I learned to understand the immense material prosperity of the country
much more easily than its social progress.
The exquisite agriculture which made millions of acres from raw farms
and ranches into rich gardens, the forestry which had changed our
straggling woodlands into great tree-farms, yielding their steady crops
of cut boughs, thinned underbrush, and full-grown trunks, those endless
orchard roads, with their processions of workers making continual
excursions in their special cars, keeping roadway and bordering trees in
perfect order--all this one could see.
There were, of course far more of the wilder, narrower roads, perfect as
the roadbed, but not parked, with all untrimmed nature to travel
through.
The airships did make a difference. To look down on the flowing,
outspread miles beneath gave a sense of the unity and continuous beauty
of our country, quite different from the streak views we used to get. An
airship is a moving mountain-top.
The cities were even more strikingly beautiful, in that the change was
greater, the contrast sharper. I never tired of wandering about on foot
along the streets of cities, and I visited several, finding, as Nellie
said, that it took no longer to improve twenty than one; the people in
each could do it as soon as they chose to.
But what made them choose? What had got into the people? That was what
puzzled me most. It did not show outside, like the country changes, and
the rebuilt cities; the people did not look remarkable, though they were
different, too. I watched and studied them, trying to analyze the
changes that could be seen. Most visible was cleanliness, comfort, and
beauty in dress.
I had never dreamed of the relief to the spectator in not seeing any
poverty. We were used to it, of course; we had our excuses, religious
and economic, we even found, or thought we found, artistic pleasure in
this social disease. But now I realized what a nightmare it had
been--the sights, the sounds, the smells of poverty--merely to an
outside observer.
These people had good bodies, too. They were not equally beautiful, by
any means; thirty years, of course, could not wholly return to the
normal a race long stunted and overworked. But in the difference in the
young generation I could see at a glance the world's best hope, that the
"long inheritance" is far deeper than the short.
Those of about twenty and under, those who were born after some of these
changes had been made, were like another race. Big, sturdy, blooming
creatures, boys and girls alike, swift and graceful, eager, happy,
courteous--I supposed at first that these were the children of
exceptionally placed people; but soon found, with a heart-stirring sort
of shock, that all the children were like that.
Some of the old folk still carried the scars of earlier conditions, but
the children were new people.
Then of my own accord I demanded reasons. Nellie laughed sweetly.
"I'm so glad you've come to your appetite," she said. "I've been longing
to talk to you about that, and you were always bored."
"It's a good deal of a dose, Nell; you'll admit that. And one hates to
be forcibly fed. But now I do want to get an outline, a sort of general
idea, of what you do with children. Can you condense a little recent
history, and make it easy to an aged stranger?"
"Aged! You are growing younger every day, John. I believe that
comparatively brainless life you led in Tibet was good for you. That was
all new impression on the brain; the first part rested. Now you are
beginning where you left off. I wish you would recognize that."
I shook my head. "Never mind me, I'm trying not to think of my
chopped-off life; but tell me how you manufacture this kind of people."
My sister sat still, thinking, for a little. "I want to avoid repetition
if possible--tell me just how much you have in mind already." But I
refused to be catechised.
"You put it all together, straight; I want to get the whole of it--as
well as I can."
"All right. On your head be it. Let me see--first---- Oh, there isn't
any first, John! We were doing ever so much for children before you
left--before you and I were born! It is the vision of all the great
child-lovers; that children are people, and the most valuable people on
earth. The most important thing to a child is its mother. We made new
mothers for them--I guess that is 'first.'
"Suppose we begin this way:
"a. Free, healthy, independent, intelligent mothers.
"b. Enough to live on--right conditions for child-raising.
"c. Specialized care.
"d. The new social consciousness, with its religion, its art, its
science, its civics, its industry, its wealth, its brilliant efficiency.
That's your outline."
I set down these points in my notebook.
"An excellent outline, Nellie. Now for details on 'a.' I will set my
teeth till that's over."
My sister regarded me with amused tenderness. "How you do hate the new
women, John--in the abstract! I haven't seen you averse to any of them
in the concrete!"
At the time I refused to admit any importance to this remark, but I
thought it over later--and to good purpose. It was true. I did hate the
new kind of human being who loomed so large in every line of progress.
She jarred on every age--old masculine prejudice--she was not what woman
used to be. And yet--as Nellie said--the women I met I liked.
"Get on with the lesson, my dear," said I. "I am determined to learn and
not to argue. What did your omnipresent new woman do to improve the
human stock so fast?"
Then Nellie settled down in earnest and gave me all I wanted--possibly
more.
"They wakened as if to a new idea, to their own natural duty as mothers;
to the need of a high personal standard of health and character in both
parents. That gave us a better start right away--clean-born, vigorous
children, inheriting strength and purity.
"Then came the change in conditions, a change so great you've hardly
glimpsed it yet. No more, never more again, please God, that brutal
hunger and uncertainty, that black devil of want and fear.
Everybody--everybody--sure of decent living! That one thing lifted the
heaviest single shadow from the world, and from the children.
"Nobody is overworked now. Nobody is tired, unless they tire themselves
unnecessarily. People live sanely, safely, easily. The difference to
children, both in nature and nurture, is very great. They all have
proper nourishment, and clothing, and environment--from birth.
"And with that, as advance in special conditions for child-culture, we
build for babies now. We, as a community, provide suitably for our most
important citizens."
At this point I opened my mouth to say something, but presently shut it
again.
"Good boy!" said Nellie. "I'll show you later."
"The next is specialized care. That one thing is enough, almost, to
account for it all. To think of all the ages when our poor babies had no
benefit at all of the advance in human intelligence!
"We had the best and wisest specialists we could train and hire in every
other field of life--and the babies left utterly at the mercy of
amateurs!
"Well, I mustn't stop to rage at past history. We do better now. John,
guess the salary of the head of the Baby Gardens in a city."
"Oh, call it a million, and go on," I said cheerfully; which somewhat
disconcerted her.
"It's as big a place as being head of Harvard College," she said, "and
better paid than that used to be. Our highest and finest people study
for this work. Real geniuses, some of them. The babies, all the babies,
mind you, get the benefit of the best wisdom we have. And it grows fast.
We are learning by doing it. Every year we do better. 'Growing up' is an
easier process than it used to be."
"I'll have to accept it for the sake of argument," I agreed. "It's the
last point I care most for, I think. All these new consciousnesses you
were so glib about. I guess you can't describe that so easily."
She grew thoughtful, rocking to and fro for a few moments.
"No," she said at length, "it's not so easy. But I'll try. I wasn't very
glib, really. I spoke of religion, art, civics, science, industry,
wealth, and efficiency, didn't I? Now let's see how they apply to the
children.
"This religion---- Dear me, John! am I to explain the greatest sunburst
of truth that ever was--in two minutes?"
"Oh, no," I said loftily. "I'll give you five! You've got to try,
anyway."
So she tried.
"In place of Revelation and Belief," she said slowly, "we now have Facts
and Knowledge. We used to believe in God--variously, and teach the
belief as a matter of duty. Now we know God, as much as we know anything
else--more than we know anything else--it is The Fact of Life.
"This is the base of knowledge, underlying all other knowledge, simple
and safe and sure--and we can teach it to children! The child mind,
opening to this lovely world, is no longer filled with horrible or
ridiculous old ideas--it learns to know the lovely truth of life."
She looked so serenely beautiful, and sat so still after she said this,
that I felt a little awkward.
"I don't mean to jar on you, Nellie," I said. "I didn't know you were
so--religious."
Then she laughed again merrily. "I'm not," she said. "No more than
anybody is. We don't have 'religious' people any more, John. It's not a
separate thing; a 'body of doctrine' and set of observances--it is what
all of us have at the bottom of everything else, the underlying basic
fact of life. And it goes far, very far indeed, to make the strong good
cheer you see in these children's faces.
"They have never been frightened, John. They have never been told any of
those awful things we used to tell them. There is no struggle with
church-going, no gagging over doctrines, no mysterious queer mess--only
life. Life is now open to our children, clear, brilliant, satisfying,
and yet stimulating.
"Of course, I don't mean that this applies equally to every last one.
The material benefit does, that could be enforced by law where
necessary; but this world-wave of new knowledge is irregular, of course.
It has spread wider, and gone faster than any of the old religions ever
did, but you can find people yet who believe things almost as dreadful
as father did!"
I well remembered my father's lingering Calvinism, and appreciated its
horrors.
"Our educators have recognized a new duty to children," Nellie went on;
"to stand between them and the past. We recognize that the child mind
should lift and lead the world; and we feed it with our newest, not our
oldest ideas.
"Also we encourage it to wander on ahead, fearless and happy. I began to
tell you the other day--and you snubbed me, John, you did really!--that
we have a new literature for children, and have dropped the old."
At this piece of information I could no longer preserve the attitude of
a patient listener. I sat back and stared at my sister, while the full
awfulness of this condition slowly rolled over me.
"Do you mean," I said slowly, "that children are taught nothing of the
past?"
"Oh, no, indeed; they are taught about the past from the earth's
beginning. In the mind of every child is a clear view of how Life has
grown on earth."
"And our own history?"
"Of course; from savagery to to-day--that is a simple story, endlessly
interesting as they grow older."
"What do you mean, then, by cutting off the past?"
"I mean that their stories, poems, pictures, and the major part of their
instruction deals with the present and future--especially the future.
The whole teaching is dynamic--not static. We used to teach mostly
facts, or what we thought were facts. Now we teach processes. You'll
find out if you talk to children, anywhere."
This I mentally determined to do, and in due course did. I may as well
say right here that I found children more delightful companions than
they used to be. They were polite enough, even considerate; but so
universally happy, so overflowing with purposes, so skilful in so many
ways, so intelligent and efficient, that it astonished me. We used to
have a sort of race-myth about "happy childhood," but none of us seemed
to study the faces of the children we saw about us. Even among
well-to-do families, the discontented, careworn, anxious, repressed, or
rebellious faces of children ought to have routed our myth forever.
Timid, brow-beaten children, sulky children, darkly resentful; nervous,
whining children, foolish, mischievous, hysterically giggling children,
noisy, destructive, uneasy children--how well I remembered them.
These new ones had a strange air of being Persons, not subordinates and
dependents, but Equals; their limitations frankly admitted, but not cast
up at them, and their special powers fully respected. That was it!
I am wandering far ahead of that day's conversation, but it led to wide
study among children, analysis, and some interesting conclusions. When I
hit on this one I began to understand. Children were universally
respected, and they liked it. In city or country, place was made for
them, permanent, pleasant, properly appointed place; to use, enjoy, and
grow up in. They had their homes and families as before, losing nothing;
but they added to this background their own wide gardens and houses,
where part of each day was spent.
From earliest infancy they absorbed the idea that home was a place to
come out from and go back to; the sweetest, dearest place--for there was
mother, and father, and one's own little room to sleep in; but the day
hours were to go somewhere to learn and do, to work and play, to grow
in.
I branched off from Nellie's startling me with her
"new-literature-for-children" idea. She went on to explain it further.
"The greatest artists work for children now, John," she said. "In the
child-gardens and child-homes they are surrounded with beauty. I do not
mean that we hire painters and poets to manufacture beauty for them; but
that painters and poets, architects and landscape artists, designers and
decorators of all kinds, love and revere childhood, and delight to work
for it.
"Remember that half of our artists are mothers now--a loving, serving,
giving spirit has come into expression--a wider and more lasting
expression than it was ever possible to put into doughnuts and
embroidery! Wait till you see the beauty of our child-gardens!"
"Why don't you call them schools? Don't you have schools?"
"Some. We haven't wholly outgrown the old academic habit. But for the
babies there was no precedent, and they do not 'go to school.'"
"You have a sort of central nursery?" I ventured.
"Not necessarily 'central,' John. And we have great numbers of them. How
can I make it any way clear to you? See here. Suppose you were a mother,
and a very busy one, like the old woman in the shoe; and suppose you had
twenty or thirty permanent babies to be provided for? And suppose you
were wise and rich--able to do what you wanted to? Wouldn't you build an
elaborate nursery for those children? Wouldn't you engage the very best
nurses and teachers? Wouldn't you want the cleanest, quietest garden for
them to play or sleep in? Of course you would.
"That is our attitude. We have at last recognized babies as a permanent
class. They are always here, about a fifth of the population. And we,
their mothers, have at last ensured to these, our babies, the best
accommodation known to our time. It improves as we learn, of course."
"Mm!" I said. "I'll go and gaze upon these Infant Paradises later--at
the sleeping hour, please! But how about that new literature you
frightened me with?"
"Oh. Why, we have tried to treat their minds as we do their
stomachs--putting in only what is good for then. I mean the very
littlest, understand. As they grow older they have wider range; we have
not expunged the world's past, my dear brother! But we do prepare with
all the wisdom, love, and power we have, the mental food for little
children. Simple, lovely music is about them always--you must have
noticed how universally they sing?"
I had, and said so.
"The coloring and decoration of their rooms is beautiful--their clothes
are beautiful--and simple--you've seen that, too?"
"Yes, dear girl. It's because I've seen--and heard--and noticed the
surprisingness of the New Child that I sit here fairly guzzling
information. Pray proceed to the literature!"
"Literature is the most useful of the arts--the most perfect medium for
transfer of ideas. We wish to have the first impressions in our
children's minds, above all things, true. All the witchery and
loveliness possible in presentation--but the things presented are not
senseless and unpleasant.
"We have plenty of 'true stories,' stories based on real events and on
natural laws and processes; but the viewpoint from which they are
written has changed; you'll have to read some to see what I mean. But
the major difference is in our stories of the future, our future here on
earth. They are good stories, mind, the very best writers make them;
good verses and pictures, too. And a diet like that, while it is just as
varied and entertaining as the 'once upon a time' kind, leaves the child
with a sense that things are going to happen--and he, or she, can help.
"You see, we don't consider anything as done. To you, as a new visitor,
we 'point with pride,' but among ourselves we 'view with alarm.' We are
just as full of Reformers and Propagandists as ever, and overflowing
with plans for improvement.
"These are the main characteristics of the new child literature: Truth
and Something Better Ahead."
"I don't like it!" I said firmly. "No wonder you dodged about so long.
You've apparently made a sort of pap out of Grad-grind and Rollo, and
feed it to these poor babies through a tube!"
This time my sister rebelled. She came firmly to my side and pulled my
hair--precisely as she used to do forty years ago and more--the few
little hairs at the crown which still troubled me in brushing--because
of being pulled out straight so often.
"You shall have no more oral instruction, young man," said she. "You
shall be taken about and shown things; you shall 'Stop! Look! Listen!'
until you admit the advantages I have striven in vain to pump into your
resisting intellect--you Product of Past Methods!"
"You're the product of the same methods yourself, my dear," I replied
amiably; "but I'm quite willing to be shown--always was something of a
Missourian."
No part of my re-education was pleasanter, and I'm sure none was more
important, than the next few days. We visited place after place, in
different cities, or in the country, and everywhere was the same high
standard of health and beauty, of comfort, fun, and visible growth.
I saw babies and wee toddlers by the thousands, and hardly ever heard
one cry! Out of that mass of experience some vivid pictures remain in my
mind. One was "mother time" in a manufacturing village. There was a big
group of mills with waterpower; each mill a beautiful, clean place,
light, airy, rich in color, sweet with the flowers about it, where men
and women worked their two-hour shifts.
The women took off their work-aprons and slipped into the neighboring
garden to nurse their babies. They were in no haste. They were
pleasantly dressed and well-fed and not tired.
They were known and welcomed by the women in charge of the child-garden;
and each mother slipped into a comfortable rocker and took into her arms
that little rosy piece of herself and the man she loved--it was a thing
to bring one's heart into one's throat. The clean peace and quiet of it,
time enough, the pleasant neighborliness, the atmosphere of contented
motherhood, those healthy, drowsy little mites, so busy with their
dinner.
Then they put them down, asleep for the most part, kissed them, and
strolled back to the pleasant workroom for another two hours.
Specialization used to be a terror, when a whole human being was held
down to one motion for ten hours. But specialization hurts nobody when
it does not last too long.
In the afternoons some mothers took their babies home at once. Some
nursed them and then went out together for exercise or pleasure. The
homes were clean and quiet, too; no kitchen work, no laundry work, no
self-made clutter and dirt. It looked so comfortable that I couldn't
believe my eyes, yet it was just common, everyday life.
As the babies grew old enough to move about, their joys widened. They
were kept in rooms of a suitable temperature, and wore practically no
clothes. This in itself I was told was one main cause of their health
and contentment. They rolled and tumbled on smooth mattresses; pulled
themselves up and swung back and forth on large, soft horizontal ropes
fastened within reach; delightful little bunches of rose leaves and
dimples, in perfect happiness.
Very early they had water to play in; clean, shallow pools, kept at a
proper temperature, where they splashed and gurgled in rapture, and
learned to swim before they learned to walk, sometimes.
As they grew larger and more competent, their playgrounds were more
extensive and varied; but the underlying idea was always clear--safety
and pleasure, full exercise and development of every power. There was no
quarrelling over toys--whatever they had to play with they all had in
abundance; and most of the time they did not have exchangeable objects,
but these ropes, pools, sand, clay, and so on, materials common to all;
and the main joy was in the use of their own little bodies, is as many
ways as was possible.
At any time when they were not asleep a procession of crowing toddlers
could be seen creeping up a slight incline and sliding or rolling
triumphantly down the other side. A sort of beautified cellar door,
this.
Strange that we always punished children for sliding down unsuitable
things and never provided suitable ones. But then, of course, one could
not have machinery like this in one brief family. Swings, see-saws, all
manner of moving things they had, with building-blocks, of course, and
balls. But as soon as it was easy to them they had tools and learned to
use them; the major joy of their expanding lives was doing things. I
speak of them in an unbroken line, for that was the way they lived. Each
stage lapped over into the next, and that natural ambition to be with
the older ones and do what they did was the main incentive in their
progress.
To go on, to get farther, higher, to do something better and more
interesting, this was in the atmosphere; growth, exercise, and joy.
I watched and studied, and grew happy as I did so; which I could see was
a gratification to Nellie.
"Aren't they ever naughty?" I demanded one day.
"Why should they be?" she answered. "How could they be? What we used to
call 'naughtiness' was only the misfit. The poor little things were in
the wrong place--and nobody knew how to make them happy. Here there is
nothing they can hurt, and nothing that can hurt them. They have earth,
air, fire, and water to play with."
"Fire?" I interrupted.
"Yes, indeed. All children love fire, of course. As soon as they can
move about they are taught fire."
"How many burn themselves up?"
"None. Never any more. Did you never hear 'a burnt child dreads the
fire'? We said that, but we never had sense enough to use it. No proverb
ever said 'a whipped child dreads the fire'! We never safeguarded them,
and the poor little things were always getting burned to death in our
barbarous 'homes'!"
"Do you arbitrarily burn them all?" I asked. "Have an annual
'branding'?"
"Oh, no; but we allow them to burn themselves--within reason. Come and
see."
She showed me a set of youngsters learning Heat and Cold, with basins of
water, a row of them; eagerly experimenting with cautious little
fingers--very cold, cold, cool, tepid, warm, hot, very hot. They could
hardly say the words plain, but learned them all, even when they all had
to shut their eyes and the basins were changed about.
Straying from house to house, from garden to garden, I watched them grow
and learn. On the long walls about them were painted an endless panorama
of human progress. When they noticed and asked questions they were told,
without emphasis, that people used to live that wave; and grew to
this--and this.
I found that as the children grew older they all had a year of travel;
each human being knew his world. And when I questioned as to expense, as
I always did, Nellie would flatten me with things like this:
"Remember that we used to spend 70 per cent, of our national income on
the expenses of war, past and present. If we women had done no more than
save that, it would have paid for all you see."
Or she would remind me again of the immense sums we used to spend on
hospitals and prisons; or refer to the general change in economics, that
inevitable socialization of industry, which had checked waste and
increased productivity so much.
"We are a rich people, John," she repeated. "So are other nations, for
that matter; the world's richer. We have increased our output and
lowered our expenses at the same time. One of our big present problems
is what to do with our big surplus; we quarrel roundly over that. But
meanwhile it is a very poor nation indeed that does not provide full
education for its children."
I found that the differences in education were both subtle and profound.
The babies' experience of group life, as well as the daily return to
family life, gave a sure groundwork for the understanding of civics.
Their first impressions included other babies; no child grew up with the
intensified self-consciousness we used to almost force upon them.
In all the early years learning was ceaseless and unconscious. They grew
among such carefully chosen surroundings as made it impossible not to
learn what was really necessary; and to learn it as squirrels learn the
trees--by playing and working in them. They learned the simple
beginnings of the world's great trades, led by natural interest and
desire, gathering by imitation and asked instruction.
I saw nowhere the enforced task; everywhere the eager attention of real
interest.
"Are they never taught to apply themselves? To concentrate?" I asked.
And for answer she showed me the absorbed, breathless concentration of
fresh young minds and busy hands.
"But they soon tire of these things and want to do something else, do
they not?"
"Of course. That is natural to childhood. And there is always something
else for them to do."
"But they are only doing what they like to do--that is no preparation
for a life work surely."
"We find it an excellent preparation for life work. You see, we all work
at what we like now. That is one reason we do so much better work."
I had talked on this line before with those who explained the workings
of industrial socialism.
"Still, as a matter of education," I urged, "is it not necessary for a
child to learn to compel himself to work?"
"Oh, no," they told me; and, to say truth, convincingly showed me.
"Children like to work. If any one does not, we know he is sick."
And as I saw more and more of the child-gardens, and sat silently
watching for well-spent hours, I found how true this was.
The children had around them the carefully planned stimuli of a
genuinely educational environment. The work of the world was there, in
words of one syllable, as it were; and among wise, courteous, pleasant
people, themselves actually doing something, yet always ready to give
information when asked.
First the natural appetite of the young brain, then every imaginable
convenience for learning, then the cautiously used accessories to
encourage further effort; and then these marvellous teachers--who seemed
to like their work, too. The majority were women, and of them nearly all
were mothers. It appeared that children had not lost their mothers, as
at first one assumed, but that each child kept his own and gained
others. And these teaching mothers were somehow more motherly than the
average.
Nellie was so pleased when I noticed this. She liked to see me "going to
school" so regularly. I was not alone in it, either. There seemed to be
numbers of people who cared enough for children to enjoy watching them
and playing with them. Nobody was worn out with child care. The parents
were not--the nurses and teachers had short shifts--it seemed to be
considered a pleasure and an honor to be allowed with the little ones.
And in all this widespread, costly, elaborate, and yet perfectly simple
and lovely environment, these little New Persons grew and blossomed with
that divine unconsciousness which belongs to children.
They did not know that the best intellects were devoted to their
service, they never dreamed what thought and love and labor made these
wide gardens, these bright playing-places, these endlessly interesting
shops where they could learn to make things as soon as they were old
enough. They took it all as life--just Life, as a child must take his
first environment.
"And don't you think, John," Nellie said, when I spoke of this, "don't
you really think this is a more normal environment for a young human
soul than a kitchen? Or a parlor? Or even a nursery?"
I had to admit that it had its advantages.
As they grew older there was every chance for specialization. In the
first years they gathered the rudiments of general knowledge, and of
general activity, of both hand and brain, and from infancy each child
was studied, and his growth--or hers--carefully recorded; not by
adoring, intimately related love, but by that larger, wiser tenderness
of these great child-lovers who had had hundreds of them to study.
They were observed intelligently. Notes were made, the mother and father
contributed theirs; in freedom and unconsciousness the young nature
developed, never realizing how its environment was altered to fit its
special needs.
As the cool, spacious, flower-starred, fruitful forests of this time
differed from the tangled underbrush, with crooked, crowded, imperfect
trees struggling for growth, that I remembered as "woods," or from
clipped and twisted products of the forcing and pruning process; so did
the new child-gardens differ from the old schools.
No wonder children wore so different an aspect. They had the fresh,
insatiable thirst for knowledge which has been wisely slaked, but never
given the water-torture. As I recalled my own youth, and thought of all
those young minds set in rows, fixed open as with a stick between the
teeth, and forced to drink, drink, drink till all desire was turned to
loathing, I felt a sudden wish to be born again--now!--and begin over.
As an adult observer, I found this re-arranged world jarring and
displeasing in many ways; but as I sat among the children, played with
them, talked with them, became somewhat acquainted with their views of
things, I began to see that to them the new world was both natural and
pleasant.
When they learned that I was a "leftover" from what to them seemed past
ages, I became extremely popular. There was a rush to get near me, and
eager requests to tell them about old times--checked somewhat by
politeness, yet always eager.
But the cheerful pride with which I began to describe the world as I
knew it was considerably dashed by their comments. What I had considered
as necessary evils, or as no evils at all, to them appeared as silly and
disgraceful as cannibalism; and there grew among them an attitude of
chivalrous pity for my unfortunate upbringing which was pretty to see.
"I see no child in glasses!" I suddenly remarked one day.
"Of course not," answered the teacher I stood by. "We use books very
little, you see. Education no longer impairs our machinery."
I recalled the Boston school children and the myopic victims of
Germany's archaic letter-press; and freely admitted that this was
advance. Much of the instruction was oral--much, very much, came through
games and exercises; books, I found, were regarded rather as things to
consult, like a dictionary, or as instruments of high enjoyment.
"School books"--"text books"--scarcely existed, at least for children.
The older ones, some of them, plunged into study with passion; but their
eyes were good and their brains were strong; also their general health.
There was no "breakdown from overstudy;" that slow, cruel, crippling
injury--sometimes death, which we, wise and loving parents of past days,
so frequently forced upon our helpless children.
Naturally happy, busy, self-respecting, these grew up; with a wide
capacity for action, a breadth of general knowledge which was almost
incredible, a high standard of courtesy, and vigorous, well-exercised
minds. They were trained to think, I found; to question, discuss,
decide; they could reason.
And they faced life with such loving enthusiasm! Such pride in the new
accomplishments of the world! Such a noble, boundless ambition to do
things, to make things, to help the world still further.
And from infancy to adolescence--all through these years of happy
growing--there was nothing whatever to differentiate the boys from the
girls! As a rule, they could not be distinguished.