Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1912 — Habit of Obeying Dictates of Honor and Duty [ARTICLE]

Habit of Obeying Dictates of Honor and Duty

By DR. CHARLES W. ELIOT

The real object in education is to cultivate in the child a capacity for self-control or self-government; not a habit of submission to an overwhelming, arbitrary, external power, but a habit of obeying the dictates of honor and duty, as enforced by active will power within the child. In child--hood and in youth it is of the utmost importance to appeal steadily and almost exclusively to motives which will be operative in after life. In too much of our systematic education we appeal to motives which we are sure cannot last; to motives which may answer for little children of

six, ten or twelve, but which are entirely inapplicable to boys or girls of fourteen, sixteen or eighteen. Thus the motive <4 fear is one of these transitory motives on which organized education in the part has simps*; exclusively relied; yet fear is a very ineffective matin with sdnHs