The Moral Instruction of Children

Right ideas and right habits form separate parts of moral education in the editor’s preface to Felix Adler’s The Moral Instruction of Children. Punctuality, regularity, silence, and steady work give school discipline an ethical role. The preface places these routines beside a change in educational aims: obedience gives way to conscience, self-control, and individual insight. Respect for classmates’ work, accuracy, kindness, and generosity supply practical examples of conduct that schools can encourage.

The author’s discussion of Moses shows another way to teach moral ideas through a biblical figure. Adler describes a reformer educated at Pharaoh’s court whose desert solitude gives him time to develop his ideas about freeing Hebrew slaves. He reads the burning bush as an expression of inner conviction and connects freedom with the need for moral legislation. The golden calf episode brings disappointment into this account, while Michel Angelo’s sculpture of Moses provides a further point of interpretation. These passages connect the formation of ethical purpose with the responsibilities that freedom brings.