It is not enough to give to our children and our society definitions of right and wrong or normless stories and books leading to an inability to make the profound decisions needed for the better world we so desperately need.

The Moral Imagination
by Michael Doyle

We do our best that our children might learn
All the things needed that they must earn
When they are older so it will not depart
For all the good morals are home in their hearts

To train up is to teach the ways of nobility
That our children might act beyond banality
Forming their habits and all of their understanding
So that these ways will always be the ways commanding

All the goodness in the ways that they should go
Being upright in virtue so that they innately know
In knowing this in their souls they are reliable
Moving onward into life they will become fully capable

In learning and relearning actions of just quality
A virtuous character forms for accountability
Through this we find the cultivation of humanity
Tending the heart of virtue teaches beyond morality

This will not come through a heavy hand
But in a way that stirs the child to understand
Addressing the head and even the heart
Through tales of childhood that will never depart

It is not enough to know what is right
But it is needed to desire to do that right
Desire that is turned and churned in imagination
Therein lies the rub of this choice's fascination

Children should be brought up to love virtue
Keeping this in mind and in particular view
That they should be taught to hate vice
Knowing the difference between the bad and the nice

Heroes are given by way of illustration
So that children might know through emulation
A wardrobe of images that are as if it were
Cleanly cut in vision and not a passing blur

It is not enough to imagine what could be
We need to reach to know what should be
The moral components of ideals and possibility
Providing the light of our children's morality

This is the manner in which character is grown
Systematically ingrained by what is shown
Perhaps the most important part of an education
If we should wish for a better path for our nation

These are the rules and laws of our veritable game
The absence of understanding this holds the blame
That parents and teachers have this obligation
Is something that I'd think requires no explanation

The richness of experience defeats the poverty
Of a child's soul unfed to its fullest capacity
To learn that which is the social good
And that indeed must become completely understood

Let the things that are read and taught
Be those with high ideals as they must and ought
Let us put books on our children's shelves
That guide and encourage them to their best selves

Let us open young eyes beyond the surface
To the deeper truths meant to embrace
This is the something worth holding on to
That just might build a better world for me and you

(c) June 12, 2020  Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved