kind of old-fashioned, benighted mother are you prating about! This is
the era of woman's rights and woman's emancipation! What time would a
woman have for her own affairs--for the exercise of her rights, which
have been won with so much effort--if she had to keep bothering her head
with that sort of thing?"
That is true. It would seem as if we had forgotten about the
self-interest and selfishness of the modern movement, which is there on
all sides to poke its tongue at a mother's devotion to her sacred cause.
Indeed, we have no answer to give to that kind of selfishness. The
essence of our thought is love and faith in the love of motherhood.
There is no selfishness in it and the language it uses is not
translatable into terms which the rule of reason can hope to understand.
But to those mothers whose hearts are still in the right place, even if
their heads have become more or less confused by the shouting and
example of intellectual leaders, there is a very simple observation to
suggest, as an answer to such objections.
Is it of much importance or benefit to you, yourself, or to anybody, or
any thing, that you should spend so much of your time in gambling at the
bridge table? Or gossiping at an afternoon tea? Or attending a meeting
at the woman's club? Or at the hair-dresser's and manicure's? Or in
intellectual pursuits of any kind? Is it not more important to you and
to your family and to the future of your race and kind, to devote a
considerable amount of your time and energy to the children, who love
you and need you and can profit greatly by your help?
Is not that entitled to the best you can give, not only because it is
the most important of all earthly occupations, but because by doing it
you set the blessed example of thinking first and most of others, and
last and least of self?
After the children are tucked in their beds, peaceful and happy in the
land of dreams, then it is time enough for you to turn your thoughts to
personal distractions and pleasures, which are proper and wholesome for
a human being when the daily work of life is done. Nobody will begrudge
it to you, and you need not begrudge it to yourself. It is what
distractions are for. It is also what the great majority of husbands and
fathers and grandfathers have been doing since the beginning of
time--working to the best of their ability for the good of home and
family--content with their recreation, after the work is done?
How can any true mother in her heart and soul be so disturbed and
misguided by intellectual enlightenment that she could be led to desert
her eternal responsibility for the pursuit of selfishness--or the
agitation of _isms_?
It ought to be reasonably clear that if a mother does desert her
responsibility, and leaves to the care of a hired employee the
development of her child's moral and spiritual feelings, the results are
liable to be very unsatisfactory. It is the same story over again, which
we took account of in connection with the heart feelings. Nagging,
scolding, lack of sympathy, false standards, superstitions, threats,
deceptions, bug-a-boos--are all apt to take a hand in forcing a
necessity for discipline and deforming character. The tangles of
temper, fear, deception, resentment, will never be unravelled and
patiently straightened out. In their wake, are pretty sure to come,
sooner or later, scenes with mother and father--hypocritical or defiant,
cajoling, whining, or tempestuous--in which harsh and ugly words will
sometimes play a part.
And one fine day, the mother will probably vouchsafe the remark, as so
many modern mothers have done in my presence, that when certain boys, or
girls, reach a certain age, they get so that it is quite impossible to
do anything with them at home and the only sensible way is to ship them
off to a boarding-school.
How much of a mother's time is required for the right kind of care for
her children? Who can judge of each case, but the right kind of mother?
Whatever the child has need of, that is for her to watch over and give,
to the fullest of her capacity.
And what of the rôle of a father in this most vital of responsibilities?
It is essentially that of a help-mate--to bring cheer and comfort and
courage, and the tenderest of protection and support. "The hand that
rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world"--so says the old
adage. In any case, it is upon the sanctity and devotion of mother love
that the future of our race depends--and the deepest feeling of a manly
man has never doubted it.
There is much, much more that might be said about the relationship of a
father to a mother, and of a mother to a father. The right foundation
for it should be the deepest of moral and spiritual feelings. The true
significance of it cannot help being eternal, not temporary. In no
department of life, has the scientific principle of self-interest and
the rule of reason had a more confusing, corrupting, and destructive
influence. To attempt to translate the meaning of a marriage into terms
of a business partnership is a ghastly mockery.
This subject is too big and the discussion of it would carry us too far
afield, to be undertaken in the present connection. Our attention has
been confined, for the time being, to mother love and the formation of
character for the next generation.
And the next question which confronts mother love is the question of
schools and school education--one of the most perplexing and troubling
of all, and yet unavoidable.
Let us suppose that our mother is an ideal one--that she has
gladly responded with the best that is in her to her love and
responsibility--that she has cherished and nourished every tender
little bud in the heart and soul of her boy--that the twig of
character is rising up straight and beautiful, in every respect.
Then comes the day when Master Bob must go off to school--a day school,
or a boarding school, or first one and then the other.
Why does he have to do this? In the first place because it is the custom
every boy is supposed to do it, when he arrives at a certain age--and
then, to receive proper instruction, his brain must be taught, his mind
enlightened.
So off to school he must go, and when he gets there, a new and different
atmosphere surrounds him, a new influence is brought to bear on the
little character, so tenderly forming, and in the main the nature of
this influence is two-fold. First, there is the school-room and the
school books and the teaching of teachers--and second, there is the
companionship, intimacy, teaching, of the other boys with whom he is
thrown into contact.
As the action of this latter influence is usually the more immediate,
direct, and compelling, we may as well give it the foremost place in our
consideration. And let us be careful to state frankly and bear
constantly in mind that all cases are by no means alike. The conditions
to be met with may be largely accidental and differ materially in degree
or kind. And the consequences, for any particular boy, may depend very
largely upon accidental circumstances, or inherited tendencies. A boy,
who is naturally warm-blooded and very impulsive, may not react in the
same way as another boy, who is inclined to be reserved and reflective.
If I am led by my observations to make use of extreme or exceptional
examples it is not my intention to imply that they are the rule, but
merely to bring out clearly a point, or meaning, which, in less degree,
may have a more general application.
We have already had occasion to refer repeatedly to the force of example
in shaping the conduct and ideas of a vast majority of people. Nowhere
is this force more rapidly effective, than in the case of growing
children. It is their instinct to absorb and imitate, consciously or
unconsciously, and so adapt themselves to new conditions of development.
And this instinct is sure to be very much alive, more than ever alive,
when boys and girls find themselves removed from the family influence,
amid new conditions and new companions of the school.
Before we follow our boy, Bob, so far, let us pause for a moment and
consider this question of companionship with other boys and the
influence of example, as it may have applied to him, while mother was
still at hand to watch over him. Any boy or boys that Bob might come
into contact with, or make companions of, would also come under mother's
eye. Not only that, but Bob would repeat to her, spontaneously and
gushingly, every new thing that they said, or did. And if Bob still had
a nurse hanging about, she would have an eye and an ear and something to
say to mother, too. If one of these boys happened to be tricky and
deceitful, resentful and cruel, mother would be sure to know about it
very quickly. She could straighten out Bob's feelings with regard to any
of those things before real damage occurred; and she could see to it
that such contamination was kept away from him. As long as a boy remains
under the home influence, it is part of mother's responsibility to guard
against just such things.
As soon as he goes away to school, and gets under the new influence, it
is no longer possible for her to do so. Of all the various kinds of boys
to be found at any school, which ones Bobby is destined to have as
closest companions, to exchange confidences with constantly, and have
set him the example, is largely a matter of luck, or accident. It may
come about through adjoining seats in class, or though proficiency in
the same games, or a common interest in collecting bird's eggs, or
postage stamps, or through being room-mates, or sleeping in the same
corridor at boarding-school, or one of a dozen other haphazard reasons.
Let us imagine that by chance, in this way, Bobby's closest companions
turn out, in due time, to be four in number. And for the sake of
emphasizing our meaning and the principle involved, let us imagine that
the accident, in this particular case, is more extreme than usual.
The first boy, Ed, has been brought up chiefly by a stern and rigidly
moral father of the old school, who has reprimanded, disciplined,
chastised, most consistently and thoroughly. The second boy, Sam, has a
society mother, somewhat of a belle, and so feverishly absorbed in her
vanities and distractions, that his up-bringing, from the cradle, has
devolved entirely upon a series of Irish, Swedish and German nurses. The
third boy, Bill, has a very intellectual mother, an ardent devotee of
woman's rights, and an active worker in various up-lift and educational
movements. She laid out a plan of mental development for him, in early
childhood, in accordance with the latest scientific books, but not
having the time to attend to it herself, and having had constant rows
with her nurses, she has ended up by heaping the blame on the natural
stupidity and stubbornness of the boy, which could only have been
inherited from his father. The fourth boy, Hal, is the most up-to-date
of all. His mother and father were both divorced and both remarried and
both have new families, for which his only feeling is mild resentment
and disdain.
These boys are hardly to blame if, as a result of such home training,
the growth of their characters has already become tangled and somewhat
over-run by the weeds of selfishness and calculation. If they were only
mischievous, high-spirited and lacking in respect, the harm might not be
great; but there is also a deficiency of the generous feelings of
sympathy and affection, of moral standards, and of any abiding faith in
what should be. Their bodies and their brains may be well developed; but
not their hearts and souls.
They may find it to their interest to display perfect discipline in the
school-room and receive high marks and commendation from their teachers;
they may also excel in the various games and win prizes on the athletic
field; but this in no way prevents them from setting an insidious
example to a less precocious companion.
For practical purposes, the point-of-view and controlling motives of
these four boys is in fairly complete accord. They think it is very
smart to do things which are against the rules; but they think it is
very stupid to get caught. They believe in using their wits to get the
best of other people--especially older people, like parents and
teachers. They believe in practising concealment, dissimulation and
insincerity; but they are very wary of getting saddled with a downright
lie. They have the utmost contempt for a "tell-tale," and they include
in this opprobrium any boy who hasn't sense enough to keep from older
people an inkling of any sort, as to what he himself may have been up
to, as well as any others of the crowd. Nothing is half so bad as
blabbing what you know--not even the risk of getting caught in a lie.
They laugh at scruples of conscience; and they place little dependence
on mother love, or father love, or any kind of love which isn't
self-centered and decidedly material. They also have little use for
high-flown sentiment, poetry, old-fashioned prejudices and pretences of
romance; and if they do have time to read a book, they want it to be
something up-to-date and exciting--a detective story, for instance, with
a master thief and vampires. In addition to this, they have a number of
other precocious and undigested notions about a variety of things, which
they are ready to pass out confidentially, in almost any connection.
Again we repeat that it is not to be inferred that all the boys in any
school, or any great proportion of them, are necessarily of this sort.
But in almost any school, some of them are liable to be met with--more
so to-day than ever, for reasons which have been amply explained. There
is no way of telling, at school, what certain boys may be thinking and
saying and doing, when they are out of sight and hearing. If our boy,
Bob, is unfortunate enough to be thrown in close and constant contact
with that kind, it is unreasonable to imagine that he is at all to
blame. His natural effort is to try and adapt himself to conditions as
he finds them; he sees and feels that he is but a tiny part of a big
system, in which most matters are determined for him, by the system
itself. Aside from which, his nature is very trusting and sensitive,
rather shy at first, and totally without experience of this new and
perplexing world.
The feelings and ideals which have been growing so tenderly in his
little heart and soul are not robust enough to offer much resistance to
repeated and covert attacks. They are in as great a need as ever, of
guidance and encouragement and nourishment and the sunlight of loving
sympathy. The formation of character was proceeding in a beautiful and
promising way, but it may not be safely assumed that the results are
complete and permanent at such an early age--the customary age which
most parents accept for sending their children to school. And where, in
the chance companionship of school life, is a fitting substitute to be
found for the right kind of family influence and the devotion of mother
love?
It is sad to say it, but I have, in my own experience, known a number of
cases, where the havoc caused in a promising character was directly
traceable to the influence and bad example of youthful associates.
A practical, up-to-date mind might say complacently that such characters
must have been so weak that they would probably have gone that way,
anyhow. But that is merely to close one's eyes to the understanding of a
vital principle, the inner feelings of heart and soul which play such a
large part in the formation of character, are subject to growth and
alteration, like all other living things; and until they are given a
fair chance to become strong, by development and exercise and proper
care, why should anything more than a relative weakness be expected of
them? If you abandon them too soon to blighting influences, there is
always danger of their being more or less spoiled.
The other side of the school question relates to the school-books and
school-rooms and the teaching of the teachers.
When we stop and consider that the average little boy, or girl, between
the ages of six and fourteen, spends thousands upon thousands of hours,
in a more or less dreary and distasteful and uninspiring way, over
school-books, in school and out, it might seem as if we had a right to
ask ourselves: Does the result justify the means? Does any one claim, or
imagine, that school-books contain much nourishment for the heart and
soul, or the moral feelings, or love of beauty? Upon what grounds, does
any one claim, or imagine, that such things are less important to the
growth of character, and a cheerful disposition, and fine standards of
conduct, than the training of the intellect? If we are perfectly
satisfied that the method employed to train the intellect does not and
need not interfere with a corresponding development of those other sides
of human nature--that is one thing. But let us not be satisfied to take
so much for granted, without giving it a little thought. That is the
first point to get clear.
All those thousands of hours spent over school-books, in school-rooms,
if they were not confined to that, might be devoted to other things.
That is obvious and inevitable. What kind of things? If they were
allowed a freedom of choice, children would want to do the things that
interested them the most--things they felt like doing. And the natural
feelings of each growing individual would be the dominant factor in
nearly all cases. The natural feelings of a little boy, or a little
girl, are nothing for any one to be ashamed of, or deplore, or wish to
make otherwise. They are part of the all-wise plan, designed more
profoundly and beautifully than any science of man can comprehend. And
nothing is more natural than that a boy, or a girl, growing up in an
atmosphere of love and sympathy and kindness, and what is right and fair
and admirable, should respond to those feelings, more and more, and grow
to have them, too. Some selfish instincts have to be guided and
controlled by deeper and better feelings and the exercise of reason, and
that is natural, too. And even the selfish instincts are just as natural
and just as wisely planned as the deeper and better feelings, or the
exercise of reason.
In the advanced stage of enlightenment at which we have arrived can any
reasonable person fail to recognize this palpable truth? It is possible
that some people might be found who have happened to overlook it; but
less easy to believe that they could fail to recognize it, when it is
called to their attention.
Any normal child delights in the exercise of all its faculties and
instincts and feelings--whether they be of the heart and the soul, or
the body and the brain. This is the natural method of their growth. And
the ideal individual would be one in whom all these sides had reached
their fullest development, in a perfectly balanced whole.
The vast majority of things which interest children and which they
naturally like and seek to do are unconsciously in line with this
endeavor. They all give exercise to some quality which is useful and
proper to human nature. And the variety of interests which may act in
this way is so infinitely great, that children are seldom at a loss to
find something that appeals to them. Sometimes they need advice, or help
from older people, but that, too, is as it should be.
If children, between six and fourteen, had at their disposal those
thousands of hours which we have referred to, and did not have to bother
with school or school-books--what kind of use might they be expected to
put them to?
It is not at all difficult to imagine. Play, in the first place, and
games--in the sunshine and open air. And if the sun isn't shining, on
rainy days, more play and games--in the play-room, or about the house,
or somewhere under shelter. Marbles and tops and kites; jumping rope,
rolling hoops, making pin-wheels; skating, sledding, snow-balling;
baseball, fishing, tennis; leap-frog, running, climbing trees; and
dozens of other pastimes, too numerous to think of. The very sound of
them is healthy and joyous and exhilarating and the general effect of
them on a growing nature is just as wholesome.
But this is not all, by any means--only one kind of thing, chiefly of
value to the physical side of development--health and strength and
vitality and cheerfulness.
In addition to this, there are many other interests of a different order
which may appeal to youth very strongly. A collection of postage stamps,
or birds' eggs, or picture cards, may become of absorbing interest to
boys and girls, with time on their hands. These may encourage patience
and perseverance and observation and enthusiasm, which are most
admirable as traits of character.
A boy may become deeply absorbed in a set of carpenter's tools and the
things he can do with them. He can set his heart on making a pair of
stilts, and a boat that will float and steer and sail, and tables and
boxes and chests of drawers for his collections--all of which may
develop skill and determination and an aspiration to fine
accomplishment. And the interest so begun may lead to a bracket-saw and
carving tools, or a turning lathe, and the fashioning of more intricate
and beautiful things.
A boy, or a girl, may have a camera and learn to take pictures and
develop them and print them, and encourage in this way the growth of
feelings and tastes and much useful knowledge--in addition to mental
training.
Boys and girls may set their hearts on building a beautiful snow
fort--and work and slave and overcome obstacles--until they have given
themselves a fine lesson in industry, and the rewards of successful
accomplishment.
A boy may become interested in a printing press, or a steam engine, or
an electric machine of some sort, and acquire by means of it, not only a
lot of worthy satisfaction and pleasure, but the enthusiasm of deep,
spontaneous feelings--in addition to useful information and mental
training.
A perfectly normal boy, without any special bent for music, or art, may
want to play on a drum, or a banjo--or to paint pictures with
water-colors--and through the effort devoted to this want, encourage the
growth of tastes and feelings, which may prove of benefit and value, all
through life.
If boys and girls are not occupied and tired by forced application to
school-books, there is hardly any limit to the number of things, to
which they may turn their attention, with natural energy and enthusiasm,
and frequently with great benefit to feelings and qualities which
involve not only the body and the mind, but the heart and soul, as well.
We have named but a few of the activities to which those thousands of
hours, now consumed by school-books and school-rooms, might be otherwise
devoted. Whether or not those things are more important to general
development of character, they certainly cannot be indulged in to
anything like the same extent, if so much time and energy is daily
required for school education. When children are released from the
school-room, their heads and their nerves are fairly tired and their
bodies longing for freedom. There is usually another period of study
hanging over them, before bed-time; and although a certain number of
hours are allowed them for recreation, that recreation is not apt to
take the form of heart-felt interests which put an added strain on
nerves and head.
With this point-of-view in mind, it may prove worth while to illustrate
by some concrete examples the kind of results that are liable to occur.
And in choosing examples, this time, it will not be necessary to rely
upon conjecture or imagination. It so happens that I may refer to some
actual cases where boys and girls have not been obliged to go to school,
or even to open a school-book, during all those thousands of hours.
And, strangely enough, in spite of the forebodings and disapproval of
many intellectual people, who always feel it their duty to protest
against such a procedure, the results in all the cases I have any
knowledge of, were not disastrous at all, but very much the contrary.