Do not expect to get the facts concerning these suggested conditions by inquiry among your children.  They are reticent, naturally, on such matters when talking with adults; besides, the sense of school honor holds them to silence.  If they tell you voluntarily, you are happy in their free confidence.  Do not betray it; simply let it lead you to make further inquiry at the school from the authorities and stimulate you to insist that, for the sake of the spiritual good of the young, the school must furnish conditions of moral health.

     I. References for Study

     Ella Lyman Cabot, Voluntary Help to the Schools, chaps. vii,
     viii.  Houghton Mifflin Co., $0.60.

     W.A.  Baldwin, “The Home and the Public Schools,” Religious
     Education, February, 1912. $0.65.

     II.  Further Reading

     M. Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools. 2 vols. 
     Longmans.

     John Dewey, The School and Society.  The University of Chicago
     Press, $1.00.

     Smith, All the Children of All the People.  Macmillan, $1.50.

     G.A.  Coe, “Virtue and the Virtues,” Religious Education,
     February, 1912.

     III.  Topics for Discussion

     1.  What ought parents to know about public-school life?

     2.  In visiting a school what may the parent do to acquire
     information in the proper way?

     3.  How may the home co-operate with the school?

     4.  What degree of instruction in morals ought the school to give?

     5.  In what way does the school best help in moral training?

     6.  What do you know about the conditions on the playgrounds of your
     own school?

CHAPTER XIX

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES

Moral crises arise in every family.  Deeply as we may desire to maintain an even tenor of character-development, in harmony and quietness, occasions will bring either our own imperfections or those of our children—­or of our neighbors’ children—­to a focus and throw them in high relief on the screen.  Progress comes not alone in perpetual placidity.  When temper slips from control, when angry passions rule, when the spirit under discipline rebels, when a course of petty wrongdoing comes to a head, when secret sins are discovered, and when we suddenly find ourselves confronted with a tragic problem in the higher life, it is still important to remember that the crisis is just as truly a part of the educational process as is the orderly, gradual method of development.

A moral crisis is an experience in which our acts are such, or have such results, that they are thrown out in a white light that reveals their inner meaning, so that they are sharply discerned for their spiritual and character values.  Then in that light courses of conduct have to be valued anew, reconsidered, and determined.