Much of the trouble with children could be obviated if teachers only
understood the real causes of wrongdoing. There are hardly more than six
such causes that are fundamental.
=1. Untrained Instinct.= This is the basic cause for trouble. The first
of all the instincts to develop, that of self-preservation, in its many
manifestations, brings one into endless conflict with social custom; and
so with each of the other instincts. The need here is for both
inhibitory and developmental training; the child must be led to deny
expression to his instincts if they are harmful to his social relations,
and must be encouraged to free and repeated expression of those impulses
which grow from his altruistic instincts.
It is instinctive for a child to give his attention to the most
appealing of the many stimuli about him. Therefore his natural impulse
is to look out of the window at the passing wagons, automobiles and
people, rather than to look at the uninteresting arithmetic which he is
supposed to be studying. When he has been led consciously to deny this
instinct until the lesson is learned he is well disciplined in this one
respect.
The development of judgment goes hand in hand with the growth of the
power of inhibition. Much trouble is caused because people expect, often
justly, a degree of judgment in a child which he has failed for some
reason to develop. A fifth grade boy, for instance, was very anxious to
make a perfect grade in spelling. His sister did this easily and his
family taunted him with being beaten by a girl. In his anxiety to win he
cheated, and was caught; whereupon he was driven to lying in an effort
at self-protection, and thus became enmeshed in a series of humiliating
and dishonest acts. Here the boy’s judgment, ideals and will-power were
all weaker than a fifth grade boy’s should be. His habits, heretofore
honest, yielded to the temptation of the situation, because his
instincts of emulation and self-esteem were stronger than the powers
developed by training.
At some point in this boy’s training, or more probably at many points,
the discipline which should have prepared him for such a situation was
weak or wanting. We may assume that every child will meet situations in
which he will find strong temptation to be dishonest, ungenerous,
unclean, lazy, self-indulgent. It is the disciplinarian’s duty to
prepare his charge for these situations, by seeing that the boy has
learned to keep his instincts in leash, and that he is supplied with
ethical standards, clearly and concretely defined, with which he may
compare the new situation in order to gain a standard for his decision.
Nor must he be unpracticed in making decisions at an age so critical; he
should often have gone through the process of examining, comparing,
evaluating and determining.
=2. Failure to Comprehend the Reason for Demands Made.= Man is a
reasonable creature, and one of the first signs of his growth is his
demand for reasons. There is no insult to authority in a request for
reasons, as so many parents and teachers seem to think; there is merely
the righteous wish to be an intelligent, rather than a blind
coöperator—to wish to play the social game with open eyes. Perhaps the
one greatest cause of trouble in home and school in disobedience. This
may come from a number of causes, but when it is not a bid for attention
or a mere imitative action, it comes from one of these two causes as a
rule:
(a) A resentful feeling that the act demanded is being imposed upon the
pupil without any adequate reason. This comes from a lack of knowledge
of the nature of things, and is best met by a frank explanation of the
reasons for asking the thing demanded.
(b) Lack of faith in the one who gives the direction. Often the reason
for giving the direction is beyond the comprehension of the child;
sometimes there is no time nor opportunity for explanation. In such
cases the child should obey, not because he knows why, but because he
believes that his parent or teacher has a good reason and is to be
trusted to direct wisely. Parents who never condescend to explain their
reasons, teachers, who say, “You are to do this because I say you are to
do it,” are not building up this kind of trust in children.
=3. Mere Imitation.= Imitation is really one of the instinctive causes,
but it persists past the stage when most of the other instincts have
been subjected to control, and it plays so important a part that it
needs a separate treatment. Bad manners of all kinds, vices, even the
attitudes of mind which dictate conduct are copied by children from
their elders and from each other. Children are often punished, when
parents or elder brothers and sisters are to blame. Teachers need to
know the home-life and environment of their charges, if for no other
reason than that they may analyze the influences that go to make up
their pupil’s attitude toward control.
=4. Desire to Attract Attention.= Teachers realize that what some pupils
do simply and directly as an unconscious expression of personality, good
or bad, others do because the doing of it puts them in the limelight.
They want attention, admiration, astonishment, sensationalism in some
form or other.
=5. Abnormal Physical Conditions.= When a teacher suspects that bad
behavior grows out of poor hearing, poor sight, adenoids, subnormal
mentality, malnutrition, nervous excitement, or any other physical
cause, he should apply a test at once and find out the truth. Tests,
simple enough to be used by any intelligent adult, have been devised for
all defects liable to be found in schools. Having ascertained where the
trouble lies, the teacher should next consult a specialist or physician
as to corrective measures. The attitude of teachers toward pupils who
offend, often changes abruptly when it is discovered that a
physiological defect lies back of the apparent badness; the pupil
becomes a patient, to be treated, rather than a criminal to be punished.
If teachers would remember that mental defects also are as real and as
amenable to treatment as physical ones, they would see themselves always
in their true characters of physicians to boys and girls who need a
specialist’s help.
=6. False and Perverted Ideals in Society.= Lastly, society, for whose
good we train the pupil out of his littleness and selfishness into
breadth and altruism, even society itself harms him frequently by
setting before him false ideals, bad examples, inadequate standards.
Society wants its members to practice self-control, but it allows them
to buy and sell drugs which destroy the power of self-control. It wants
them to lead moral lives, but allows every inducement to immorality to
be presented to them. It calls to unity and harmony, but fosters
discordant elements in its own fabric. Sometimes these social influences
for evil may be controlled by the teacher, sometimes they are beyond his
power to touch; but if only the teacher can learn to recognize the
sources of such influences when they affect his own problem, he has
gained much.
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