SELFISHNESS AND PROPERTY
I come now to a problem analogous to that of Fear, in that we are
concerned with an impulse which is strong, partly instinctive, and
largely undesirable. In all such cases, we have to be careful not to
thwart a child’s nature. It is useless to shut our eyes to his nature,
or to wish that it were different; we must accept the raw material
which is provided, and not attempt to treat it in ways only applicable
to some different material.
Selfishness is not an ultimate ethical conception; the more it is
analysed, the vaguer it becomes. But as a phenomenon in the nursery
it is perfectly definite, and presents problems with which it is
very necessary to cope. Left to himself, an older child will seize a
younger child’s toys, demand more than his share of grown-up attention,
and generally pursue his desires regardless of the younger child’s
disappointments. A human ego, like a gas, will always expand unless
restrained by external pressure. The object of education, in this
respect, is to let the external pressure take the form of habits,
ideas and sympathies in the child’s own mind, not of knocks and blows
and punishments. The idea which is needed is that of justice, not
self-sacrifice. Every person has a right to a certain amount of room
in the world, and should not be made to feel wicked in standing up for
what is due to him. When self-sacrifice is taught, the idea seems to be
that it will not be fully practised, and that the practical result will
be about right. But in fact people either fail to learn the lesson, or
feel sinful when they demand mere justice, or carry self-sacrifice to
ridiculous extremes. In the last case, they feel an obscure resentment
against the people to whom they make renunciations, and probably allow
selfishness to return by the back door of a demand for gratitude. In
any case, self-sacrifice cannot be true doctrine, because it cannot be
universal; and it is most undesirable to teach falsehood as a means to
virtue, because when the falsehood is perceived the virtue evaporates.
Justice, on the contrary, can be universal. Therefore justice is the
conception that we ought to try to instil into the child’s thoughts and
habits.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to teach justice to a solitary
child. The rights and desires of grown-up people are so different from
those of children that they make no imaginative appeal; there is
hardly ever direct competition for exactly the same pleasure. Moreover,
as the grown-up people are in a position to exact obedience to their
own demands, they have to be judges in their own case, and do not
produce upon the child the effect of an impartial tribunal. They can,
of course, give definite precepts inculcating this or that form of
convenient behaviour: not to interrupt when their mother is counting
the wash, not to shout when their father is busy, not to obtrude
their concerns when there are visitors. But these are inexplicable
requirements, to which, it is true, the child submits willingly enough
if otherwise kindly treated, but which make no appeal to his own sense
of what is reasonable. It is right that the child should be made to
obey such rules, because he must not be allowed to be a tyrant, and
because he must understand that other people attach importance to their
own pursuits, however odd those pursuits may be. But not much more
than external good behaviour is to be got by such methods; the real
education in justice can only come where there are other children.
This is one of many reasons why no child should long be solitary.
Parents who have the misfortune to have an only child should do all
that they can to secure companionship for it, even at the cost of a
good deal of separation from home, if no other way is possible. A
solitary child must be either suppressed or selfish--perhaps both by
turns. A well-behaved only child is pathetic, and an ill-behaved one
is a nuisance. In these days of small families, this is a more serious
trouble than it used to be. It is one of the grounds for advocating
nursery-schools, as to which I shall have more to say in a later
chapter. But for the moment I shall assume a family of two at least,
not very widely separated in age, so that their tastes are largely the
same.
Where there is competition for a pleasure which can only be enjoyed by
one at a time, such as a ride in a wheelbarrow, it will be found that
the children readily understand justice. Their impulse, of course, is
to demand the pleasure for themselves to the exclusion of the others,
but it is surprising how quickly this impulse is overcome when the
grown-ups institute the system of a turn for each. I do not believe
that a sense of justice is innate, but I have been astonished to see
how quickly it can be created. Of course, it must be real justice;
there must not be any secret bias. If you are fonder of some of the
children than of others, you must be on your guard to prevent your
affections from having any influence on your distribution of pleasures.
It is of course a generally recognized principle that toys must be
equal.
It is quite useless to attempt to suppress the demand for justice by
any kind of moral training. Do not give more than justice, but do not
expect the child to accept less. There is a chapter in “The Fairchild
Family” on “The Secret Sins of the Heart” which illustrates the methods
to be avoided. Lucy has maintained that she has been good, so her
mother tells her that even when her behaviour is all right her thoughts
are wrong, and quotes: “The heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked” (Jeremiah, xvii, 9). So Mrs. Fairchild gives Lucy
a little book in which to record the “desperately wicked” things that
are in her heart when outwardly she is good. At breakfast, her parents
give a ribbon to her sister and a cherry to her brother, but nothing to
her. She records in her book that at this point she had a very wicked
thought, that her parents loved her brother and sister better than
they loved her. She had been taught, and she believed, that she ought
to cope with this thought by moral discipline; but by this method it
could only be driven underground, to produce strange distorted effects
in later years. The proper course would have been for her to express
her feeling, and for her parents to dispel it either by giving her a
present, too, or by explaining, in a way she could understand, that she
must wait for another time, as no further present was available at the
moment. Truth and frankness dispel difficulties, but the attempt at
repressive moral discipline only aggravates them.
Closely connected with justice is the sense of property. This is a
difficult matter, which must be dealt with by adaptable tact, not by
any rigid set of rules. There are, in fact, conflicting considerations,
which make it difficult to take a clear line. On the one hand, the
love of property produces many terrible evils in later years; the fear
of losing valued material possessions is one of the main sources of
political and economic cruelty. It is desirable that men and women
should, as far as possible, find their happiness in ways which are not
subject to private ownership, _i.e._, in creative rather than defensive
activities. For this reason, it is unwise to cultivate the sense of
property in children if it can be helped. But before proceeding to act
upon this view, there are some very strong arguments on the other side,
which it would be dangerous to neglect. In the first place, the sense
of property is very strong in children; it develops as soon as they
can grasp objects which they see (the hand-eye co-ordination). What
they grasp, they feel is theirs, and they are indignant if it is taken
away. We still speak of a property as a “holding”, and “maintenance”
means “holding in the hand”. These words show the primitive connection
between property and grasp; so does the word “grasping”. A child
which has no toys of its own will pick up sticks or broken bricks or
any odds and ends it may find, and will treasure them as its very own.
The desire for property is so deep-seated that it cannot be thwarted
without danger. Moreover property cultivates carefulness and curbs the
impulse of destruction. Especially useful is property in anything that
the child has made himself; if this is not permitted, his constructive
impulses are checked.
Where the arguments are so conflicting, we cannot adopt any clear-cut
policy, but must be guided to a great extent by circumstances and the
child’s nature. Nevertheless, something can be said as to the means of
reconciling these opposites in practice.
Among toys, some should be private and some common. To take an extreme
case, a rocking-horse would of course always be common. This suggests
a principle: where a toy can be equally enjoyed by all, but only by
one at a time, it should be common if it is too large or expensive to
be duplicated. On the other hand, toys more adapted to one child than
to another (because of difference of age, for example) may properly
belong to the one to whom they give the most pleasure. If a toy wants
careful handling which an older child has learnt to give, it is fair
that a younger child should not be allowed to get hold of it and
spoil it. The younger child should be compensated by private property
in the toys specially appropriate to its age. After two years old, a
broken toy should not be immediately replaced if it has been broken
by the child’s carelessness; it is just as well that the loss should
be felt for a while. Do not let a child always refuse the use of its
own toys to other children. Whenever it has more than it can actually
use, it should not be allowed to protest if another child plays with
those that it is not using. But here I should except toys which the
other child is likely to break, and toys out of which their owner has
constructed some edifice which is a source of pride. Until the edifice
is forgotten, it should, if possible, be allowed to stand, as a reward
of industry. Subject to these provisos, do not let the child develop a
dog-in-the-manger attitude; it must never be allowed to prevent another
child’s enjoyment wantonly. It is not very difficult to teach a modicum
of decent behaviour in these respects, and it is quite worth the
necessary firmness. Do not allow a child to snatch things from another
child, even when it would be within its legal rights in doing so. If an
older child is unkind to a younger one, show a similar unkindness to
the older one, and explain immediately why you do so. By such methods
it is not difficult to establish that degree of kindness in children to
each other which is necessary to prevent constant storms and tears.
On occasion, a certain amount of sternness may be necessary, amounting
to a mild form of punishment. But on no account must a habit of
tyrannizing over the weak be allowed to develop.
While permitting a certain number of cherished possessions, it is
well to encourage the habit of using toys, such as bricks, to which
the child only has the exclusive right while he is using them. The
Montessori apparatus is common to all the children, but so long as a
child is using one piece of apparatus no other child must interfere.
This develops a sense of limited tenant-right, dependent upon work;
such a sense does not run counter to anything that is desirable in
later years. For very young children, this method is hardly applicable,
because they are not yet sufficiently constructive. But as they acquire
skill it becomes more and more possible to interest them in the process
of building. So long as they know they can have the material for
construction whenever they like, they will not much mind others having
it too, and the reluctance to sharing which they may feel at first is
soon dispelled by custom. Nevertheless, when a child is old enough, he
should, I think, be allowed to own books, because that will increase
his love of books and therefore stimulate reading. The books that are
his own property should, as far as possible, be good books, such as
Lewis Carroll and Tanglewood Tales, not mere trash. If the children
want trash, it should be common property.
The broad principles involved are: First, do not produce in the child
a sense of thwarting from not having enough property; this is the way
to produce a miser. Secondly, allow the child private property when it
stimulates a desirable activity, and, in particular, where it teaches
careful handling. But subject to these limitations turn the child’s
attention, as far as you can, to pleasures not involving private
ownership. And even where there is private ownership, do not allow the
child to be mean or miserly when other children wish to be allowed to
play with his things. As to this, however, the object is to induce the
child to lend of his own free will; so long as authority is required,
the end aimed at has not been achieved. In a happy child, it should not
be difficult to stimulate a generous disposition; but if the child is
starved of pleasures, he will of course cling tenaciously to those that
are attainable. It is not through suffering that children learn virtue,
but through happiness and health.