ing, in addition
to being the most important, is also the most difficult. What the public
schools can do in this field is quite limited. The training which the
child gets on the streets and at home almost overshadows it.

=Nature of Moral Training.= A good person is one who does the right social
thing at the right time. The more completely and consistently one does
this, the better one is. What kind of training can one receive that will
give assurance of appropriate moral action? Two things can be done to
give a child this assurance. The child can be led to form proper ideals
of action and proper habits of action. By ideal of action, we mean that
the child should know what the right action is, and have a desire to do
it. Habits of action are acquired only through action. As has been
pointed out in the preceding pages, continued action of a definite kind
develops a tendency to this particular action. One's character is the
sum of his tendencies to action. These tendencies can be developed only
through practice, through repetition. Moral training, therefore, has the
same basis as all other training, that is, in habits. The same procedure
that we use in teaching the child the multiplication table is the one to
use in developing honesty. In the case of the tables, we have the child
say "fifty-six" for "eight times seven." We have him do this till he
does it instantly, automatically. Honesty and truthfulness and the other
moral virtues can be fixed in the same way.

=Home and Moral Training.= The home is the most important factor in moral
training. This is largely because of the importance of early habits and
attitudes. Obedience to parents and respect for authority, which in a
large measure underlie all other moral training, must be secured and
developed in the early years of childhood. The child does not start to
school till about six years old. At this age much of the foundation of
morality is laid. Unless the child learns strict obedience in the first
two or three years of life, it is doubtful whether he will ever learn it
aright. Without the habit of implicit obedience, it is difficult to
establish any other good habit.

Parents should understand that training in morality consists, in large
measure, in building up habits, and should go about it in a systematic
way. As various situations arise in the early life of a child, the
parents should obtain from him the appropriate responses. When the
situations recur, the righ