CONCERNING CHILDREN
* * * * *
_By Charlotte Perkins Stetson_
IN THIS OUR WORLD. Cloth, 16mo. 5/--
WOMEN AND ECONOMICS. Cloth, 12mo. 6/--
THE YELLOW WALL PAPER. Paper boards, 12mo. 2/--
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
24 Bedford Street Strand
LONDON, W.C.
* * * * *
CONCERNING
CHILDREN
BY
CHARLOTTE PERKINS [STETSON] GILMAN
AUTHOR OF
"WOMEN AND ECONOMICS," "IN THIS OUR WORLD,"
"THE YELLOW WALL PAPER."
[Illustration]
LONDON: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
BOSTON: SMALL, MAYNARD & CO.
1903
TO
MY DAUGHTER, KATHARINE
WHO HAS TAUGHT ME MUCH OF WHAT
IS WRITTEN HERE
Contents.
PAGE
I. THE PRECIOUS TEN 3
II. THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND 25
III. TWO AND TWO TOGETHER 46
IV. THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER 70
V. TEACHABLE ETHICS 96
VI. A PLACE FOR CHILDREN 118
VII. UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING 139
VIII. PRESUMPTUOUS AGE 156
IX. THE RESPECT DUE TO YOUTH 169
X. TOO MUCH CONSIDERATION 183
XI. SIX MOTHERS 200
XII. MEDITATIONS ON THE NURSE-MAID 212
XIII. CHILDREN AND SERVANTS 233
XIV. MOTHERS, NATURAL AND UNNATURAL 255
XV. SOCIAL PARENTAGE 278
Concerning Children
I.
THE PRECIOUS TEN.
According to our religious belief, the last best work of God is the
human race. According to the observation of biologists, the highest
product of evolution is the human race. According to our own natural
inner conviction, this twofold testimony is quite acceptable: we are
the first class.
Whatever our merits when compared with lower species, however, we vary
conspicuously when compared with one another. Humanity is superior to
equinity, felinity, caninity; but there are degrees of humanness.
Between existing nations there is marked difference in the qualities
we call human; and history shows us a long line of advance in these
qualities in the same nation. The human race is still in the making,
is by no means done; and, however noble it is to be human, it will be
nobler to be humaner. As conscious beings, able to modify our own
acts, we have power to improve the species, to promote the
development of the human race. This brings us to the children.
Individuals may improve more or less at any time, though most largely
and easily in youth; but race improvement must be made in youth, to be
transmitted. The real progress of man is born in him.
If you were buying babies, investing in young human stock as you would
in colts or calves, for the value of the beast, a sturdy English baby
would be worth more than an equally vigorous young Fuegian. With the
same training and care, you could develope higher faculties in the
English specimen than in the Fuegian specimen, because it was better
bred. The savage baby would excel in some points, but the qualities of
the modern baby are those dominant to-day. Education can do much; but
the body and brain the child is born with are all that you have to
educate. The progress of humanity must be recorded in living flesh.
Unless the child is a more advanced specimen than his father and
mother, there is no racial improvement. Virtues we still strive for
are not yet ours: it is the unconscious virtues we are born with that
measure the rise of nations.
Our mechanical products in all their rich variety serve two
purposes,--to show the measure of the brains that made them, and to
help make better ones.
The printing-press, for instance, marked a century of ability; but its
main value is to develope centuries of greater ability. Society
secretes, as it were, this mass of material wherewith to nourish its
countless young; and, as this material is so permanent and so mobile,
it is proportionately more advantageous to our posterity than the
careful preparation of some anxious insect for her swarm of progeny.
Unless the creature is born better than his creators, they do not save
him. He sinks back or is overcome by others, perhaps lingering
decadent among the traces of lost arts, like degenerate nomad savages
who wander among the ruins of ancestral temples. We see plenty of such
cases, individually, showing this arrested social development,--from
the eighteenth-century man, who is only a little behind his age and
does not hinder us much, to the dragging masses of dull peasantry and
crude savagery, which keep us back so seriously. This does not include
the reversions and degenerates, the absolutely abortive members of
society; but merely its raw stock, that heavy proportion of the people
who are not bred up to the standard of the age. To such we may apply
every advantage of education, every facile convenience of the latest
day; and, though these things do help a little, we have still the
slow-minded mass, whose limited range of faculties acts as a steady
check on the success of our best intellects. The surest, quickest way
to improve humanity is to improve the stock, the people themselves;
and all experience shows that the time to improve people is while they
are young. As in a growing cornstalk the height is to be measured from
joint to joint, not counting the length of its long, down-flowing
leaves, so in our line of ascent the height is to be measured from
birth to birth, not counting the further development of the parent
after the child is born.
The continued life of the parent counts in other ways, as it
contributes to social service; and, in especial, as it reacts to
promote the further growth of the young. But the best service to
society and the child is in the progress made by the individual before
parentage, for that progress is born into the race. Between birth and
birth is the race bred upward. Suppose we wish to improve a race of
low savages, and we carefully select the parents, subjecting them to
the most elaborate educational influences, till they are all dead.
Then we return, and take a fresh set of parents to place under these
advantageous conditions, leaving the children always to grow up in
untouched savagery. This might be done for many generations, and we
should always have the same kind of savages to labour with, what
improvement was made being buried with each set of parents. Now, on
the other hand, let us take the children of the tribe, subject them to
the most advantageous conditions, and, when they become parents,
discontinue our efforts on that generation and begin on the next. What
gain was made in this case would be incorporated in the stock; we
should have gradually improving relays of children.
So far as environment is to really develope the race, that development
must be made before the birth of the next generation.
If a young man and woman are clean, healthy, vigorous, and virtuous
before parenthood, they may become dirty, sickly, weak, and wicked
afterward with far less ill effect to the race than if they were sick
and vicious before their children were born, and thereafter became
stalwart saints. The sowing of wild oats would be far less harmful if
sowed in the autumn instead of in the spring.
Human beings are said to have a longer period of immaturity than other
animals; but it is not prolonged childhood which distinguishes us so
much as prolonged parenthood. In early forms of life the parent
promptly dies after having reproduced the species. He is of no further
use to the race, and therefore his life is discontinued. In the
evolution of species, as the parent becomes more and more able to
benefit the young, he is retained longer in office; and in humanity,
as it developes, we see an increasing prolongation of parental
usefulness. The reactive value of the adult upon the young is very
great, covering our whole range of conscious education; but the real
worth of that education is in its effects on the young before they
become parents, that the training and improvement may become ours by
birth, an inbred racial progress.
It may be well here to consider the objections raised by the Weissman
theory that "acquired traits are not transmissible." To those who
believe this it seems useless to try to improve a race by development
of the young with a view to transmission. They hold that the child
inherits a certain group of faculties, differing from the parents
perhaps through the "tendency to vary," and that, although you may
improve the individual indefinitely through education, that
improvement is not transmissible to his offspring. The original
faculties may be transmitted, but not the individual modification.
Thus they would hold that, if two brothers inherited the same kind and
amount of brain power, and one brother was submitted to the finest
educational environment, while the other was entirely neglected, yet
the children of the two brothers would inherit the same amount of
brain development: the training and exercise which so visibly improved
the brain of the educated brother would be lost to his children.
Or, if two brothers inherited the same physical constitution, and one
developed and improved it by judicious care and exercise, while the
other wasted strength and contracted disease, the children of either
would inherit the original constitutional tendencies of the parent,
unaffected by that parent's previous career.
This would mean that the whole tremendous march of race-modification
has been made under no other influence than the tendency to vary, and
that individual modification in no way affects the race.
Successive generations of individuals may be affected by the
cumulative pressure of progress, but not the race itself. Under this
view the Fuegian baby would be as valuable an investment as the
English baby, unless, indeed, successive and singularly connected
tendencies to vary had worked long upon the English stock and
peculiarly neglected the Fuegian. In proof of this claim that
"acquired traits are not transmissible," an overwhelming series of
experiments are presented, as wherein many consecutive generations of
peaceful guinea pigs are mutilated in precisely the same way, and, lo!
the last guinea pig is born as four-legged and symmetrically-featured
as the first.
If it had been so arranged that the crippled guinea pigs obtained some
advantage because of their injuries, they might have thus become
"fittest"; and the "tendency to vary" would perhaps have launched out
a cripple somewhere, and so evolved a triumphant line of three-legged
guinea pigs.
But, as proven by these carefully conducted scientific experiments, it
does not "modify the species" at all to cut off its legs,--not in a
score of generations. It modifies the immediate pig, of course, and is
doubtless unpleasant to him; but the effect is lost with his death.
It has always seemed to me that there was a large difference between a
mutilation and an acquired trait. An acquired trait is something that
one uses and developes, not something one has lost.
The children of a soldier are supposed to inherit something of his
courage and his habit of obedience, not his wooden leg.
The dwindled feet of the Chinese ladies are not transmitted; but the
Chinese habits are. The individual is most modified by what he does,
not by what is done to him; and so is the race.
Let a new experiment be performed on the long-suffering guinea pig.
Take two flourishing pair of the same family (fortunately, the
tendency to vary appears to be but slight in guinea pigs, so there is
not serious trouble from that source), and let one pair of guinea pigs
be lodged in a small but comfortable cage, and fed and fed and
fed,--not to excess, but so as to supply all guinea-piggian desires as
soon as felt,--them and their descendants in their unnumbered
generations. Let the other pair be started on a long, slow, cautious,
delicate but inexorable system of exercise, not exercise involving
any advantage, with careful mating of the most lively,--for this would
be claimed as showing only the "tendency to vary" and "survival of the
fittest,"--but exercise forced upon the unwilling piggies to no profit
whatever.
A wheel, such as mitigates the captivity of the nimble squirrel,
should be applied to these reluctant victims; a well-selected,
stimulating diet given at slowly increasing intervals; and the
physical inequalities of their abode become greater, so that the
unhappy subjects of scientific research would find themselves skipping
ever faster and farther from day to day.
If, after many generations of such training, the descendants of these
cultivated guinea pigs could not outrun the descendants of the plump
and puffy cage-fed pair, the Weissman theory would be more strongly
re-enforced than by all the evidence of his suffering cripples.
Meanwhile the parent and teacher in general is not greatly concerned
about theories of pan-genesis or germ-plasm. He knows that, "as the
twig is bent, the tree's inclined," and that, if the fathers have
eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are pretty certain to be set
on edge.
Inherit we must to some degree; and whatever comes to us by that
method must belong to the parent before he is a parent. Traits
acquired after parentage are certainly not transmissible, whatever may
be the case before. Our inherited constitution, temper, character,
tendency, is like an entailed estate. It is in the family, belongs to
the family in succession, not to the individual. It is "owned" by the
individual in usufruct, but cannot be sold, given away, or otherwise
alienated. It must be handed on to the next heir, somewhat better or
worse, perhaps, for the current ownership. When the new heir takes
possession of his estate, he confers with the steward, and becomes
thoroughly acquainted with his holdings. Here are the assets,--this
much in permanent capital, this much in income, which he may use as he
will. It would be possible for him to overspend that income, to cut
down the timber and sell it, to incur debts, impoverishing the next
heir. Perhaps this has been done; and he finds himself with neglected
lands, buildings in disrepair, restricted resources, and heavy debts.
In such case the duty of the heir is to live carefully, avoiding every
extravagance, and devote all he can save to clearing off the
encumbrances on the estate, thus handing it on to the next heir in
better shape than he received it. If this is not done, if one
generation after another of inheritors draws relentlessly on the
burdened estate and adds to its encumbrances, there comes a time when
the heavy mortgages are foreclosed, and that estate is lost.
So with the human constitution. We inherit such and such powers and
faculties; such and such weaknesses, faults, tendencies to disease.
Our income is the available strength we have to spare without drawing
on our capital. Perhaps our ancestors have overdrawn already, wasting
their nerve force, injuring their organisms, handing down to us an
impoverished physique, with scarce income enough for running expenses,
yet needing a large sinking fund for repairs.
In this case it is our plain duty to live "within our means" in nerve
force, however limited, and to devote all we can spare to building up
the constitution, that we may transmit it in an improved condition to
the next heir. If we do not do this, if successive generations
overdraw their strength, neglect necessary rest and recreation,
increase their weaknesses and diseases, then there comes a time when
the inexorable creditor called Nature forecloses the mortgage, and
that family is extinct. The heir of the entailed estate in lands and
houses has an advantage over the heir of blood and brain. He does not
transmit his property until he dies. He has a lifetime to make the
needed improvements. But the inheritor of poor eyesight, weak lungs,
and a bad temper has a shorter period for repairs. If a woman, she is
likely to become a mother by the time she is twenty-five,--perhaps
sooner; the man, a father by thirty.
Taking the very early marriages of the poor into consideration (and
they are a heavy majority of the population), we may take twenty-five
as the average beginning of parenthood. Of course there is still room
for improvement before the later children appear; but the running
expenses increase so heavily that there is but a small margin to be
given to repairs. The amount of nerve force hitherto set aside to
control the irritable temper will now be drawn upon by many new
demands: the time given to special exercises for the good of the lungs
will now be otherwise used. However good the intentions afterward, the
best period for self-improvement is before the children come. This
reduces the time in which to develope humanity's inheritance to
twenty-five years. Twenty-five years is not much at best; and that
time is further limited, as far as individual responsibility goes, by
subtracting the period of childhood. The first, say, fifteen years of
our lives are comparatively irresponsible. We have not the judgment or
the self-control to meddle with our own lives to any advantage; nor is
it desirable that we should. Unconscious growth is best; and the
desired improvement during this period should be made by the skilful
educator without the child's knowledge. But at about fifteen the
individual comes to a keen new consciousness of personal
responsibility.
That fresh, unwarped sense of human honour, the race-enthusiasm of the
young; and the fund of strength they bear with them; together with the
very light expenses of this period, all the heavy drains of life being
met by the parent,--these conditions make that short ten years the
most important decade of a lifetime.
It is no wonder that we worship youth. On it depends more than on the
most care-burdened age. It is one of the many follies of our
blundering progression that we have for so long supposed that the
value of this period lay merely in its enjoyableness. With fresh
sensations and new strength, with care, labour, and pain largely kept
away, youth naturally enjoys more heartily than age, and has less to
suffer; but these are only incidental conditions. Every period has its
advantage and accompanying responsibilities. This blessed time of
youth is not ours to riot through in cheerful disregard of human duty.
The biological advantage of a longer period of immaturity is in its
cumulative value to the race, the older parent having more development
to transmit.
The human animal becomes adult comparatively early,--that is, becomes
capable of reproducing the species; and in states of low social grade
he promptly sets about it.
But the human being is not only an individual animal: he is a social
constituent. He may be early ready to replace himself by another man
as good, but he is not yet able to improve upon the past and give the
world a man much better. He is not yet developed as a member of
society,--trained in those special lines which make him not only a
healthier, stronger, rounder individual, but a more highly efficient
member of society. Our people to-day are not only larger and
longer-lived than earlier races, but they are capable of social
relations immeasurably higher than those open to a never-so-healthy
savage.
The savage as an individual animal may be equal--in some ways
superior--to the modern man; but, as a social constituent, he is like
a grain of sand in a heap compared to some exquisitely fitted part of
an intricate machine,--a living machine, an organism. In this social
relation man may grow and develope all his life; and that is why
civilisation, socialisation, brings us useful and honourable age,
while savagery knocks its old folk on the head.
But while the social structure grows in beauty, refinement, and power,
and eighty years may be spent in its glorious service, that service
must be given by individuals. Unless these individuals improve from
age to age, showing a finer, subtler, stronger brain and unimpaired
physique, there can be no genuine or enduring social improvement. We
have seen repeatedly in history a social status lodged in
comparatively few individuals, a narrow fragile upper-class
civilisation; and we have seen it always fall,--fall to the level of
its main constituents, the mass of the people.
One per cent. of sane men in a society of lunatics would make but a
foolish state; one per cent. of good men in a society of criminals
would make a low grade of virtue; one per cent. of rich men in a
society of poor peasants does not make a rich community. A society is
composed of the people who compose it, strange to say,--all of them;
and, as they are, it is. The people must be steadily made better if
the world is to move. The way to make people better is to have them
born better. The way to have them born better is to make all possible
improvement in the individual before parentage. That is why youth is
holy and august: it is the fountain of human progress. Not only that
"the child is father to the man," but the child is father to the
state--and mother.
The first fifteen years of a child's life should be treated with a
view to developing the power of "judgment" and "will," that he may be
able to spend his precious ten in making the best possible growth. A
boy of fifteen is quite old enough to understand the main principles
of right living, and to follow them. A girl of fifteen is quite old
enough to see the splendid possibilities that lie before her, both in
her individual service to society and the almost limitless power of
motherhood. It is not youth which makes our boys and girls so foolish
in their behaviour. It is the kind of training we give the little
child, keeping back the most valuable faculties of the brain instead
of helping them to grow. A boy cast out upon the street to work soon
manifests both the abilities and vices of an older person. A girl
reared in a frivolous and artificial society becomes a practising
coquette while yet a child. These conditions are bad, and we do not
wish to parallel them by producing a morbidly self-conscious and
prematurely aged set of youngsters. But, if the child has been trained
in reason and self-control,--not forced, but allowed to grow in the
natural use of these qualities,--he will be used to exercising them
when he reaches the freer period of youth, and not find it so
difficult to be wise. It is natural for a child to reason, and the
power grows with encouragement and use. It is natural for a child to
delight in the exercise of his own will upon himself in learning to
"do things."
The facility and pleasure and strong self-control shown by a child in
playing some arbitrary game prove that it is quite natural for him to
govern his acts to a desired end, and enjoy it.
To a desired end, however. We have not yet succeeded in enlisting the
child's desires to help his efforts. We rather convince him that being
good is tedious and unprofitable, often poignantly disagreeable; and,
when he passes childhood, he is hampered with this unfortunate
misbelief of our instilling.
But, with a healthy brain and will, a youth of fifteen, with the
knowledge easily available at that age, should be not only able and
willing, but gloriously eager for personal development. It is an age
of soaring ambition; and that ambition, directed in lines of real
improvement, is one of Nature's loveliest and strongest forces to lift
mankind.
There is a splendid wealth of aspiration in youth, a pure and haughty
desire for the very highest, which ought to be playing into the
current of our racial life and lifting it higher and higher with each
new generation.
The love of emulation, too, so hurtful in the cheap, false forms it so
often takes, is a beautiful force when turned to self-improvement. We
underrate the power of good intention of our young people. We check
and irritate them all through childhood, confusing and depressing the
upward tendencies; and then wag our aged heads pityingly over "the
follies of youth."
There is wisdom in youth, and power, if we would but let it grow. A
simple unconscious childhood, shooting upward fast and strong along
lines of rational improving growth, would give to the opening
consciousness of youth a healthy background of orderly achievement,
and a glorious foreground,--the limitless front of human progress.
Such young people, easily appreciating what could be done for
themselves and the world by right living, would pour their rich
enthusiasm and unstrained powers into real human growing,--the growing
that can be done so well in that short, wonderful ten years,--that
must be done then, if the race is to be born better. Three or four
generations of such growth would do more for man's improvement than
our present methods of humaniculture accomplish in as many centuries.
II.
THE EFFECT OF MINDING ON THE MIND.
Obedience, we are told, is a virtue. This seems simple and conclusive,
but on examination further questions rise.
What is "a virtue"?
What is "obedience"?
And, if a virtue, is it always and equally so?
"There is a time when patience ceases to be a virtue." Perhaps
obedience has its limits, too.
A virtue is a specific quality of anything, as the virtue of mustard
is in its biting quality; of glass, transparency; of a sword, its edge
and temper. In moral application a virtue is a quality in mankind
whereby we are most advantaged. We make a distinction in our specific
qualities, claiming some to be good and some bad; and the virtues are
those whereby we gain the highest good. These virtues of humanity
change in relative value with time, place, and circumstance. What is
considered a virtue in primitive life becomes foolishness or even vice
in later civilisation; yet each age and place can show clear reason
for its virtues, trace their introduction, rise into high honour, and
gradual neglect.
For instance, the virtue of endurance ranks high among savages. To be
able to bear hunger and heat and cold and pain and dire fatigue,--this
power is supreme virtue to the savage, for the simple reason that it
is supremely necessary to him. He has a large chance of meeting these
afflictions all through life, and wisely prepares himself beforehand
by wilfully undergoing even worse hardships.
Chastity is a comparatively modern virtue, still but partially
accepted. Even as an ideal, it is not universally admired, being
considered mainly as a feminine distinction. This is good proof of its
gradual introduction,--first, as solely female, a demand from the man,
and then proving its value as a racial virtue, and rising slowly in
general esteem, until to-day there is a very marked movement toward a
higher standard of masculine chastity.
Courage, on the other hand, has been held almost wholly as a
masculine virtue, from the same simple causes of sociological
development; to this day one hears otherwise intelligent and
respectable women own themselves, without the slightest sense of
shame, to be cowards.
A comparative study of the virtues would reveal a mixed and changeful
throng, and always through them all the underlying force of necessity,
which makes this or that quality a virtue in its time.
We speak of "making a virtue of necessity." As a matter of fact, all
virtues are made of necessity.
A virtue, then, in the human race is that quality which is held
supremely beneficial, valuable, necessary, at that time. And what, in
close analysis, is obedience? It is a noun made from the verb "to
obey."
What is it to obey? It is to act under the impulse of another
will,--to submit one's behaviour to outside direction.
It involves the surrender of both judgment and will. Is this capacity
of submission of sufficient value to the human race to be called a
virtue? Assuredly it is--sometimes. The most familiar instance of the
uses of obedience is among soldiers and sailors, always promptly
adduced by the stanch upholders of this quality.
They do not speak of it as particularly desirable among farmers or
merchants or artists, but cling to the battlefield or the deck, as
sufficient illustrations. We may note, also, that, when our elaborate
efforts are made to inculcate its value to young children, we always
introduce a railroad accident, runaway, fire, burglar, or other
element of danger; and, equally, in the stories of young animals
designed for the same purpose, the disobedient little beast is always
exposed to dire peril, and the obedient saved.
All this clearly indicates the real basis of our respect for
obedience.
Its first and greatest use is this: where concerted action is
necessary, in such instant performance that it would be impossible to
transmit the impulse through a number of varying intelligences.
That is why the soldier and sailor have to obey. Military and nautical
action is essentially collective, essentially instant, and too
intricate for that easy understanding which would allow of swift
common action on individual initiative. Under such circumstances,
obedience is, indeed, a virtue, and disobedience the unpardonable sin.
Again, with the animals, we have a case where it is essential that the
young should act instantly under stimuli perceptible to the mother and
not to the young. No explanation is possible. There is not speech for
it, even if there were time. A sudden silent danger needs a sudden
silent escape. Under this pressure of condition has been evolved a
degree of obedience absolutely instinctive and automatic, as so
beautifully shown in Mr. Thompson's story of the little partridges
flattening themselves into effacement on their mother's warning
signal.
With deadly peril at hand, with no brain to give or to receive
explanation, with no time to do more than squeak an inarticulate
command, there is indeed need for obedience; and obedience is
forthcoming. But is this so essential quality in rearing young animals
as essential in human education? So far in human history, our
absolute desideratum in child-training is that the child shall obey.
The child who "minds" promptly and unquestioningly is the ideal: the
child who refuses to mind, who, perhaps, even says, "I won't," is the
example of all evil.
Parental success is judged by ability to "make the children mind": to
be without that is failure. All this has no reference whatever to the
kind of behaviour required. The virtue in the child is simply to do
what it is told, in any extreme of folly or even danger. Witness the
immortal fame of Casabianca. Being told to "stay," this sublime infant
stayed, though every instinct and reason was against it, and he was
blown up unflinching in pursuance of duty. The effect of minding on
the mind is here shown in extreme instance. Under the pressure of the
imposed will and judgment of his father, the child restrained his own
will and judgment, and suffered the consequences. The moral to be
drawn is a very circuitous one. Although obedience was palpably
injurious in this case, it is held that such perfect surrender would
in most cases be highly beneficial.
That other popular instance, beginning
"Old 'Ironsides' at anchor lay
In the harbor of Mahon."
is more practical. The judicious father orders the perilously poised
son to
"Jump! Jump, boy, far into the deep!"
and he jumps, and is hauled out by the sailors.
As usual, we see that the reason why obedience is so necessary is
because of imminent danger, which only obedience can escape. With this
for a practical background, and with the added proviso that, unless
obedience is demanded and secured when there is no danger, it will not
be forthcoming when there is, the child is "trained to obey" from the
first. No matter how capricious and unnecessary the command, he must
"mind," or be punished for not "minding." We may fall short of success
in our efforts; but this is our ideal,--that a child shall do what he
is told on the instant, and thus fulfil his whole scale of virtue as
well as meet all the advantages of safety.
Our intense reverence for the virtue of obedience is easily traceable.
In the first place there is the deep-seated animal instinct, far
outdating human history. For uncounted ages our brute mother ancestors
had reared their brute young in automatic obedience,--an obedience
bred in the bone by those who obeyed and lived, any deficiency in
which was steadily expurgated by the cutting off of the hapless
youngster who disobeyed. This had, of course, a reflex action on the
mother. When one's nerve-impulse finds expression through another
body, that expression gives the same sense of relief and pleasure as a
personal expression. When one wills another to do something which the
other promptly does, it gives one an even larger satisfaction than
doing what one wills one's self. That is the pleasure we have in a
good dog,--our will flows through his organism uninterrupted. It is a
temporary extension of self in activity that does not weary.
This is one initial reason for the parental pleasure in obedience and
displeasure in disobedience. When the parent emits an impulse calling
for expression through the child, and the child refuses to express it,
there is a distinct sense of distress in the parent, quite apart from
any ulterior advantage to either party in the desired act. Almost any
mother can recall this balked feeling, like the annoyance of an
arrested sneeze.
To this instinct our gradually enlarging humanness has added the
breadth of wider perceptions and the weight of growing ideas of
authority, with the tremendous depth of tradition and habit. Early
races lived in constant danger, military service was universal,
despotism the common government, and slavery the general condition.
The ruling despot exacted obedience from all; and it was by each grade
exacted remorselessly from its inferiors. No overseer so cruel as the
slave. Where men were slaves to despotic sovereigns, their women were
slaves to them; and the women tyrannised in turn over their slaves, if
they had any. But under every one else were always the children,
defenceless absolutely, inferior physically and mentally. Naturally,
they were expected to obey. As we built out of our clouded brains dim
and sinister gods, we predicated of them the habits so prominent in
our earthly rulers: the one thing the gods would have was obedience,
which, therefore, grew to have first place in our primitive religion.
The early Hebrew traditions of God, with which we are all so familiar,
picture him as in a continuous state of annoyance because his
"children" would not "mind." In the centuries of dominance of the
Roman Catholic Church, obedience became additionally exalted. The
power and success of that magnificent organisation depended so
absolutely on this characteristic that it was given high place in the
vows of religious societies,--highest of all by the Jesuits, who
carried it to its logical extreme, the subordinate being required to
become as will-less as a corpse, actuated solely by the commands of
his superior. Even militarism offers no better instance of the value
and power of obedience than does "the Church."
It now becomes clear why we so naturally venerate this quality: first,
the deep brute instinct; second, the years of historic necessity and
habit; third, the tremendous sanction of religion. It is only a few
centuries since the Protestant Reformation broke the power of church
dominance and successfully established the rebellion of free thought.
It is less than that since the American Revolution and the French
Revolution again triumphantly disobeyed, and established the liberty
of the individual in matters temporal. Since then the delighted brain
has spread and strengthened, thinking for itself and doing what it
thought; and we have seen some foretaste of what a full democracy will
ultimately bring to us. But this growth of individual freedom has but
just begun to penetrate that stronghold of all habit and tradition,
the Home. Men might be free, but women must still obey. Women are
beginning to be free, but still the child remains,--the under-dog
always; and he, at least, must obey. On this we are still practically
at one,--Catholic and Protestant, soldier and farmer, subject and
citizen.
Let us untangle the real necessity from this vast mass of hoary
tradition, and see if obedience is really the best thing to teach a
child,--if "by obedience" is the best way to teach a child. And let
careful provision here be made for a senseless inference constantly
made when this question is raised. Dare to criticise a system of
training based on obedience, and you are instantly assumed to be
advocating no system at all, no training, merely letting the child run
wild and "have his own way." This is a most unfair assumption. Those
who know no other way of modifying a child's behaviour than through
"making him mind" suppose that, if he were not made to mind, he must
be utterly neglected. Child-training to their minds is to be
accomplished only through child-ordering; and many think the training
quite accomplished if only the subject is a model of obedience.
Others, a little more open-minded, and who have perhaps read something
on the subject, assume that, if you do not demand obedience of the
child, it means that you must "explain" everything to him, "reason"
with him from deed to deed; and this they wearily and rightly declare
to be impossible. But neither of these assumptions is correct. One may
question the efficacy of the Salisbury method without being thereby
pledged to vegetarianism. One may criticise our school system, yet not
mean that children should have no education.
The rearing of children is the most important work, and it is here
contended that, in this great educational process, obedience, as a
main factor, has a bad effect on the growing mind. A child is a human
creature. He should be reared with a view to his development and
behaviour as an adult, not solely with a view to his behaviour as a
child. He is temporarily a child, far more permanently a man; and it
is the man we are training. The work of "parenthood" is not only to
guard and nourish the young, but to develope the qualities needed in
the mature.
Obedience is defended, first, as being necessary to the protection of
the child, and, second, as developing desirable qualities in the
adult. But the child can be far better protected by removing all
danger, which our present civilisation is quite competent to do; and
"the habit of obedience" developes very undesirable qualities. On what
characteristics does our human pre-eminence rest? On our breadth and
accuracy of judgment and force of will. Because we can see widely and
judge wisely, because we have power to do what we see to be right,
therefore we are the dominant species in the animal kingdom; therefore
we are consciously the children of God.
These qualities are lodged in individuals, and must be exercised by
individuals for the best human progress. If our method of advance were
that one person alone should be wise and strong, and all other persons
prosperous through a strict subservience to his commands, then,
indeed, we could do no better for our children than to train them to
obey. Judgment would be of no use to them if they had to take
another's: will-power would be valueless if they were never to
exercise it.
But this is by no means the condition of human life. More and more is
it being recognised that progress lies in a well-developed average
intelligence rather than in a wise despot and his stupid serfs. For
every individual to have a good judgment and a strong will is far
better for the community than for a few to have these qualities and
the rest to follow them.
The "habit of obedience," forced in upon the impressible nature of a
child, does not develope judgment and will, but does develope that
fatal facility in following other people's judgment and other people's
wills which tends to make us a helpless mob, mere sheep, instead of
wise, free, strong individuals. The habit of submission to authority,
the long, deeply impressed conviction that to "be good" is to "give
up," that there is virtue in the act of surrender,--this is one of the
sources from which we continually replenish human weakness, and fill
the world with an inert mass of mind-less, will-less folk, pushed and
pulled about by those whom they obey.
Moreover, there is the opposite effect,--the injurious reaction from
obedience,--almost as common and hurtful as its full achievement;
namely, that fierce rebellious desire to do exactly the opposite of
what one is told, which is no nearer to calm judgment than the other.
In obeying another will or in resisting another will, nothing is
gained in wisdom. A human creature is a self-governing intelligence,
and the rich years of childhood should be passed in the guarded and
gradual exercise of those powers.
Now this will, no doubt, call up to the minds of many a picture of a
selfish, domineering youngster, stormily ploughing through a number of
experimental adventures, with a group of sacrificial parents and
teachers prostrate before him. Again an unwarranted assumption.
Consideration of others is one of the first laws of life, one of the
first things a child should be taught; but consideration of others is
not identical with obedience. Again, it will be imagined that the
child is to be left to laboriously work out for himself the
accumulated experiments of humanity, and deprived of the profits of
all previous experience. By no means. On the contrary, it is the
business of those who have the care of the very young to see to it
that they do benefit by that previous experience far more fully than
is now possible.
Our system of obedience cuts the child off from precisely this
advantage, and leaves him longing to do the forbidden things,
generally doing them, too, when he gets away from his tutelage. The
behaviour of the released child, in its riotous reaction against
authority as such, as shown glaringly in the action of the average
college student, tells how much judgment and self-control have been
developing behind the obedience.
The brain grows by exercise. The best time to develope it is in youth.
To obey does not develope the brain, but checks its growth. It gives
to the will a peculiar suicidal power of aborting its own impulse, not
controlling it, but giving it up. This leaves a habit of giving up
which weakens our power of continued effort.
All this is not saying that obedience is never useful in childhood.
There are occasions when it is; and on such occasions, with a child
otherwise intelligently trained, it will be forthcoming. We make a
wide mistake in assuming that, unless a child is made to obey at every
step, it will never obey. A grown person will obey under sharp instant
pressure.
If there is a sudden danger, and you shriek at your friend, "Get
up--quick!" or hiss a terrified, "Sh! Sh! Be still!" your friend
promptly obeys. Of course, if you had been endeavouring to "boss" that
friend with a thousand pointless caprices, he might distrust you in
the hour of peril; but if he knew you to be a reasonable person, he
would respond promptly to a sudden command.
Much more will a child so respond where he has full reason to respect
the judgment of the commander. Children have the automatic habit of
obedience by the same animal inheritance that gives the mother the
habit of command; but we so abuse that faculty that it becomes lost in
righteous rebellion or crushed submission. The animal mother never
misuses her precious authority. She does not cry, "Wolf! Wolf!" We
talk glibly about "the best good of the child," but there are few
children who are not clearly aware that they are "minding" for the
convenience of "the grown-ups" the greater part of the time.
Therefore, they suspect self-interest in even the necessary commands,
and might very readily refuse to obey in the hour of danger.
It is a commonplace observation that the best children--_i.e._, the
most submissive and obedient--do not make the best men. If they are
utterly subdued, "too good to live," they swell the Sunday-school list
of infant saints, die young, and go to heaven: whereas the rebellious
and unruly boy often makes the best citizen.
The too obedient child has learned only to do what he is told. If not
told, he has no initiative; and, if told wrong, he does wrong. Life to
him is not a series of problems to be solved, but a mere book of
orders; and, instead of understanding the true imperious "force" of
natural law, which a wise man follows because he sees the wisdom of
the course, he takes every "must" in life to be like a personal
command,--a thing probably unreasonable, and to be evaded, if
possible.
The escaped child, long suppressed under obedience, is in no mood for
a cheerful acceptance of real laws, but imagines that there is more
"fun" in "having his own way." The foolish parent claims to be obeyed
as a god; and the grown-up child seeks to evade God, to treat the laws
of Nature as if she, too, were a foolish parent.
Suppose you are teaching a child arithmetic. You tell him to put down
such and such figures in such a position. He inquires, "Why?" You
explain the reason. If you do not explain the reason, he does not
understand the problem. You might continue to give orders as to what
figures to set down and in what places; and the child, obeying, could
be trotted through the arithmetic in a month's time. But the
arithmetic would not have gone through him. He would be no better
versed in the science of numbers than a type-setter is in the learned
books he "sets up." We recognise this in the teaching of arithmetic,
and go to great lengths in inventing test problems and arranging easy
stages by which the child may gradually master his task. But we do not
recognise it in teaching the child life. The small acts of infancy are
the child's first problems in living. He naturally wishes to
understand them. He says, "Why?" To which we reply inanely, "Because I
tell you to!" That is no reason. It is a force, no doubt, a pressure,
to which the child may be compelled to yield. But he is no wiser than
he was before. He has learned nothing except the lesson we imagine so
valuable,--to obey. At the very best, he may remember always, in like
case, that "mamma would wish me to do so," and do it. But, when cases
differ, he has no guide. With the best intentions in life, he can but
cast about in his mind to try to imagine what some one else might tell
him to do if present: the circumstances themselves mean nothing to
him. Docility, subservience, a quick surrender of purpose, a wavering,
untrained, easily shaken judgment,--these are the qualities developed
by much obedience.
Are they the qualities we wish to develope in American citizens?
III.
TWO AND TWO TOGETHER.
"If not trained to obedience, what shall the child be trained to?"
naturally demands the outraged parent. To inculcate that first of
virtues has taken so much time and effort that we have overlooked the
subsequent qualities which require our help, and feel rather at sea
when this sheet anchor is taken from us.
But it is not so hard a problem, when honestly faced. A child has a
body and a mind to be nourished, sheltered, protected, allowed to
grow, and judiciously trained.
We are here considering the brain training; but that is safely
comparable to--is, indeed, part of--the body training, for the brain
as much as the lungs or liver is an organ of the body. In training the
little body, our main line of duty is to furnish proper food, to
insure proper rest, and to allow and encourage proper exercise.
Exactly this is wanted to promote right brain growth. We do not wish
to overstimulate the brain, to develope it at the expense of other
organs; but we do wish to insure its full natural growth and to
promote its natural activities by a wise selection of the highest
qualities for preferred use. And we need more knowledge of the various
brain functions than is commonly possessed by those in charge of young
children.
The office of the brain we are here considering is to receive, retain,
and collate impressions, and, in retaining them, to hold their
original force as far as possible, so that the ultimate act, coming
from a previous impression, may have the force of the original
impulse. The human creature does not originate nervous energy; but he
does secrete it, so to speak, from the impact of natural forces. He
has a storage battery of power we call the will. By this high faculty
we see a well-developed human being working steadily for a desired
object, without any present stimulus directed to that end, even in
opposition to prevent stimulus tending to oppose that end. This width
of perception, length of retention, storage of force, and power of
steady, self-determined action distinguish the advanced human brain.