ART AND LITERATURE IN CHILD LIFE
The influence of art upon the life of a young child is difficult of
measurement. It may freely be said, however, that there is little or
no danger in exaggerating its influence, and considerable danger in
underrating it. It is difficult of measurement because the influence
is largely an unconscious one. Indeed, it may be questioned whether
that form of art which gives him the most conscious and outspoken
pleasure is the form that in reality is the most beneficial; for,
unquestionably, he will get great satisfaction from circus posters,
and the poorly printed, abominably illustrated cheap picture-books
afford him undeniable joy. He is far less likely to be expressive of
his pleasure in a sun-shiny nursery, whose walls, rugs, white beds,
and sun-shiny windows are all well designed and well adapted to his
needs. Nevertheless, in the end the influence of this room is likely
to be the greater influence and to permanently shape his ideas of
the beautiful; while he is entirely certain, if allowed to develop
artistically at all, to grow past the circus poster period.
This fact--the fact that the highest influence of art is a secret
influence, exercised not only by those decorations and pictures which
flaunt themselves for the purpose, but also by those quiet, necessary,
every-day things, which nevertheless may most truly express the art
spirit--this fact makes it difficult to tell what art and what kind of
art is really influencing the child, and whether it is influencing him
in the right directions.
[Sidenote: Color]
Until he is three years old, for example, and often until he is past
that age, he is unable to distinguish clearly between green, gray and
blue; and hence these cool colors in the decorations around him, or in
his pictures, have practically no meaning for him. He has a right,
one might suppose, to the gratification of his love for clear reds and
yellows, for the sharp, well-defined lines and flat surfaces,
whose meaning is plain to his groping little mind. Some of the best
illustrators of children's books have seemed to recognize this. For
example, Boutet de Monvil in his admirable illustrations of Joan of
Arc meets these requirements perfectly, and yet in a manner which must
satisfy any adult lover of good art. The Caldecott picture books, and
Walter Crane's are also good in this respect, and the Perkins pictures
issued by the Prang Educational Co. have gained a just recognition
as excellent pictures for hanging on the nursery wall. Many of the
illustrations in color in the standard magazines are well worth
cutting out, mounting and framing. This is especially true of Howard
Pyle's work and that of Elizabeth Shippen Green.
[Sidenote: Classic Art]
Since photogravures and photographs of the masterpieces can be had
in this country very inexpensively, there is no reason why children
should not be made acquainted at an early age with the art classics,
but there is danger in giving too much space to black and white,
especially in the nursery where the children live. Their natural love
of color should be appealed to do deepen their interest in really good
pictures.
[Illustration: "My Mary"]
[Illustration: "Blow, Wind Blow"
PERKINS' PICTURES]
Nevertheless, it is a matter of considerable difficulty still to
find colored pictures which are inexpensive and yet really good. The
Detaille prints, while not yet cheap, are not expensive either, and
are excellent for this purpose; but the insipid little pictures of
fairies, flowers, and birds may be really harmful, as helping to form
in the young child's mind too low an ideal of beauty--of cultivating
in him what someone has called "the lust of the eye."
[Sidenote: Plastic Art]
What holds true of the pictorial art holds equally true of the plastic
art. As Prof. Veblin of the University of Chicago has scathingly
declared, our ideals of the beautiful are so mingled with worship of
expense that few of us can see the genuine beauty in any object apart
from its expensiveness. For this reason as well as, perhaps, because
of a remnant of barbarism in us, we love gold and glitter, and a great
deal of elaboration in our vases, and are far from being over-critical
of any piece of statuary which costs a respectable sum.
[Illustration: RELIEF MEDALLION
By Andrea della Robbia, in Foundling Hospital, Florence.]
A certain appreciation, however, of the real value of a good
plaster-cast has been gaining among us of late years, and many public
schools, especially in the large cities, have been establishing
standards of good taste in this respect. Good casts and bas-relief,
decorate their halls and class-rooms. There are few homes that cannot
afford to follow their example. But in buying these things be not
misled by sales and advertised bargains. It is more than seldom that
the placques, casts, and vases thus obtained are such as could have
any valuable influence whatever upon the young lives with which they
are brought in contact. Meretricious and showy ornaments, designed to
look as if they cost more than they really do, have no business in the
sincere home where the children are being sincerely educated.
[Sidenote: Music]
The same general laws apply to music. No art has a greater and more
insinuating influence. The very songs with which the mother sings the
baby to sleep have an occult influence which is later revealed and
made plain. Such songs, then, should be simple. They may be nothing
but improvisations, the mother's mind and heart making music, but
they should not be melodramatic songs of the music-hall order. No such
mawkish sentimentalism as that shown in "The Gypsy's Warning," for
example, or other songs which belong to the cheap theater should have
a place in the holy of holies--that inmost self of the child--which
responds to music.
The simple folk-songs of all nations, Eleanor Smith's and most of
Mrs. Gaynor's songs, already mentioned, and the songs collected by
Reinecke, called "Fifty Children's Songs," are excellent for this
purpose. The old-fashioned nonsense songs, such as "Billy Boy," "Mary
had a Little Lamb" and "Hey Diddle Diddle, the Cat and the Fiddle,"
may also have a pleasant and harmless place of their own.
Instrumental music should be on the same general order, not loud and
showy, but clear, simple, sweet, and free from startling effects.
Dashing pieces, rag-time pieces, marches, two-steps, and familiar
tunes with variations, instead of bringing about a spirit of
gentleness and harmony, actually tend to produce self-assertiveness
and quarrelsomeness. Let any mother who does not believe this try the
effort of an hour of the one kind of music on one evening, and an
hour of the other kind on another evening. The difference will be
immediately apparent.
[Sidenote: The Drama]
The influence of the drama must not be forgotten. This form of art,
fallen so low among us since the time of the Puritans that it can
scarcely be called an art at all, is, nevertheless, the art which
perhaps above all others has an immediate and yet lasting influence.
Children are themselves instinctively dramatic. They like to compose
and act out all sorts of dramas of their own, from playing house
(which is nothing but a drama prolonged from day to day), to such
dramatic games as Statue-posing and Dumb Crambo. All children like to
dress up, to wear masks, and to imitate the peculiarities of persons
about them; to try on, as it were, the world as they see it, and
discover thereby how the actors in it feel. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister
has already been referred to. In this--his great book on education--he
practically bases all education upon the drama, and even throws the
treatise itself into dramatic form.
This does not mean, however, that all children should be permitted
to go to the theater as freely as they like. No; the plays which they
compose and act for themselves have a far higher value educationally
than most of the spectacular presentations of the old fairy tales
with which they are usually regaled, and certainly more than the
sensational melodramas which give them false ideas of art and
morality. They should go sometimes to the theater to see really good
and simple plays, but they should be oftener encouraged to get up for
themselves plays at home. If, as they grow older, they are helped to
think out their costumes with something of historical accuracy, to
be true to the spirit and scenery of the times in which the
representations are laid, the activity can be made to increase in
value to them as the years go by. There is no other art, perhaps,
by which the child so intimately links the world spirit with his own
spirit. It is for this reason that the School of Education in the
University of Chicago is equipped with small theaters in which the
children act.
[Sidenote: Literature]
As for the art of literature, not all children love reading, perhaps,
but certainly all children love to hear stories told, and the skilful
mother will direct this spontaneous affection into a love for
reading. No other single love, except perhaps the love of nature,
so emancipates the child from the thrall of circumstances. If he can
escape from the small ills of life into fairy-land merely by opening
the covers of a book, be sure that these ills will not have power to
crush him, unless they be very great ills indeed.
[Sidenote: Fairy Tales]
There are those who still believe that fairy-tales and fiction of all
sorts are nothing but lies. Poor souls, with their faces against the
stone wall of hard facts, they can never look up into the sky and see
the winged and beautiful thoughts freely disporting there. They make
no distinction between truth and fact, yet truth is of the spirit and
fact of the flesh; and truth, because it is of the spirit, may appear
under many forms, even under the form of play. All rightly told and
rightly conceived fairy-tales are true just as a good picture is true.
The painter uses oil, turpentine, and pigment to represent the wool
of a sheep, the water of a pond, the green spears of grass. Some
literal-minded person might say that he was lying because he pretented
that his little square of canvas truthfully represented grazing sheep
at the brook-side, but most of us recognize that he is really telling
the truth only in another than an every day form. In the same way
the writer of fairy-tales tells the truth, using the pigments of the
imagination.
If children ask whether a given story is true or not, answer without
hesitation, "yes." It is true, but it is a fairy kind of truth; it
is inside truth. There is magic in it and a mystery. The child who is
never allowed to read fairy tales, the man or the woman who prefers
the newspaper to a good book of fiction, misses much in life. It is
not only that the imagination--the divinest quality of man, because
the quality that makes man in his degree a creator--does not receive
culture, and that he misses the indescribable intellectual ecstasy
that comes only with the setting free of the wings of the mind, but
that also he is inevitably shorn of his sympathy and shut up to a
narrow circle of interests.
[Sidenote: Imagination and Sympathy]
For sympathy, above all moral qualities, is dependent upon
imagination. If you cannot imagine how you would feel under your
neighbor's conditions, you cannot deeply sympathize with him. The
person of unimaginative mind sympathizes only with those whose
experience and habits are similar to his own. He never escapes
from the narrow circle of his own personality. But the man whose
imagination has been kept flexible and ready from earliest childhood
has within him the power of sympathizing with whatever is human--yes!
even with creatures and things below the human level. Without
imagination, therefore, it is not possible for a man to be a great
scientist, for science demands sympathy with processes and objects
which are not yet human. It is not possible, obviously, for him to be
a great artist of any kind, for all art is interpretation of the world
by means of the imagination. It is not possible for him, even, to be
a good man in any broad sense, for the man whose sympathies are narrow
is often found to be guilty of injustice toward those who lie outside
the pale of those sympathies.
By all means, then, encourage the love of reading in your children,
and get them the best of story-books to read, and subscribe to the
best magazines. Read with them. Let some reading enter into every
day's life; talk over what has been read at the dinner-table, and so
avoid harmful personalities and disagreeable criticisms.
[Sidenote: Books]
As to the books to choose, choose the best. Generally speaking, the
best are those that have some dignity of age upon them. As in music
you chose the folksongs, so in children's literature also choose the
old fashioned fairy stories, such as those collected by the Brothers
Grimm and by Andrew Lang. Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Stories
of course are classics. Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales give excellent
suggestions as to the right use to be made of the old mythologies.
Many of the supplementary readers now being so widely used in the
public schools are good, simple versions of these old stories which
helped to make the world what it should be. For the rest there are
two standard children's magazines which help to form a good taste in
literature and which are continually suggestive of the right sort of
reading material. These are The Youth's Companion and St. Nicholas.
[Sidenote: Nature Study]
Finally, all appreciation of literature and art depends upon a love of
and some knowledge of nature. Fairy stories and mythology especially
are so dependent upon nature for their inner meaning and significance
as scarcely to be intelligible without some knowledge of natural
processes and laws. Of course, it is true that art in its turn
idealizes nature and fills her beautiful form with a beautiful soul;
so that the child who is being developed on all sides needs to take
his books and his pictures out of doors in order to get the full good
of them.
[Sidenote: Art and Nature]
No amount of music, art, and literature can make up for the free life
in the fields and under the sky which all these arts describe and
interpret. If he should be so unhappy as to have to choose between
nature and art, it would be better for him to choose nature, because
then, perhaps, art might be born in his own soul. But there is happily
no need for such a painful choice. He can sing his little song out of
doors with the birds and notice how they join in the chorus. He can
paint evening sunsets with the pine-trees against it far better out of
doors than indoors with copy perched before him. He can look down the
aisles of the real woods to watch for the enchanted princess, or for
the chivalrous knight whose story he is reading. Art and nature belong
together in the unified soul of the child. Well for him and for the
world in which he lives if they are never divorced, but he goes on to
the end loving them both and seeing them both as one.
CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATES
If the child was intended to grow into a man of family, merely, family
training might be sufficient for him, but since he must grow into a
member of society, social training is as necessary for him as family
training. Failure to recognize this truth is at the bottom of the
current misconceptions of the Kindergarten. There are still thousands
of persons who suppose it is only a superior sort of day-nursery where
children may be safely kept and innocently employed while the mother
gets the housework done.
[Sidenote: The Kindergarten]
While this might be a laudable enough function to perform, it is by
no means the function of the Kindergarten. This method of instruction
aims at much more. It aims to lay foundations for a complete later
education, and especially to make firm in the child those virtues and
aptitudes which, when they are held by the majority of men, constitute
the safety and welfare of society. For this reason no home, however
well ordered, can supply to the child what the Kindergarten supplies.
For the home is necessarily limited to the members of one family,
while the Kindergarten, on the contrary, makes plain to the child the
claims upon him of society not made up of his kinsfolk. It is the wide
world in miniature, and if it is a properly organized Kindergarten,
it will contain within itself a wide variety of children--children of
wealth and of poverty, of ignorance and of gentle breeding--and will
bring them all under one just rule. For only by this commingling of
many characters upon a common level and under the strict reign of
justice can the child be fitted practically, and by means of a series
of progressive experiments, for citizenship in a genuine democracy.
[Sidenote: Exclusive Associates]
Parents sometimes so far miss the aim of the Kindergarten as to desire
that instead of such a commingling there shall be a narrow limit set;
that in the Kindergarten shall be only such children as the child is
accustomed to associate with. But if the Kindergarten acceded to this
demand, as it seldom does, it would lose much of its usefulness, for
every one knows that children cannot be permanently sheltered from
contact with the outside world, nor can they be always reared in an
atmosphere of exclusiveness. A wisdom greater than the mother's has
ordered that no child shall be so narrowly nourished. If he has any
freedom whatever, any naturalness of life, he must and will enlarge
his circle of acquaintances beyond the limit of his mother's calling
list.
Indeed, even those Kindergartens which are professedly exclusive, and
which confine their ministrations to the children of one particular
neighborhood, are obliged by the nature of things to contain nascent
individualities of almost every type. For no neighborhood, however
equal in wealth and fashion, ever produced children of an unvarying
quality. In any circle, no matter how exclusive, there are mischievous
children, children who use bad language, children who have sly, mean
tricks, children who do not speak the truth, and who are in other ways
quite as undesirable as the children of the poor and ignorant. It is
often asserted, indeed, that the children of exclusive neighborhoods
very often show more varieties of badness than the children of the
open street. The records of the private Kindergarten as compared with
the public Kindergarten amply prove this statement.
[Sidenote: Evil Example]
Since, then, whether you confine your child to the limits of your
own circle or not, you cannot successfully keep him from playing with
children who are more or less objectionable, what are you going to do
to keep him from the harm of such association? You have to make him
strong enough to withstand temptation and resist the force of evil
example. Of course, he must have as little of the wrong example,
especially in his younger and tenderer years, as can be managed
without too greatly checking his activity and curtailing his freedom.
Yet after all he is to be taught a positive and not a negative
righteousness, and if his home training is not sufficient to enable
him to stand against a certain downward pull from the outside, there
is something the matter with it.
While he must not be strained too hard, nor too constantly associate
with children whose manners put his manners to the test, still he
ought by degrees, almost imperceptibly, to be accustomed to holding
to the truth, to that which is found good, no matter whether his
associates find it desirable or not.
[Sidenote: Social Training]
A good Kindergarten is a mother's best help in this endeavor, for
there her child meets with all sorts of other children. The very
influence of the place, and the ever-ready help of the teacher are on
his side. Every effort he makes to do right is met and welcomed. In
every stand that he takes against temptation, he is unobtrusively
reinforced. Moreover, the wrong-doing of his comrades is never allowed
to retain the attractive glitter that it sometimes acquires on the
play-ground. It is promptly held up to general obloquy, and the good
child finds to his surprise that he is not the only one who thinks
that teasing, for example, is mean and selfish and that a violent
temper is ugly.
[Sidenote: Responsibility to Society]
Moreover, in the Kindergarten the sense of social responsibility is
borne in upon him. Perhaps it comes to him first when he is chosen
to lead the march and finds that he must be careful not to squeeze
through too narrow places, lest someone get into trouble. In dealing
out pencils, worsted, and other materials he must be careful to
show strict impartiality, and give no preference to his own personal
friends. In a hundred small ways he is helped to regulate his own
conduct, so that it may conduce to the welfare of the whole school.
Where there are no Kindergartens, the task becomes a more difficult
one for the mother, for it becomes necessary, then, that she herself
should undertake the social training of her child, and this means that
she must know his playmates, not only through his report of them,
but through her own observation of them, and that they must be
sufficiently at home with her to betray their true characters in her
presence. And this means, of course, that she must become her child's
playmate. There are few women who think that they have time for this,
but there are also few who would not be benefited by it. If anywhere
there is a fountain of youth, it gushes up invisibly wherever playing
children are, and she who plays with them gets sprinkled by it.
[Sidenote: Sharing the Child's Play]
If there be no time during the busy day when she can justly enter into
the children's free play, at least there is a little while in the late
afternoon or in the early evening when she can do so, if she will. An
hour or two a week spent in active association with children at their
games will make her intimately acquainted with all their playmates,
and, moreover, constitute her a power of first magnitude among them.
Her motherhood thus extends itself, and she blesses not only her own
children, but all those who come near her children. In this respect no
Kindergarten can take the place of the mother's own companionship with
the child in his social life.
[Sidenote: The Children's Hour]
In an ideal condition the child has his Kindergarten in the morning;
his quiet hours, one of them entirely solitary, in the afternoon; his
social time, when he, his brothers and sisters and mother, are joined
with the other children and mothers in the neighborhood, in the late
afternoon, and his family time, with both father and mother, in the
evening before going to bed.
In thus sharing her child's social life the mother admits the claim
upon her of social responsibility; she sees that her duty is not
to her own home alone, but to the other homes with which hers is
linked--not to her own child alone, but to all children whose lives
touch her child's life. Her own nature widens with the perception,
and she enhances her direct teaching with the force of a beautiful
example.
STUDIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
[Sidenote: Abstract Studies]
There may easily be too many studies and too many accomplishments
in the life of any child. As our schools are constituted there are
certainly too many studies of the wrong kind being carried on every
day. But there are also too few studies of the right kind. In one of
our large cities a test was once made as to how much the children
who left school at the fifth grade, as 70 per cent of them do, had
actually learned in a way that would be of practical value to them,
and the results were most discouraging. These city children who could
recite their tables of measurements with glibness, and who performed
with a fair degree of success several hundred examples dealing with
units of measure, could not tell whether their school-room floor
contained one acre or two hundred and forty! None of them suspected
that it contained less than an acre. Although they could bound the
States of the Union, and give the principal exports and imports, they
knew next to nothing of their own city and of its actual relation
to the countries which they studied in their geography lessons. The
teachers, in explanation, laid much of the blame for this state of
affairs upon the parents, saying that they took but little interest
in their children's studies, and never attempted to link them to the
things of every-day life. But while this claim might be justified to
some extent, it was by no means sufficient to cover the facts of the
case. The truth is, it was quite as much the teachers' duty to link
these abstract studies with concrete facts, as it was the parents'.
[Sidenote: Dead Knowledge]
Such an experience, however, suggests the manner in which parents can
best help on the work of children in school. So long as these studies
are still taught in the dead, monotonous way common to text-books,
children will be racked nervously, and not benefited mentally in the
effort to master them. Fathers and mothers who by the exercise of some
ingenuity manage to show the child that his arithmetical knowledge is
of actual help in solving the questions of every-day life; that his
history has bearings upon the progress of events around him, and that
his geography relates to actual places which, perhaps, father and
mother may have seen, or which their books tell about--such fathers
and mothers will make their children's school work easier, at the same
time that they increase the sum of their children's knowledge. It is
dead knowledge only--knowledge wrenched from its living content--that
is difficult of digestion.
[Sidenote: The New Education]
It is natural for a young mind to like to learn, as it is for a
healthy stomach to be supplied with food; but knowledge, like the
food, must be fit for the use that is to be made of it and for the
organ that is to receive it; and the brain, like the stomach, has a
signal which it flies to show whether the food is what it wants or
not. The brain exhibits interest exactly as the stomach exhibits
appetite. The object of scientific education is to discover what the
spontaneous, universal interest of children of certain ages is, and
to meet that interest with the fullest possible supply of knowledge in
every conceivable form.
Scientific education does not depend upon text-books or upon merely
verbal explanations, but gets the idea home to the child by the means
of a varied appeal to all the senses and sensibilities. For this
reason the most advanced schools have many more studies and what are
commonly called accomplishments than the public or parochial
schools. That is, they add to the three r's--reading, 'riting and
'rithmetic--drawing, modeling, painting, manual training, physical
culture, dramatic representation, music, field trips, and laboratory
work.
[Sidenote: Correlation of Studies]
Yet this apparently great increase of subjects in the number of
studies actually lessens the amount of work required of the child,
because all these different activities, by means of what is called
correlation, are brought to bear upon the same subject. For example,
the class which goes out for a field trip to visit a near-by brook
sees the water actually at work, cutting its way to the river, and
thence to the sea. They measure its force and note its effects; they
make a water-color sketch of some curve of it; they notice what birds
and insects are about; what flowers grow there; what indications there
may be of burrowing animals. When they get back to school they model,
perhaps, some bird that they have noticed; or in the geographical
laboratory, with streams of water try to reproduce in miniature the
action of the brook upon the soil through which it flows.
For their arithmetic lesson they estimate the number of years the
brook must have been flowing to have cut its valley to its present
depth. They make a full report and description of their day's work
for their reading and writing lesson. They have thus gained an immense
amount of information, and have done a great deal of hard work; but
instead of being nervously exhausted, they are bright and exhilarated.
Such fatigue as they know is wholesome and fits them for a sound
night's sleep.
[Sidenote: Home Expedients]
When it is impossible to send the child to such a school as this,
something may be done by supplementing the ordinary school by some
of these procedures. The clay jar, the crayons, and the paints have
already been suggested, and with the parents' interest in the child's
studies, helping him to model and paint things which he studies at
school, he will instantly show the good effect of the home training
and encouragement. As for field trips, the regular Sunday walk, or
evening stroll, may be made to take its place. If you think that you
do not know enough to teach your child on these walks, give him then
the privilege of teaching you. He will work the harder in order to
rise to the occasion.
[Sidenote: Physical Culture]
As for physical culture, if your school is without it, your barn, your
parlor, and your lawn may supply it in some sort. In the barn may be a
trapeze; there is already the ladder and the hay-loft; on the lawn may
be a swing, trees to climb, and the tennis court. In your parlor may
be a little home dancing school, where for a half an hour or so, the
children march, skip, or two-step to music of your making. In the wood
shed may be a carpenter's bench with real tools, where he may work and
get some of the good of manual training.
[Sidenote: Showy Accomplishments]
Accomplishments, meaning thereby showy things that children do for
the edification of guests, are of doubtful value. It is pleasant, of
course, to have your little girl play a piece or two on the piano to
entertain your visitors, but it is not nearly so important as health
and strength, and a cheerful temper. Sometimes all three of these are
sacrificed to the two or three hours' practice a day. Often, too, this
extra work after school hours--work full as monotonous and nervous
and uninteresting as the school work itself--is just what is needed
to transform a healthy young girl into a nervous invalid. This is
especially true, if she undertakes, as she usually does, to study
music when she is about thirteen years old--the very time when, if
wise physicians could regulate affairs to their liking, she would be
taken out of school altogether and required to do nothing more than a
little light housework every day.
[Sidenote: Natural Talent]
Of course, if she is naturally musical some kind of help and sympathy
must be given her in her attempt to master the piano or violin or to
manage her own voice. But while she should be allowed to learn as
much as her unurged energies permit her to learn, she should not be
required to practice more than a very small amount, say half an hour
a day. The bulk of her musical education should be acquired in
the vacation time, when she can give two hours a day without
overstraining.
The same general rules hold good of dancing, painting, the
acquirements of foreign languages, a special course of reading, or
any other work undertaken in addition to the regular school work. This
latter, as it is now constituted, is quite as severe a nervous and
intellectual strain as most young people can undergo with safety.
[Sidenote: "Enthusiasms"]
There is one characteristic in young people which needs to be noted in
this connection:--the desire to take up some form of work, to strive
with it furiously for a brief while, to drop it unfinished; take up
another with equal eagerness, drop that in turn and go on to a third.
This performance is peculiarly irritating to all systematic and
ambitious parents. Sometimes they rigidly insist that each task shall
be finished before a new one is assumed. But in reality, is this
necessary? It seems to be as natural for a young mind to set eagerly
to work for a short time at each new bit of knowledge, as it is for a
nursing child to require refreshments every two or three hours. It is
an adult trait to stick to a task, even though a very long one, until
it is accomplished. The youthful trait is to take kindly to a clutter
of unfinished tasks.
The youthful consciousness is of a world full of jostling interests.
Why not let the children alone, and allow them to spring lightly from
one enthusiasm to another? Of course you will help them to finish,
either at the first sitting or at the second or at the third, the task
that was undertaken when that particular enthusiasm was at its height.
The drawing which has remained on the easel during the foot-ball
season may be suggestively brought to notice again in the quiet times
between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The boat begun last summer may
well be finished in the days of the succeeding Spring when all the
earth is full of the sound of running water. Thus each task, though
not completed at once, gets done in the end; and the youthful capacity
for many sympathies and many desires has not been narrowed.
[Sidenote: Parental Vanity]
Such a line of conduct presupposes, of course, that the parent
considers only the child's best welfare, and not his own parental
vanity. He is not desirous that his son shall do anything so well
as to attract the attention and admiration of the neighbors. He is
desirous merely that the boy shall grow up wholesomely and happily,
showing such superiority as there may be in him when the fitting time
and opportunity present themselves. He will not attempt to make a
musician of an unmusical child, nor a mechanic of an artistic child.
He will not object to the brilliant and impractical dreams of the
young inventor, but will help to make them practicable; and though he
may squirm at some of the investigations of the budding scientist, he
will not forbid them.
[Sidenote: Development of Intellect]
For such a parent recognizes that the important thing, educationally,
is to secure the reaction of expression upon thought and feeling.
That is, he is not trying to secure at this time--at any time during
youth--perfect expression of any thought or feeling, but only to
deepen feeling and clarify thought by encouraging all attempts at
expression. He does not wish his child to make a finished picture or
a perfect statue, but to acquire a greater sensitiveness to color and
form by each attempt to express that color and form which he already
knows. Thus whatever studies and accomplishments his child may be in
the act of acquiring are seen to be nothing as acquisitions, but the
child himself is seen to be growing stage by stage within the clumsy
scaffolding.
FINANCIAL TRAINING
The financial training of children ought really to be considered under
the head of moral training, but in some respects it can come equally
well under the head of intellectual training; for to spend money well
requires both self-control and intelligence. Some persons seem to
think that all that a child can be taught in this regard is to save
money, and they meet the situation by purchasing various shapes and
styles of savings banks. But it is entirely possible to teach the
child too thoroughly in this respect and to make him so fond of his
jingling pennies safe within a yellow crockery pig or iron cupolaed
mansion that be will not spend them for any object, however laudable.
Others evade the issue as long as possible by giving the child no
money at all; while most of us pursue an uncertain and wabbly course,
sometimes giving money, sometimes withholding it, sometimes exhorting
the child to spend, and sometimes to save.
[Sidenote: Regular Allowance]
In truth spending wisely is a difficult problem. As a rule the child
may safely be induced to lay by for a season and then encouraged to
spend for some generous purpose. Christmas and other festivals offer
excellent opportunities for proper disbursement of the hoarded funds.
These may be supposed to have accumulated from irregular gifts; but
as the child grows older he should come into receipt of a regular
definite allowance, perhaps conditioned upon his performance of some
stated duty. A certain part of his allowance he may he permitted to
spend upon such frivolities as are naturally dear to his young heart;
another part of it he should be encouraged--not commanded--to put
aside for larger purposes.
The giving of this allowance must not be confused with the pernicious
habit of bribing the child to the performance of those little daily
courtesies and duties which he ought to be willing to perform out of
love and a sense of right. A certain part of his daily work, such as
seeing that the match-boxes all over the house are filled, or some
similar share of the general labor of the household, may be regarded
as that for which he is paid wages; and any extra task which does not
justly belong to him, he may sometimes be paid for performing; but not
always. For instance, he ought to be willing to run to the grocery
for mother without demanding that he be paid a penny for the job; yet
sometimes the penny may be forthcoming. The point is that he should be
ready to work, even to work hard, without pay, and yet that he should
never feel that his mother withholds pay from him when she can give it
and he receive it without injury.
[Sidenote: Spending Foolishly]
When the money is once his, he should be allowed to feel the full
happiness and responsibility of possession, and if he insists upon
spending it foolishly, should be allowed to do it and to suffer to the
full the uncomfortable consequences. If, on the contrary, he will
not spend it at all, his mother must use every means in her power to
lessen the desire for ownership and to increase his love for others
and his eagerness to please them.
As judgment develops the allowance may well be increased to provide
for necessities in the way of incidentals and clothing until at the
"age of discretion" he is in full charge of the funds for his personal
expenses. He should be encouraged to apply his knowledge of commercial
arithmetic in the keeping of personal accounts.
Experience in spending a fixed amount of money is especially needful
for the daughters. Most young men have the value of money and
financial responsibility forced upon them in the natural course
of events, but too often the young wife has not had the training
qualifying her for the equal financial partnership which should exist
in the ideal marriage.
[Illustration: THE INFANT GALAHAD--FIRST SIGHT OF THE GRAIL
From the mural paintings by Edwin A. Abbey in the Boston Public
Library]
RELIGIOUS TRAINING
[Sidenote: Sunday School Teachers]
If the common school is not sufficient for the secular education
of the child, certainly the Sunday School is not sufficient for his
religious education. In the common schools the teachers are more or
less trained for their work. It is a life occupation with them; by
means of it they earn their living, and their daily success with their
pupils marks their rate of progress toward higher fields of endeavor.
Nothing of this sort is true in the Sunday School. While occasionally
it happens that a day school teacher becomes a Sunday School teacher,
this is seldom true, for most teachers who teach during the week
feel that they need the Sunday for rest; and while some Sunday School
teachers betray a commendable earnestness and zeal for their work, and
associations and conventions have latterly added somewhat to the
joint effort to better the conditions, still it remains true that the
teaching in the Sunday Schools is far below the pedagogic level of
the common schools. Yet the subject which is dealt with in the Sunday
Schools, instead of being of less importance than that dealt with in
the common schools, is of pre-eminently greater importance. Because
of its subtlety, its intimacy with the hidden springs of conduct, it
calls for the exercise of the very highest teaching skill.
Some sort of recognition of these two facts--that Sunday School
teachers are in most cases very inadequately trained for their work,
and that the work itself is of great importance, and of equally great
difficulty--has led to the issuing of many quarterlies, International
Lesson Leaflets, and other Sunday School aids. Necessary as such help
may be under present conditions, they cannot possibly meet the many
difficulties of the case. If the central committees, who issue these
leaflets, were composed wholly of the wisest men and women on earth,
it would still be impossible for them to give lessons to the millions
of children in their various denominations which should meet the
personal needs, and daily interests of these young people.
[Sidenote: Sunday School Training]
As a consequence, Sunday School teaching is and must be largely
theoretical and still more largely exegetical, and with neither theory
nor exegesis is the young mind of the developing child very much
concerned. What he needs is not the historical side of religion or of
that great body of religious literature which we call the Bible, but
a living faith which links all that was taught by the prophets and
apostles, centuries ago, with what is happening in the child's own
town and family at that very moment. It is a wide gap to bridge, and
it cannot be bridged by a semi-historical review backed by picture
cards, golden texts, and stars for good behavior. These things are
merely the marks of an endeavor to fitly accomplish a great task,
an endeavor almost absurdly out of proportion to this aim, rendered
significant, however, because it is the earnest of a great faith and a
great hope.
So far as Sunday Schools help children, it is because of this spirit
of faithfulness, and not because of the form which it has assumed.
In choosing, then, whether you shall send your child to a Sunday
School, choose by the presence or absence of this spirit. If you know
the teachers of the Sunday School to be earnest, loving, and devoted,
you may with safety assume that their personal influence will make up
for what is archaic in their method of teaching. Where the spirit is
present only in a few, or where it manifests itself only occasionally,
as at seasons of revival, you may well hesitate to let your child
attend. A great improvement would come about if parents would show
a greater interest and encourage proper teachers to take charge of
classes. It is a thankless task at present.
[Sidenote: Theory Not Practice]
There is one great danger in the teaching of any Sunday School--one
which the best of them cannot wholly escape--and that is, that, in the
very nature of things, they teach theory and not practice. Harmful as
this may be, indeed as it surely is in adult life, it does not begin
to be so harmful as it does in youth, for the young child, as we have
seen, is and should remain a unit in consciousness. His life, his
intellect, and his will are one--an undivided trinity. The divorce of
these three is at any time a regrettable occurrence; the divorce of
them in early life is an almost irreparable disaster.
[Sidenote: Useless Truths]
The current theory is that children will learn many truths in the
Sunday School which they will not put into practice then, perhaps, but
which they will find useful in later life. This fallacy underlies, of
course, almost all conventional education and has only been overthrown
by the dictum of modern psychology, that there is but small storage
accommodation in the brain for facts which have no immediate relation
to life. What may be termed the saturating power of the brain is
limited, and after it has soaked up a rather small number of truths,
it can contain no more until it has in some way disposed of those that
it still has--either by making them part of its own living structure,
which is done only by making immediate application of them; or by
dropping them below the threshold of consciousness, that is, in common
language, forgetting them. Moreover, the brain may form the habit of
easily dropping all that relates to a given subject into the limbo
where unused things lie disregarded, and when this becomes the
habitual method of disposing of religious instruction, the results are
particularly deplorable.
[Sidenote: The Mother as Teacher]
Feeble as her own knowledge may be, a mother has certain advantages as
a teacher of her children over any but the exceptional Sunday school
teacher. For, first, she knows the children, and, knowing them, knows
their needs. Secondly, she knows their daily lives and continually
during the week can point out wherein they fail to live up to
their Sunday's lesson. And again and most important, she loves them
tenderly, and from love flows wisdom. Usually the mother gives her own
children a love far beyond that given by anyone else, and this deeper
love sharpens her intellectual faculties and makes her both a keen
observer and a good tactician. Giving her children some simple lesson
on Sunday afternoon, she finds a hundred opportunities to make the
lesson living and vital to them during the succeeding week.
[Sidenote: Religious Enthusiasm]
In the early years of the child's life, the mother is usually the
one to decide whether he shall attend Sunday School or not, but as
he approaches adolescence he is likely to take the matter in his
own hands, and if it happens that some revivalist or a new stirring
preacher comes in contact with his life at this time, he is very
likely to be swept off his feet with a sudden zeal of religious
enthusiasm, which his mother fears to check. The reports of
memberships, baptisms, etc., show that a large number become converted
and join the church during adolescence. While this does not in the
least argue that the conclusions that they reach at that time are
therefore unsound--for adolescence is not a disease, nor a form of
insanity, but a normal, if excitable, condition--still it does prove,
when coupled with the further fact that in adult life these young
converts often relapse into their previous condition, that a more
lasting basis for religion must be found than the emotional intensity
of this period of life. A religion to be lasting must be coldly
reaffirmed by the intellect: the dictum of the heart alone is not
sufficient. Religious enthusiasm, like all other forms of enthusiasm,
tends of itself to bring about the opposite condition, and to be
succeeded by fits of despondency and bitterness as intense and severe
as the enthusiasm itself was brilliant and ecstatic. The history of
all great religious leaders amply proves this. They had their bitter
hours of wrestling with the powers of darkness, hours which almost
counter-balanced the hours of uplift. Only clearly thought-out
intellectual convictions reinforced by the habit of daily righteous
living can secure the soul against such emotional aberrations.
[Sidenote: Danger of Reaction]
Therefore, although the religious excitability of adolescence must
not be thwarted lest it be turned into less helpful channels, and lest
religion lose all the beauty and compelling power lent to it by the
glow of youthful feelings, yet it must be so balanced and ordered by
a clear reason, and especially by the habit of putting each enthusiasm
to the test of conduct, that the young mind may remain true to its law
of growth, developing harmoniously on all three sides at once.
The danger of permitting a young boy or girl while under the influence
of this emotional instability to enter into any special form of
religious service is the danger of reaction. He will discover that
all is not as his early vision led him to suppose--because that
early vision was of things too high and holy for any earthly
realization--and he may turn against what seems to him to be hypocrisy
and pretense with a bitterness proportioned to his former love. Many
honest, faithful men and women remain in this state of reaction for
the rest of their lives.
[Sidenote: A Difficult Period]
Nevertheless, it will not do to thwart these young beginnings. They
must neither be nipped in the bud nor forced to a premature ripening.
Above all they must not be suffered to endure the killing frost of
ridicule. The period is a difficult one, but, as Dr. Stanley Hall
points out, it is supremely the mother's opportunity. If she can hold
her boy's or her girl's confidence now, can ease their eager young
hearts with an intelligent sympathy, she can probably keep them from
any public commitment. Perhaps they may desire to confide in the
minister; if so, let the mother confide in him first. Perhaps they
have bosom friends, passing through the same stirring experience; then
let the mother win over these friends.
Her object should be to shelter this beautiful sentiment; to keep it
safe from exposure; above all, to utilize it as a motive-power--as
an incentive to noble action. The Kindergarten rule is a good one: as
quick as a love springs in a child's breast, give it something to do.
When the love of God awakes there, give it much to do. Usually, the
only way open is to join the church, to make a public profession. The
wise mother will see to it that there are other ways, urging the young
knight to serve his King by going forth into the world immediately
about him and fighting against all forms of evil, giving him a
practical, definite quest. The result of such restriction of
public speech, and stimulation of private deed, will be a sincere,
lowly-minded religion, so inwoven with the truest activities as to be
inseparable from them. Such a religion knows no reaction.
[Sidenote: Bible Study]
Now is supremely the time for a study of the Bible. Interesting as a
Divine Story Book to the young children, it becomes the Book of Life
to these older ones. In teaching it at home, a few simple rules need
to be borne in mind. The first is that the Bible must be thought of
not as a series of disconnected texts and thoughts, but as a connected
whole. The division of King James' Bible into verses and chapters is
but poorly adapted to this purpose. The illogical, strange character
of the paragraphing, as measured by the standards of modern English,
is apparent at a glance, for often a verse will end in the middle of
a sentence, and the sentence be concluded in the next verse. The
chapters in the same way often fail to finish the subject with which
they deal, and sometimes include several subjects. Therefore, the
mother who undertakes to read the Bible to her children needs first
to go through the lesson herself, and to decide what subject, not what
chapter, she will take up that day. There is a reader's edition of
the Bible, and one called the "Children's Bible," both of which aim
to leave out all repetition and references and to arrange the Bible
narrative in a simple, consecutive order, nevertheless employing the
beautiful Bible language. These editions might prove of considerable
help to mothers who feel unequal to doing the work by themselves.
[Sidenote: Children's Bible]
Second, comparable to this in importance is the reading of the Bible
and talking about it in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice; for what
you want is to make the Bible teachings live in to-day. You must not,
therefore, suggest by your tone or manner that they belong to another
day, and that they are, in some sense, to be shut out from common life
and speech. This does not mean such common use of Biblical phrases
in every day conversation as to cause it to grow into that form or
irreverence known as cant, but it does mean simple usage of Bible
thought, and the effort to fit it to the conditions of daily life.
Such a habit in itself will force any family to discriminate as to
what things in the Bible are living and eternal, and what things
belong rightly to that far away time and place of which the Bible
narrative treats, thus practicing both teacher and pupils--that is,
both parents and children--in the art of finding the universal spirit
of truth under all temporal disguises. Without this art the Bible is a
closed book, even to the closest student.
[Sidenote: Making Lessons Real]
Again, every effort should be made to help the home Bible class to
understand the period studied in that week's lesson, and to this end
secular literature and art should be freely called upon, not only such
stories, for example, as "Ben Hur," but other stories not necessarily
religious, which deal with the same time and place; they are of great
help in putting vividly before the children and parents the temporal
setting of the eternal stories. Cannon Farrar's "Life of Christ" is a
very great help to the realization of the New Testament scenes, as is
also Tissot's "Pictorial Life of Christ." In short every art should be
made to deepen and clarify the conceptions roused by the study of the
Bible.
[Sidenote: In Conclusion]
The mother who undertakes the tremendous task of rightly training her
children, will need to exercise herself daily in all the Christian
virtues--and if there are any Pagan ones not included under faith,
hope, charity, patience, and humility, to exercise those also.
With these virtues to support her, she will be able to use whatever
knowledge she may acquire. Without them she can do nothing.
TEST QUESTIONS
The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the
regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for
the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to
emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the
lesson.
PART III
Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly
requested _not_ to answer according to the text-book where opinions
are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases
credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your
name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so
that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.
1. How can you bring the influence of art to bear upon your child?
2. What is the influence of music? How can you employ it?
3. Do you believe in fairy tales for children? State your reasons.
4. How would you encourage the love of nature in your child?
5. What is it that the Kindergarten can do better than the home?
6. Suppose that your child had some undesirable acquaintances, how
would you meet the situation?
7. What can you say of accomplishments for children?
8. If manual training, physical culture, domestic science, etc., are
not taught in your schools and you wish your children to get some of
the advantages of these studies, how will you set about it?
9. What do you understand to be the correlation of studies?
10. Should parents become acquainted with the teachers of their
children and their methods? Why?
11. How may children be taught the use of money?
12. State the advantages and disadvantages of Sunday schools. What
have they meant in _your own_ experience?
13. How will you train your child religiously? Can anyone take this
task from you?
14. What rules must be borne in mind in teaching the Bible at home?
15. Give some experience of your own (or of a friend) in the training
of a child wherein a success has been achieved.
16. Are there any questions you would like to ask or subjects which
you wish to discuss in connection with the lessons on the Study of
Child Life?
Note.--After completing the test sign it with your full name.
Supplementary Notes
on
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
BY MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES.
In this "Study of Child Life" we have considered some of the
fundamental principles of education. When we think of the complex
inheritance of the American people it is, perhaps, no wonder that many
families contain individuals varying so widely from each other as to
seem to require each a complete system of education all to himself.
We are a people born late in the history of the race, and our blood
is mingled of the Norseman's, the Celt's, and the Latin's. Advancing
civilization alone would tend to make us more complex, our problems
more subtle; but in addition to this we are mixed of all races, and
born in times so strenuous that, sooner or later, every fibre of our
weaving is strained and brought into prominence.
In the letters from my students this fact, with which I was already
familiar in a general sort of way, has been brought more particularly
to my attention. In all cases, the situation has been responsible for
much confusion and difficulty. In a good many, it has led to
family tragedies, varying in magnitude from the unhappiness of the
misunderstood child to that of the lonely woman, suffering in adult
life from the faults of her upbringing, and the failure of the family
ties whose need she felt the more as the duties of motherhood pressed
upon her. If it were possible for me to violate the confidence of my
pupils I could prove very conclusively that the old-fashioned system
of bringing up children on the three R's and a spanking did not work
so well as some persons seem to think. I could prove that the problem
has grown past the point where instinct and tradition may be held
as sufficient to solve it. Everyone, seeing these letters, would be
obliged to confess, "Yes, indeed, here is plain need of training for
parents." Yet, at the same time, these same persons would be tempted
to inquire, "But can any training meet such a difficult situation?"
Here is despair; and some cause for it. When one's own mother has not
understood one; when one has lived lonely in the midst of brothers and
sisters who are more strange than strangers; when one's childhood is
full of the memory of obscure but intense sufferings, one flies for
relief, perhaps, to any one who offers it hopefully enough; but
one does not really expect to get it. _Can_ training, especially by
correspondence, meet the need?
Not wholly, of course, let us be frank to admit. No amount of theory,
however excellent, can take the place of the drill given only in the
hard school of experience. But when the theory is not merely theory,
but sound principle, based on scientific observation, confirmed by the
wide experience of many persons, it is as valuable in practical life
as any rule of mathematics to the practical engineer. We all know that
the technical correspondence schools really do fit young mechanics
to move on and up in the trade. By correspondence he is given what
Froebel calls the interpreting word. The experience in application the
student has to supply himself.
So in the matter of education. There are genuine principles which
underlie the development of every child that lives--even the
feeble-minded, deaf, and blind. Read Helen Keller's wonderful life,
if you want to see the proof of it. Just as surely as a child has
two legs and has to learn to walk on them by a series of prolonged
experiments, just so surely he has (a) a sense of justice, (b) an
instinct for freedom, (c) a love of play. Every kind of child has all
these instincts, as much as he has love for food and drink; and to
educate him consists in developing these instincts into (a) the habit
of dealing justly by others, (b) the right use of freedom, (c) love
of work. The particular methods may differ. The principles _do not and
CANNOT DIFFER_.
She who would succeed in child training must hold to these truths with
all her might and main--making them, in fact, her religion, for they
are the doctrines of the Christian religion as applied to motherhood.
To hold them lightly, or even experimentally, will not do. One most
walk in faith. And that the faith may not be blind, but may be based
on experience and understanding, let me suggest this means of proof:
Instead of asking yourself how the laws laid down in these little
books would fit this or that particular child, your own or another's,
ask how they would have fitted you, if they had been applied to you
by your own mother. Take the chapter on faults, pick out the one which
was yours, in childhood--oh, of course, you've got over it now!--think
of some bitter trouble into which that fault hurried you, and conceive
that, instead of the punishment you did receive, you had been treated
as the lesson suggests--what, do you think, would have been the
result? And so with the other chapters--even with that much-mooted
question of companionship. Test the truth of them all by their
imaginary application to the child you know best. When you can, find
the principles that your own mother did employ in your education,
and examine the result of what she did. Some of the principles will
suddenly become luminous to you, I am sure; and some things that
happened in the past receive an explanation.
Such a self-examination, to be of any value, must be rigidly honest.
There is too much at stake here for you to permit any remnants of
bitter feeling to influence your judgment--and you will surely be
surprised to find how many bitter resentments will show that they
yet have life. The past is dead, as far as your power to change it is
concerned; but it lives, as a thing that you can use. Here is your own
child, to be helped or hindered by what you may have endured. It will
all have been worth while, if by means of it you can save him from
some bruises and falls. Every bitterness will be sweetened if you
can look through it and find the truth which shall serve this dearer
little self who looks to you for guidance.
Then, when you have found the principles true--and not one minute
before!--put them rigidly into practice. I say, not one minute before
you are convinced, because it is better to hold the truth lightly in
the memory as a mere interesting theory you have never had time to
test, than to swallow it, half assimilated. Truth is a real and living
power, once it is applied to life; and to half-use it in doubt, and
fear, is to invite indigestion and consequent disgust. Take of these
teachings that which you are sure is sound and right, and use it
faithfully, and unremittingly. Be careful that no plea of expediency,
no hurry of the moment, makes you false. If you are thus faithful
in small things, one after the other, in a series fitted to your own
peculiar constitution, the others will prove themselves to you; for
they are coherent truths, and not one lives to itself alone, but joins
hands with all the rest. Being truths, they fit all human minds--yours
and mine, and those of our children, no matter how diverse we may be.
OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN
Isn't it ridiculously true that, as soon as we get enlightened
ourselves, we burn to enlighten the rest of the world? We do not seem
to remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the
contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our power of
comprehension. It is really comforting to my own sense of impatience
and balked zeal to find how many of my pupils are dreadfully concerned
about other people's children. This one's heart burns over the little
boy next door who is shamefully mismanaged and who already begins to
show the ill effects of his treatment. That one has a sister-in-law
who refuses to listen to a word spoken in season.
Between my smiles--those comfortable smiles with which we recognize
our own shortcomings--I, too, am really concerned about the
sister-in-law's children. It is true that their mother ought to be
taught better, and that, if she isn't, those innocent lambs are going
to suffer for it. Off at this distance, without the ties of kindred to
draw me too close for clear judgment, I see, though, that we have
to walk very cautiously here, for fear of doing more harm than good.
Better that those benighted women never heard the name of child-study,
than to hear it only to greet it with rebellion and hatred. Yet
to force any of our principles upon her attention when she is in a
hostile mood--or to _force_ them, indeed, in any mood--is to invite
just this attitude.
Most of us, by the time that we are sufficiently grown up to undertake
the study of child life, have outgrown the habit of plainly telling
our friends to their faces just what we think of their faults; yet
this is a safe and pleasant pastime beside that other of trying
to tell them how to bring up their children. You stand it from me,
because you have invited it, and perhaps still more because you never
see me, and the personal element enters only slightly and pleasantly
into our relationship. I sometimes think that students pour out their
hearts to me, much as we used to talk to our girl friends in the dark.
I'm very sure I should never dare to say to their faces what I write
so freely on the backs of their papers!
You see, the adult, too, has his love of freedom; and while he can
stand an indirect, impersonal preachment, which he may reject if he
likes without apology, he will not stand the insistence of a personal
appeal. I've let "Little Women" shame me into better conduct, when I
was a girl, at times when no direct speech from a living soul would
have brought me to anything but defiance--haven't you? We have to
apply our principles to the adult world about us, well as to the
child-world, and teach, when we permit ourselves to teach at all,
chiefly by example, by cheerful confession of fallibility, by
open-mindedness. Above all things, we have to respect the freedom of
these others, about whom we are so inconveniently anxious.
It is fair, though, that the spoken word should interpret what we do.
It is fair enough to tell your sister-in-law what you think and ask
her judgment upon it, if you can trust yourself not to rub your own
judgment in too hard. If you are unmarried, and a teacher, you will
have to concede to her preposterous marital conceit a humble and
inquiring attitude, and console your flustered soul by setting it
to the ingenious task of teaching by means of a graduated series of
artful inquiries. Don't, oh don't! seek for an outspoken victory.
Be content if some day you hear her proclaim your truth as her own
discovery. It never was yours, anyway, any more than it is hers or
than it is mine. Be glad that, while she claims it, she at least holds
it close.
If you are a mother, you are in an easier case. You can do to your own
children just what she ought to do to hers, and tell about it softly,
as if sure of her sympathy. If you are very sincere in your desire for
the welfare of her child, you may even ask her advice about yours, and
so gain the right to offer a little in exchange--say one-tenth of what
she gives.
All these warnings apply to unsought advice--a dangerous thing to
offer under any circumstances. Except there is a real emergency, you
had better avoid it. If your nephew or little neighbor is winning
along through his troubles fairly well, best keep hands off. But if
you absolutely _must_ interfere, guard yourself as I suggest, and
remember that, even then, you will assuredly get burned, if you play
long with that dangerous fire of maternal pride!
When your advice is sought, you are in a different position. Then you
have a right to speak out, though if you are wise and loving you will
temper that right with charity. No one can be too gentle in dealing
with a soul that honestly asks for help; but one can easily be too
timid. Think, under these circumstances, of yourself not at all;
but put yourself as much as possible in her place; be led by her
questions; and answer fearlessly from the depths of the best truth you
hold. Then leave it. You can do no more. What becomes of that truth,
once you have lovingly spoken it, is no more of your concern.
THE SEX QUESTION
Always convinced of the importance of this subject, convictions have
deepened to the point of dismay since learning, through this school,
of the many women who have suffered and who continue to suffer, both
mentally and physically, because, in early girlhood, they were not
taught those finer physiological facts upon which the very life of the
race depends. Yet, strangely enough, these very victims find it almost
impossible to give their children the knowledge necessary to save
them from a similar fate. It is as if the lack of early training in
themselves leaves them helpless before a situation from which they
suffer but which they have never mastered.
Of course such feelings, in themselves morbid, are not to be trusted.
Faced with a task like this we have only to ask ourselves not "Is it
hard?" but "Is it in truth my task?" If it is, we may be sure that we
shall be given strength to do it, provided only that we are sincere in
our willingness to do it and do not count our feelings at all.
It is preposterous to have such feelings, in the first place. They
are wholly the product of false teaching. For we have no right--as we
recognize when we stop to think about it in calmness of spirit, and
apart from our special difficult--to sit in scornful judgment upon
any of the laws of nature. When we find ourselves in rebellion against
them, what we have to do is to change the state of our minds, for
change the laws we cannot. If we women could inaugurate a gigantic
strike against the present method of bearing children--and I imagine
that millions would join such a strike if it held out any promise of
success!--we still could accomplish nothing. To fret ourselves into a
frazzle over it, is to accomplish less than nothing;--it is to enter
upon the pathway to destruction.
In teaching our children, then, we have first to conquer
ourselves--that painful, reiterated, primal necessity, which must
underlie all teaching. Having done so, we shall find our task easier
than we supposed. The children's own questions will lead us; and if we
simply make it a rule never to answer a question falsely no matter how
far it may probe, we shall find ourselves not only enlightening
but receiving enlightenment. For nothing is so sure an antidote to
morbidness as the unspoiled mind of a child. He looks at the facts
with such a calm, level gaze that proportions are restored to us as we
follow his look.
Many of my letters show that adult women, wives and mothers, still
grope for the truth that lies plain to the eyes of any simple
child--the truth that there is no such thing as clean and unclean,
only use and misuse. Others, through love, and the splendid
revelations that it makes, have risen so far above their former
misconceptions that they fear to tell a child the facts before he has
experienced the love. I can imagine that in an ideal world some such
reticence might be good and right--but this is far from an ideal
world. We have to train our children relatively, not absolutely, in
the knowledge that we do not control all their environment. I think
the solution of the difficulty is to teach the facts of sex in a
perfectly calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, just as one
teaches the laws of digestion. When knowledge of evil is thrust upon
our child let us be sorry with him that those other children have
never been taught, and that they are doing their bodies such sad
mischief. But don't exaggerate it; don't be too shocked; don't condemn
the poor little sinners, who are also victims, too severely. Charity
toward wrong-doing is the best prophylactic against imitation. We
never feel the lure of a sin which grieves us in another; but often
the call of a sin which we too strongly condemn. Because the very
strength of the condemnation rouses our imaginations, is in itself an
emotion, and, since it is certainly not a loving one, must necessarily
be linked with all other unloving and therefore evil emotions. As far
as possible, let us keep feeling out of this subject, until such time
as the true and beautiful feeling of love between husband and wife
arises and uplifts it.
FATHERS
And now comes the editor of these lessons and accuses me of neglecting
the fathers! Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts.
Not only do I agree with him that "all ordinary children have fathers,
and it might be well to put in a paragraph;" but I am cheerfully
willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere
modicum of readers can be assured me. I fairly ache to talk to
fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of
them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad
to conduct it.
Joking aside, however, I truly feel that the saddest lack many of our
children have to suffer is the lack of fathers; and the saddest lack
our men have to suffer is the lack of children. So little are most men
awake to this subject that I am perfectly convinced that much of the
prevalent "race suicide" is due to their objections to a large family,
rather than to their wives'. Upon them comes the burden of support.
They get few of the joys which belong to children, and nearly all of
the woes. Seldom do they share the games of their offspring, or their
happy times; and almost always the worst difficulties are thrust upon
them for solution. Not that they often solve them! How can we expect
it?
There is Edgar growing very untruthful and defiant. We have concealed
all the first stages of the disease for fear of bothering poor tired
papa. At last it reaches such a height that we can conceal it no
longer. We fling the desperate boy at the very head of the bewildered
father, and then have turns of bitter disappointment because the
remedies that are applied may be so much cruder, even, than our own.
Here is a boy who gets close to his father only to find the proximity
very uncomfortable; and a father who becomes acquainted with his son
only through the ugly revelations of his worst faults.
Not but that the fathers are somewhat to blame, too. Without urging by
us, they ought, of course to take a spontaneous interest in the lives
for which they are responsible. They ought to, and they often do; but
the interest is sometimes ill-advised, and consequently unwelcome.
There are fathers whose interest is a most inconvenient thing. When
they are at home, they run everything, growl at everything, upset, as
like as not, all that the mother has been trying to do during the day.
I know wives who are distinctly glad to encourage their husbands in
the habit of lunching down-town, so that they can have a little room
for their own peculiar form of activity. And maybe we all have times
of sympathizing with the woman in this familiar story: There was a man
once who never left the house without a list of directions to his wife
as to how she should manage things during his absence.
"Better have the children carry umbrellas this morning; it's going to
rain," said he, as he went out of the door. "Be sure to put on their
rubbers. And since the baby is so croupy I'd get out his winter
flannels, if I were you."
"Yes, dear," said the patient wife. "Make your mind easy. I'll take
just as good care of them as if they were my own children." Of course
this is an extreme case.
There are other fathers whose whole idea of the parental relation
seems to be indulgence. No system of discipline, however mild, can be
carried out when such a man wins the children's hearts and ruins their
dispositions. It is he, isn't it? (I don't quite recollect the tale)
who was sent, after death, to the warm regions, there to expiate his
many sins of omission. And his adoring children, who had been hauled
to heaven by the main strength, let us say, of their mother, found
that the only thing they could do for him was to call out celestial
hose company number one and ask them to play awhile upon the
overheated apartments of poor tired papa.
The truth is--sit close and let no man hear what we say!--that these
fathers are much what we, the mothers, make them. If, under the
mistaken idea of saving father from all the worries of the children,
we hurry the youngsters off to bed before he comes home in
the evening, conceal our heart-burnings over them, do our
correspondence-school work in secret and solitude, meditate in the
same fashion over plans for their upbringing, talk to our neighbors
but never to him about the daily troubles, how can we expect any man
on earth, no matter how susceptible of later angelic growth, to become
a wise and devoted father? Tired or not, he is a father, not a mere
bread-winner. Whether he likes it at the moment or not, it is for
his soul's health for him to enter into the full life of his family,
including those problems which are at the very heart of it, after his
day of grinding, and very likely unloving, work at the office. Here
love enters to interpret, to soften, to make all principles live. Here
alone he can give himself to those gentler forms of judgment which
are necessary as much to the completion of his own character as to the
happiness and welfare of his wife and children. Someone has said that
we wrong our friends when we ask nothing of them; and certainly it is
true that we wrong our husbands when we do not demand big and splendid
things of them.
That word demand troubles me a little. So many women demand--and
demand terribly! But what they demand is indulgence, sympathy,
interest--I think sometimes that they crave a man's utter absorption
in themselves much as a man craves strong drink. It is their form of
intoxication. Such demanding is not, of course, what I mean. Demand
nothing for yourself, beyond simple justice. Not love, for that flies
at the very sound of demand, and dies before nagging. But demand for
the man himself, call upon his nobler qualities, and don't let him
palm off on you his second-best. Many a man is loved and honored by
his business associates whose wife and children never catch a glimpse
of the finer side of him. Demand the exercise of these fine traits in
the home. Demand that he be a fine man in the eyes of his children as
in the eyes of his friends. Be sure that he will rise to the occasion
with a splendid sense of having, now, a home that is a home, of having
a wife who is wived to the man he likes best to be.
This bids fair to be--as I knew it would, if once I permitted myself
to write at all on the subject--not a paragraph, but a whole essay--or
perhaps, if I did not check myself, a whole volume! But after all,
what I want to say is merely that as no child can be born without
a father, so he cannot be properly trained without a father's daily
assistance. And that, since most fathers come to the task even more
untrained than the mothers, some training must be undertaken. By whom?
By the mother. It is, I solemnly believe, your duty to go ahead a
little on this part of the journey, find out what ought to be done,
and teach, coax, induce your husband to co-operate with you in these
things. No one knows better than you do that he is only a boy at heart
after all--perhaps the very dearest boy of them all. This boy you have
to help while yet the other children are little--but be sure that, as
you teach him, so, all the time, will he teach you. Every principle
laid down in this book, above all others the principle of _freedom_,
will apply to him. He will take the lessons a trifle more reluctantly
but more lastingly than the younger boys; and in a little while you
will be envied of all your women friends because of the competency,
the reliability, the contentment of your children's father.
THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE
When all is said and done, it remains true that the finest, the
most subtle and penetrating influence in education is precisely
that education for which no rules can be laid down. It is the silent
influence of the motives which impel the persons who constantly
surround us. If we examine for a little our own childhood we see at
once that this is so. What are those canons of conduct by which we
judge others and even occasionally ourselves? Whence came that list
of _impossible_ things, those things that are so closed to us that we
cannot, even under great stress, of temptation, conceive ourselves as
yielding to them?
There is an enlightening story of a young man, born and bred a
gentleman, who, by the way of fast living falls upon poverty. In the
hard pressure of his financial affairs he is about to commit suicide,
when suddenly he finds, in an empty cab, a roll of bills amounting to
some thousands of dollars. The circumstances are such that he knows
that he can, if he will, discover the owner; or, he can, without
fear of detection, keep the money himself. He makes up his mind,
deliberately, to keep it, and then, almost against his will,
subconsciously as it were, walks to the office of the man who lost the
money and restores it to him.
Now, doubtless, in his downward career he had done many things which
judged by any absolute standard of morality were quite as wrong as the
keeping of that money would have been, but the fact remained that he
could not do that deed. Others, yes, but not that. He was a gentleman,
and gentlemen do not steal private property, whatever they may do
about public property. Yet probably, in all his life he had not once
been told not to steal--not one word had he been taught, openly,
on the subject. No one whom he knew stole. He was never expected
to steal. Stealing was a sin beyond the pale. So strong was this
unconscious, _but unvarying_ influence, that by it he was saved, in
the hour of extreme need, from even feeling the force of a temptation
that to a boy born and reared, say, in the slums, would have been
overwhelming.
Now, considering such things, I take it that it behooves us, as
parents, to look closely at the sort of persons that we are, clear
inside of us. To examine, as if with the clear eyes of our own
children, waiting to be clouded by our sophistries, the motives from
which we habitually act in the small affairs of everyday life. Are
we influenced by fear of what the neighbors will say? Have we one
standard of courtesy for company times, and another for private
moments? If so, why? Are we self-indulgent about trifles? Are we
truthful in spirit as well as in letter? Do we permit ourselves to
cheat the street-car and the railroad company, teaching the child at
our side to sit low that he may ride for half-fare? Do we seek
justice in our bargaining, or are we sharp and self-considerate? Do we
practice democracy, or only talk it and wave the flag at it?
And so on with a hundred other questions as to those small repeated
acts, which, springing from base motives, may put our unconscious
influence with our children in the already over-weighted down-side of
the scale; or met bravely and nobly, at some expense of convenience,
may help to enlighten the weight of inherited evil. Sometimes I wonder
how much of what we call inherited evil is the result not of heredity
at all, but of this sort of unconscious education.
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
THE SELF-DISTRUSTFUL CHILD.
"Your question is an excellent one. The answer to it is really
contained in your answer to the question about obedience. If a child
obey _laws_ not persons, and is steadily shown the reasonableness of
what is required of him, he comes to trust those laws and to trust
himself when he is conscious of obeying. But in addition to this
general training, it might be well to give a self-distrustful child
easy work to do--work well within his ability--then to praise him for
performing it; give him something a little harder, but still within
his reach, and so on, steadily calling on him for greater and greater
effort, but seeing to it that the effort is not too great and that it
bears visible fruit. He should never be allowed to be discouraged; and
when he droops over his work, some strong, friendly help may well he
given him. Sensitive, conscientious children, such as I imagine
you were, are sometimes overwhelmed in this way by parents, quite
unconscious of the pain they are giving by assigning tasks that are
beyond the strength and courage of the young toilers.
"At the same time, much might be done by training the child's
attention from _product_ to _process_. You know the St. Louis Fair
does not aim to show what has been done, but _how_ things are done.
So a child--so you--can find happiness and intellectual uplift in
studying the laws at work under the simplest employment instead of
counting the number of things _finished_."
COMPANY WAYS
"A boy who is visiting us is so beset with rules and 'nagged' even
by glances and nudges, that I wonder that he is not bewildered and
rebellious. He seems good and pleasant and obedient (12 years old),
but I keep wondering why?"
"Perhaps these were company ways inspired by an over-anxiety on his
mother's part that he should appear well. Oh, I have been so tempted
in this direction!--for of course people look at my children to see if
they prove the truth of my teachings, and as they are vigorous, free
and active youngsters, with decided characteristics they often do the
most unexpected and uncomfortable things! There must be good points
both in the boy himself--the boy you mention--and in his training
which offset the bad effects of the 'nagging' you notice--and possibly
the nagging itself may not be customary when he is at home. And
perhaps the mother knows that you are a close observer of children."
THEORY BEFORE PRACTICE
"There is only one danger in learning about the training of children
in advance of their advent, and that is the danger of being too sure
of ourselves--too systematic. The best training is that which is most
invisible--which leaves the child most in freedom. Almost the whole
duty of mothers is to provide the right environment and then just
love and enjoy the child as he moves and grows in it. But to do this
apparently easy thing requires so much simplicity and directness of
vision and most of us are so complex and confused that considerable
training and considerable effort are required to put us into the right
attitude.
"For myself, soon after I took my kindergarten training, which I did
with three babies creeping and playing about the schoolroom, I read
George Meredith's 'Ordeal of Richard Feveril' (referred to on p. 33,
Part I) and felt that that book was an excellent counter-balance,
saving me, in the nick of time, from imposing any system, however
perfect, upon my children. Perhaps you will enjoy reading it, too."
THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL
"Doing right from love of parent may easily become too strong a factor
and too much reliance may be placed upon it. There are few dangers in
child training more real than the danger of over working the emotional
appeal. You do not wish your child to form the habit of working for
approval, do you?"
THE FOOD QUESTION
"The food question can be met in less direct ways with your young
baby. No food but that which is good for him need be seen. It is
seldom good to have so young a child come to the family table. It
is better he would have his own meals, so that he is satisfied with
proper foods before the other appears. Or, if he must eat when you do,
let him have a little low table to himself, spread with his own pretty
little dishes and his own chair, with perhaps a doll for companion or
playmate. From this level he cannot see or be tempted by the viands on
the large table; yet, if his table is near your chair you can easily
reach and serve him. It is a real torment to a young child to see
things he must not touch or eat, and it is a perfectly unnecessary
source of trouble.
"My four children ate at such a low table till the oldest was eight
years old, when he was promoted to our table, and the others followed
in due order."
AIR CASTLES
"What a wonderful reader you were as a child! and certainly the books
you mention were far beyond you. Yet I can not quite agree that the
habit of air-castle building is pernicious. Indeed I believe in it.
It needs only to be balanced by practical effort, directed towards
furnishing an earthly foundation for the castle. Build, then, as high
and splendid as you like, and love them so hard that you are moved
to lay a few stones on the solid earth as a beginning of a more
substantial structure; and some day you may wake to find some of your
castles coming true. Those practical foundation stones underlying a
tremendous tower of idealism have a genuine magic power. Build all you
like about your baby, for instance. Think what things Mary pondered in
her heart.
"No, I'm never worried about idealism except when it is contented with
itself and makes but little effort at outward realization. But the
fact that you are taking this course proves that you will work to
realize your ideals.
"I don't think it very bad either to read to 'kill time.' Though if
you go on having a family, you won't have any time to kill in a very
little while. But do read on when you can, otherwise you may be shut
in, first you know, to too small a world, and a mother needs to draw
her own nourishment from _all_ the world, past and present."
DUTY TO ONESELF
"Yes, I should say you were distinctly precocious, and that you are
almost certainly suffering from the effects of that early brilliancy.
But the degree was not so great as to permanently injure you,
especially if you see what is the matter, and guard against repeating
the mistakes of your parents. I mean that you can now treat your own
body and mind and nerves as you wish they had treated them. Pretend
that you are your own little child, and deal with yourself tenderly
and gently, making allowances for the early strain to which you were
subjected. So few of us American women, with our alert minds, and our
Puritanic consciences, have the good sense and self-control to refrain
from driving ourselves; and if, as often happens, we have formed
the bad habit early in life, reform is truly difficult, but not
impossible. We can get the good of our disability by conscientiously
driving home the principle that in order to 'love others as ourselves'
we must learn to _love ourselves as we love others_. We have literally
no right to be unreasonably exacting toward ourselves,--but perhaps I
am taking too much upon myself by preaching outside the realm of child
study."
THE MOTHER AND THE TEACHER
"Your paper has been intensely interesting to me. I have always held
that a true teacher was really a mother, though of a very large flock,
just as a true mother is really a teacher, though of a very small
school. The two points of view complete each other and I doubt if
either mother or teacher can see truly without the other. They tell
us, you know, that our two eyes, with their slight divergence of
position, are necessary to make us, see things as having more than one
side; and the mother and the teacher, one seeing the individual child,
the other the child as the member of the race, need each other to see
the child as the complex, many-sided individual he really is.
"In your school, do you manage to get the mothers to co-operate? Here,
I am trying to get near my children's teachers. They try, too; but
it is not altogether easy for any of us. We need some common meeting
ground--some neutral activity which we could share. If you have any
suggestions, I shall be glad to have them. Of course, I visit school
and the teachers visit me, and we are friendly in an arm's length
sort of fashion. That is largely because they believe in corporal
punishment and practice it freely and it is hard for us to look
straight at each other over this disagreement."
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.
To the Matron of a Girls' Orphan Asylum
"Now to the specific questions you ask. My answers must, of course, be
based upon general principles--the special application, often so
very difficult a matter, must be left to you. To begin with corporal
punishment. You say you are 'personally opposed, but that your early
training and the literal interpretation of Solomon's rod keep you
undecided.' Surely your own comment later shows that part, at least,
of the influence of your early training was _against_ corporal
punishment, because you saw and felt its evils in yourself. Such
early training may have made you unapt in thinking of other means
of discipline; but it can hardly have made you think of corporal
punishment as _right_.
"And how can anyone take Solomon's rod any more literally than she
does the Savior's cross? We are bid, on a higher authority than
Solomon's proverbs, to take up our cross and follow Him. This we all
interpret figuratively. Would you dream, for instance, of binding
heavy crosses of wood upon the backs of your children because you felt
yourselves so enjoined in the literal sense of the Scriptures? Why,
then, take the rod literally? It is as clearly used to designate any
form of orderly discipline as the cross is used to designate endurance
of necessary sorrows. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh
alive.'
"As to your next question about quick results, I must recognize that
you are in a most difficult position. For not the best conceivable
intentions, nor the highest wisdom, can make the unnatural conditions
you have to meet, as good as natural ones. In any asylum many purely
artificial requirements must be made to meet the artificial situation.
Time and space, those temporal appearances, grow to be menacing
monsters, take to themselves the chief realities. Nevertheless,
_so far as you are able_, you surely want to do the natural, right,
unforced thing. And with each successful effort will come fresh wisdom
and fresh strength for the next.
"Let me suggest, in the case you mention, of insolence, that three
practical courses are open to you: one to send or lead the child
quietly from the room, with the least aggressiveness possible, so as
not further to excite her opposition, and to keep her apart from the
rest until she is sufficiently anxious for society to be willing to
make an effort to deserve it; or two, to do nothing, permitting a
large and eloquent silence to accentuate the rebellious words; or
three, to call for the condemnation of the child's mates. Speaking to
one or two whose response you are sure of first, ask each one present
for a expression of opinion. This is so severe a punishment that it
ought not often to be invoked; but it is deadly sure."
STEALING
"The question of honesty is, indeed, most difficult. I do not think it
would lower the standard of morality to _assume_ honesty, as the thing
you expected to find, to accept almost any other explanation, to agree
with the whole body of children that dishonesty was so much the fault
of dreadfully poor people who had nothing unless they stole it, that
it could not be their fault, who had so much--couldn't be the fault of
anyone who was well brought up as they were. Emphasize, in story and
side allusion, at all sorts of odd moments when no concrete desire
called away the children's minds, the fact that honesty is to be
expected everywhere, except among terribly unfortunate people--of
course assuming that they with their good shelter and good schooling
are among the fortunate ones. Then you will give each child not only
plenty of everything, but things individualized, easily distinguished,
and a place to put them in. I've often thought that the habit of
buying things wholesale--so many dolls, all exactly alike, so many
yards of calico for dresses, all exactly alike, leads, in institutions
like yours, to a vague conception of private property, and even
of individuality itself. If some room could be allowed for free
choice--the children be allowed to buy their own calicoes, within a
given price, or to choose the trimmings or style, etc. I feel sure the
result would be a sturdier self-respect and a greater sense of that
difference between individuals which needs emphasizing just as much as
does the solidarity of individuals."
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS FOR MOTHERS
Fundamental Books (Philosophy of Education--Pedagogy)
The Science of Rights ($5.00, postage 30c), J.G. Fichte.
Education of Man ($1.50, postage 12c), Friedrich Froebel.
Mottoes and Commentaries of Froebel's Mother Play ($1.50,
postage 14c), translated by Susan E. Blow.
The Part Played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man ($2.00,
postage 15c), from "A Century of Science," article by John
Fiske.
How Gertrude Teaches Her Children ($1.50, postage 14c),
Pestalozzi.
Levana, Bohn Library ($1.00, postage 12c), Jean Paul Richter.
Education ($1.25, postage 12c), Herbert Spencer.
General Books on Education
Household Education ($1.25, postage 10c), Harriet Martineau.
Bits of Talk About Home Matters ($1.25, Postage 10c), H.H.
Jackson.
Biography of a Baby ($1.50, postage 12c), Millicent Shinn.
Study of Child Nature ($1.00, postage 10c), Elizabeth
Harrison.
Two Children of the Foot Hills ($1.25, postage 10c), Elizabeth
Harrison.
The Moral Instruction of Children ($1.50, postage 14c), Felix
Adler.
The Children of the Future ($1.00, postage 10c), Nora A.
Smith.
Children's Rights ($1.00, postage 10c), Kate Douglas Wiggin
and Nora A. Smith.
Republic of Childhood (3 vols., each $1.00; postage 10c), Kate
Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith.
Educational Reformers ($1.50, postage 14c), Quick.
Lectures to Kindergartners ($1.00, postage 10c), Elizabeth
Peabody.
The Place of the Story in Early Education ($0.50, postage 6c),
Sara E. Wiltse.
Children's Ways ($1.25, postage 10c), Sully.
Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers ($3.50, postage 20c),
Barnard.
Adolescence (2 vols., $7.50; postage 56c), G. Stanley Hall.
Psychology and Advanced
The Mind of the Child (2 vols., each $1.50, postage 10c), W.
Preyer.
The Intellectual and Moral Development of the Child ($1.50,
postage 12c), G. Compayre.
Child Study ($1.25, postage 14c), Amy Tanner.
The Story of the Mind ($0.35, postage 6c), J. Mark Baldwin.
Psychology (Briefer Course, $1.60; postage 16c. Advanced
Course, 2 vols., $4.80; postage 44c), James.
School and Society ($1.00, postage 10c), John Dewey.
Emile ($0.90, postage 8c), Rousseau.
Pedagogics of the Kindergarten ($1.50, postage 12c), Froebel.
Education by Development ($1.50, postage 12c), Froebel.
Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers, Henry Barnard.
Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel ($1.50,
postage 12c), Blow.
Studies of Childhood ($2.50, postage 20c), Sully.
Mental Development ($1.75, postage 16c), Baldwin.
Education of Central Nervous System ($1.00, postage 16c),
Halleck.
Child Observations, Imitative Symbolic Education ($1.50,
postage 12c), Blow.
Interest as Related to Will ($0.25, postage 6c), Dewey.
Religious Training
Christian Nurture ($1.25, postage 12c), Horace Bushnell.
On Holy Ground ($3.00, Postage 30c), W.L. Worcester.
The Psychology of Religion ($1.50, postage 14c), E.D.
Starbuck.
The Sex Question
The Song of Life ($1.25, postage 12c), Margaret Morley.
What a Young Boy Ought to Know ($1.00, postage 10c), Rev.
Sylvanus Stall.
What a Young Girl Ought to Know ($1.00, postage 10c), Rev.
Sylvanus Stall.
Duties of Parents to Children in Regard to Sex ($0.40, postage
4c), Rev. Wm. L. Worcester.
How to Tell the Story of Reproduction to Children, Pamphlet
5c; order from Mothers' Union, 3408 Harrison Street, Kansas
city, Mo.
Of General Interest to Mothers
Wilhelm Meister ($1.00, postage 14c), Goethe.
Story of My Life ($1.50, postage 14c), Helen Keller.
The Ordeal of Richard Feveril ($1.50, postage 14c), George
Meredith.
Up from Slavery ($1.50, postage 14c), Booker T. Washington.
Emmy Lou ($1.50, Postage 14c), Mrs. George Madden Marten.
The Golden Age ($1.00, postage 10c), Kenneth Grahame.
Dream Days ($1.00, postage 10c), Kenneth Grahame.
In the Morning Glow ($1.25, Postage 12c), Roy Rolf Gilson.
Man and His Handiwork, Wood.
Primitive Industry ($5.00, postage 40c), Abbott.
Every Day Essays ($1.25, postage 10c), Marion Foster
Washburne.
Family Secrets ($1.25, postage 10c), Marion Foster Washburne.
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Fairy Tales
Grimm's Fairy Tales ($0.50, postage 14c).
Andrew Lang's Green, Yellow, Blue and Red Fairy Books (each
$0.50, postage 14c).
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales ($0.50, portage 14c).
Tanglewood Tales ($0.75, postage 14c), Hawthorne.
The Wonder Book ($0.75, postage 12c), Hawthorne.
Old Fashioned Fairy Tales by Tom Hood, retold by Marion Foster
Washburne. (In press.)
Adventures of a Brownie, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. Edited
by Marion Foster Washburne. (In press.)
A Few Books for Various Ages
Water Babies ($0.75, postage 12c), Charles Kingsley.
At the Back of the North Wind ($0.75, postage 12c), George
McDonald.
Little Lame Price ($0.50, postage 8c), Dinah Maria Mulock
Craik.
In the Child World ($2.00, postage 16c), Emilie Poulson.
Nature Myths ($0.35, postage 6c), Flora J. Cooke.
Sharp Eyes ($2.50, postage 18c), Gibson.
Stories Mother Nature Told ($0.50, postage 6c), Jane Andrew.
Jungle Books (2 vols, each $1.50; postage 16c), Kipling.
Just-So Stories ($1.20, postage 12c), Kipling.
Music for Children
Finger Plays ($1.25, postage 12c), Emilie Poulson.
Fifty Children's Songs, Reinecke.
Songs of the Child World (2 vols., each $1.00; postage 12c),
Gaynor.
Songs for the Children (2 vols., each $1.25; postage 14c),
Eleanor Smith.
30 Selected Studies (Instrumental), ($1.50, postage 14c),
Heller.
Pictures for Children
Detaille Prints, Boutet de Monvil, Joan of Arc.
Caldecott: Picture Books (4 vols., each $1.25; postage 12c).
Walter Crane: Picture Books ($1.25, postage 10c).
Colored illustrations cut from magazines, notably those drawn
by Howard Pyle, Elizabeth Shippen Greene, and Jessie Wilcox
Smith.
See articles in "Craftsman" for December, 1904, February and
April, 1905, "Decorations for School Room and Nursery."
_Note_.--Books in the above list may be purchased through the
American School of Home Economics at the prices given. Members
of the School will receive students' discount.
Program for Supplemental Work
on the
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
By Marion Foster Washburne.
MEETING I
Infancy. (Study pages 3-25)
(a) Its Meaning. See Fiske on "The Part Played by Infancy in the
Evolution of Man" in "A Century of Science" (16c).
(b) General Laws of Progression. See Millicent Shinn's "Biography of
a Baby" (12c), and W. Preyer's "The Mind of the Child" (20c). Give
resumes of these two books.
(c) Practical Conclusions. Hold Experience Meeting to conclude
afternoon.
MEETING II
Faults and Their Remedies. (Study pages 26-57)
(a) General Principles of Moral Training. Read Herbert Spencer on
"Education" (12c), chapter on "Punishment"; also call for quotations
from H.H. Jackson's "Bits of Talk About Home Matters" (10c).
(b) Corporal Punishment. Why It Is Wrong.
(c) Positive Versus Negative Moral Training. Read extracts from
Froebel's "Education of Man" (12c), and Richter's "Levana" (12c), Kate
Douglas Wiggin's "Children's Rights" (10c), and Elizabeth Harrison's
"Study of Child Nature" (10c), are easier and pleasanter reading,
sound, but less fundamental. Choice may be made between these two sets
of books, according to conditions.
(Select answer to test questions on Part I and send them to the
School.)
MEETING III
Character Building. (Study pages 59-75)
Read extracts from Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Harriet Martineau.
(a) From Froebel to show general principles (12c).
(b) From Pestalozzi (14c) or if that is not available, from "Mottoes
and Commentaries on Froebel's Mother-Play" (14c), to show ideal
application of these general principles.
(c) From Harriet Martineau's "Household Education" (10c), "Children's
Rights" (10c), to show actual application of these general principles.
Experience meeting.
MEETING IV
Educational Value of Play and Occupations. (Study pages 78-99)
(a) General Principles--Quote authorities from past to present. Read
from "Education of Man" (12c) and "Mother Play" (14c).
(b) Representative and Symbolic Plays. See "Education of Man" (12c)
and "Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel" (12c). Dancing
and Drama from Richter's "Levana" (12c).
(c) Nature's Playthings (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water). Ask members
of class to describe plays of their own childhood and tell what they
meant to them.
(Select answer to test questions on Part II.)
MEETING V
Art and Literature in Child Life. (Study pages 100-112)
Ask members to bring good pictures and story-books, thus making
exhibit.
(a) Place of Pictures in Children's Lives. Of Color. Of Modeling.
Influence of artistic surroundings. If anyone knows of a model nursery
or schoolroom, let her describe it. Are drawing and modeling at school
"fads" or living bases for educational processes? See Dewey on "The
School and Society" (10c).
(b) Place of fiction in education. See "The Place of the Story in
Early Education" (6c).
(c) Accomplishments. Practical discussion of the advantages and
disadvantages of music lessons, the languages, and other work out of
school. See "Adolescence," by G. Stanley Hall.
MEETING VI
Social and Religious Training. (Study pages 114-140 and Supplement)
(a) The Question of Associations. See Dewey's "The School and Society"
(10c), "The Republic of Childhood" (30c). Quote "Up from Slavery"
(14c) and "Story of My Life" (14c), to show that the humblest
companions may sometimes be the most desirable.
(b) The New Education. See catalogues of the Francis W. Parker School,
Chicago, Ill., (4c); The Elementary School, University of Chicago,
(6c); State Normal School, Hyannis, Mass., (4c); "School Gardens,"
Bulletin No. 160, Office of Experiment Stations, Department of
Agriculture, Washington, D.C., (2c).
(c) The Sex Question. Where are the foundations of morality
laid--church, school, home, or street? Read entire, "Duties of Parents
to Children in Regard to Sex" (pamphlet, 5c).
(d) Religious Training. Read from "Christian Nurture" (12c) and
"Psychology of Religion" (14c). (Select answer to test questions on
Part III.)
For more extended program, book lists for mothers, children's book
list, loan papers, send to the National Congress of Mothers, Mrs. E.C.
Grice, Corresponding Secretary, 3308 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
Price, 10 cents each. See also "The Child in Home, School, and State,"
with address by President Roosevelt.--Report of the N.C.M. for 1905.
Price, 50c.
NOTE.--When reference books mentioned in the foregoing program are not
available from public libraries, they may be borrowed of the A.S.H.E.
for the cost of postage indicated in parentheses. Three books may be
borrowed at one time by a class, one by an individual. For class work,
a book may be kept for two weeks, or longer, if there is no other call
for it. Send stamps with requests, which should be made several weeks
in advance to avoid disappointment.
INDEX
Abnormal laziness, 47
Abstract studies, 119
Accomplishments and studies, 119
showy, 123
Accounts, personal, 129
Adolescence, religious excitability, 136
Adult's world, 24
Advantage of positive commands, 61
Affections, cultivation of, 45
Aims of kindergarten, 45
Air as a plaything, 82
castles, 163
Allowance, regular, 127
Alternate growth of children, 14
Anaemia, 47
Answer honest questions, 71
Answers to questions, 160
Application of principles, 141
Aristotle's teachings, 76
Art and literature in child life, 101
and nature, 112
classic, 102
influence of, 101
plastic, 104
Associates, children's, 113
exclusive, 114
Baby-jumpers, 14
Bandaging the abdomen, 21
Beginnings of will, 7
Bible, children's, 139
Bible lessons made real, 139
study, 138
Bonfires, 85
Books for children, 111, 170
Bottle-fed babies, 25
Breaking the will, 29
Busy work, 97
Care of pets, 45
Cause of impudence, 51
of irritability and nervousness, 35
of rupture, 21
of temper, 35
Character building, rules in, 74
Children, other people's, 145
Children's associates, 113
Bible, 139
clubs, value of, 45
hour, the, 118
Child's share in family republic, 65
world, 24
Classic art, 102
Clay modeling, 80
Climbing, 13
Clothing, proper, 20
Color, 102
Colored pictures, 104
Commands, disagreeable, 37
positive, 35
useless, 11
Company ways, 161
Conclusion, 140
Condition at birth, 3
Consciousness of self, 6
Corporal punishment, 54, 166
Correlation of studies, 121
Correspondence training, 142
Costume model, 21
Creeping, 12
Cultivate affections, 45
Cutting and pasting, 99
Daily outing, 18
Dancing for children, 87
Danger of forcing, 12
Dangerous pastimes, 83
Darwin's observations, 9
Depravity, original, 61
Development of intellect, 126
premature, 3
Diagram of Gertrude suit, 23
Diet, simple, 25
Disadvantages of Sunday Schools, 134
Disagreeable commands, 37
Discipline, educative, 57
Disobedience, 30
real, 33
Double standard of morality, 53
Double standards, 158
Drama, 107
Dramatic games, 107
plays, 87
Drawing and painting, 99
Dress for play, 79
Dress, proper, 20
Duties, systematized, 37
Duty to one's self, 164
Education, the new, 120
scientific, 121
Educational beginnings, 5
exercises, 5
value of play, 77
Educative discipline, 57
Effect of Sunday school teaching, 132
Emergencies, 30
Enthusiasm, religious, 135
"Enthusiasms", 124
Essentials of play, 78
Evasive lying, 39
Evils, permanent, 28
resulting from corporal punishment, 55
Example, bad, 52
courteous, 54
evil, 115
versus precept, 34, 68
Exclusive associates, 114
Fairy tales, 109
Family republic, 64
Fathers, 152
responsibilities of, 154
Fatigue harmful to children, 94
Faults and their remedies, 26
real, 28
temporary, 24
Fear versus love, 55
Feeding, indiscriminate, 25
Financial training, 126
Fire as a plaything, 84
First grasping, 8
Fiske's doctrine of right, 64
teachings, 15
Food, natural, 24
question, 162
undesired, 11
Forcing, danger of, 12
Fresh air, 18
Froebel's great motto, 70
philosophy, 59
Fundamental principles of the new education, 59
Games, dramatic, 107
Gardens for children, 81
Gertrude suit, 21
Goodness, original, 61
Goodness, negative, 32
Grasping, 9, 11
Growth of children, 14
of will, 8
Helping, 93
mother, 91
Home kindergarten, 90
How the child develops, 3
Imagination and sympathy, 110
Imitativeness, instinct of, 32
Imaginative lying, 39
Immature judgment, 30
Impudence, cause of, 51
Incomplete development at birth, 4
Indiscriminate feeding, 25
punishment, 55
Industry, willing, 94
Influence of art, 101
Inherited crookedness, 41
disposition, 38
Instinct, 9
of imitativeness, 32
Instrumental music, 107
Intellect, development of, 126
Irritability, cause of, 35
Jealousy, 42
Justice and love in the family, 42
Kindergarten, aims of, 45
as a remedy for selfishness, 44
methods, 62
methods in the home, 90
social advantages of, 113
Knit garments, 22
Law-making habit, 70
Laziness, 46
Liberty, 33, 64
Limitations of words, 67
Literature, 108
and art, 101
Looking, 9
Love of work, 93
versus fear, 55
Low voice commands, 66
Lungs, weak, 21
Luther's teachings, 76
Lying, evasive, 39
imaginative, 39
kinds of, 38
politic, 40
Magazines for children, 111
Magic lantern, 85
Massage, 5
Meaning of righteousness, 72
Model costume, 21
Modeling apron, 81
clay, 80
Monotony undesirable, 95
Moral precocity, 73
training, object of, 60
Mother and teacher, 165
Mother, teaching, 92
Mothers as teachers, 134
Mud pies, 80
Muscular development, 5
Music for children, 106
instrumental, 107
study of, 124
Mystery of sex, 72
Nagging, 96
Naps, 20
Natural food, 24
punishment, 29
talent, 124
Nature study, 112
Negative goodness, 32
Neighbors' opinions, 63
Nervousness, cause of, 35
New education, the, 120
principles of, 59
Normal child, 12
Nursery requisites, 16
Object of moral training, 60
of punishment, 40
Objection to pinning blanket, 21
Obligation of truthfulness, 38
Occupations, 90
Only child, the, 44
Opportunity for growth, 16
Order of development, 9
Other people's children, 145
Outing, daily, 18
Painting and drawing, 99
Parental indulgence, 154
vanity, 125
Pasting and cutting, 99
Permanent evils, 28
Personal accounts, 129
Pets, care of, 45
Physical cause of laziness, 46
culture, 123
culture records, 25
Philosophy, Froebel's, 59
Pictures, colored, 104
Pinning blanket, objection to, 21
Plastic art, 104
Play, 76
educational value of, 77
essentials of, 78
with the limbs, 5
Politeness to children, 69
Politic lie, the, 40
Positive commands, 35, 61
Precautions to prevent attacks of temper, 37
with fire, 84
Precocity, 15
moral, 73
Premature development, 3
Preyer's record, 11, 19
Principles, application of, 141
Prohibitions, useless, 34
Punishment, corporal, 54
indiscriminate, 55
natural, 29
object of, 40
self, 34
Questions, answers to, 160
Quick temper, 35
Real disobedience, 33
faults, 28
Reflex grasping, 7
Regular allowance, 127
Religious enthusiasm, 135
excitability of adolescence, 136
training, 131
Remedy for fits of temper, 36
Responsibilities of fathers, 154
Restrictions of dress, 79
Rhythmic movements, 86
Richter's views, 28, 87
Right doing, 28
made easy, 63
Righteousness, meaning of, 72
Right material for play, 79
Rights of others, 64
Rules in character building, 74
Rupture, cause of, 21
Sand piles, 80
Scientific education, 121
Self-distrustful child, 160
Selfishness, 43
Self-mastery, 29
punishment, 34
Sewing, 98
Sex, 71
mystery of, 72
question, the, 149
Showy accomplishments, 123
Simple diet, 25
Sleep, sufficient, 19
Social advantages of kindergarten, 113
Soft spot in head, 4
Solitude remedy for temper, 36
Songs for children, 86
Spencer's view, 29
Spending foolishly, 128
wisely, 127
Standard of morality, double, 53
Standing, 14
Stanley Hall's views, 137
Stealing, 168
Stockinet for undergarments, 22
Story telling, 93
Studies, abstract, 119
and accomplishments,119
correlation of, 121
Success in child training, 143
Sullenness, 38
Sunday school, disadvantage of, 134
effect of, 132
teachers, 131
Sunlight necessary for growth, 16
Sympathy and imagination, 110
in play, 79
Symptoms of anaemia, 47
Systematized duties, 37
Talent, natural, 124
Teaching mother, 92
Telling stories, 93
Temperament, emotional, 42
Temperature of nursery, 18
Temper, cause of, 35
precautions to prevent attacks of, 37
Temporary faults, 24
Theater, 108
Theory before practice, 161
Thermometer in nursery, 18
Throwing, 10
Tiedemann's teachings, 35
Touching forbidden things, 11
Toys, 83, 88, 89
Training, financial, 126
for parents, 142
religious, 131
Truthfulness, obligations of, 38
Unconscious influence, 157
Underclothing, 22
Undesired food, 11
Undisciplined will, 30
Unresponsiveness, 38
Unsought advice, 148
Untidiness, its remedy, 49
Useless commands, 11
prohibitions, 34
Value of children's clubs, 45
Vanity, parental, 125
Variable periods of growth, 15
Ventilation, means of, 18
Walking, 14
Water as a plaything, 82
colors, 99
Weak lungs, 21
Weight at birth, 4
Wholesome surroundings, 16
Will, beginnings of, 7
breaking, the, 29
growth of, 8
Willful child, 34
Willing industry, 94
Will, undisciplined, 30
Work, beautiful, 96
love of, 93
Wrappings, extra, 21