The school as a character-building agency - religion in public schools

Humanist, March-April, 1998 by Thayer V.T.

This means that we should cease to think of the school as primarily, if not solely, concerned with the academic and intellectual training of the young. Both modem psychology and the necessities of our common life require the abandonment of this faulty conception of the mind. We know now that we cannot effectively educate the mind of a child apart from his or her emotional nature, or teach precept and principle without practice.

Consequently, a good school is as much concerned with providing the conditions for healthy personality development as it is for teaching the skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Indeed, it recognizes that the one is dependent upon the other.