[Sidenote: Visiting Exhibit]
Mr. Babbitt, the leading citizen of Hoopeston, had just returned from a
long trip to the Orient. As he was wealthy, he had brought back a great
many curios and art treasures; and as he was public-spirited, he
arranged to exhibit these in the large assembly room of the high school
building, and to lecture about them to any who cared to come. While the
exhibits were being arranged, the high school students did not use the
assembly hall, as Mr. Babbitt, aided by several assistants, was busy
unpacking and putting things into place. However, the students came to
Mr. Tower, the principal, to ask that they be allowed to go into the
assembly room at noon to look at things.
“I hardly know what to do about this,” said Mr. Tower, in chapel, “but I
feel that young people of your age and training should be able to go to
see these things, enjoy them, and not injure or even handle them at all.
Therefore, I asked Mr. Babbitt if you might go in at noon, after giving
a pledge that you would not touch or handle anything. He said he would
trust you if I could, and so we have decided that you may go into the
room at noon, by giving a signed promise to this effect to the servant
whom Mr. Babbitt leaves there at the door.”
This plan worked excellently. Practically the whole school spent the
greater part of their noon hours for several days looking at the quaint
and lovely things Mr. Babbitt had brought. Not one thing was hurt or
even touched, although a small vase was broken by accident when some
boys, examining the contents of a temporary shelf, fell over each other
in their eagerness. But the boys volunteered to pay for this loss, and
Mr. Babbitt was entirely satisfied.
Mr. Tower could not have trusted his students so fully had not he and
many other teachers and parents taught ideals of self-control and honor
for a long time preceding this test. The principal’s talk and the
written pledge were means of bringing and keeping before the students’
minds the ideal of controlled curiosity, of a desire to touch inhibited
by the will.
This ideal of a fine sense of honor controlling the instinct to touch,
take apart, roll, toss or otherwise experiment with anything that
arouses interest, should be taught very early in school life. Little
children want to handle everything, including work material, playthings,
ornaments, books, curios, pictures; older ones want to handle
instruments and apparatus used in their laboratories. “Mine and thine”
must early be differentiated, and the satisfaction of curiosity by
handling limited to one’s own possessions. If this be taught in the home
and the primary grades, older children will be found as reliable as Mr.
Tower’s students when a serious test comes.
(2) _Curiosity stimulated by destructive-constructive impulses._ Even
very young children take pleasure in pulling things to pieces—not so
much because of a wish to destroy as because of the pleasure of
producing effects. Destroying is easier than constructing, so naturally
destructiveness develops before constructiveness. But the latter
characteristic becomes relatively stronger as ability to do difficult
things increases. With boys from twelve to fifteen years of age the
instinct sometimes becomes almost a mania. Then is the time that the
wise parent or teacher will find a means for harmless ways of indulging
an inclination that may develop later into genius, and in any case will
bring much first-hand information.