Education generates habits of application, order and the love of virtue; and controuls, by the force of habit, any innate obliquities in our moral organization.
I find the use of the word "habit" to be interesting in this context. It makes sense that education is described as generating "habits of application" because education is essentially teaching people how to do things or how to apply knowledge. Education also creates a love of virtue because being educated was viewed in that time period and is viewed today as one of the highest virtues a person can obtain. What interests me most, however, is the description of education as an institution that creates order and controls the masses. The argument here is that just as education "generates habits of application", it also generates habits of moral decision making. One would argue then that a person obtains their morals and their respect of the human race only after being educated. Is this a valid argument? Are uneducated people generally less moral? In my COLA on Religion and Politics in 2017 this semester, we explored the question of if a person can have morals if they are not religious with the assumption that religion teaches people morals. I personally do believe that a person can have morals if they are not religious, but I am still not sure as to whether or not a person is simply born with morals or must be taught them throughout the course of their life. I think that the authors of this document lean more towards the side that humans must be taught morals, and education rooted in public institution helps to universalize those morals and create a community of people who share the same values.