I have recently become interested in Musar and the seemingly extravagant claims made for it by Israel Salanter. I am thinking that perhaps the Musar movement was right and that there is something about that basic set of books [the six classical ones I mean] which instills good character traits in people. While I am not totally convinced,  I am still tending in this direction. In fact, I brought this up with one fellow I know and his thought that it sounds good and further that someone should put the basic Musar cannon into dots. What this would mean would be someone should get together the basic Musar books of the disciples of Israel Salanter and make a set out of them and put dots into them.
That would be the books of Reb Israel Salanter, "HaTvuna," "Or Israel" of Isaac Blasser, The second recent volume of the writings of Isaac Blasser that came out recently in Israel, The "Madgragat HaAdam," "Chachma and Musar" from Simcha Zizel. 


This maybe is not on the deep philosophical level of Kant or Plato but these are still very good books and perhaps in fact do instill something precious into people.

I agree learning is not everything.  I have long held that something like the Boy Scouts of America is very important for children  and this instills values into people that no books could ever do.

The problem is that it seems to me that this is not very workable in Brooklyn.  At any rate is it my suggestion to start the Orthodox Jewish Boy Scouts of America  that meet every week and would learn out door skills and survival skills and what things like “team work” and “loyalty” and “human decency” mean in real life.

 Also I must mention later books of Musar after the direct disciples of Israel Salanter are not very good. They became "frum" [in the non complementary connotation of that word].  In my recommendation of Musar i meant specifically the books of the first generation disciples