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Quote by: Chalk Perhaps discourage the outright immoral.. but morals tend to be shaped by a persons' individual experiences and views, meaning there is arguably no one correct moral stance. I don't think it's possible to enforce morality without enforcing a type of ideology on people.. and you only need to recap the history books to see that ends in disaster. |
From 1840 to 1958 free public education transmitted the ideology of democracy, and prepared our young for good moral judgement, while maintain separation of state and church. I am unaware of any disaster, except what has happened since we stopped doing this.
"Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be aquired". Lloyd George
William James in his 1899 book "Talks to Teachers on Psychology" explains the importance to teachers of training children for such habits, and at the 1917 National Education Association Conference, speakers spoke of preparing students for good citizenship. Following text books stressed this as the reason for taxing all people and educating all children.
"Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty" Shaftesbury Again, I say education was about training the higher thinking skills for good reasoning, and moral judgement. We thought "good manners" and "moral" were synonomous, and that "virtue" and "strength" were synonomous. When we add an "e" to "moral" we get "morale" that high spirited feeling that comes from believing we have done the right thing. Morale is the Spirit of America.
My grandmother would say, we teach children math to teach them how to think. Diagramming sentences was another way to learn logic. The Conceptual Method of education taught progressively more complex concepts. This is tied to liberal education.
It is also tied to preventing mental dis-order, a state of mental confusion that can be dangerous to self and others.
"Personal liberty is the paramount to essential to human dignity and happiness".
Bulwer
"In the same proportion that ignorance and vice prevail in a republic, will the government partake of of dispotism". Sprague (note a republic can be despotic and that is what those who insist we are not a democracy are going to get if they don't gain a better understanding of democracy)
Or in other words, only highly moral people can have liberty. For how to prepare people for good moral judgement, go to Socrates.
"No free government, or the blessings of liberty can be preserved to any people but by firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by the frequent recurrence to fundamental principles". Patrick Henery
We taught all children a set of values until 1958. Do you know them? Do you believe we can maintain liberty when what is written here is not taught in our schools and is not common knowledge?