Preface



between right and wrong, and that the failure to
find an agreement between ethics and experience con-
fronts the child long before its entrance at school.
   Not only do its conceptions fail to square with
life as it finds it, but the practices and habits of
the persons it looks up to fail to square with what
these elders claim for life. Further, the child meets
with an innate stupidity on the part of its elders
that school cannot surpass, a stupidity which as-
sumes knowledge on the child's part that it cannot
possibly have.
  These conditions make for confusion in the child's
mind, and a consequent impairment of its reasoning
faculties, before it presents itself to the school.
  Given the very young child struggling to evolve
its working rule out of nebula, how do its elders
aid it The isolated fact without background or
connection, the generalization with no regard to
its particular application, the specific rule that will
not fit the general case-these too often are its por-
tion, resulting in lack of perspective, no sense of pro-
portion, and no grasp of values. The child's concep-
tions of the cardinal virtues, the moral law, the
fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of Christ,
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