to be assigned again real home occupations, tasks they must do
conscientiously, habits of work arranged for week days and holidays
without oversight, in every case where the child can help himself.
Instead of the modern school child having a mother and servants about
him to get him ready for school and to help him to remember things, he
should have time every day before school to arrange his room and brush
his clothes, and there should be no effort to make him remember what
is connected with the school. The home and the school should combine
together systematically to let the child suffer for the results of his
own negligence.
Just the reverse of this system rules to-day. Mothers learn their
children's lessons, invent plays for them, read their story books to
them, arrange their rooms after them, pick up what they have let fall,
put in order the things they have left in confusion, and in this and
in other ways, by protective pampering and attention, their desire for
work, their endurance, the gifts of invention and imagination, qualities
proper to the child, become weak and passive. The home now is only a
preparation for school. In it, young people growing up, are accustomed
to receive services, without performing any on their part. They are
trained to be always receptive instead of giving something in return.
Then people are surprised at a youthful generation, selfish and
unrestrained, pressing forward shamelessly on all occasions before their
elders, crudely unresponsive in respect of those attentions, which in
earlier generations were a beautiful custom among the young.
To restore this custom, all the means usually adopted now to protect the
child from physical and psychical dangers and inconveniences, will have
to be removed. Throw the thermometer out of the window and begin with
a sensible course of toughening; teach the child to know and to bear
natural pain. Corporal punishment must be done away with not because
it is painful but because it is profoundly immoral and hopelessly
unsuitable. Repress the egoistic demands of the child when he interferes
with the work or rest of others; never let him either by caresses or by
nagging usurp the rights of grown people; take care that the servants do
not work against what the parents are trying to insist on in this and in
other matters.
We must begin in doing for the child in certain ways a thousand times
more and in others a hundred thousand times less. A beginning must be
made in the tenderest age to establish the child's feeling for nature.
Let him live year in and year out in the same country home; this is one
of the most significant and profound factors in training. It can be held
to even where it is now neglected. The same thing holds good of making
a choice library, commencing with the first years of life; so that the
child will have, at different periods of his life, suitable books for
each age; not as is now often the case, get quite spoilt by the constant
change of summer excursions, by worthless children's books, and costly
toys. They should never have any but the simplest books; the so-called
classical ones. They should be amply provided with means of preparing
their own playthings. The worst feature of our system are the playthings
which imitate the luxury of grown people. By such objects the covetous
impulse of the child for acquisition is increased, his own capacity for
discovery and imagination limited, or rather, it would be limited if
children with the sound instinct of preservation, did not happily smash
the perfect playthings, which give them no creative opportunity, and
themselves make new playthings from fir cones, acorns, thorns, and
fragments of pottery, and all other sorts of rubbish which can be
transformed into objects of great price by the power of the imagination.
To play with children in the right way is also a great art. It should
never be done if children do not themselves know what they are going
to do; it should always be a special treat for them as well as their
elders. But the adults must always on such occasions, leave behind every
kind of educational idea and go completely into the child's world of
thought and imagination. No attempt should be made to teach them
at these times anything else but the old satisfactory games. The
experiences derived from these games about the nature of the children,
who are stimulated in one direction or another by the game, must be kept
for later use.
Games in this way increase confidence between children and adults. They
learn to know their elders better. But to allow children to turn all the
rooms into places to play in, and to demand constantly that their elders
shall interest themselves in them, is one of the most dangerous species
of pampering common to the present day. The children become accustomed
to selfishness and mental dependence. Besides this constant educational
effort brings with it the dulling of the child's personality. If
children were free in their own world, the nursery, but out of it had
to submit to the strict limits imposed by the habits, wills, work,
and repose of parents, their requirements and their wishes, they would
develop into a stronger and more considerate race than the youth of the
present day. It is not so much talking about being considerate, but the
necessity of considering others, of really helping oneself and others,
that has an educational value. In earlier days, children were quiet
as mice in the presence of elder persons. Instead of, as they do now,
breaking into a guest's conversation, they learned to listen. If the
conversation of adults is varied, this can be called one of the best
educational methods for children. The ordinary life of children, under
the old system, was lived in the nursery where they received their most
important training from an old faithful servant and from one another.
From their parents they received corporal punishment, sometimes a
caress. In comparison with this system, the present way of parents and
children living together would be absolute progress, if parents could
but abstain from explaining, advising, improving, influencing every
thought and every expression. But all spiritual, mental, and bodily
protective rules make the child now indirectly selfish, because
everything centres about him and therefore he is kept in a constant
state of irritation. The six-yearold can disturb the conversation of the
adult, but the twelve-year-old is sent to bed about eight o'clock, even
when he, with wide open eyes, longs for a conversation that might be to
him an inspiring stimulus for life.
Certainly some simple habits so far as conduct and order, nourishment
and sleep, air and water, clothing and bodily movement, are concerned,
can be made the foundations for the child's conceptions of morality. He
cannot be made to learn soon enough that bodily health and beauty must
be regarded as high ethical characteristics, and that what is injurious
to health and beauty must be regarded as a hateful act. In this sphere,
children must be kept entirely independent of custom by allowing the
exception to every rule to have its valid place. The present anxious
solicitude that children should eat when the clock strikes, that they
get certain food at fixed meals, that they be clothed according to the
degree of temperature, that they go to bed when the clock strikes, that
they be protected from every drop of unboiled water and every extra
piece of candy, this makes them nervous, irritable slaves of habit. A
reasonable toughening process against the inequalities, discomforts, and
chances of life, constitutes one of the most important bases of joy of
living and of strength of temper. In this case too, the behaviour of the
person who gives the training, is the best means of teaching children
to smile at small contretemps, things which would throw a cloud over the
sun, if one got into the habit of treating them as if they were of great
importance. If the child sees the parent doing readily an unpleasant
duty, which he honestly recognises as unpleasant; if he sees a parent
endure trouble or an unexpected difficulty easily, he will be in honour
bound to do the like. Just as children without many words learn to
practice good deeds when they see good deeds practiced about them; learn
to enjoy the beauty of nature and art when they see that adults enjoy
them, so by living more beautifully, more nobly, more moderately, we
speak best to children. They are just as receptive to impressions of
this kind as they are careless of those made by force.
Since this is my alpha and omega in the art of education, I repeat now
what I said at the beginning of this book and half way through it. Try
to leave the child in peace; interfere directly as seldom as possible;
keep away all crude and impure impressions; but give all your care and
energy to see that personality, life itself, reality in its simplicity
and in its nakedness, shall all be means of training the child.
Make demands on the powers of children and on their capacity for
self-control, proportionate to the special stage of their development,
neither greater nor lesser demands than on adults. But respect the joys
of the child, his tastes, work, and time, just as you would those of an
adult. Education will thus become an infinitely simple and infinitely
harder art, than the education of the present day, with its
artificialised existence, its double entry morality, one morality for
the child, and one for the adult, often strict for the child and lax for
the adult and vice versa. By treating the child every moment as one does
an adult human being we free education from that brutal arbitrariness,
from those over-indulgent protective rules, which have transformed him.
Whether parents act as if children existed for their benefit alone, or
whether the parents give up their whole lives to their children, the
result is alike deplorable. As a rule both classes know equally little
of the feelings and needs of their children. The one class are happy
when the children are like themselves, and their highest ambition is
to produce in their children a successful copy of their own thoughts,
opinions, and ideals. Really it ought to pain them very much to see
themselves so exactly copied. What life expected from them and required
from them was just the opposite--a richer combination, a better
creation, a new type, not a reproduction of that which is already
exhausted. The other class strive to model their children not according
to themselves but according to their ideal of goodness. They show their
love by their willingness to extinguish their own personalities for
their children's sake. This they do by letting the children feel that
everything which concerns them stands in the foreground. This should be
so, but only indirectly.
The concerns of the whole scheme of life, the ordering of the home, its
habits, intercourse, purposes, care for the needs of children, and their
sound development, must stand in the foreground. But at present, in most
cases, children of tender years, as well as those who are older, are
sacrificed to the chaotic condition of the home. They learn self-will
without possessing real freedom, they live under a discipline which is
spasmodic in its application.
When one daughter after another leaves home in order to make herself
independent they are often driven to do it by want of freedom, or by
the lack of character in family life. In both directions the girl
sees herself forced to become something different, to hold different
opinions, to think different thoughts, to act contrary to the dictates
of her own being. A mother happy in the friendship of her own daughter,
said not long ago that she desired to erect an asylum for tormented
daughters. Such an asylum would be as necessary as a protection against
pampering parents as against those who are overbearing. Both alike,
torture their children though in different ways, by not understanding
the child's right to have his own point of view, his own ideal of
happiness, his own proper tastes and occupation. They do not see that
children exist as little for their parent's sake as parents do for their
children's sake. Family life would have an intelligent character if each
one lived fully and entirely his own life and allowed the others to do
the same. None should tyrannise over, nor should suffer tyranny from,
the other. Parents who give their home this character can justly
demand that children shall accommodate themselves to the habits of the
household as long as they live in it. Children on their part can ask
that their own life of thought and feeling shall be left in peace at
home, or that they be treated with the same consideration that would be
given to a stranger. When the parents do not meet these conditions they
themselves are the greater sufferers. It is very easy to keep one's son
from expressing his raw views, very easy to tear a daughter away from
her book and to bring her to a tea-party by giving her unnecessary
occupations; very easy by a scornful word to repress some powerful
emotion. A thousand similar things occur every day in good families
through the whole world. But whenever we hear of young people speaking
of their intellectual homelessness and sadness, we begin to understand
why father and mother remain behind in homes from which the daughters
have hastened to depart; why children take their cares, joys, and
thoughts to strangers; why, in a word, the old and the young generation
are as mutually dependent as the roots and flowers of plants, so often
separate with mutual repulsion.
This is as true of highly cultivated fathers and mothers as of simple
bourgeois or peasant parents. Perhaps, indeed, it may be truer of the
first class, the latter torment their children in a naive way, while the
former are infinitely wise and methodical in their stupidity. Rarely
is a mother of the upper class one of those artists of home life who
through the blitheness, the goodness, and joyousness of her character,
makes the rhythm of everyday life a dance, and holidays into festivals.
Such artists are often simple women who have passed no examinations,
founded no clubs, and written no books. The highly cultivated mothers
and the socially useful mothers on the other hand are not seldom those
who call forth criticism from their sons. It seems almost an invariable
rule that mothers should make mistakes when they wish to act for the
welfare of their sons. "How infinitely valuable," say their children,
"would I have found a mother who could have kept quiet, who would have
been patient with me, who would have given me rest, keeping the outer
world at a distance from me, with kindly soothing hands. Oh, would that
I had had a mother on whose breast I could have laid my head, to be
quiet and dream."
A distinguished woman writer is surprised that all of her
well-thought-out plans for her children fail--those children in whom
she saw the material for her passion for governing, the clay that she
desired to mould.
The writer just cited says very justly that maternal unselfishness
alone can perform the task of protecting a young being with wisdom
and kindliness, by allowing him to grow according to his own laws. The
unselfish mother, she says, will joyfully give the best of her life
energy, powers of soul and spirit to a growing being and then open all
doors to him, leaving him in the broad world to follow his own paths,
and ask for nothing, neither thanks, nor praise, nor remembrance. But to
most mothers may be applied the bitter exclamation of a son in the book
just mentioned, "even a mother must know how she tortures another; if
she has not this capacity by nature, why in the world should I recognise
her as my mother at all."
Certain mothers spend the whole day in keeping their children's nervous
system in a state of irritation. They make work hard and play joyless,
whenever they take a part in it. At the present time, too, the school
gets control of the child, the home loses all the means by which
formerly it moulded the child's soul life and ennobled family life.
The school, not father and mother, teaches children to play, the school
gives them manual training, the school teaches them to sing, to look at
pictures, to read aloud, to wander about out of doors; schools, clubs,
sport and other pleasures accustom youth in the cities more and more
to outside life, and a daily recreation that kills the true feeling for
holiday. Young people, often, have no other impression of home than that
it is a place where they meet society which bores them.
Parents surrender their children to schools in those years in which they
should influence their minds. When the school gives them back they
do not know how to make a fresh start with the children, for they
themselves have ceased to be young.
But getting old is no necessity; it is only a bad habit. It is very
interesting to observe a face that is getting old. What time makes out
of a face shows better than anything else what the man has made out
of time. Most men in the early period of middle age are neither
intellectually fat nor lean, they are hardened or dried up. Naturally
young people look upon them with unsympathetic eyes, for they feel that
there is such a thing as eternal youth, which a soul can win as a prize
for its whole work of inner development. But they look in vain for this
second eternal youth in their elders, filled with worldly nothingnesses
and things of temporary importance.
With a sigh they exclude the "old people" from their future plans and
they go out in the world in order to choose their spiritual parents.
This is tragic but just, for if there is a field on which man must sow a
hundred-fold in order to harvest tenfold it is the souls of children.
When I began at five years of age to make a rag doll, that by its weight
and size really gave the illusion of reality and bestowed much joy on
its young mother, I began to think about the education of my future
children. Then as now my educational ideal was that the children
should be happy, that they should not fear. Fear is the misfortune of
childhood, and the sufferings of the child come from the half-realised
opposition between his unlimited possibilities of happiness and the way
in which these possibilities are actually handled. It may be said that
life, at every stage, is cruel in its treatment of our possibilities of
happiness. But the difference between the sufferings of the adult
from existence, and the sufferings of the child caused by adults, is
tremendous. The child is unwilling to resign himself to the sufferings
imposed upon him by adults and the more impatient the child is against
unnecessary suffering, the better; for so much the more certainly will
he some day be driven to find means to transform for himself and for
others the hard necessities of life.
A poet, Rydberg, in our country who had the deepest intuition into
child's nature, and therefore had the deepest reverence for it, wrote as
follows: "Where we behold children we suspect there are princes, but as
to the kings, where are they?" Not only life's tragic elements diminish
and dam up its vital energies. Equally destructive is a parent's want
of reverence for the sources of life which meet them in a new being.
Fathers and mothers must bow their heads in the dust before the exalted
nature of the child. Until they see that the word "child" is only
another expression for the conception of majesty; until they feel that
it is the future which in the form of a child sleeps in their arms, and
history which plays at their feet, they will not understand that they
have as little power or right to prescribe laws for this new being as
they possess the power or might to lay down paths for the stars.
The mother should feel the same reverence for the unknown worlds in
the wide-open eyes of her child, that she has for the worlds which like
white blossoms are sprinkled over the blue orb of heaven; the father
should see in his child the king's son whom he must serve humbly with
his own best powers, and then the child will come to his own; not to the
right of asking others to become the plaything of his caprices but to
the right of living his full strong personal child's life along with
a father and a mother who themselves live a personal life, a life from
whose sources and powers the child can take the elements he needs for
his own individual growth. Parents should never expect their own highest
ideals to become the ideals of their child. The free-thinking sons of
pious parents and the Christian children of freethinkers have become
almost proverbial.
But parents can live nobly and in entire accordance to their own ideals
which is the same thing as making children idealists. This can often
lead to a quite different system of thought from that pursued by the
parent.
As to ideals, the elders should here as elsewhere, offer with timidity
their advice and their experience. Yes they should try to let the young
people search for it as if they were seeking fruit hidden under the
shadow of leaves. If their counsel is rejected, they must show neither
surprise nor lack of self-control.
The query of a humourist, why he should do anything for posterity since
posterity had done nothing for him, set me to thinking in my early youth
in the most serious way. I felt that posterity had done much for its
forefathers. It had given them an infinite horizon for the future beyond
the bounds of their daily effort. We must in the child see the new
fate of the human race; we must carefully treat the fine threads in the
child's soul because these are the threads that one day will form the
woof of world events. We must realise that every pebble by which one
breaks into the glassy depths of the child's soul will extend its
influence through centuries and centuries in ever widening circles.
Through our fathers, without our will and without choice, we are given a
destiny which controls the deepest foundation of our own being. Through
our posterity, which we ourselves create, we can in a certain measure,
as free beings, determine the future destiny of the human race.
By a realisation of all this in an entirely new way, by seeing the
whole process in the light of the religion of development, the twentieth
century will be the century of the child. This will come about in
two ways. Adults will first come to an understanding of the child's
character and then the simplicity of the child's character will be kept
by adults. So the old social order will be able to renew itself.
Psychological pedagogy has an exalted ancestry. I will not go back to
those artists in education called Socrates and Jesus, but I commence
with the modern world. In the hours of its sunrise, in which we, who
look back, think we see a futile Renaissance, then as now the spring
flowers came up amid the decaying foliage. At this period there came
a demand for the remodelling of education through the great figure of
modern times, Montaigne, that skeptic who had so deep a reverence for
realities. In his Essays, in his Letters to the Countess of Gurson, are
found all of the elements for the education of the future. About the
great German and Swiss specialists in pedagogy and psychology, Comenius,
Basedow, Pestalozzi, Salzmann, Froebel, Herbart, I do not need to speak.
I will only mention that the greatest men of Germany, Lessing, Herder,
Goethe, Kant and others, took the side of natural training. In regard to
England it is well known that John Locke in his Thoughts on Education,
was a worthy predecessor of Herbert Spencer, whose book on education in
its intellectual, moral, and physical relations, was the most noteworthy
book on education in the last century.
It has been noted that Spencer in educational theory is indebted to
Rousseau; and that in many cases, he has only said what the great German
authorities, whom he certainly did not know, said before him. But this
does not diminish Spencer's merit in the least. Absolutely new thoughts
are very rare. Truths which were once new must be constantly renewed by
being pronounced again from the depth of the ardent personal conviction
of a new human being.