The Teaching of Intellectual and Moral Virtues

Abstract

N HIGHER education we are confronted with three prominent facts: (a) the student, (b) the teacher, (c) the subject matter. A college student (ideally at least) comes to college to grasp truth with the aid of teachers. Both student and teacher are equipped with mental machinery to enable them to function properly with respect to truth. They both have intellectual faculties and habits. There are differences, too. The intellectual habits of the teacher are supposed to be settled; those of the student are dispositions as yet. The teacher has had much acquaintance with truths unknown to the student. The teacher has conformed his mind to a multiplicity of objects and has brought order out of chaos by a progressive determination of faculties through habits of intelligence, science, and wisdom. His knowledge is ordered, or at least it should be. There is unity in it. The student is confronted with the same multiplicity of objects and he is bewildered at it. The task of the teacher is to remove this mental bewilderment. How can it be done? It cannot be done unless there is a common meeting ground for both the student and the teacher. What is this common meeting ground? Truth incarnated in things. The teacher knows that if he can bring the student to conform his mind to the essences and natures of things, there is hope for bringing about unity in multiplicity, order from confusion. Now truth is objective to both teacher and student. It does not change; it is the same for all men, for all time. Its incarnation may differ with place and time, but it remains the same. It assumes the dress of place and time, but it is not changed thereby. Thus student and teacher can travel along together without fearing lest their mental progress be delayed by changing accidents. To teach means to impart knowledge. Knowledge is truth. To teach, therefore, is to impart truth. This does not mean passivity on the part of the student. Learning requires self-activity. The teacher's function is to shine the searchlight of his mind upon truth hidden in things so that the student can conform his mind to these things and so become intelligent, scientific, and wise. With each act of the intellect exercising itself in acquiring truth there comes a strengthening and deepening of intellectual habit. No vast laboratories are required for this. It can be done in a bare classroom where the only instruments are the fine instruments of the mind. It can be done directly because the mean of intellectual virtue can be uncovered or discovered for the student by the teacher. In other words, truth is the mean of intellectual virtue, and consistent con-