Children’s Morality Code of 1916

what that existing set of guidelines was. It was a truly intriguing, quite creepy, and disturbing story that ties to evolving views on childhood, child labor laws, unrealistic patriotism, and a contest to see who could come up with the

best morality code for kids. Yes, whole thing creeps me out, really doozy, and I knew nothing about it prior to that mention of in her biography, and then I was like, what, well, and this first sentence that I'm going to have to read, I immediately stopped what I was doing because I was like, what is this. On February twenty second, nineteen sixteen, the National Institution for Moral Instruction in Washington, d C. Announced

a contest. Thanks to the donation of an anonymous businessman, the institution was offering five thousand dollars for quote the best code of morals suitable for use by teachers and parents in the training of children. So the rules of this competition were as follows. Each state in the Union was to submit at least one entry. Some could submit too, with a maximum total of seventy entries. Each state superintendent of Education was to select the person for I'm their

state who would write the submission. In the case of New York, there were five contributors. Upon submission, the entries would all be bound together in textbook format so that the public would have access to them and their entirety, but only one of them would be declared the winner, as determined by a panel of judges. A write up about this contest in the Washington, d C. Times Herald quoted an announcement by the institution regarding the compilation of

these code proposals. Quote Consultations by code writers have been had with all sorts of people, but especially with parents who have succeeded in bringing their children up well. So it's unclear what the criteria were for parents to be deemed successful in that regard, but the rules of the contest noted that the code should be written with wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance in mind, and that no theological dogmas should be in This issue of children and morality was a

hot topic in nineteen sixteen. On May twenty first, the Richmond Times Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia ran a full page article titled what a child should Do in a moral Emergency. It opens by posing a series of questions to parents. Quote, if a ruffian tries to pick a row with your little boy Johnny, shouting you bumped into me, I am going to smash you in the nose? What is the correct thing for little Johnny to do under such circumstances?

If a neighborhood bully grabs your little Tommy's bag of marbles, what should little Tommy say about it? If some strange boy, girl or grown up person attempts cajoleries with your daughter Mary, what is Mary to do and say under the many different circumstances which may arise, just saying I am one hundred percent adding cajoleries to my personal lives. On and once the parent is introduced by the paper to this conundrum.

The article continues, quote, have you carefully instructed Johnny and Tommy and Mary on what to do under these various unexpected situations and emergencies which are confronting boys and girls? How can children be expected to face intelligently and act advisedly in these little daily tragedies of life unless instructed. Here is a field of practical instruction which has been overlooked.

So this article continues by mentioning the Japanese schools in Hawaii use a picture series that show similar scenarios, that those pictures are hung all over the schools and they change out periodically so students can study them as they go about their daily school life, and schools in the US, the write up points out, have no program in place for character education. The paper puts the responsibility for the rise in various delinquent acts in the country squarely on

that gap. The article also introduced the work of Milton Fairchild, who took photographs of kids around the Washington, DC area where he lived. He claimed never to pose children or to use actors. He just surreptitiously took kids' photos when they were engaged in activities like fighting, stealing, bullying, etc. He used a specially designed camera that was in his

briefcase to avoid detection by the children. He also photographed the resolution of these kinds of incidents with the intent to use the ones that showed the kids doing the right thing as examples of correct behavior. Obviously, today this would run a foul of some privacy rights, even though taking pictures of strangers to put them on the internet has become a thing that people do. Don't do that though,

don't and super don't do it with children. No. The virtue of this form of moral education, according to the paper, is that, unlike lecturing, which kids tend to be dismissive of, photographs are endlessly engaging to children. Noting that quote, pictures that touch on real life, the life of the child, make the problems vital and concrete, and the lessons they

convey impressed children's minds with proportionate strength. Several of Fairchild's photos are in the write up, and at the end of the article it is revealed that Fairchild is the head of the National Institution for Moral Instruction. We're going to come back to him, but there is also a need to look at what was going on in the US in the nineteen teens that forms the backdrop for this push to teach kids everywhere how to be good

and moral citizens. There were, of course, several contributing factors. One was all of the stuff that was happening in the lead up and eventual passage of the keeting Oen Act of nineteen sixteen. That act banned goods that came from any factory, shop, or cannery that employed children under the age of fourteen. Minds in the Act were named and had the same blockage of sales if they employed

children that were younger than sixteen. Any other businesses were barred from employing children under the age of sixteen working at night or for shifts longer than eight hours. This labor law, the first attempt at regulating child labor, was a long time coming, and as this issue was being discussed and debated in legislation in the early twentieth century, it also was part of a bigger move of leading people to reconsider the place of children in US society.

The idea of childhood as a time that special and precious had started to gain more of a foothold. So there was this idealization of children that no doubt fueled some of these pushes to create ideal children. The early years of the twentieth century also saw a huge surge of immigration into the United States, and there were concerns about how the children of those immigrants were going to

assimilate into the culture of the United States. Many of these people settled in cities, which led to jumps in population. To keep up new infrastructure and more schools were created, and in those schools, reformers saw an opportunity to teach immigrant children how to be proper US citizens. We will return to the Morality Code competition in just a moment, but first we are going to pause for a sponsor break.

So even though all of the states participated in this Morality Code competition, not everyone was on board with fair Child's idea of a structured morality education. As the competition got underway, there were a meetia detractors. A lot of them just held up the Ten Commandments as a perfectly good moral code, with complaints that there was no need

for any additional effort to create something new. Milton Fairchild addressed this issue in interviews, noting that the Ten Commandments are written for adults and He also notes that the first five are about religious duties and not moral problems, but that the moral problems the commandments present in the second half aren't really suitable for kids. He noted, quote,

honor thy father and mother is appropriate for children. Likewise, thou shalt not kill if there is a question of using a knife in a fight, a thing happily rare among boys. Thou shalt not steal is a much needed commandment to the child world. But to children, what significance has Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house. Most children never think of doing such a thing. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Why should a child covet a wife?

A neighbor's wife would be some other child's mother. This brings us to the issue of morality more philosophically, as it was playing out in the education space when Fairchild launched this morality code contest in the early twentieth century, noted educator John Dewey wrote, quote, the moral has been conceived in too goody goody a way. Ultimate moral motives and forces are nothing more or less than social intelligence.

He thought it was better for kids to work through their own solutions to moral problems, and to be rewarded if they came to a course of action that resulted in a positive outcome. Dewey argued that this would result in adults with a strong ability to navigate scenarios where

there were moral issues in play. The logic was that if you just told children how to behave in certain situations, they would never develop the skills to manage the many unpredictable events they were likely to encounter in their lives. But for a more conservative branch of the progressive education movement, it made more sense to develop morality codes so that kids would have a map showing a list of rules

essentially that people were expected to abide by. Seemed like a much more efficient way to teach children how to behave in this group's opinion. A lot of people probably already knew who Milton Fairchild was before that newspaper mention that we talked about a moment ago. He had been working in education and specifically focused on programs for raising moral children for quite some time. Milton Fairchild, whose first name was Edwin, sort of formed a bridge between the

two ideologies we just discussed. For a little background on him. He was born in Michigan in eighteen sixty five. He attended Oberlin College, and in eighteen ninety three he graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. He became a Unitarian minister after he graduated, and one of the causes that he really worked on was trying to get churches to establish moral lessons for kids that were outside of the usual approach of parables and biblical stories and offered real world information.

He actually left the church by the end of the nineteenth century because he couldn't really get that going, and instead he worked on achieving that same goal through the school system. And it is at that point that he dropped the Edwin from his name and started just going by Milton. Some people that noted his work kind of described this as him rebranding himself from a minister to

an educational expert. The year that he left the church eighteen ninety eight, he founded the Educational Church Board, the first of several organizations that were intended to support his goals of moral education. He formed the Moral Education Board in nineteen oh six, and then in nineteen eleven the

National Institution for Moral Instruction. That organization would also rebrand as the Character Education Institution in nineteen eighteen after this push for a morality code for kids, and reflective of the next stage of the larger effort, which we will

talk about in a bit. The facet of fair Child's approach that made him really the sole holder of the middle ground between educational theorists who wanted institutionalized morality education and those who wanted to let kids work through ideas without imposing a structure of morality on them is that while Fairchild was a minister by training and did favor institutional lessons, he sought a secular approach to it rather

than one that was rooted in Christianity. He recognized that not all families were Christian, but that didn't mean they weren't moral, or that they weren't valuable members of society. As noted by Alison L. Jackson in her twenty eighteen dissertation on Fairchild's work, He's frequently grouped with the conservative progressives in the movement, but that loses some of the nuance of his efforts, which changed and evolved. Some of that evolution was horrific, as we will see in a bit.

Throughout the Morality Code competition, various newspapers reported on the work that their state's chosen writer was doing. For example, the Daily Utah Chronicle wrote in April of nineteen seventeen that the winners would be announced in October and that Utah's entrant was in the running to win it, stating Dean Milton Bannion, who represented Utah in the competition, is

enthusiastic about such work being done in schools. He is also desirous of arousing general public interest in universal character education. Earlier in the competition, Banion had given a quote to the same paper stating that he would quote be grateful for advice and suggestions as to what moral principles should be taught to children from nine to fourteen years of age and to youths from fourteen to eighteen years also

for suggestions as to the form of the codes. On February twenty second, nineteen seventeen, the competition closed with fifty two entries, and at that point the entries were sent to the panel of judges. Those judges were George Trumbull, Lad of Yale University, who was the chair of the judges panel, Supreme Court Justice Mellem Pitney, and Eva Perry Moore,

president of the National Council of Women. It was announced that once the winning entry was chosen, all of the other entrants would be given a chance to revise their own prior to the publication of the collected works in a textbook. That book was published in two volumes with different purposes. The first was for childhood and the second

was for elementary and high schools. The winning entry came from William J. Hutchins of Ohio, who was president of Maria College in Kentucky at the time, and his code opens with the paragraph quote, Boys and girls who are good Americans tried to become strong and useful that our country may become ever greater and better. Therefore they obey the laws of right living, which the best Americans have

always obeyed. So right out of the gate, this flags is a little misguided in the claim that best Americans have always obeyed the law. We've had plenty of examples otherwise. On this show we threw that tea into the harbor. Hudgens Code laid out ten laws of right living, which are one the law of health. The good American tries to gain and keep perfect health. To the law of self control. The good American controls himself. Three the law of self reliance. The good American is self reliant. For

the law of reliability, the good American is reliable. Five the law of clean play. The good American plays fair. Sex The law of duty. The good American does his duty. Seven the law of good workmanship. The good American tries to do the right thing and the right way. Eight the law of teamwork. The good American works and friendly cooperation with his spellow workers. Nine the law of kindness. The good American is kind. Ten the law of loyalty. The good American is loyal. The beginning of this list

is ablest. Oh yeah, there's tons of ablest stuff. We'll talk about a little bit more. Under each of these headers is a brief explainer and then a set of pledges for students. We're only going to read the first one, the Law of self control, to give you a sense of the style of the document. Quote, those who best control themselves can best serve their country. I will control my tongue and will not allow it to speak mean,

vulgar or profane words. I will control my temper and will not get angry when people or things displease me, I will control my thoughts and will not allow a foolish wish to spoil a wise purpose. The Hutchins Code

was not the end of the effort. Once the National Institution for Moral Instruction had basic morals covered, the organization planned another contest right after it, As reported in the Atlanta Constitution on September thirtieth, nineteen seventeen, quote, the National Institution for Moral Instruction at Washington, d C. Has offered for nineteen eighteen to nineteen nineteen an award of twenty thousand dollars for the best method of character education in

public schools in the US. The circular sent out from this institution states that it is a matter of vital concern to those who think in terms of the national interest and of the welfare of the several states, that ways and means be developed by which the children and youth of the nation can be given a thorough character education. The character of the masses of the people in all its express us controls the happiness, prosperity, and development of

the nation. After the war, there will be a period of recuperation and readjustment, after which will be a more serious test of democracy than the war. The children of these war times will be the mass of our citizens and our leaders of national life in this period of readjustment. So it's a little unclear, but the point of this second contest was for someone to come up with a way to systematize the adoption and teaching of this code.

According to the Washington Posts write up of the second phase quote, the proposal of the institution is that the public school system places character education on a par with intellectual, vocational, and physical education, because character is the foundation of a successful life, and character among the masses of the people, both rich and poor, is essential to the happiness and development of the repub blick. This all gets so creepy to me. Uh. This contest, this second one, worked a

little bit differently than the first. In this instance, nine educators from each state for a total of four hundred and thirty two because Alaska and Hawaii were not states yet. So if you're like that, math doesn't math, it does, uh, And those nine educators would study for a year and work out the best way to implement this new morality code. The twenty thousand dollars prize money would be distributed among

the nine people from the winning state. With the chairman of the group receiving four thousand dollars and all others receiving two thousand dollars. It took until nineteen twenty two to announce a winner. The statements fair Child gave during this second phase jump out as being a lot less everyone, love your neighbor and be good, and a lot heavier

on consequences and with a little eugenics thrown in. In October of nineteen nineteen, he gave several statements to a state educational conference held in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that were reported in multiple newspapers. He gave a talk at the conference titled how to Introduce Moral Instruction into the curriculum of Schools, and he made some troubling remarks in the process. He started by noting that he had charted ninety three virtues

that make up the perfect human being. These included things like being artistic and neat quote cooperative and not individualistic, adaptable, attentive,

not careless, decisive, quick, thrifty, cautious, et cetera. These seem relatively benign, but then some of them get downright awful quote developed body, not poorly nourished, strength, without disabilities, muscular control not bungling, grace of figure and carriage not frumpy, vital not sluggish, appetites normal, not inactive, endurance not quickly tired, and resistance to disease not susceptible. Just tripling down on the ablest part of it at that time, for real.

And then he said, quote, a great training will be developed for the production of experts in character education who will function through the public schools. Each child will be registered at birth, and its character and age looked after to the age of citizenship. Already real dicey, but it's about to get so much worse. First, he seems to have loosened his feelings about church involvement, noting that they

needed to participate. Quote the churches will be asked to assist in this character education and to furnish the religious sanctions for conduct. But the state will supply, under the plan being formulated, the state sanctions and will furnish through the schools, the ways and means and the wisdom for the success full character education of each child within the possibilities. Uh. It's his plans for the kids that don't quite make

the grade that are really problematic. Quote children who cannot be educated into sound character, will be taken charge of at maturity by the state and kept under control, prevented from breeding and crime during their natural life. The parents will be chief factor in this successful character education, and they will be under the guidance of trained experts in

home character education working from the schools. So it seems like if this scenario were to play out as fair Child envisioned in this talk, there would need to be state run containment facilities for the kids who were deemed unfit to be good citizens, and they would be incarcerated for the rest of their lives, kept from breeding. An important part of the eugenics movement. Yeah, it is so horrifying.

This is some of those things where in his earlier stuff, I'm like, this is creepy, but I get where he got here, Like he's missing some vital things, But I see why he thinks this is a good path, even if it's a mess. But once I read this article, I was like, jum, excuse, there's no way, There's no way he could possibly think this was okay. But he did.

In nineteen twenty two, the winner of the twenty thousand dollars prize was announced, and we will talk about which state won it, how the nineteen sixteen Morality Code was revised, and thankfully ongoing resistance to all of these initiatives after we hear from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going. In nineteen twenty two, Iowa's planned for implementing Hutchin's Morality Code into schools won the prize.

The Iowa approach addressed one of the big criticisms that had been leveled since that first contest was announced, which was that tacking on a section of education about morals was not really going to be effective. So the Iowa plan was built on integrating the Morality Code into all of the other parts of the educational curriculum. Their proposed plan opened with quote, the right organization of the school can alone go far towards solving the character training problems.

To feel the collective judgment of one's peers is the heart of moral impulse. With the announcement of Iowa's win, also came the news that the National Institute for Moral Instruction had reincorporated as the Character Education Institution to more accurately reflect its goals. In nineteen twenty four, the code got a revision pass This revision was covered in the Journal of Education that year and described the five point

process that the Character Education Institution used in updating the code. First, it studied all the submissions from the original contest and tabulated the ideas in them to see which were often repeated. Second, experts in the human sciences were consulted and asked for input on the Hutchins Code. Third, and we'll quote this directly because it's a little odd quote. A list of the morality acts of well brought up children has been made,

numbering about six hundred and fifty. The Hutchins Code has been checked up on this list of morality acts to make sure that it emits no important phases of childhood morality. Fourth, recent literature regarding childhood morality was reviewed. And then fifth, a list that was started by the Institution in nineteen fifteen to catalog all the virtues of human beings was looked at to ensure quote direction of the expression of each one of these virtues in childhood conduct must be

contained within the Children's Morality Code. That list, once again was made up by Milon Fairchild. The revision led to a new order for the ten laws in the original Morality Code, and some of them were changed, so the new version was one the law of self control. The good American controls himself. Two the law of good health. The good American tries to gain and keep perfect health. Three the law of kindness. The good American is kind. Four the law of sportsmanship. The good American plays fair.

That updates the clean play law. Five the law of self reliance. The good American is self reliance. Six the law of duty. The good American does his duty. Seventh the law of reliability. The good American is true. Eight the law of truth. The good American tells the truth. Nine the law of good workmanship. The good American tries to do the right things in the right way. And ten the law of teamwork. The good American works in friendly cooperation with his fellow workers. So not a lot

of change. She reflects some differences in vocabulary. We mentioned in our Gertrude Chandler Warner episode that she wrote her book Good Americans' First Lessons for the Littlest Ones in nineteen twenty six as an adaptation of the Morality Code for younger children. But even as she worked on it, there was a study underway to assess its real efficacy, and that study did not go well for Milton Fairchild

and his supporters. There had long been a debate about whether character was something that could be taught, or if it was more of a habitual response to various stimuli like scenarios. Yeah, it's more like, can you actually tell a kid what to do? Or will he learn what to do when he actually encounters these things in real life?

And which is really going to be valuable. Two academics, Hugh Hartshorn, professor of Religious education at the University of Southern California, and doctor Mark A. Mayfessor of psychology at Syracuse University, working through the John D. Rockefeller funded Institute of Social and Religious Research, were able to start a series of investigations in nineteen twenty four into just how well a moral code for children actually worked. Their work

was supervised by psychologist Edward Thorndike. The actual bulk of this research took place from nineteen twenty five to nineteen thirty, and it became known as the Character Education Inquiry. Its goal to quote develop an understanding of character as a personal and social phenomenon. If you're wondering why this topic

was enough to get huge amounts of funding. It's because a lot of money was being spent to establish and maintain that morality program in schools, and a lot of people thought the whole thing was both incorrect in ideology and incredibly wasteful. Starting in nineteen twenty eight, the Character Education Inquiry findings were published in three volumes by the mcmill in Company under the general title Studies in the Nature of Character. The first of these was Volume one,

Studies in Deceit. The following year, Volume two, Studies in Service and Self Control, was released, and finally in nineteen thirty Volume three, Studies in the Organization of Character, came out. They detailed their methods of testing and research, which involved a lot of work with students and teachers often asking students questions to gauge what the kids thought qualified as cheating on tests. There were many, many different tests conducted to get a large data set and offer a range

of variables in moral situations. When it came to deception, part of their findings were summarized this way quote, no one is honest or dishonest by nature. Where conflict arises between a child and his environment, deception is in natural mode of adjustment, having in itself no moral significance. If indirect ways of gaining his ends are successful, they will be continued unless definite training is undertaken through which direct

and honest methods may also become successful. Apart from the actual practice of direct or honest methods of gaining ends where a conflict of wills is actually involved, the mere urging of honest behavior by teachers, or the discussion of standards and ideals of honesty, no matter how much such general ideas may be emotionalized, has no necessary relation to

the control of conduct. The extent to which individuals may be affected, either for better or for worse, is not known, but there seems to be evidence that such effects as may result are not generally good and are sometimes unwholesome. This does not imply that the teaching of general ideas, standards and ideals is not desirable and necessary, but only that the prevailing ways of inculcating ideas probably do little

good and may do some harm. The Character Education Inquiry had a massive impact on both public and academic perception of the Morality Code and its teaching, and most schools abandoned it by the nineteen thirties. Fair Child kept trying to find ways to implement morality and character education in schools, but he was also declining in health, and after an extensive illness that began in nineteen thirty two, he died

in December of nineteen thirty nine. I will say that there are ongoing discussions about how to teach morality to children. It's not like that suddenly ended at this point, but sure this particular effort did, which we will talk about on Friday, and how very creepy we both find them. In the meantime, I have a really fun email from our listener Jen about one of my very favorite topics lately,

that being hydroponics. Jen Rights, Holly and Tracy. Your podcast gets me through the workday most days as I work on my PhD. I must say this week's hydroponic episode had me giggling as I sit at my desk, which is in a USDA Farm Service Agency building. She talks about where she works. I'm not going to say that just for safety, but mentions that they are currently developing an urban agricultural demonstration garden and I have been trying to find a way to add a hydroponic system to

the garden. Thank you for the great history of hydroponics. I would like to believe that the gardens of Babylon really were the first. She shares a picture that she took. I'm not going to say where, just to preserve her privacy, but she writes, my ten year old son and I travel to that area and on our way home, notice that the snow squall happening between us and the greenhouse made the pink sky touch the ground. It's truly amazing to see how pink purple the grow lights make the

skies around here. They are noticeable from the city, which is a good forty miles away. My family does complain that they don't get a dark sky all the time, even living in the country. But I think it's pretty, and she says, here is a picture of my mom. The reason we were traveling to the area it was to celebrate her ringing the bell after completing six months

of chemo for pancreatic cancer. She is a rare breed of survivors and as a love of Snoop Dogg, the nurses made her this shirt and a pop brownie that was not grown idronically. I lost so much Keep up the great work, and thank you for being a little bright spot in my day as I assist landowners with conservation. Jen. Her mother's shirt is a Snoop Dogg shirt. Congratulations to your mother. She sounds amazing. I hope she has only

great health going forward. She also includes a picture for pet Tax of her mom's lab who has been her constant companion through all of her treatment. Amazing, Jen, thank you for sharing all of this. It made my day very, very delightful and it's a lovely way to end a discussion of creepy things. You would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio

app or anywhere else that you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.