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education, but it ends with his conclusion about what education
serves – again, what it is “good for.” And it is with the
following passage that his book does conclude:
A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible
for the failure to recognize that all the aims and
values which are desirable in education are
themselves moral. Discipline, natural development,
culture, social efficiency, are moral traits – marks
of a person who is a worthy member of that society
which it is the business of education to further.
There is an old saying to the effect that it is not
enough for a man to be good; he must be good for
something. The something for which a man must be
good is capacity to live as a social member so that
what he gets from living with others he contributes.
[…] Discipline, culture, social efficiency, personal
refinement, improvement of character are but phases
of the growth of capacity nobly to share in [this]
balanced experience. And education is not a mere
means to such a life. Education is such a life. To
maintain capacity for such education is the essence
of morals. For conscious life is a continual
beginning afresh. (344, emphasis mine)
Because the cultivation of “morals” brings about the further
cultivation of “conscious life,” which is, more or less, the sum
total of “reflective thought,” the training of “morals” thus
brings about the further training of “conscious life.” But
because the reverse is also true – the influence of “conscious
life” or “reflective thought” upon those “morals” – the
burgeoning of thought is the burgeoning of “morals.” The result
of such a dialectical relationship is the progressing of society
as well as the progressing of those who live within that
society, alongside of us.
This relationship where one exists and evolves because of
the other, through the other, recalls Perry’s conclusion that
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