SOME HABITS OF MIND--SOME MORAL HABITS
=A Science of Education.=--Allow me to say once more, that I venture
to write upon subjects bearing on home education with the greatest
deference to mothers; believing, that in virtue of their peculiar
insight into the dispositions of their own children, they are blest
with both knowledge and power in the management of them which
lookers-on can only admire from afar. At the same time, there is
such a thing as a _science_ of education, that does not come by
intuition, in the knowledge of which it is possible to bring up a
child entirely according to natural law, which is also Divine law, in
the keeping of which there is great reward.
=Education in Habit favours an Easy Life.=--We have seen why Habit,
for instance, is such a marvellous force in human life. I find this
view of habit very encouraging, as giving a scientific reasonableness
to the conclusions already reached by common experience. It is
pleasant to know that, even in mature life, it is possible by a little
persistent effort to acquire a desirable habit. It is good, if not
pleasant, to know, also, with what fatal ease we can slip into bad
habits. But the most comfortable thing in this view of habit is,
that it falls in with our natural love of an easy life. We are not
unwilling to make efforts in the beginning with the assurance that
by-and-by things will go smoothly; and this is just what habit is, in
an extraordinary degree, pledged to effect. The mother who takes pains
to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and
easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has
a weary life of endless friction with the children. All day she is
crying out, ‘Do this!’ and they do it not; ‘Do that!’ and they do the
other. ‘But,’ you say, ‘if habit is so powerful, whether to hinder or
to help the child, it is fatiguing to think of all the habits the poor
mother must attend to. Is she never to be at ease with her children?’
=Training in Habits becomes a Habit.=--Here, again, is an illustration
of that fable of the anxious pendulum, overwhelmed with the thought of
the number of ticks it must tick. But the ticks are to be delivered
tick by tick, and there will always be a second of time to tick in.
The mother devotes herself to the formation of one habit at a time,
doing no more than keep watch over those already formed. If she be
appalled by the thought of overmuch labour, let her limit the number
of good habits she will lay herself out to form. The child who starts
in life with, say, twenty good habits, begins with a certain capital
which he will lay out to endless profit as the years go on. The
mother who is distrustful of her own power of steady effort may well
take comfort in two facts. In the first place, she herself acquires
the _habit_ of training her children in a given habit, so that
by-and-by it becomes, not only no trouble, but a pleasure to her. In
the second place, the child’s most fixed and dominant habits are
those which the mother takes no pains about, but which the child picks
up for himself through his close observation of all that is said and
done, felt and thought, in his home.
=Habits inspired in the Home Atmosphere.=--We have already considered
a group of half-physical habits--order, regularity, neatness--which
the child imbibes, so to speak, in this way. But this is not all:
habits of gentleness, courtesy, kindness, candour, respect for other
people, or--habits quite other than these, are inspired by the child
as the very atmosphere of his home, the air he lives in and must grow
by.
I.--THE HABIT OF ATTENTION
Let us pass on, now, to the consideration of a group of mental habits
which are affected by direct training rather than by example.
First, we put the _habit of Attention_, because the highest
intellectual gifts depend for their value upon the measure in which
their owner has cultivated the habit of attention. To explain why this
habit is of such supreme importance, we must consider the operation of
one or two of the laws of thought. But just recall, in the meantime,
the fixity of attention with which the trained professional man--the
lawyer, the doctor, the man of letters--listens to a roundabout
story, throws out the padding, seizes the facts, sees the bearing of
every circumstance, and puts the case with new clearness and method;
and contrast this with the wandering eye and random replies of the
uneducated;--and you see that to differentiate people according to
their power of attention is to employ a legitimate test.
=A Mind at the Mercy of Associations.=--We will consider, then, the
nature and the functions of attention. The mind--with the possible
exception of the state of coma--is never idle; ideas are for ever
passing through the brain, by day and by night, sleeping or waking,
mad or sane. We take a great deal too much upon ourselves when we
suppose that _we_ are the authors and intenders of the thoughts
we think. The most we can do is to give direction to these trains of
thought in the comparatively few moments when we _are_ regulating
the thoughts of our hearts. We see in dreams--the rapid dance of ideas
through the brain during lighter sleep--how ideas follow one another
in a general way. In the wanderings of delirium, in the fancies of the
mad, the inconsequent prattle of the child, and the babble of the old
man, we see the same thing, _i.e._ the law according to which
ideas course through the mind when they are left to themselves. You
talk to a child about glass--you wish to provoke a proper curiosity
as to how glass is made, and what are its uses. Not a bit of it; he
wanders off to Cinderella’s glass slipper; then he tells you about
_his_ godmother who gave him a boat; then about the ship in which
Uncle Harry went to America; then he wonders why you do not wear
spectacles, leaving you to guess that Uncle Harry does so. But the
child’s ramblings are not whimsical; they follow a law, the law of
association of ideas, by which any idea presented to the mind recalls
some other idea which has been at any time associated with it--as
glass, and Cinderella’s slipper; and that, again some idea associated
with it. Now this law of association of ideas is a good servant and a
bad master. To have this aid in recalling the events of the past, the
engagements of the present, is an infinite boon; but to be at the
mercy of associations, to have no power to think of what we choose
when we choose, but only as something ‘puts it in our head,’ is to be
no better than an imbecile.
=Wandering Attention.=--A vigorous effort of will should enable us
at any time to fix our thoughts. Yes; but a vigorous self-compelling
will is the flower of a developed character; and while the child has
no character to speak of, but only natural disposition, who is to
keep humming-tops out of a geography lesson, or a doll’s sofa out
of a French verb? Here is the secret of the weariness of the home
schoolroom--the children are thinking all the time about something
else than their lessons; or, rather, they are at the mercy of the
thousand fancies that flit through their brains, each in the train
of the last. “Oh, Miss Smith,” said a little girl to her governess,
“there are so _many_ things more interesting than lessons to
think about!”
Where is the harm? In this: not merely that the children are wasting
time, though that is a pity; but that they are forming a desultory
habit of mind, and reducing their own capacity for mental effort.
=The Habit of Attention to be Cultivated in the Infant.=--The
help, then, is not in the will of the child but in the _habit of
attention_, a habit to be cultivated even in the infant. A baby,
notwithstanding his wonderful powers of observation, has no power of
attention; in a minute, the coveted plaything drops from listless
little fingers, and the wandering glance lights upon some new joy.
But even at this stage the habit of attention may be trained: the
discarded plaything is picked up, and, with ‘Pretty!’ and dumb
show, the mother keeps the infant’s eyes fixed for fully a couple of
minutes--and this is his first lesson in attention. Later, as we have
seen, the child is eager to see and handle every object that comes in
his way. But watch him at his investigations: he flits from thing to
thing with less purpose than a butterfly amongst the flowers, staying
at nothing long enough to get the good out of it. It is the mother’s
part to supplement the child’s quick observing faculty with the habit
of attention. She must see to it that he does not flit from this to
that, but looks long enough at one thing to get a real acquaintance
with it.
Is little Margaret fixing round eyes on a daisy she has plucked? In
a second, the daisy will be thrown away, and a pebble or a buttercup
will charm the little maid. But the mother seizes the happy moment.
She makes Margaret see that the daisy is a bright yellow eye with
_white_ eyelashes round it; that all the day long it lies there
in the grass and looks up at the great sun, never blinking as Margaret
would do, but keeping its eye wide open. And that is why it is called
daisy, ‘day’s eye,’ because its eye is always looking at the sun which
makes the day. And what does Margaret think it does at night, when
there is no sun? It does what little boys and girls do; it just shuts
up its eye with its white lashes tipped with pink, and goes to sleep
till the sun comes again in the morning. By this time the daisy has
become interesting to Margaret; she looks at it with big eyes after
her mother has finished speaking, and then, very likely, cuddles it
up to her breast or gives it a soft little kiss. Thus the mother
will contrive ways to invest every object in the child’s world with
interest and delight.
=Attention to ‘Things’; Words a Weariness.=--But the tug-of-war begins
with the lessons of the schoolroom. Even the child who has gained the
habit of attention to _things_, finds _words_ a weariness.
This is a turning-point in the child’s life, and the moment for the
mother’s tact and vigilance. In the first place, never let the child
_dawdle_ over copybook or sum, sit dreaming with his book before
him. When a child grows stupid over a lesson, it is time to put it
away. Let him do another lesson as unlike the last as possible, and
then go back with freshened wits to his unfinished task. If mother
or governess have been unwary enough to let the child ‘moon’ over a
lesson, she must just exert her wits to pull him through; the lesson
must be done, of course, but must be made bright and pleasant to the
child.
=Lessons Attractive.=--The teacher should have some knowledge of the
principles of education; should know what subjects are best fitted
for the child considering his age, and how to make these subjects
attractive; should know, too, how to vary the lessons, so that each
power of the child’s mind should rest after effort, and some other
power be called into play. She should know how to incite the child to
effort through his desire of approbation, of excelling, of advancing,
his desire of knowledge, his love of his parents, his sense of duty,
in such a way that no one set of motives be called unduly into play
to the injury of the child’s character. But the danger she must be
especially alive to, is the substitution of any other natural desire
for that of knowledge, which is equally natural, and is adequate for
all the purposes of education.
=Time-table; Definite Work in a Given Time.=--I shall have
opportunities to enter into some of these points later; meantime,
let us look in at a home schoolroom managed upon sound principles.
In the first place, there is a time-table, written out fairly, so
that the child knows what he has to do and how long each lesson is to
last. This idea of definite work to be finished in a given time is
valuable to the child, not only as training him in habits of order,
but in diligence; he learns that one time is _not_ ‘as good as
another’; that there is no right time left for what is not done in its
own time; and this knowledge alone does a great deal to secure the
child’s _attention_ to his work. Again, the lessons are short,
seldom more than twenty minutes in length for children under eight;
and this, for two or three reasons. The sense that there is not much
time for his sums or his reading, keeps the child’s wits on the alert
and helps to fix his attention; he has time to learn just so much of
any one subject as it is good for him to take in at once: and if the
lessons be judiciously alternated--sums first, say, while the brain is
quite fresh; then writing, or reading--some more or less mechanical
exercise, by way of a rest; and so on, the programme varying a little
from day to day, but the same principle throughout--a ‘thinking’
lesson first, and a ‘painstaking’ lesson to follow,--the child gets
through his morning lessons without any sign of weariness.
Even with regular lessons and short lessons, a further stimulus may
be occasionally necessary to secure the attention of the child.
His desire of approbation may ask the stimulus, not only of a word
of praise, but of something in the shape of a reward to secure his
utmost efforts. Now, rewards should be dealt out to the child upon
principle: they should be the _natural consequences_ of his good
conduct.
=A Natural Reward.=--What is the natural consequence of work well and
quickly done? Is it not the enjoyment of ampler leisure? The boy is
expected to do two right sums in twenty minutes: he does them in ten
minutes; the remaining ten minutes are his own, fairly earned, in
which he should be free for a scamper in the garden, or any delight
he chooses. His writing task is to produce six perfect _m_’s: he
writes six lines with only one good _m_ in each line; the time
for the writing lesson is over and he has none for himself; or, he
is able to point out six good _m_’s in his first line, and he
has the rest of the time to draw steamboats and railway trains. This
possibility of letting the children occupy themselves variously in the
few minutes they may gain at the end of each lesson, is compensation
which the home schoolroom offers for the zest which the sympathy of
numbers, and emulation, are supposed to give to school work.
=Emulation.=--As for emulation, a very potent means of exciting and
holding the attention of children, it is often objected that a desire
to excel, to do better than others, implies an unloving temper, which
the educator should rather repress than cultivate. Good marks of some
kind are usually the rewards of those who do best, and it is urged
that these good marks are often the cause of ungenerous rivalry. Now,
the fact is, the children are being trained to live in the world, and
in the world we all _do_ get good marks of one kind or another,
prize, or praise, or both, according as we excel others, whether in
football or tennis, or in picture-painting or poem-making. There
are envyings and heart-burnings amongst those who come in second
best; so it has been from the beginning, and doubtless will be to the
end. If the child is to go out into an emulous world, why, it may
possibly be well that he should be brought up in an emulous school.
But here is where the mother’s work comes in. She can teach her
child to be first without vanity, and to be last without bitterness;
that is, she can bring him up in such a hearty outgoing of love
and sympathy that joy in his brother’s success takes the sting out
of his own failure, and regret for his brother’s failure leaves no
room for self-glorification. Again, if a system of marks be used as
a stimulus to attention and effort, the good marks should be given
for _conduct_ rather than for _cleverness_--that is, they
should be within everybody’s reach: every child may get his mark for
punctuality, order, attention, diligence, obedience, gentleness;
and therefore, marks of this kind may be given without danger of
leaving a rankling sense of injustice in the breast of the child who
fails. Emulation becomes suicidal when it is used as the incentive
to intellectual effort, because the desire for knowledge subsides
in proportion as the desire to excel becomes active. As a matter of
fact, marks of any sort, even for conduct, distract the attention of
children from their proper work, which is in itself interesting enough
to secure good behaviour as well as attention.
=Affection as a Motive.=--That he ought to work hard to please his
parents who do so much for him, is a proper motive to bring before the
child from time to time, but not too often: if the mother trade on
her child’s feelings, if, ‘Do this or that to please mother,’ ‘Do not
grieve poor mother,’ etc., be brought too frequently before the child
as the reason for right doing, a sentimental relation is set up which
both parent and child will find embarrassing, the true motives of
action will be obscured, and the child, unwilling to appear unloving,
will end in being untrue.
=Attractiveness of Knowledge.=--Of course, the most obvious means
of quickening and holding the attention of children lies in the
attractiveness of knowledge itself, and in the real appetite for
knowledge with which they are endowed. But how successful faulty
teachers are in curing children of any desire to know, is to be seen
in many a schoolroom. I shall later, however, have an opportunity for
a few words on this subject.
=What is Attention?=--It is evident that _attention_ is no
‘faculty’ of the mind; indeed, it is _very_ doubtful how far the
various operations of the mind should be described as ‘faculties’ at
all. _Attention_ is hardly even an operation of the mind, but
is simply the act by which the whole mental force is applied to the
subject in hand. This act, of bringing the whole mind to bear, may
be trained into a _habit_ at the will of the parent or teacher,
who attracts and holds the child’s attention by means of a sufficient
motive.
=Self-Compelled.=--As the child gets older, he is taught to bring
_his own will_ to bear; _to make himself_ attend in spite
of the most inviting suggestions from without. He should be taught
to feel a certain triumph in compelling himself to fix his thoughts.
Let him know what the real difficulty is, how it is the nature of his
mind to be incessantly thinking, but how the thoughts, if left to
themselves, will always run off from one thing to another, and that
the struggle and the victory required of him is to fix his thoughts
upon the task in hand. ‘You have done your _duty_,’ with a look
of sympathy from his mother, is a reward for the child who has made
this effort in the strength of his growing will. But it cannot be too
much borne in mind that attention is, to a great extent, the product
of the educated mind; that is, one can only attend in proportion as
one has the intellectual power of developing the topic.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of this habit of
attention. It is, to quote words of weight, “within the reach of every
one, and should be made the primary object of all mental discipline”;
for whatever the natural gifts of the child, it is only in so far as
the habit of attention is cultivated in him that he is able to make
use of them.
=The Secret of Overpressure.=--If it were only as it saves wear
and tear, a perpetual tussle between duty and inclination, it is
worth while for the mother to lay herself out to secure that her
child never does a lesson into which he does not put his heart. And
that is no difficult undertaking; the thing is, to be on the watch
from the beginning against the formation of the contrary habit
of _in_attention. A great deal has been said lately about
overpressure, and we have glanced at one or two of the causes whose
effects go by this name. But truly, one of the most fertile causes of
an overdone brain is a failure in the habit of attention. I suppose
we are all ready to admit that it is not the things we _do_, but
the things we _fail to do_, which fatigue us, with the sense of
omission, with the worry of hurry in overtaking our tasks. And this is
almost the only cause of failure in work in the case of the healthy
schoolboy or schoolgirl: wandering wits hinder a lesson from being
fully taken in at the right moment; that lesson becomes a bugbear,
continually wanted henceforth and never there; and the sense of loss
tries the young scholar more than would the attentive reception of a
dozen such lessons.
=The Schoolboy’s Home Work.=--In the matter of home work, the parents
may still be of great use to their boys and girls after they begin to
go to day-school; not in helping them, that should not be necessary;
but let us suppose a case:--‘Poor Annie does not finish her lessons
till half-past nine, she really has so much to do’; ‘Poor Tom is at
his books till ten o’clock; we never see anything of the children in
the evening,’ say the distressed parents; and they let their children
go on in a course which is absolutely ruinous both to bodily health
and brain power.
=Wholesome Home Treatment for Mooning.=--Now, the fault is very
seldom in the lessons, but in the children; they _moon_ over
their books, and a little wholesome home treatment should cure them
of that ailment. Allow them, at the utmost, an hour and a half for
their home-work; treat them tacitly as defaulters if they do not
appear at the end of that time; do not be betrayed into word or look
of sympathy; and the moment the time for lessons is over, let some
delightful game or story-book be begun in the drawing-room. By-and-by
they will find that it _is_ possible to finish lessons in time to
secure a pleasant evening afterwards, and the lessons will be much the
better done for the fact that concentrated attention has been bestowed
on them. At the same time the custom of giving home-work, at any rate
to children under fourteen, is greatly to be deprecated. The gain of
a combination of home and school life is lost to the children; and a
very full scheme of school work may be carried through in the morning
hours.
=Rewards and Punishments should be relative Consequences of
Conduct.=--In considering the means of securing attention, it has been
necessary to refer to discipline--the dealing out of rewards and
punishments,--a subject which every tyro of a nursemaid or nursery
governess feels herself very competent to handle. But this, too, has
its scientific aspect: there is a _law_ by which all rewards and
punishments should be regulated: they should be the _natural_, or, at
any rate, the _relative consequences_ of conduct; should imitate, as
nearly as may be without injury to the child, the treatment which such
and such conduct deserves and receives in after life. Miss Edgeworth,
in her story of _Rosamond and the Purple Jar_, hits the right
principle, though the incident is rather extravagant. Little girls do
not often pine for purple jars in chemists’ windows; but that we
should suffer for our wilfulness in getting what is unnecessary by
doing without what is necessary, is precisely one of the lessons of
life we all have to learn, and therefore is the right sort of lesson
to teach a child.
=Natural and Educative Consequences.=--It is evident that to
administer rewards and punishments on this principle requires patient
consideration and steady determination on the mother’s part. She
must consider with herself what fault of disposition the child’s
misbehaviour springs from; she must aim her punishment at that fault,
and must brace herself to see her child suffer present loss for
his lasting gain. Indeed, exceedingly little actual punishment is
necessary where children are brought up with care. But this happens
continually--the child who has done well gains some natural reward
(like that ten minutes in the garden), which the child forfeits who
has done less well; and the mother must brace herself and her child to
bear this loss; if she equalise the two children she commits a serious
wrong, not against the child who has done well, but against the
defaulter, whom she deliberately encourages to repeat his shortcoming.
In placing her child under the discipline of consequences, the mother
must use much tact and discretion. In many cases, the _natural
consequence_ of the child’s fault is precisely that which it is her
business to avert, while, at the same time, she looks about for some
consequence related to the fault which shall have an _educative_
bearing on the child: for instance, if a boy neglect his studies, the
_natural_ consequence is that he remains ignorant; but to allow
him to do so would be criminal neglect on the part of the parent.
II.--THE HABITS OF APPLICATION, ETC.
=Rapid Mental Effort.=--The habits of mental activity and of
application are trained by the very means employed to cultivate that
of attention. The child may _plod_ diligently through his work
who might be trained to _rapid_ mental effort. The teacher
herself must be alert, must expect instant answers, quick thought,
rapid work. The tortoise will _lag_ behind the hare, but the
tortoise must be trained to move, every day, a trifle quicker. Aim
steadily at securing quickness of apprehension and execution, and that
goes far towards getting it.
=Zeal must be stimulated.=--So of application. The child must not be
allowed to get into the mood in which he says, ‘Oh, I am so tired of
sums,’ or ‘of history.’ His zeal must be stimulated; there must always
be a pleasing vista before him; and steady, untiring application to
work should be held up as honourable, while fitful, flagging attention
and effort are scouted.
III.--THE HABIT OF THINKING
=‘A Lion’ Operations included in Thinking.=--The actual labour of
the brain is known to psychologists under various names, and divided
into various operations: let us call it _thinking_, which, for
educational purposes, is sufficiently exact; but, by ‘thinking,’
let us mean a real conscious effort of mind, and not the fancies
that flit without effort through the brain. This sort of thing, for
instance, an example quoted by Archbishop Thompson in his _Laws
of Thought_[8]:--“When Captain Head was travelling across the
pampas of South America, his guide one day suddenly stopped him, and
pointing high into the air, cried out ‘A lion!’ Surprised at such an
exclamation, accompanied with such an act, he turned up his eyes, and
with difficulty perceived, at an immeasurable height, a flight of
condors, soaring in circles in a particular spot. Beneath this spot,
far out of sight of himself or guide, lay the carcass of a horse, and
over that carcass stood, as the guide well knew, a lion, whom the
condors were eyeing with envy from their airy height. The signal of
the birds was to him what the sight of the lion alone would have been
to the traveller--a full assurance of its existence. Here was an act
of thought which cost the thinker no trouble, which was as easy to
him as to cast his eyes upward, yet which from us, unaccustomed to
the subject, would require many steps and some labour. The sight of
the condors convinced him that there was some carcass or other; but
as they kept wheeling far above it, instead of swooping down to their
feast, he guessed that some beast had anticipated them. Was it a dog,
or a jackal? No; the condors would not fear to drive away, or share
with, either: it must be some large beast, and as there were lions
in the neighbourhood, he concluded that one was here.” And all these
steps of thought are summed up in the words ‘A lion.’
This is the sort of thing that the children should go through, more
or less, in every lesson--a tracing of effect from cause, or of cause
from effect; a comparing of things to find out wherein they are alike,
and wherein they differ; a conclusion as to causes or consequences
from certain premises.
IV.--THE HABIT OF IMAGINING
=The Sense of the Incongruous.=--All their lessons will afford scope
for some slight exercise of the children’s thinking power, some more
and some less, and the lessons must be judiciously alternated, so that
the more mechanical efforts succeed the more strictly intellectual,
and that the pleasing exercise of the imagination, again, succeed
efforts of reason. By the way, it is a pity when the sense of the
ludicrous is cultivated in children’s books at the expense of
better things. _Alice in Wonderland_ is a delicious feast of
absurdities, which none of us, old or young, could afford to spare;
but it is doubtful whether the child who reads it has the delightful
imaginings, the realising of the unknown, with which he reads _The
Swiss Family Robinson_.
This point is worth considering in connection with Christmas books for
the little people. Books of ‘comicalities’ cultivate no power but the
sense of the incongruous; and though life is the more amusing for the
possession of such a sense, when cultivated to excess it is apt to
show itself in a flippant habit. _Diogenes and the Naughty Boys of
Troy_ is irresistible, but it is not the sort of thing the children
will live over and over, and ‘play at’ by the hour, as we have all
played at Robinson Crusoe finding the footprints. They must have
‘funny books,’ but do not give the children too much nonsense-reading.
=Commonplace Tales; Tales of Imagination.=--Stories, again, of the
Christmas holidays, of George and Lucy, of the amusements, foibles,
and virtues of children in their own condition of life, leave nothing
to the imagination. The children know all about everything so well
that it never occurs to them to play at the situations in any one of
these tales, or even to read it twice over. But let them have tales of
the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times, heroic
adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales in which they
are never roughly pulled up by the impossible--even where all is
impossible, and they know it, and yet believe.
=Imagination and Great Conceptions.=--And this, not for the children’s
amusement merely: it is not impossible that posterity may write us
down a generation blest with little imagination, and, by so far, the
less capable of great conceptions and heroic efforts, for it is only
as we have it in us to let a person or a cause fill the whole stage of
the mind, to the exclusion of self-occupation, that we are capable of
large-hearted action on behalf of that person or cause. Our novelists
say there is nothing left to imagine; and that, therefore, a realistic
description of things as they are is all that is open to them. But
imagination is nothing if not creative, unless it see, not only what
is apparent, but what is conceivable, and what is poetically fit in
given circumstances.
=Imagination Grows.=--Now imagination does not descend, full-grown, to
take possession of an empty house; like every other power of the mind,
it is the merest germ of a power to begin with, and grows by what it
gets; and childhood, the age of faith, is the time for its nourishing.
The children should have the joy of living in far lands, in other
persons, in other times--a delightful double existence; and this
joy they will find, for the most part, in their story-books. Their
lessons, too, history and geography, should cultivate their conceptive
powers. If the child do not live in the times of his history lesson,
be not at home in the climes his geography book describes, why, these
lessons will fail of their purpose. But let lessons do their best, and
the picture-gallery of the imagination is poorly hung if the child
have not found his way into the realms of fancy.
=Thinking comes by Practice.=--How the children’s various lessons
should be handled so as to induce habits of thinking, we shall
consider later; but this for the present: _thinking_, like
writing or skating, comes by practice. The child who never has
thought, never does think, and probably never will think; for
are there not people enough who go through the world without any
deliberate exercise of their own wits? The child must think, get at
the reason-why of things for himself, every day of his life, and more
each day than the day before. Children and parents both are given to
invert this educational process. The child asks ‘Why?’ and the parent
answers, rather proud of this evidence of thought in his child. There
is some slight show of speculation even in wondering ‘Why?’ but it is
the slightest and most superficial effort the thinking brain produces.
Let the parent ask ‘Why?’ and the child produce the answer, if he
can. After he has turned the matter over and over in his mind, there
is no harm in telling him--and he will remember it--the reason why.
Every walk should offer some knotty problem for the children to think
out--“Why does that leaf float on the water, and this pebble sink?”
and so on.
V.--THE HABIT OF REMEMBERING
=Remembering and Recollecting.=--Memory is the storehouse of whatever
knowledge we possess; and it is upon the fact of the stores lodged
in the memory that we take rank as intelligent beings. The children
learn in order that they may remember. Much of what we have learned
and experienced in childhood, and later, we cannot reproduce, and yet
it has formed the groundwork of after-knowledge; later notions and
opinions have grown out of what we once learned and knew. That is our
sunk capital, of which we enjoy the interest though we are unable to
realise. Again, much that we have learned and experienced is not only
retained in the storehouse of memory, but is our available capital,
we can reproduce, _recollect_ upon demand. This memory which
may be drawn upon by the act of recollection is our most valuable
endowment.
=A ‘Spurious’ Memory.=--There is a third kind of (spurious)
memory--facts and ideas floating in the brain which yet make no part
of it, and are exuded at a single effort; as when a barrister produces
all his knowledge of a case in his brief, and then forgets all about
it; or when the schoolboy ‘crams’ for an examination, writes down what
he has thus learned, and behold, it is gone from his gaze for ever: as
Ruskin puts it, “They cram to pass, and not to know; they _do_
pass, and they _don’t_ know.” That the barrister, the physician,
should be able thus to dismiss the case on which he has ceased to be
occupied, the publisher the book he has rejected, is well for him,
and this art of forgetting is not without its uses: but what of the
schoolboy who has little left after a year’s work but his place in a
class-list?
=Memory a Record in the Brain Substance.=--To say anything adequate
on the subject of memory is impossible here; but let us try to answer
two or three queries which present themselves on the surface. How do
we come to ‘remember’ at all? How do we gain the power to utilise
remembered facts--that is, to _recollect_? And under what
conditions is knowledge acquired that neither goes to the growth of
brain and mind, nor is available on demand, but is lightly lodged in
the brain for some short period, and is then evacuated at a single
throw? We are interested in a wonderful invention--an instrument
which records spoken words, and will deliver, say a century hence,
speech or lecture in the very words and in the very tones of the
speaker. Such an instrument is that function of the brain called
memory, whereby the impressions received by the brain are recorded
_mechanically_--at least, such is the theory pretty generally
received now by physiologists. That is, the mind takes cognisance of
certain facts, and the nerve substance of the brain _records_
that cognisance.
=Made under what Conditions.=--Now, the questions arise, Under
what conditions is such an imprint of fact or event made upon the
substance of the brain? Is the record permanent? And is the brain
capable of receiving an indefinite number of such impressions? It
appears, both from common experience and from an infinite number of
examples quoted by psychologists, that any object or idea which is
regarded with _attention_ makes the sort of impression on the
brain which is said to fix it in the memory. In other words, give an
instant’s undivided attention to anything whatsoever, and that thing
will be remembered. In describing this effect, the common expression
is accurate beyond its intention. We say, “Such and such a sight or
sound, or sensation, made a strong _impression_ on me.” And that
is precisely what has happened: arrest the attention upon any fact or
incident, and that fact or incident is remembered; it is impressed,
imprinted upon the brain substance. The inference is plain. You want
the child to remember? Then secure his whole _attention_, the
fixed gaze of his mind, as it were, upon the fact to be remembered;
then he will have it: by a sort of photographic (!) process, that fact
or idea is ‘taken’ by his brain, and when he is an old man, perhaps,
the memory of it will flash across him.
=Recollection and the Law of Association.=--But it is not enough to
have a recollection flash across one incidentally; we want to have the
power of recalling at will: and for this, something more is necessary
than an occasional act of attention producing a solitary impression.
Supposing, for instance, that by good teaching you secure the child’s
attention to the verb _avoir_, he will remember it; that is to
say, some infinitely slight growth of brain tissue will record and
retain that one French verb. But one verb is nothing; you want the
child to learn _French_, and for this you must not only fix his
attention upon each new lesson, but each must be so linked into the
last that it is impossible for him to recall one without the other
following in its train. The physical effect of such a method appears
to be that each new growth of brain tissue is, so to speak, laid
upon the last; that is, to put it figuratively, a certain tract of
the brain may be conceived of as being overlaid with French. This
is to make a practical use of that law of association of ideas of
which one would not willingly become the sport; and it is the neglect
of this law which invalidates much good teaching. The teacher is
content to produce a solitary impression which is only recalled as
it is acted upon by a chance suggestion; whereas he should forge the
links of a chain to draw his bucket out of the well. Probably the
reader may have heard, or heard of, a Dr Pick, who grounded a really
philosophical system of mnemonics on these two principles of attention
and association. Whatever we may think of his application of it, the
principle he asserted is the right one.
=Every Lesson must recall the Last.=--Let every lesson gain the
child’s entire attention, and let each new lesson be so interlaced
with the last that the one _must_ recall the other; that, again,
recalls the one before it, and so on to the beginning.
=No Limit to the Recording Power of the Brain.=--But the ‘lightly
come, lightly go’ of a mere verbal memory follows no such rules. The
child gets his exercise ‘by heart,’ says it off like a parrot, and
behold, it is gone; there is no record of it upon the brain at all. To
secure such a record, there must be time; time for that full gaze of
the mind we call _attention_, and _for the growth of the brain
tissue to the new idea_. Given these conditions, there appears to
be no limit of quantity to the recording power of the brain. Except in
this way: a girl learns French, and speaks it fairly well; by the time
she is a grandmother she has forgotten it entirely, has not a word
left. When this is the case, her French has been disused; she has not
been in the habit of reading, hearing, or speaking French from youth
to age. Whereby it is evident that, to secure right-of-way to that
record of French imprinted on her brain, the path should have been
kept open by frequent goings and comings.
=But Links of Association a Condition of Recollection.=--To acquire
any knowledge or power whatsoever, and then to leave it to grow
rusty in a neglected corner of the brain, is practically useless.
Where there is no chain of association to draw the bucket out of
the well, it is all the same as if there were no water there. As
to how to form these links, every subject will suggest a suitable
method. The child has a lesson about Switzerland to-day, and one
about Holland to-morrow, and the one is linked to the other by the
very fact that the two countries have hardly anything in common; what
the one has, the other has not. Again, the association will be of
_similarity_, and not of _contrast_. In our own experience
we find that colours, places, sounds, odours recall persons or events;
but links of this sensuous order can hardly be employed in education.
The link between any two things must be found in the nature of the
things associated.
VI.--THE HABIT OF PERFECT EXECUTION
=The Habit of turning out Imperfect Work.=--‘Throw perfection into all
you do’ is a counsel upon which a family may be brought up with great
advantage. We English, as a nation, think too much of persons, and too
little of _things_, _work_, _execution_. Our children are allowed to
make their figures, or their letters, their stitches, their dolls’
clothes, their small carpentry, anyhow, with the notion that they will
do better by-and-by. Other nations--the Germans and the French, for
instance--look at the question philosophically, and know that if the
children get the _habit_ of turning out imperfect work, the men and
women will undoubtedly keep that habit up. I remember being delighted
with the work of a class of about forty children, of six and seven, in
an elementary school at Heidelberg. They were doing a writing lesson,
accompanied by a good deal of oral teaching from a master, who wrote
each word on the blackboard. By-and-by the slates were shown, and I
did not observe _one faulty or irregular letter_ on the whole forty
slates. The same principle of ‘perfection’ was to be discerned in a
recent exhibition of school-work held throughout France. No faulty work
was shown, to be excused on the plea that it was the work of children.
=A Child should Execute Perfectly.=--No work should be given to a
child that he cannot execute _perfectly_, and then perfection
should be required of him as a matter of course. For instance, he is
set to do a copy of strokes, and is allowed to show a slateful at
all sorts of slopes and all sorts of intervals; his moral sense is
vitiated, his _eye_ is injured. Set him six strokes to copy;
let him, not bring a slateful, but six perfect strokes, at regular
distances and at regular slopes. If he produces a faulty pair, get
_him_ to point out the fault, and persevere until he has produced
his task; if he does not do it to-day, let him go on to-morrow
and the next day, and when the six perfect strokes appear, let it
be an occasion of triumph. So with the little tasks of painting,
drawing, or construction he sets himself--let everything he does
_be well done_. An unsteady house of cards is a thing to be
ashamed of. Closely connected with this habit of ‘perfect work’ is
that of finishing whatever is taken in hand. The child should rarely
be allowed to set his hand to a new undertaking until the last is
finished.
VII.--SOME MORAL HABITS--OBEDIENCE
It is disappointing that, in order to cover the ground at all, we must
treat those moral habits, which the mother owes it to her children to
cultivate in them, in a slight and inadequate way; but the point to
be borne in mind is, that all that has been already said about the
cultivation of _habit_ applies with the greatest possible force
to each of these _habits_.
=The Whole Duty of a Child.=--First, and infinitely the most
important, is the habit of _obedience_. Indeed, obedience is the
whole duty of the child, and for this reason--every other duty of the
child is fulfilled as a matter of obedience to his parents. Not only
so: obedience is the whole duty of man; obedience to conscience, to
law, to Divine direction.
It has been well observed that each of the three recorded temptations
of our Lord in the wilderness is a suggestion, not of an act of overt
sin, but of an act of _wilfulness_, that state directly opposed
to obedience, and out of which springs all that foolishness which is
bound up in the heart of a child.
=Obedience no Accidental Duty.=--Now, if the parent realise that
obedience is no mere accidental duty, the fulfilling of which is a
matter that lies between himself and the child, but that he is the
appointed agent to train the child up to the intelligent obedience
of the self-compelling, law-abiding human being, he will see that he
has no right to _forego_ the obedience of his child, and that
every act of disobedience in the child is a direct condemnation of the
parent. Also, he will see that the motive to the child’s obedience
is not the arbitrary one of, ‘Do this, or that, because I have said
so,’ but the motive of the apostolic injunction, “Children, obey your
parents in the Lord, _for this is right_.”
=Children must have the Desire to Obey.=--It is only in proportion as
the will of the child is in the act of obedience, and he obeys because
his sense of _right_ makes him _desire_ to obey in spite of
temptations to disobedience--not of constraint, but willingly--that
the habit has been formed which will, hereafter, enable the child to
use the strength of his will against his inclinations when these
prompt him to lawless courses. It is said that the children of parents
who are most strict in exacting obedience often turn out ill; and
that orphans and other poor waifs brought up under strict discipline
only wait their opportunity to break out into license. Exactly so;
because, in these cases, there is no gradual training of the child in
the _habit_ of obedience; no gradual enlisting of his _will_
on the side of sweet service and a free-will offering of submission to
the highest law: the poor children are simply bullied into submission
to the _will_, that is, the _wilfulness_, of another; not at
all, ‘for it is _right_’; only because it is convenient.
=Expect Obedience.=--The mother has no more sacred duty than that of
training her infant to instant obedience. To do so is no difficult
task; the child is still “trailing clouds of glory ... from God,
who is his home”; the principle of obedience is within him, waiting
to be called into exercise. There is no need to rate the child, or
threaten him, or use any manner of violence, because the parent is
_invested_ with authority which the child intuitively recognises.
It is enough to say, ‘Do this,’ in a quiet, authoritative tone, and
_expect it to be done_. The mother often enough loses her hold
over her children because they detect in the tone of her voice that
she does not expect them to obey her behests; she does not think
enough of her position; has not sufficient confidence in her own
authority. The mother’s great stronghold is in the _habit_ of
obedience. If she begin by requiring that her children always obey
her, why, they will always do so as a matter of course; but let them
once get the thin end of the wedge in, let them discover that they can
do otherwise than obey, and a woful struggle begins, which commonly
ends in the children doing that which is right in their own eyes.
This is the sort of thing which is fatal: The children are in the
drawing-room, and a caller is announced. ‘You must go upstairs now.’
‘Oh, mother dear, _do_ let us stay in the window-corner; we will
be as quiet as mice!’ The mother is rather proud of her children’s
pretty manners, and they stay. They are _not_ quiet, of course;
but that is the least of the evils; they have succeeded in doing as
they chose and not as they were bid, and they will not put their necks
under the yoke again without a struggle. It is in little matters that
the mother is worsted. ‘Bedtime, Willie!’ ‘Oh, mamma, _just_ let
me finish this’; and the mother yields, forgetting that the case in
point is of no consequence; the thing that matters is that the child
should be daily confirming a _habit_ of obedience by the unbroken
repetition of acts of obedience. It is astonishing how clever the
child is in finding ways of evading the spirit while he observes the
letter. ‘Mary, come in.’ ‘Yes, mother’; but her mother calls four
times before Mary comes. ‘Put away your bricks’; and the bricks are
put away with slow, reluctant fingers. ‘You must _always_ wash
your hands when you hear the first bell.’ The child obeys for that
once, and no more.
To avoid these displays of wilfulness, the mother will insist from the
first on an obedience which is prompt, cheerful, and lasting--save for
lapses of memory on the child’s part. Tardy, unwilling, occasional
obedience is hardly worth the having; and it is greatly easier to give
the child the _habit_ of perfect obedience by never allowing him
in anything else, than it is to obtain this mere formal obedience by
a constant exercise of authority. By-and-by, when he is old enough,
take the child into confidence; let him know what a noble thing it is
to be able to make himself do, in a minute, and brightly, the very
thing he would rather not do. To secure this habit of obedience, the
mother must exercise great self-restraint; she must never give a
command which she does not intend to see carried out to the full. And
she must not lay upon her children burdens, grievous to be borne, of
command heaped upon command.
=Law ensures Liberty.=--The children who are trained to perfect
obedience may be trusted with a good deal of liberty: they receive
a few directions which they know they must not disobey; and for the
rest, they are left to learn how to direct their own actions, even at
the cost of some small mishaps; and are not pestered with a perpetual
fire of ‘Do this,’ and ‘Don’t do that!’
VIII.--TRUTHFULNESS
It is unnecessary to say a word of the duty of Truthfulness; but the
training of the child in the habit of strict veracity is another
matter, and one which requires delicate care and scrupulosity on the
part of the mother.
=Three Causes of Lying--all Vicious.=--The vice of lying arises
from three causes: carelessness in _ascertaining_ the truth,
carelessness in _stating_ the truth, and a deliberate intention
to deceive. That all three are vicious, is evident from the fact that
a man’s character may be ruined by what is no more than a careless
mis-statement on the part of another: the speaker repeats a damaging
remark without taking the trouble to sift it; or he repeats what he
has heard or seen with so little care to deliver the truth that his
statement becomes no better than a lie.
=Only One Kind visited on Children.=--Now, of the three kinds of
lying, it is only, as a matter of fact, the third which is severely
visited upon the child; the first and the second he is allowed in.
He tells you he has seen ‘lots’ of spotted dogs in the town--he
has really seen two; that ‘all the boys’ are collecting crests--he
knows of three who are doing so; that ‘everybody’ says Jones is a
‘sneak’--the fact is he has heard Brown say so. These departures
from strict veracity are on matters of such slight importance that
the mother is apt to let them pass as the ‘children’s chatter’; but,
indeed, every such lapse is damaging to the child’s sense of truth--a
blade which easily loses its keenness of edge.
=Accuracy of Statement.=--The mother who trains her child to strict
accuracy of statement about things small and great fortifies him
against temptations to the grosser forms of lying; he will not readily
colour a tale to his own advantage, suppress facts, equivocate, when
the statement of the simple fact has become a binding habit, and when
he has not been allowed to form the contrary vicious habit of playing
fast and loose with words.
=Exaggeration and Ludicrous Embellishments.=--Two forms of
prevarication, very tempting to the child, will require great
vigilance on the mother’s part--that of exaggeration and that of
clothing a story with ludicrous embellishments. However funny a
circumstance may be as described by the child, the ruthless mother
must strip the tale of everything over and above the naked truth: for,
indeed, a reputation for facetiousness is dearly purchased by the
loss of that dignity of character, in child or man, which accompanies
the habit of strict veracity; it is possible, happily, to be humorous
without any sacrifice of truth.
=Reverence, etc.=--As for _reverence_, _consideration for others_,
_respect for persons and property_, I can only urge the importance of
a sedulous cultivation of these moral qualities--the distinguishing
marks of a refined nature--until they become the daily _habits_ of the
child’s life; and the more, because a self-assertive, aggressive,
self-seeking temper is but too characteristic of the times we live in.
=Temper--Born in a Child.=--I am anxious, however, to say a few words
on the _habit_ of sweet temper. It is very customary to regard
temper as constitutional, that which is born in you and is neither
to be helped nor hindered. ‘Oh, she is a good-tempered little soul;
nothing puts her out!’ ‘Oh, he has his father’s temper; the least
thing that goes contrary makes him fly into a passion,’ are the sorts
of remarks we hear constantly.
=Not Temper, but Tendency.=--It is no doubt true that the children
inherit a certain tendency to irascibility or to amiability, to
fretfulness, discontentment, peevishness, sullenness, murmuring, and
impatience; or to cheerfulness, trustfulness, good-humour, patience,
and humility. It is also true that upon the preponderance of any
of these qualities--upon _temper_, that is--the happiness or
wretchedness of child and man depends, as well as the comfort or
misery of the people who live with him. We all know people possessed
of integrity and of many excellent virtues who make themselves
intolerable to their belongings. The root of the evil is, not that
these people were _born_ sullen, or peevish, or envious--that
might have been mended; but that they were permitted to grow up
in these dispositions. Here, if anywhere, the power of habit is
invaluable: it rests with the parents to correct the original twist,
all the more so if it is from them the child gets it, and to send
their child into the world blest with an even, happy temper, inclined
to make the best of things, to look on the bright side, to impute the
best and kindest motives to others, and to make no extravagant claims
on his own account--fertile source of ugly tempers. And this, because
the child is born with no more than certain _tendencies_.
=Parents must correct Tendency by New Habit of Temper.=--It is by
force of habit that a tendency becomes a temper; and it rests with the
mother to hinder the formation of ill tempers, to force that of good
tempers. Nor is it difficult to do this while the child’s countenance
is as an open book to his mother, and she reads the thoughts of his
heart before he is aware of them himself. Remembering that every
envious, murmuring, discontented thought leaves a track in the very
substance of the child’s brain for such thoughts to run in again and
again--that this track, this _rut_, so to speak, is ever widening
and deepening with the traffic in ugly thoughts--the mother’s care is
to hinder at the outset the formation of any such track. She sees into
her child’s soul--sees the evil temper in the act of rising: now is
her opportunity.
=Change the Child’s Thoughts.=--Let her _change the child’s
thoughts_ before ever the bad temper has had time to develop into
conscious feeling, much less act: take him out of doors, send him
to fetch or carry, tell him or show him something of interest,--in a
word, give him something else to think about; but all in a natural
way, and without letting the child perceive that he is being treated.
As every fit of sullenness leaves place in the child’s mind for
another fit of sullenness to succeed it, so every such fit averted by
the mother’s tact tends to obliterate the evil traces of former sullen
tempers. At the same time, the mother is careful to lay down a highway
for the free course of all sweet and genial thoughts and feelings.
I have been offering suggestions, not for a course of intellectual and
moral training, but only for the formation of certain _habits_
which should be, as it were, the outworks of character. Even with
this limited programme, I have left unnoticed many matters fully as
important as those touched upon. In the presence of an embarrassment
of riches, it has been necessary to adopt some principle of selection;
and I have thought it well to dwell upon considerations which do not
appear to me to have their full weight with educated parents, rather
than upon those of which every thoughtful person recognises the force.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] This example, offered by so able a psychologist, is so admirable
that I venture to quote it more than once.