The Teacher's Practical Philosophy

The author of this work was formerly Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Yale University. In 1906 and 1907 he spent some time lecturing in Japan and Korea on the subject with which this volume is concerned. The Japanese exhibited a surprising degree of interest in moral education-an interest that speaks well for the present and future of that people. In his Preface Professor Ladd, in speaking of this, says:

"Among the Japanese the interest in the moral aspect and value of the system of public education was at that time intense and pervasive. It embraced not only the teachers as a class and the officials of the government in the department of education, but also the leaders in the army and navy, in business circles, and in civil and social affairs. As instances of this interest I might cite the remark of a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War, who declared that his principal anxiety in training the nearly thirty thousand recruits under his charge was to give them the right 'spiritual education,' and also the fact that I was repeatedly urged into giving additional courses of lectures on the ethics of business inthe government commercial colleges, where ethics is made a required subject of study through one of the two years of the course."

The author has performed a very important work in preparing the present volume, which is as vital as it is practical. Great emphasis is here laid upon the personal equation of the teacher and the moral element of instruction. It is a volume that will appeal with compelling force to all persons worthy to train the young, and will give them inspiration as well as practical instruction necessary to fulfilling the high function of their calling.

Two systems of education have been weighed in the balance and found wanting: The theological education given where state and church are united, and purely intellectual training. In Spain, Portugal, Russia-indeed, in all lands where a dominant religious faith has had the training of the young, we find a most deplorable failure in the development of the noblest and best in the people. Where religious dogmatism dominates education, we find invariably narrow religious bigotry, superstition and bitter hostility to the intellectual freedom which is the handmaid of progress and the wayshower of civilization; while narrow intellectual training has failed to properly develop the moral character of the young or foster that idealism that is as necessary to the true greatness and enduring progress of a civilization of a people as oxygen is necessary to the physical body. Professor Ladd believes that:

"The lack of discipline, through moral and religious motives and in accordance with moral and religious ideals, in the home-life, in school and in college, and in society at large is the prime source of all our national evils so far as they are connected with the educative processes now in vogue."

The treatise is divided into four major sections, in which are considered at length and luminously the function, equipment and chief ideals of the teacher, and his place in society and the state.

-The Twentieth Century Magazine, Volume 4 [1911]