Pupils' Standards of Judging Citizenship

Abstract

At the present time the younger generation is commonly criticized for a lack of serious intentions, a low standard of morality, and a general lack of those qualities that make for good citizenship. The whole matter was presented to the writer so forcibly that an experiment was undertaken to ascertain, if possible, the answers to the following questions: (i) Are our high schools educating our young people to become better citizens? (2) Are the standards of moral judgment higher in the case of girls than in the case of boys? (3) What undesirable traits in a citizen do our young people most despise? The moral standards by which pupils judge the actions of other people and which regulate their own conduct cannot easily be ascertained, for pupils often have higher standards than their actions indicate. It is difficult, therefore, to answer the foregoing questions. The writer, knowing that it was almost impossible to secure direct answers, decided to try an indirect method of approach. It is not easy to determine what an individual will do under certain circumstances, but his judgment of the actions of other people generally gives some idea of his moral standards. The first problem was to obtain a list of the traits or virtues that necessarily enter into the making of a good citizen. After consulting business men, bankers, lawyers, teachers, ministers, and laborers, the following list of virtues was made up: courage, honesty, industry, (chastity), obedience, service, sobriety, tolerance, truthfulness, and thrift. The term morality was a very general term but seemed to convey the meaning of in the vocabulary of the pupil better than the term chastity itself and hence was used. Ten stories, each illustrating the lack of one of these virtues, were then prepared. As an example, the story illustrating the lack of the virtue honesty follows: