impressions and transmitted them in expressions without check or
discrimination. With the development of more complex organisms and
their more complex activities came the accompanying complexity of
brain, which could co-ordinate those activities to the best advantage.
Action is the main line of growth. Conditions press upon all life, but
life is modified through its own action under given conditions. And
the relative wisdom and success of different acts depend on the brain
power of the organism.
The superiority of races lies in better adaptation to condition. In
human life, in the long competition among nations, classes, and
individuals, superiority still lies in the same development. Power to
receive and retain more wide, deep, and subtle impression; power to
more accurately and judiciously collate these impressions; power to
act steadily on these stored and selected impulses rather than on
immediate impulses,--this it is which marks our line of advance.
The education of the child should be such as to develope these
distinguishing human faculties. The universe, speaking loudly, lies
around every creature. Little by little we learn to hear, to
understand, to act accordingly. And this we should teach the child, to
recognise more accurately the laws about him and to act upon them.
A very little child does this in his narrow range exactly as does the
adult in wider fields. He receives impressions, such as are allowed to
reach him. He stores and collates those impressions with increasing
vigour and accuracy from day to day; and he acts on the sum of those
impressions with growing power. Naturally, his range of impression is
limited, his power of retention is limited, his ability to relate the
impression retained is limited; and his action is at first far more
open to immediate outside stimulus, and less responsive to the inner
will-force, than that of an adult. That is the condition of childhood.
It is for us to gently, delicately, steadily surround the child with
such conditions as shall promote this orderly sequence of brain
function rather than to forcibly develope and retain his more
primitive methods.
Before going further, let us look at the average mental workings of
the human creature, and see if it seems to us in smooth running order.
We have made enormous progress in brain development, and we manifest
wide differences in brain power. But clearly discernible through all
the progress and all the difference is this large fault in our mental
machinery,--a peculiar discrepancy between the sum of our knowledge
and the sum of our behaviour. Man being conscious and intelligent, it
would seem that to teach him the desirability of a given course of
action would be sufficient. That it is not sufficient, every mother,
every teacher, every preacher, every discoverer, inventor, reformer,
knows full well.
Instruction may be poured in by the ton: it comes out in action by the
ounce. You may teach and preach and pray for two thousand years, and
very imperfectly Christianise a small portion of the human race. You
may exhort and command and reiterate; and yet the sinner, whether
infant or adult, remains obdurate. No wonder we imagined an active
Enemy striving to oppose us, so difficult was good behaviour in spite
of all our efforts. It has never occurred to us that we were pursuing
an entirely erroneous method. We uttered like parrots the pregnant
proverb, "Example is better than precept," learning nothing by it.
What does that simple saying mean? That one learns better by
observation than by instruction, especially when instruction is
coupled with command. This being a clearly established fact, why have
we not profited by it? Because our brains, all of our brains from the
beginning of time, have been blurred and blinded and weakened by the
same mistake in infant education.
What is this mistake? What is it we have done so patiently and
faithfully all these years to every one of the human race which has
injured the natural working of the brain? This: we have systematically
checked in our children acts which were the natural sequence of their
observation and inference; and enforced acts which, to the child's
mind, had no reason. Thus we have carefully trained a world of people
to the habit of acting without understanding, and also of
understanding without acting. Because we were unable even to entirely
subvert natural brain processes, because our children must needs do
some things of their own motion and not in obedience to us, therefore
some power of judgment and self-government has grown in humanity. But
because we have been so largely successful in our dealings with the
helpless little brain is there so little power of judgment and
self-government among us.
Observe, too, that our most intelligent progress is made in those
arts, trades, professions, sciences, wherein little children are not
trained; and that our most palpable deficiencies are in the morals,
manners, and general personal relations of life, wherein little
children are trained. The things we are compelled to do in obedience
we make no progress in. They are either obeyed or disobeyed, but are
not understood and improved upon: they stand like the customs of
China. The things we learn by understanding and practising are open to
further knowledge and growth.
A normal human act, as distinguished from the instinctive behaviour
of lower animals or from mere excito-motary reaction, involves always
these three stages,--impression, judgment, expression. These are not
separate, but are orderly steps in the great main fact of
life,--action. It is all a part of that transmission of energy which
appears to be the business of the universe.
The sun's heat pours upon the earth, and passes through whatever
substance it strikes, coming out transformed variously, according to
the nature of the substance. Man receives his complement of energy,
like every other creature,--physical stimulus from food and fire,
psychical stimulus from its less known sources; and these impressions
tend to flow through him into expression as naturally as, though with
more complexity than, in other creatures.
The song of the skylark and Shelley's "Skylark" show this wide
difference in the amount and quality of transmission, yet are both
expressions of the same impressions, plus those wider impressions to
which the poet's organism was open.
The distinctive power of man is that of connected action. Our immense
capacity for receiving and retaining impressions gives us that
world-stock of stored information and its arrested stimulus which we
call knowledge. But wisdom, the higher word, refers to our capacity
for considering what we know,--handling and balancing the information
in stock, and so acting judiciously from the best impression or group
of impressions, instead of indiscriminately from the latest or from
any that happens to be uppermost.
This power, in cases of immediate danger, we call "presence of mind."
Similarly, when otherwise intelligent persons do visibly foolish
things, we call it "absence of mind." The brain, as an organ, is
present in both cases; but in the former it is connected with action,
in the latter the connection is broken. The word "thoughtless," as
applied to so large a share of our walk and conversation, describes
this same absence of the mind from the place where it is wanted.
In training the brain of the child, first importance lies in
cultivating this connection between the mind and the behaviour. As
with eye or hand, we should induce frequent repetition of the desired
motions, that the habit of right action be formed. If the child is
steadily encouraged to act in this natural connection, in orderly
sequence of feeling, thought, and action, he would grow into constant
"presence of mind" in his behaviour. Habits work in all directions;
and a habit of thoughtful behaviour is as easy to form, really easier,
than a habit of obedience,--easier, because it would be the natural
function of the brain to govern behaviour if we did not so laboriously
contradict it. We have preferred submission to intelligence, and have
got neither,--not intelligence because we have so violently
discouraged it, and not submission because the healthy upward forces
of human brain growth will not submit. Those races where the children
are most absolutely subservient, as with the Chinese and Hindu, where
parents are fairly worshipped and blindly obeyed, are not races of
free and progressive thought and healthy activity.
The potential attitude of mind involved in our method is shown in that
perfect expression of "childish faith,"--"It's so because mamma says
so; and, if mamma says so, 'tis so if 'tain't so." That position makes
it very easy for mamma as long as "childish faith" endures; but how
does it help the man she has reared in this idyllic falsehood? The
painful truth is that we have used childish weaknesses to make our
government easy for us, instead of cultivating the powers that shall
make life easy to them. A child's limitless credulity is the open door
of imposition, and is ruthlessly taken advantage of by mother and
father, nurse and older companion generally.
As a feature in brain-training, this, of course, works absolute harm.
It prolongs the infant weakness of the racial brain, keeps us
credulous and open to all imposture, hinders our true growth. What we
should do is to help the child to question and find out,--teach him to
learn, not to believe. He does learn, of course. We cannot shut out
the workings of natural laws from him altogether. Gradually he
discovers that fire is hot and water wet, that stone is hard to fall
on, and that there are "pins in pussy's toes." His brain is always
being healthily acted upon by facts, his power of discrimination he
practises as best he may, and his behaviour follows inevitably.
Given such a child, with such and such an inheritance of constitution
and tendency, submit him to certain impressions, and he behaves
accordingly. He has felt. He has thought. He is about to do. Here
comes in our universal error. We concern ourselves almost wholly with
what the child does, and ignore what he feels and thinks. We check the
behaviour which is the logical result of his feeling and thinking, and
substitute another and different behaviour for his adoption.
Now it is a direct insult to the brain to try to make the body do
something which the brain does not authorise. It is a physical shock:
it causes a sort of mental nausea. There are many subconscious
activities which go on without our recognition; but to call on the
body to consciously go through certain motions, undirected by previous
mental processes, is an affront to any healthy brain. It is sharply
distasteful to us, because it is against the natural working of the
machinery. The vigorous functional activity of the young brain cries
out against it; and the child says, "Why?" "Why" is an articulate
sound to express the groping of the brain for relation, for
consistency. We have so brow-beaten and controverted this natural
tendency, so forced young growing brains to accept the inconsistent,
that consistency has become so rare in human conduct as to be called
"a jewel." Yet the desire for consistency is one of the most inherent
and essential of our mental appetites. It is the logical tendency, the
power to "put two and two together," the one great force that holds
our acts in sequence and makes human society possible.
We demand consistency in others, and scoff at the lack of it, even in
early youth. "What yer talkin' about, anyway?" we cry. "There's no
sense in that!" We expect consistency of ourselves, too. It is funny,
though painful, to see the ordinary warped brain trying to square its
own conduct with its own ideals. Square they must, somehow, however
strained and thin is our patchwork connection. We check the child's
act, the natural sequence of his feeling and thought, so incessantly
as to give plenty of basis for that pathetic tale of the little girl
who said her name was Mary. "And what is your last name?" "Don't,"
said she. "Mary Don't." By doing this, we constantly send back upon
the brain its own impulses, and accustom it to such continual
discouragement of natural initiative that it gradually ceases to
govern the individual behaviour. In highest success, this produces the
heavy child, whining, "What shall I do now?" always hanging about, fit
subject for any other will to work on; and the heavy adult, victim of
ennui, and needing constant outside stimulus to "pass away the time."
The slowness, the inertia, the opaque conservatism, and the openness
to any sort of external pressure, easiest, of course, on the down
side,--which so blocks the path of humanity,--largely come back to
that poor child's surname, Mary Don't. It is thoroughly beaten into us
when young, and for the rest of life we mostly "Don't." But beyond
the paralysing "Don't!" checking the natural movement of the organism,
comes a galvanising "Do!" shocking it into unnatural activity. We tell
the child to perform a certain action toward which his own feeling and
thought have made no stir whatever. "Why?" he demands. And we state as
reason our authority, and add an immediate heaven or hell arrangement
of our own making to facilitate his performance. He does it. Hell is
very near. He does it many, many times. He becomes habituated to a
course of behaviour which comes to its expression not through his own
previous impression and judgment, but through ours; that is, he is
acting from another person's feeling and thinking. We have asserted
our authority just before his act, between it and his thought. We have
made a cleft which widens to a chasm between what he feels and thinks
and what he does. Into that chasm pours to waste an immeasurable
amount of human energy. The struggles of the dethroned mind to get
possession of its own body again, as the young man or woman grows to
personal freedom, ought to strike remorse and shame to the parental
heart. They do not, because the devoted parent knows no more of these
simple psychic processes than the Goths knew of the priceless
manuscripts they destroyed so cheerfully. With the slow, late kindling
of the freed mind, under the stimulus perhaps of noble thoughts from
others, or just the inner force of human upgrowth, the youth tries to
take the rudder, and steer straight. But the rudder chains are
stretched to useless slackness or rusted and broken. He feels nobly.
He thinks nobly. He starts to do nobly, but his inner pressure meets
no quick response in outer act. The connection is broken. The habit of
"don't" is strong upon him. Following each upward impulse which says,
"Do!" is that automatic check, artificial, but heavily driven in,
which has so thoroughly and effectually taught the brain to stop at
thinking, not to do what it thought. What he felt and thought was not
allowed to govern his action these fifteen years past. Why should it
now? It takes years of conscientious work to re-establish this
original line of smooth connection, and the mended place is never so
strong as it would have been if it had not been broken.
Also, the work of those who seek to educate our later youth, and of
those who are forever pouring out their lives to lead the world a
little higher, is rendered million-fold more difficult by this same
gulf, this terrible line of cleavage which strikes so deep to the
roots of life, and leaves our beautiful feelings and wise thoughts to
mount sky-high in magnificent culture, while our action, which is
life's real test, grovels slowly along, scarce moved by all our fine
ideas.
A more general discourager of our racial advancement than this method
of brain-training we could hardly have invented. It is universal in
its application, and grinds down steadily on all our people during the
most impressionable years of life. That we grow as we do in spite of
it is splendid proof of the beneficent forces of our unconscious life,
always stronger than our conscious efforts; and that our American
children grow more freely, and so have more power of initiative and
self-government, is the best work of our democracy.
"But what else can we do?" will ask the appalled parents. Without
authority they feel no grip upon the child, and see themselves exposed
to infant tyranny, and the infant growing up neglected and untrained.
This shows how little progress we have made in child-culture, how
little grasp we have of the real processes of education. Any parent,
no matter how ignorant, is wiser than a baby and larger. Therefore,
any parent can direct a child's action and enforce it, to some extent.
But to understand how to modify the child's action by such processes
as shall keep it still his own, to alter his act by first altering his
feeling and thought and so keeping the healthy sequence unbroken, that
is a far more subtle and difficult task. A typical instance of this
difference in method may be illustrated in that common and always
difficult task, teaching a child table manners. Here is a case in
which there is no instinct in the child to be appealed to. The noise,
clumsiness, and carelessness to which we object are not at all
unpleasant to him. In what way can we reach the child's range of
reasoning, and convince him of the desirability of this artificial
code of ours? We can, of course, state that it displeases us, and
appeal to his good will not to give us pain. This is rational enough;
but consideration for others, based on a mere statement of
distaste,--a distaste he cannot sympathise with,--is a rather weak
force with most children. It is a pity to over-strain this delicate
feeling. It should be softly tested from time to time, and used enough
to encourage a healthy growth; but to continually appeal to a sympathy
none too strong is often to strain and weaken it. In table manners it
seldom works well. The alleged distress of the parent requires too
much imagination, the desired self-control has too slight a basis.
But there is a far safer and better way. Carefully work out in your
own mind the real reason why you wish the child to conform to this
particular code of table ethics. It is not wholly on the ground of
displeasing you by the immediate acts. The main reason why they
displease you, and why you are so concerned about the matter, is that
this is the accepted standard among the people with whom you associate
and with whom you expect the child to associate; and, if he does not
conform to this code, he will be excluded from desirable society.
Reasons why table manners exist at all, or are what they are, require
further study; but the point at issue is not why it is customary to
eat with the fork instead of the knife, but why your child should do
so. When he gets to the point of analysing these details, and asks why
he should fold his napkin in one case and leave it crumpled in
another, you will of course be prepared with the real reasons.
Meanwhile the real reason why the child should learn not to do these
undesirable things is that such manners, if pursued, will deprive him
of desirable society.
We usually content ourselves with an oral statement to this effect:
"Nobody will want to eat with you if you do so!" Right here let a word
be said to those who are afraid of over-stimulating a child's brain by
a more rational method of training. Training by observation and
deduction is far easier to a young brain than training by oral
statements. To take into the mind by ear a statement of fact, and to
hold that statement in memory and preserve its force to check a
natural action, is a difficult feat for an adult. But to see that such
a thing has such a consequence, and "take warning" by that, is the
"early method," the natural method, the quickest, easiest, surest way.
So, instead of saying to the child, "If you behave so, people will not
want to eat with you," we should let him see that this is the case,
and feel the lack.
His most desirable society is usually that of his parents; and his
first entrance upon that plane should be fairly conditioned upon his
learning to play the game as they do. No compulsion, no penalties, no
thought of "naughtiness," merely that, if he wants to eat with them,
why, that is the way they eat, and he must do so, too. If he will not,
exit the desirable society. By very gradual steps,--not by long,
tiresome grown-up meals, but by a graduated series of exercises that
should recognise the physical difficulty of co-ordinating the young
faculties on this elaborate "manual of arms,"--a child could learn the
whole performance in a reasonable time, and lose neither nervous force
nor clearness of perception in the process.
As we do these things now, pulling this string and that, appealing to
feelings half developed, urging reasons which find no recognition,
using compulsion which to the child's mind is arbitrary and unjust, we
may superinduce a tolerable system of table manners, but we have more
or less injured the instrument in so doing. A typewriter could,
perhaps, be worked with a hammer; but it would not improve the
machine. We have had far more consideration for "the machinery of the
household" than for the machinery of a child's mind, and yet the real
foundation claim of the home is that it is necessary to rear children
in. If the ordinary conditions of household life are unsuitable to
convey the instruction we desire, it is for us to so arrange those
conditions as to make them suitable.
There are cases, many cases, in a child-time, where we cannot command
the conditions necessary for this method of instruction, where the
child must act from our suggestion with no previous or accompanying
reasoning. This makes it all the more necessary that such reasoning
should be open to him when we can command it. Moreover, the ordinary
events in a young life are not surprises to the parent. We know in
advance the things that are so unexpected to the child. Why should we
not be at some pains to prepare him for these experiences? The given
acts of each day are not the crucial points we make of them. What is
important is that the child shall gradually establish a rational and
connected scheme of life and method of action, his young faculties
improving as he uses them, life growing easier and plainer to him from
year to year. It is for the parent, the educator, the brain-trainer,
to study out details of method and delicate applications. The main
purpose is that the child's conduct shall be his own,--his own chosen
course of action, adopted by him through the use of his own faculties,
not forced upon him by immediate external pressure.
It is our business to make plain to him the desirability of the
behaviour we wish produced, carefully establishing from day to day his
perceptions of the use and beauty of life, and his proven confidence
in us as interpreters. The young brain should be regularly practised
in the first easy steps of sequential reasoning, arguing from the
interesting causes we so carefully provide to the pleasant or not too
painful effects we so honestly let it feel, always putting two and two
together as it advances in the art and practice of human conduct. Then
it will grow into a strong, clear, active, mature brain, capable of
relating the facts of life with a wider and juster vision than has
been ours, and acting unflinchingly from its own best judgment, as we
have striven to do in vain these many years.
IV.
THE BURNT CHILD DREADS THE SLIPPER.
The question of discipline is a serious one to every young mother; and
most mothers are young to begin with. She feels the weight of maternal
responsibility and the necessity for bringing up her child properly,
but has studied nothing whatever on the subject.
What methods of discipline are in general use in the rearing of
children? The oldest and commonest of all is that of meeting an error
in the child's behaviour with physical pain. We simply hurt the child
when he does wrong, in order that he may so learn not to do wrong. A
method so common and so old as this ought to be clearly justified or
as clearly condemned by its results.