By precocity I mean the manifestation of the child’s mental functions at
a period earlier than the one observed in the past and present
generations of children.
In the course of his growth and development the individual unfolds his
inner powers through acquisition of the stored-up experiences of
previous generations. The well known biogenetic law may, with some
modifications, be applied to mental life. The development of the
individual is an abbreviated reproduction of the evolution of the
species. Briefly put: Ontogenesis is an epitome of Phylogenesis. This
biogenetic law holds true in the domain of education. The stored-up
experiences of the race are condensed, foreshortened, and recapitulated
in the child’s life history. This process of progressive “precocity,” or
of foreshortening of education, has been going on unconsciously in the
course of human evolution. We have reached a stage when man can be made
_conscious_ of this fundamental process, thus getting control over his
own growth and development.
Although the process of foreshortening of education has been taking
place throughout the history of mankind, and especially of civilized
humanity, still the process has remained imperceptible on account of its
extremely slow rate of progress. Hence the fact of “precocity,” or of
early development of children, has been hitherto regarded as rare, as
phenomenal. Like all rare phenomena, precocity, or early child
development, is considered as unique, as abnormal, and even as
pathological. In fact, many still regard precocity as some form of
malady akin to mental alienation.
It is well to bear in mind that phenomena, at first scarce and rare, may
under favorable conditions become sufficiently numerous to be quite
common. In fact, we may lay it down as a law that all discoveries,
inventions, and changes in general, economical, political, social,
mental, moral, and religious, first appear on a small scale in limited
areas from which they spread in various directions. Organisms start, as
variations or mutations, from minute nuclei of growth; species have
their origin in small centres and restricted areas. A new species may
begin with some apparently insignificant variation which may grow and
develop, and which, from a certain standpoint, may be regarded as an
abnormality.
What at present is considered as “precocity,” and hence as an
abnormality, may really be the foreshadowing of the future. The
apparently precocious variation may and will turn out a normal
phenomenon. The stone which the builders refused is become the head
stone of the corner. Early education, precocity, is to become the corner
stone of human life. _At present the preliminary period of child
education is unduly retarded to the detriment of the individual and
society._
The truth is, we do not realize the importance of early training. We
begin education late in the child’s life, when dispositions have become
formed and habits have become rigid. This delay seriously injures the
growth of the child by lowering the level of mental activity. The
critical points of formation of mental interests are allowed to slip by,
leaving the individual irresponsive to mental, æsthetic, and moral
interests. The critical turning points, when the best energies could be
brought out, are not taken care of at the right moment.
The mental functions become prematurely atrophied and degenerated. When
we later on attempt to awaken those functions, we are surprised to find
them absent. We labor under the false impression that the child is
naturally inapt and deficient. To make up for this apparent deficiency
we force the child’s mind into narrow channels, crippling and deforming
it into mean mediocrity. The child is run into the rigid moulds of home,
school, and college with the result of permanent mutilation of
originality and genius. The individual is deformed, because the critical
spirit of inquiry and originality is racked on the Procrustes’ bed of
home and school. The unfortunate thing about it is the firm belief that
the crippled spirit of the child is a congenital mediocrity. Instead of
shouldering the fault, we put the burden on Heredity. Darwinism with its
spontaneous variation and hereditary transmission, Austro-Germanic
Mendelism, accompanied by a widespread propaganda of Eugenics, have
blotted out from view the far more fundamental factors of environment
and education which play such a paramount rôle in man’s life.
We may profit by recent studies in Psychopathology. In my investigations
I have shown the important rôle which early child experience plays in
the patient’s life. Psychopathic affections can be traced to child fears
which become afterwards reinforced by unfavorable conditions of life.
This is formulated in my works on Psychopathology. Psychopathology
clearly brings out the significant fact that a good start in early
childhood is of the utmost consequence to the individual. Only a good
education in early life can save man from the innumerable psychopathic
maladies to which he is subject. The seeds of vicious habits and of
criminal tendencies can be eliminated in early childhood.
Early development or what is termed “precocity” in children will not
only prevent vice, crime, and disease, but will strengthen the
individual along all lines, physical, mental, and moral. We should be
careful not to cast the child’s mind into ready made moulds, not to
subject his mind, his character to the yoke of meaningless mannerisms
and rigid formalities. We should have respect for the child’s
personality. We should remember that there is genius in every healthy,
normal child.
We are blind to the child’s latent genius, because we look to brute
force as our standard. Like savages, we are afraid of genius, especially
when it is manifested as “precocity in children.” This abject fear of
genius and of precocity is one of the most pernicious philistine
superstitions, causing the retardation of the progress of humanity. The
fear of mental precocity is essentially the phobia of the inveterate
philistine.
We should bear in mind that the philistine is an insignificant, though
exact part of a huge social machine, of a Frankenstein “kultur” before
which the philistine prostrates himself in dust, a social monster of
which he is proud to form an irresponsible mite. Whether he be an atom
of a political organization, of a nation, or of a military
kultur-system, the philistine is trained to be content to play the same
ignoble, slavish rôle of submission, obedience, and irresponsibility.
Without personal conscience, without personal will, without personal
initiative, the impersonal philistine is like the stupid genie of
Aladdin’s lamp who slavishly obeys the master of the magic lamp.
The present horrible European war (predicted in this volume several
years before the onset of the war. See pp. 30, 31) is the unfortunate,
but natural outcome of philistine education and philistine life. The
immediate cause of the war may be traced to politics, greed,
competition, to commercial, industrial, cultural, national,
international, and racial complications. At bottom, however, the present
European war is ultimately due to our pernicious system of training, the
bane of our industrial, social life. Millions of men are drilled and
disciplined to act as automata; men are trained from childhood, at home,
school, college, and university to surrender their individual judgment,
and follow blindly an alleged “social consciousness,” entrusted, by a
set of philistine bureaucrats, to superior leaders, to generals,
admirals, and field-marshals. Men are hypnotized by a pernicious and
vicious system of training and quasi-education to consider it a high,
sacred ideal to obey implicitly the will of a few officials and
diplomats, to attack, plunder and slaughter at the command of generals
and officers, in the interest of a plutocratic oligarchy, hallowed by
the vague shibboleth: “Flag, Country, Patriotism.”[2] The youth of
nations is debauched with the belief in the supreme grandeur of
delivering their personal responsibility in the keeping of a handful of
Byzantine bureaucrats, irresponsible junkers, and half-crazed Cæsars.
The principle “Be Childlike” is paramount in the education of mankind.
The child represents the future, all the possibilities, all the coming
greatness of the human race. We, the adults, are contaminated by the
brutal passions and vices incident to the struggle for existence and
self-preservation.
Plasticity of mind is characteristic of genius. Plasticity of mind and
body is preëminently characteristic of the child. Adaptability and
plasticity are found in all young tissue, muscle, gland, and nerve. As
the organism ages, becomes differentiated, and adapted to special
functions and conditions of life, it loses its original plasticity. The
tissues become fixed and the functions set. The adult’s brain and mind
begin to work in ruts. The child is superior to the adult.
The child looks at the world with eyes simple, clear, bright, not
blinded by the heavy scales of traditions, superstitions, and prejudices
of remote ages. The intricate worries, complex fears, selfish motives,
brutal passions, greed, revenge, malice, vice, enmity do not as yet mar
the soul of the child. Artificial needs, strong animal passions have no
firm hold on the child’s mind. The child’s mind is purer, fresher,
brighter, far more original than the adult intelligence with its
philistine notions and hide-bound habits of thought and belief.
With age the mind becomes specialized and degraded in quality. Unless
checked by a good education and by a persistent course of mental
activity, intellectual and other mental interests, the adult mind is apt
to deteriorate. Unless controlled by a good education and by intense
mental interests, free from service to animal needs, the emotions of
self-regard, the impulse of self-preservation with its fear instinct
gradually gain in man the upper hand. In the child, on the contrary, the
personal interests are relatively weak, and fluctuating, hence the
possibility of pure disinterestedness, pure curiosity, love of learning,
the root of all originality present both in genius and the child. The
child presents the innocence and gentleness of human genius, the adult
philistine is the embodiment of the force and cunning of the brute.
We should not be scared by the bug-bear of precocity. We should awaken
man’s genius by giving the child an early, a “precocious” education. We
should bear in mind that the knowledge of our schoolboys and schoolgirls
far surpasses that of the ancient sages or of the mediæval doctors. We
should learn to understand and to utilize the process of progressive
foreshortening of race acquisitions in the history of the individual.
The great biologist, Professor C. S. Minot, comes to a similar
conclusion, as the result of his profound biological investigations: “I
believe,” says Minot, “that this principle of psychological development,
paralleling the career of physical development, needs to be more
considered in arranging our educational plans. For if it be true that
the decline in the power of learning is most rapid at first, it is
evident that we want to make as much use of the early years as
possible—that the tendency, for instance, which has existed in many of
our universities, to postpone the period of entrance into college, is
biologically an erroneous tendency. It would be better to have the young
man get to college earlier, graduate earlier, get into practical life or
into professional schools earlier, while the power of learning is
greater.”
I may say that within my experience children who had the advantage of an
early education and training manifested a higher grade of intellectual
and moral life, a far better state of physical health than children
brought up under the present retarding and crippling system of
education. In conclusion I may add that in order to gain access to man’s
Reserve Energy we must have recourse to early child education, to the
much maligned, and greatly feared “Precocity in Children.”
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[1] Reproduced in part, with the kind permission of the publishers, from
my contribution to the forthcoming Encyclopædia of Education, published
by Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, London, England.
[2] “The cheapest form of pride,” says Schopenhauer, “is national pride;
for if a man is proud of his own nation it follows that he has no
qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not
have recourse to those which he shares with his fellow-men.... Every
miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts as
a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and
glad to defend all its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus
reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.... National character is
only another name for the particular form which the littleness,
perversity, and baseness of mankind take in every country.”...
“Narrowness, prejudice, vanity, and self-interest are the main elements
of patriotism.”... “Does not all history show that whenever a king is
firmly established on the throne, and the people reach some degree of
prosperity, he uses it to lead an army, like a band of robbers, against
adjoining countries? Are not almost all wars ultimately undertaken for
purpose of plunder?”... Schopenhauer prophetically warns his countrymen:
“All war is a matter of robbery, and the Germans should take that as a
warning.”