One of the important things to accomplish in the forming of character
in children is to find out what useful occupation is, to each of them,
recreation instead of dull work.
No individual of normal mental capacity is born without some useful
equipment if opportunity be offered for its discovery and development.
It is this which separates man from the rest of creation so distinctly
that it seems almost to endow him with god-like attributes.
As children are tireless and persistent in play, even so will men be
tireless and persistent in work if the particular useful occupation,
that to them is recreative, can be selected by them.
The venerable historian and diplomat, Bancroft, while residing in
Washington, and still assiduously pursuing his life-work when he was
nearly ninety years of age, was interviewed by an eminent journalist
of his acquaintance for the purpose of collecting biographical data.
The interviewer expressed amazement at the evidences of hard work on
the desk and scattered about the study of the historian, and inquired,
"At your time of life do you not find your work something of a burden?
Most men aim to retire long before they have reached your age."
Mr. Bancroft's face took on an amused expression and then a broad
smile at the question as he replied, "Work is but a comparative term.
I never work. That is, I never work in the sense that is usually meant
by the use of the word. I was very fortunate in the choice of an
occupation. A person is lucky who in his youth selects the occupation
that can furnish him with recreation in his old age."
Jacque, the great animal painter of the last generation, once said to
the writer, "I am beginning to suffer weakness in my eyes so that I
cannot work more than half an hour at a time. I feel it with great
sorrow, for I have yet so much that I want to do in this life."
These happen to be examples from men who had earned success and reaped
great honor, but they are not unusual. There are many who never tire
of helping nature to raise crops useful to man, others who never are
weary of cultivating fine breeds of domestic animals, and yet others
who are never quite happy when absent from the bench or the lathe.
The contention of pessimists, that there must always be some unskilled
and needy units to perform the drudgery of society that would
otherwise remain undone, is pernicious falsehood.
There always will be found some means of performing the drudgery of
work even if the time should come when there are no longer any misfit
occupations and consequent drudgery and discontent among men.
When there are no longer any machine men there will be automata of
iron, steel or wood to take their place.
A few years ago a wave spread over the fashionable world whose mandate
was that it was not respectable to engage in any useful occupation.
Fortunately, that wave has passed on, to be remembered only as one of
the curiosities of social evolution, as related to the progressive
nations and races, so that now it is not quite respectable not to be
useful to society in some active manner.
It is true that many men and women are as tireless as children in
doing something under the name of "Sport" that they would not be hired
to do under the name of "Work," but such are usually of the _nouveau
riche_ class who think to accentuate their new position in the
stratum of fortune called "society" by a show of independence and
leisure.
The real sentiment of the age, however, is that useful occupation is
necessary to respectability, and the most important discovery for any
age or for any individual is that _true happiness can result only
from_--is the evidence and fruit of--_conscious usefulness_.
Nothing else is so important to character-formation as ample
facilities for finding out the occupation that each child would rather
engage in than do anything else or nothing. The range of the useful
occupations is not so great but what preference tests can easily be
secured in every community near at hand. Manual-training institutions
furnish a very wide range of choice, and parental farms can be located
near to urban communities for nature tests, while a taste for the sea
will accompany a tendency to wander abroad and will draw as a magnet
to the source of its fascination.[4]
[4] Vacant lots in cities can even be used for the purpose
of nature study by planting potatoes in them, as
demonstrated by the Governor of Michigan.
There are millions of children born in the city whose yearnings may be
for the farm, the sea, or the woods. The pessimistic cry of the
present time is that country youth flock to the city and congest labor
conditions there while the cultivation of the land is neglected. With
a proper appreciation of the value of character-building or
useful-habit-forming, and systematic provision of tests for preference
of occupation, this unbalance of the proper division of labor need not
obtain.
From our own observation and experience we know that there are more
city children who would delight in country occupations, if they only
had a chance to know something of the possibilities of pleasure in
them, than there are country children who can find a preference for
city limitations.
The parental farms already established prove this to be true, and a
very important discovery in connection with them is that they can be
made not only self-sustaining but profitable.
The expression, "Many a good sailor is spoiled by being shut up in a
shop when he ought to be on the bridge, or aloft trimming sail," is
true and might be changed to adapt itself to many misfit occupations.
One thing is certain, and that is, if the occupation is not productive
of happiness it is a misfit.
The development of the kindergarten and manual-training schools has
revealed the possibilities of cultivating character and habit along
the line of useful preference and has been even more important to the
evolution of usefulness than has the harnessing of the forces of
nature for the use of man in performing the drudgery of work. From a
minor branch of education, the character-building and habit-forming
schools that are developing out of the success of the kindergarten
method will come to be recognized as the _basis of government, in
that they are the nurseries of good citizenship_.
Reiteration of this statement cannot rightly be criticised, for it is
the ever-recurring theme on which the development of social harmony is
being built.
The restless energy of children often provokes the remark, "Oh! if the
energy the little ones expend could only be gathered and stored for
useful application, we grown folks might take it easy." True enough!
and what we propose, as a means towards a quarantine that will prevent
in some degree any misdirection of this God-given and irrepressible
energy, can accomplish the wish. Many separate movements have been
instituted to take children out of unwholesome surroundings and give
them new views of life. The New York _Life_ and _The Daily News_, of
Chicago, have championed fresh air funds for the purpose of giving
infants days or weeks of outing at lake or sea side, or on farms, and
have built commodious pavilions for their comfort. The Rev. Doctor Gray
of the Forward Movement takes many separate squads of little ones into
the country each summer for a two weeks' season of camping, while the
residents on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva, Wis., take out over
five hundred waifs--ninety at a time--from Chicago and give them a two
weeks' summer vacation at the "Holiday Home," located in the midst of
their villas.
In this year of 1898 provision has been made by the Board of Education
of Chicago for a two months' school session during vacation, where the
instruction chiefly includes courses of art and nature-study.
Provision was made for two thousand children, but the applications
numbered more than four thousand and the disappointment of the
rejected ones was pitiful to see.[5] The parental farms established in
Massachusetts and elsewhere throughout the land have done a wonderful
work and show a crying need for many more of them.[6]
[5] NOTE.--We have learned since the above has been in type
that the fund supporting the Summer Vacation School was
raised through the sale of little national flags, promoted
by Miss Mary E. McDowell of the University of Chicago
Settlement.
[6] NOTE.--And now, August, 1898, Ex-President Cleveland,
gives practical emphasis to his oft-repeated advice relative
to the training of junior citizens, by the donation of a
valuable farm in New Jersey for the uses of a
farm-cottage-school for the waifs of Greater New York.
These are but a few of the experiments that are being made which lead
to a recognition of the necessity of complete advantages that will
effect a perfect social quarantine against the influence of evil
suggestions by giving an ample supply of good ones. But the greatest
good will come only when these institutions have become systematic
instead of spasmodic; complete instead of partial. Then, and only
then, will the progress of reform have been relieved of uncivilized
obstruction.
Governor Pingree of Michigan and Mayor Jones of Toledo, Ohio, are
making experiments in the same direction, but all such spontaneous
effort on the part of individual altruists is pioneering and leads the
way to systematic warfare, by peaceful means, against the forces of
evil and neglect that beset infancy and childhood in their
helplessness.