Nov. 1921): 198–208.