The article addresses the problem of moral education in the period of modernization of the primary general education system aimed at the formation of a new educational space that allows ensuring the spiritual and moral formation of the younger generation, its preparation for life self-determination, independent choice in favor of humanistic ideals. The author considers the attitude of modern schoolchildren to life, to social interaction and communication, the manifestation of personal qualities that meet or do not meet the norms and requirements of public morality. The system of social relations containing the entire system of moral and ethical relations in society is considered, and the indices of moral culture are cited with the support of universal moral principles. Gradations of the aggregate values of morality are cited, various directions of moral formation, its stages and properties are singled out. The methods of upbringing and self-education of the highest moral and aesthetic emotions are: reading of fiction, visiting exhibitions and museums, getting acquainted with various kinds of art, participating in amateur art activities, visiting circles and creative studios, engaging in tourism, sports. The article discusses the contradictory nature of the content of the moral life of schoolchildren as an object of the educational process, the organization of which must be systematically and constantly working, focusing efforts on skillfully resolving contradictions, developing moral sense, consciousness, habits, and habitual forms of behavior in this process.