useful rule in all education? It is, not to gain time, but to lose it.
Forgive the paradox, O my ordinary reader! It must be uttered by any
one who reflects, and whatever you may say, I prefer paradoxes to
prejudices. The most perilous interval of human life is that between
birth and the age of twelve years. At that time errors and vices take
root without our having any means of destroying them; and when the
instrument is found, the time for uprooting them is past. If children
could spring at one bound from the mother's breast to the age of
reason, the education given them now-a-days would be suitable; but in
the due order of nature they need one entirely different. They should
not use the mind at all, until it has all its faculties. For while it
is blind it cannot see the torch you present to it; nor can it follow
on the immense plain of ideas a path which, even for the keenest
eyesight, reason traces so faintly.
The earliest education ought, then, to be purely negative. It consists
not in teaching truth or virtue, but in shielding the heart from vice
and the mind from error. If you could do nothing at all, and allow
nothing to be done; if you could bring up your pupil sound and robust
to the age of twelve years, without his knowing how to distinguish his
right hand from his left, the eyes of his understanding would from the
very first open to reason. Without a prejudice or a habit, there would
be in him nothing to counteract the effect of your care. Before long
he would become in your hands the wisest of men; and beginning by doing
nothing, you would have accomplished a marvel in education.
Reverse the common practice, and you will nearly always do well.
Parents and teachers desiring to make of a child not a child, but a
learned man, have never begun early enough to chide, to correct, to
reprimand, to flatter, to promise, to instruct, to discourse reason to
him. Do better than this: be reasonable yourself, and do not argue
with your pupil, least of all, to make him approve what he dislikes.
For if you persist in reasoning about disagreeable things, you make
reasoning disagreeable to him, and weaken its influence beforehand in a
mind as yet unfitted to understand it. Keep his organs, his senses,
his physical strength, busy; but, as long as possible, keep his mind
inactive. Guard against all sensations arising in advance of judgment,
which estimates their true value. Keep back and check unfamiliar
impressions, and be in no haste to do good for the sake of preventing
evil. For the good is not real unless enlightened by reason. Regard
every delay as an advantage; for much is gained if the critical period
be approached without losing anything. Let childhood have its full
growth. If indeed a lesson must be given, avoid it to-day, if you can
without danger delay it until to-morrow.
Another consideration which proves this method useful is the peculiar
bent of the child's mind. This ought to be well understood if we would
know what moral government is best adapted to him. Each has his own
cast of mind, in accordance with which he must be directed; and if we
would succeed, he must be ruled according to this natural bent and no
other. Be judicious: watch nature long, and observe your pupil
carefully before you say a word to him. At first leave the germ of his
character free to disclose itself. Repress it as little as possible,
so that you may the better see all there is of it.
Do you think this season of free action will be time lost to him? On
the contrary, it will be employed in the best way possible. For by
this means you will learn not to lose a single moment when time is more
precious; whereas, if you begin to act before you know what ought to be
done, you act at random. Liable to deceive yourself, you will have to
retrace your steps, and will be farther from your object than if you
had been less in haste to reach it. Do not then act like a miser, who,
in order to lose nothing, loses a great deal. At the earlier age
sacrifice time which you will recover with interest later on. The wise
physician does not give directions at first sight of his patient, but
studies the sick man's temperament, before prescribing. He begins late
with his treatment, but cures the man: the over-hasty physician kills
him.
Remember that, before you venture undertaking to form a man, you must
have made yourself a man; you must find in yourself the example you
ought to offer him. While the child is yet without knowledge there is
time to prepare everything about him so that his first glance shall
discover only what he ought to see. Make everybody respect you; begin
by making yourself beloved, so that everybody will try to please you.
You will not be the child's master unless you are master of everything
around him, and this authority will not suffice unless founded on
esteem for virtue.
There is no use in exhausting your purse by lavishing money: I have
never observed that money made any one beloved. You must not be
miserly or unfeeling, or lament the distress you can relieve; but you
will open your coffers in vain if you do not open your heart; the
hearts of others will be forever closed to you. You must give your
time, your care, your affection, yourself. For whatever you may do,
your money certainly is not yourself. Tokens of interest and of
kindness go farther and are of more use than any gifts whatever. How
many unhappy persons, how many sufferers, need consolation far more
than alms! How many who are oppressed are aided rather by protection
than by money!
Reconcile those who are at variance; prevent lawsuits; persuade
children to filial duty and parents to gentleness. Encourage happy
marriages; hinder disturbances; use freely the interest of your pupil's
family on behalf of the weak who are denied justice and oppressed by
the powerful. Boldly declare yourself the champion of the unfortunate.
Be just, humane, beneficent. Be not content with giving alms; be
charitable. Kindness relieves more distress than money can reach.
Love others, and they will love you; serve them, and they will serve
you; be their brother, and they will be your children.
Blame others no longer for the mischief you yourself are doing.
Children are less corrupted by the harm they see than by that you teach
them.
Always preaching, always moralizing, always acting the pedant, you give
them twenty worthless ideas when you think you are giving them one good
one. Full of what is passing in your own mind, you do not see the
effect you are producing upon theirs.
In the prolonged torrent of words with which you incessantly weary
them, do you think there are none they may misunderstand? Do you
imagine that they will not comment in their own way upon your wordy
explanations, and find in them a system adapted to their own capacity,
which, if need be, they can use against you?
Listen to a little fellow who has just been under instruction. Let him
prattle, question, blunder, just as he pleases, and you will be
surprised at the turn your reasonings have taken in his mind. He
confounds one thing with another; he reverses everything; he tires you,
sometimes worries you, by unexpected objections. He forces you to hold
your peace, or to make him hold his. And what must he think of this
silence, in one so fond of talking? If ever he wins this advantage and
knows the fact, farewell to his education. He will no longer try to
learn, but to refute what you say.
Be plain, discreet, reticent, you who are zealous teachers. Be in no
haste to act, except to prevent others from acting.
Again and again I say, postpone even a good lesson if you can, for fear
of conveying a bad one. On this earth, meant by nature to be man's
first paradise, beware lest you act the tempter by giving to innocence
the knowledge of good and evil. Since you cannot prevent the child's
learning from outside examples, restrict your care to the task of
impressing these examples on his mind in suitable forms.
Violent passions make a striking impression on the child who notices
them, because their manifestations are well-defined, and forcibly
attract his attention. Anger especially has such stormy indications
that its approach is unmistakable. Do not ask, "Is not this a fine
opportunity for the pedagogue's moral discourse?" Spare the discourse:
say not a word: let the child alone. Amazed at what he sees, he will
not fail to question you. It will not be hard to answer him, on
account of the very things that strike his senses. He sees an inflamed
countenance, flashing eyes, threatening gestures, he hears unusually
excited tones of voice; all sure signs that the body is not in its
usual condition. Say to him calmly, unaffectedly, without any mystery,
"This poor man is sick; he has a high fever." You may take this
occasion to give him, in few words, an idea of maladies and of their
effects; for these, being natural, are trammels of that necessity to
which he has to feel himself subject.
From this, the true idea, will he not early feel repugnance at giving
way to excessive passion, which he regards as a disease? And do you
not think that such an idea, given at the appropriate time, will have
as good an effect as the most tiresome sermon on morals? Note also the
future consequences of this idea; it will authorize you, if ever
necessity arises, to treat a rebellious child as a sick child, to
confine him to his room, and even to his bed, to make him undergo a
course of medical treatment; to make his growing vices alarming and
hateful to himself. He cannot consider as a punishment the severity
you are forced to use in curing him. So that if you yourself, in some
hasty moment, are perhaps stirred out of the coolness and moderation it
should be your study to preserve, do not try to disguise your fault,
but say to him frankly, in tender reproach, "My boy, you have hurt me."
I do not intend to enter fully into details, but to lay down some
general maxims and to illustrate difficult cases. I believe it
impossible, in the very heart of social surroundings, to educate a
child up to the age of twelve years, without giving him some ideas of
the relations of man to man, and of morality in human actions. It will
suffice if we put off as long as possible the necessity for these
ideas, and when they must be given, limit them to such as are
immediately applicable. We must do this only lest he consider himself
master of everything, and so injure others without scruple, because
unknowingly. There are gentle, quiet characters who, in their early
innocence, may be led a long way without danger of this kind. But
others, naturally violent, whose wildness is precocious, must be
trained into men as early as may be, that you may not be obliged to
fetter them outright.
The Idea of Property.
Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are concentrated
upon ourselves; our first natural movements have reference to our own
preservation and well-being. Thus our first idea of justice is not as
due from us, but to us. One error in the education of to-day is, that
by speaking to children first of their duties and never of their
rights, we commence at the wrong end, and tell them of what they cannot
understand, and what cannot interest them.
If therefore I had to teach one of these I have mentioned, I should
reflect that a child never attacks persons, but things; he soon learns
from experience to respect his superiors in age and strength. But
things do not defend themselves. The first idea to be given him,
therefore, is rather that of property than that of liberty; and in
order to understand this idea he must have something of his own. To
speak to him of his clothes, his furniture, his playthings, is to tell
him nothing at all; for though he makes use of these things, he knows
neither how nor why he has them. To tell him they are his because they
have been given to him is not much better, for in order to give, we
must have. This is an ownership dating farther back than his own, and
we wish him to understand the principle of ownership itself. Besides,
a gift is a conventional thing, and the child cannot as yet understand
what a conventional thing is. You who read this, observe how in this
instance, as in a hundred thousand others, a child's head is crammed
with words which from the start have no meaning to him, but which we
imagine we have taught him.
We must go back, then, to the origin of ownership, for thence our first
ideas of it should arise. The child living in the country will have
gained some notion of what field labor is, having needed only to use
his eyes and his abundant leisure. Every age in life, and especially
his own, desires to create, to imitate, to produce, to manifest power
and activity. Only twice will it be necessary for him to see a garden
cultivated, seed sown, plants reared, beans sprouting, before he will
desire to work in a garden himself.
In accordance with principles already laid down I do not at all oppose
this desire, but encourage it. I share his taste; I work with him, not
for his pleasure, but for my own: at least he thinks so. I become his
assistant gardener; until his arms are strong enough I work the ground
for him. By planting a bean in it, he takes possession of it; and
surely this possession is more sacred and more to be respected than
that assumed by Nunez de Balboa of South America in the name of the
king of Spain, by planting his standard on the shores of the Pacific
Ocean.
He comes every day to water the beans, and rejoices to see them
thriving. I add to his delight by telling him "This belongs to you."
In explaining to him what I mean by "belongs," I make him feel that he
has put into this plot of ground his time, his labor, his care, his
bodily self; that in it is a part of himself which he may claim back
from any one whatever, just as he may draw his own arm back if another
tries to hold it against his will.
One fine morning he comes as usual, running, watering-pot in hand. But
oh, what a sight! What a misfortune! The beans are uprooted, the
garden bed is all in disorder: the place actually no longer knows
itself. What has become of my labor, the sweet reward of all my care
and toil? Who has robbed me of my own? Who has taken my beans away
from me? The little heart swells with the bitterness of its first
feeling of injustice. His eyes overflow with tears; his distress rends
the air with moans and cries. We compassionate his troubles, share his
indignation, make inquiries, sift the matter thoroughly. At last we
find that the gardener has done the deed: we send for him.
But we find that we have reckoned without our host. When the gardener
hears what we are complaining of, he complains more than we.
"What! So it was you, gentlemen, who ruined all my labor! I had
planted some Maltese melons, from seed given me as a great rarity: I
hoped to give you a grand treat with them when they were ripe. But for
the sake of planting your miserable beans there, you killed my melons
after they had actually sprouted; and there are no more to be had. You
have done me more harm than you can remedy, and you have lost the
pleasure of tasting some delicious melons."
JEAN JACQUES. "Excuse us, my good Robert. You put into them your
labor, your care. I see plainly that we did wrong to spoil your work:
but we will get you some more Maltese seed, and we will not till any
more ground without finding out whether some one else has put his hand
to it before us."
ROBERT. "Oh well, gentlemen, you may as well end the business; for
there's no waste land. What I work was improved by my father, and it's
the same with everybody hereabout. All the fields you see were taken
up long ago."
EMILE. "Mr. Robert, do you often lose your melon-seed?"
ROBERT. "Pardon, my young master: we don't often have young gentlemen
about that are careless like you. Nobody touches his neighbor's
garden; everybody respects other people's work, to make sure of his
own."
EMILE. "But I haven't any garden."
ROBERT. "What's that to me? If you spoil mine, I won't let you walk
in it any more; for you are to understand that I'm not going to have
all my pains for nothing."
JEAN JACQUES. "Can't we arrange this matter with honest Robert? Just
let my little friend and me have one corner of your garden to
cultivate, on condition that you have half the produce."
ROBERT. "I will let you have it without that condition; but remember,
I will root up your beans if you meddle with my melons."
In this essay on the manner of teaching fundamental notions to children
it may be seen how the idea of property naturally goes back to the
right which the first occupant acquired by labor. This is clear,
concise, simple, and always within the comprehension of the child.
From this to the right of holding property, and of transferring it,
there is but one step, and beyond this we are to stop short.
It will also be evident that the explanation I have included in two
pages may, in actual practice, be the work of an entire year. For in
the development of moral ideas, we cannot advance too slowly, or
establish them too firmly at every step. I entreat you, young
teachers, to think of the example I have given, and to remember that
your lessons upon every subject ought to be rather in actions than in
words; for children readily forget what is said or done to them.
As I have said, such lessons ought to be given earlier or later, as the
disposition of the child, gentle or turbulent, hastens or retards the
necessity for giving them. In employing them, we call in an evidence
that cannot be misunderstood. But that in difficult cases nothing
important may be omitted, let us give another illustration.
Your little meddler spoils everything he touches; do not be vexed, but
put out of his reach whatever he can spoil. He breaks the furniture he
uses. Be in no hurry to give him any more; let him feel the
disadvantages of doing without it. He breaks the windows in his room;
let the wind blow on him night and day. Have no fear of his taking
cold; he had better take cold than be a fool.
Do not fret at the inconvenience he causes you, but make him feel it
first of all. Finally, without saying anything about it, have the
panes of glass mended. He breaks them again. Change your method: say
to him coolly and without anger, "Those windows are mine; I took pains
to have them put there, and I am going to make sure that they shall not
be broken again." Then shut him up in some dark place where there are
no windows. At this novel proceeding, he begins to cry and storm: but
nobody listens to him. He soon grows tired of this, and changes his
tone; he complains and groans. A servant is sent, whom the rebel
entreats to set him free. Without trying to find any excuse for utter
refusal, the servant answers, "I have windows to take care of, too,"
and goes away. At last, after the child has been in durance for
several hours, long enough to tire him and to make him remember it,
some one suggests an arrangement by which you shall agree to release
him, and he to break no more windows. He sends to beseech you to come
and see him; you come; he makes his proposal. You accept it
immediately, saying, "Well thought of; that will be a good thing for
both of us. Why didn't you think of this capital plan before?" Then,
without requiring any protestations, or confirmation of his promise,
you gladly caress him and take him to his room at once, regarding this
compact as sacred and inviolable as if ratified by an oath. What an
idea of the obligation, and the usefulness, of an engagement will he
not gain from this transaction! I am greatly mistaken if there is an
unspoiled child on earth who would be proof against it, or who would
ever after think of breaking a window purposely.
Falsehood. The Force of Example.
We are now within the domain of morals, and the door is open to vice.
Side by side with conventionalities and duties spring up deceit and
falsehood. As soon as there are things we ought not to do, we desire
to hide what we ought not to have done. As soon as one interest leads
us to promise, a stronger one may urge us to break the promise. Our
chief concern is how to break it and still go unscathed. It is natural
to find expedients; we dissemble and we utter falsehood. Unable to
prevent this evil, we must nevertheless punish it. Thus the miseries
of our life arise from our mistakes.
I have said enough to show that punishment, as such, should not be
inflicted upon children, but should always happen to them as the
natural result of their own wrong-doing. Do not, then, preach to them
against falsehood, or punish them confessedly on account of a
falsehood. But if they are guilty of one, let all its consequences
fall heavily on their heads. Let them know what it is to be
disbelieved even when they speak the truth, and to be accused of faults
in spite of their earnest denial. But let us inquire what falsehood
is, in children.
There are two kinds of falsehood; that of fact, which refers to things
already past, and that of right, which has to do with the future. The
first occurs when we deny doing what we have done, and in general, when
we knowingly utter what is not true. The other occurs when we promise
what we do not mean to perform, and, in general, when we express an
intention contrary to the one we really have. These two sorts of
untruth may sometimes meet in the same case; but let us here discuss
their points of difference.
One who realizes his need of help from others, and constantly receives
kindness from them, has nothing to gain by deceiving them. On the
contrary, it is evidently his interest that they should see things as
they are, lest they make mistakes to his disadvantage. It is clear,
then, that the falsehood of fact is not natural to children. But the
law of obedience makes falsehood necessary; because, obedience being
irksome, we secretly avoid it whenever we can, and just in proportion
as the immediate advantage of escaping reproof or punishment outweighs
the remoter advantage to be gained by revealing the truth.
Why should a child educated naturally and in perfect freedom, tell a
falsehood? What has he to hide from you? You are not going to reprove
or punish him, or exact anything from him. Why should he not tell you
everything as frankly as to his little playmate? He sees no more
danger in the one case than in the other.
The falsehood of right is still less natural to children, because
promises to do or not to do are conventional acts, foreign to our
nature and infringements of our liberty. Besides, all the engagements
of children are in themselves void, because, as their limited vision
does not stretch beyond the present, they know not what they do when
they bind themselves. It is hardly possible for a child to tell a lie
in making a promise. For, considering only how to overcome a present
difficulty, all devices that have no immediate effect become alike to
him. In promising for a time to come he actually does not promise at
all, as his still dormant imagination cannot extend itself over two
different periods of time. If he could escape a whipping or earn some
sugar-plums by promising to throw himself out of the window to-morrow,
he would at once promise it. Therefore the laws pay no regard to
engagements made by children; and when some fathers and teachers, more
strict than this, require the fulfilling of such engagements, it is
only in things the child ought to do without promising.
As the child in making a promise is not aware what he is doing, he
cannot be guilty of falsehood in so doing: but this is not the case
when he breaks a promise. For he well remembers having made the
promise; what he cannot understand is, the importance of keeping it.
Unable to read the future, he does not foresee the consequences of his
actions; and when he violates engagements he does nothing contrary to
what might be expected of his years.
It follows from this that all the untruths spoken by children are the
fault of those who instruct them; and that endeavoring to teach them
how to be truthful is only teaching them how to tell falsehoods. We
are so eager to regulate, to govern, to instruct them, that we never
find means enough to reach our object. We want to win new victories
over their minds by maxims not based upon fact, by unreasonable
precepts; we would rather they should know their lessons and tell lies
than to remain ignorant and speak the truth.