DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Continued_)
§ 1. LYING
Parents are likely to be wilfully blind to the faults of their children.
But some faults cannot be ignored; they must surely quicken the most
indifferent parent to thought. We suffer a shock when our own child
appears as a wilful liar.
"What shall I do when I catch the child in an outright lie? Surely he
knows that is wrong and that he is wilfully doing the wrong!"
First, be sure whether he is "lying." Lying means a purposeful intent to
deceive by word of mouth or written word. When Charles Dickens wrote
_Oliver Twist_ he described a burglary that never happened, so far as he
knew. He intended the reader to feel that it was true. Was he lying? No;
because he simply used his imagination to paint a scene which was part
of a great lesson he desired to teach the English public. Even had he
had no great moral purpose, it would still not have been a lie, just as
we do not accuse the writer of even the most frivolous novel of lying.
He is simply creating, or imitating, in the field of imagination.
Imagination is the child's native world. When the little girl says, "My
dolly is sick," she is saying that which is not so, but instead of
reproving her for lying, you prepare an imaginary pill for the doll.
Many children's lies are simply elaborations of their doll- and
plaything-imaginings. When my little daughter told me, and insisted upon
it, that she had seen seven bears, of varied colors, on the avenue,
should I have reproved her for lying? Was it not better to humor her
fancy, to draw it out, to give it free play, being careful gradually to
let her know that I knew it was fancy? I entered into the game with her
and enjoyed it so long as we all understood it was only fancy. It is a
crime to crush a child's power of creating a world by imagination, a
fair world, set in the midst of this world where things are imperfect,
jarring, and disappointing, a world in which everything is always "just
so."
But one must also carefully aid the child in distinguishing between the
world of fancy and the world of fact. This takes time and patience. We
must not rob the life of fancy nor must we allow the habits of freedom
with ideas to pass over into habits of carelessly handling realities.
Along with the development of fancy we must train the powers of exact
observation and statement of facts. The child who saw seven bears, red,
green, yellow, etc., must go to see real bears and must tell me exactly
their colors and forms. Daily training in exactitude of statements of
real facts is the best antidote for a fancy that has run out of its
bounds. It establishes a habit of precision in thinking which is the
essence of truth-telling.
§ 2. PROTECTIVE LYING
But there is another form of lying which is frequently met in some form.
It may be called protective lying. Ask the little fellow with the
jam-smeared face, "Have you been in the pantry?" and he is likely to do
the same thing that nature does for the birds when she gives them a coat
that makes it easier to hide from their enemies. He valiantly answers
"No, Mother." He would protect himself from your reproof. There has been
awakened before this the desire to seem good in your eyes and he desires
your approbation most of all. The moral struggle with him is very brief;
he does not yet distinguish between being good and seeming good; if his
negative answer will help him to seem good he will give it.
What shall we do? First, stop long enough to remember that appetites for
jam speak louder than your verbal prohibitions. The jam was there and
you were not. It can hardly be said that he deliberately chose to do a
wrong; he is still in the process of learning how to do things
deliberately, just as you still are, for that matter. Consider whether
your training of the anti-jam habit has been really conscientious and
sufficient to establish the habit in any degree. It were wiser to ask
these things of yourself before putting the fateful question to him. It
would be better not to ask a small child that question. It demands too
much of him. Besides, you are losing a chance to establish a valuable
idea in his mind, namely, that acts usually carry evidences along with
them. Better say, "I see you've been in the pantry." That will help to
establish the habit of expecting our acts to be known. Then would follow
with the little child the careful endeavor to train him to recognize the
acts that are wrong because harmful, greedy, against the good of others,
and against his own good.
Just here parents, especially many religious parents, meet the
temptation thoughtlessly to use God as their ally by reminding the child
that, though they could not see him in the pantry, God was there
watching him. In the vivid memory of a childhood clouded by the thought
of a police-detective Deity, may one protest against this act of
irreverence and blasphemy? True, God was there; but not as a spy, a
reporter of all that is bad, anxious to detect, but cowardly and cruel
in silence at all other times! Let the child grow up with the happy
feeling that God is always with him, rejoicing in his play, his
well-aimed ball, his successes in school, his constant friend, helper,
and confidant. I like better the God to whom a little fellow in Montana
prayed the other day, "O God, I thank you for helping me to lick Billy
Johnson!" The child of the pantry needs to know the God who will help
him to do and know the right.
§ 3. OLDER CHILDREN
But protective lying presents a more serious problem with older
children. The school-teacher and parent meet it, just as the judge and
the employer meet it in adults. The cure lies early in life.
Truth-telling is as much a habit as lying is. Perhaps it is more easily
practiced; its drafts are on the powers of observation and memory rather
than on those of imagination. Along with the child's imaginative powers
there must be developed the powers of exact observation and description.
Exact observation and description or relation are but parts of the
larger general virtue of precision. Help children at every turn of life
to be right--right in doing things, right in thinking, in saying, and in
execution. Precision at any point in life helps lift the life's whole
level. Truth-telling is not a separable virtue. You cannot make a boy
truthful in word if you let him lie in deed. You cannot expect he will
speak the truth if you do not train him to do the truth, in his play, in
ordering his room, in thinking through his school problems, and in
thinking through his religious difficulties. Truth-telling is the verbal
reaction of the life which habitually holds that nothing is right until
it is just right.
Two things would, ordinarily, make sure of a truthful statement, instead
of a protective lie, in answer to your question: first, that the young
person has been trained to the habit of seeing and stating things as
they are--and that you really give him a chance so to state them, and,
secondly, that to some degree there has been developed a recognition of
considerations or values that are higher than either escape from
punishment or the winning of your approbation. He will choose the course
that offers what seems to him to be the greater good; he will choose
between punishment, with rectitude, a good conscience, a sense of unity
with the higher good, of peace with God his friend, a greater
approximation to your ideal, on the one side, and, on the other, escape
from punishment.
Everything in that crisis will depend on how real you have made the good
to be, how much the sense of the reality of God and his companionship
has brought of joy and friendship, and how high are his values of the
actual, the real, the true.
§ 4. AT THE CRISIS
But what shall we do as we meet the lie on the lips of the child? First,
as already suggested, do not wait until you meet it. Train the child to
the truthful life. Second, be sure you do not make too heavy moral
demands. Remember the instinct to protect himself from immediate
punishment or disapprobation is stronger than any other just then. Do
not ask him to do what the law says the prisoner may not do, incriminate
himself. We have no right to put on our children tests harder than they
can bear. Often we put those which are harder than we could face. What
you will do just then depends on what you have been doing for the
training of the child or youth. Do not expect him to solve problems in
moral geometry if you have neglected simple addition in that realm.
Punishment by the blow or the immediate sentence will be futile. The
offender must know he has trespassed in a realm beyond your
administration and rule; he has done more than commit an offense against
you. Whatever consequences follow--such as your hesitation to accept his
word--must evidently be a part of the operation of the entire moral law.
Help him to see that lying strikes at the root of all social relations
and would make all happy and prosperous living, all friendship, and all
business impossible by destroying social confidence.
Facing the crisis, do not demand more than your training gives you a
right to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as to
guilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question;
we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see the
values of exactitudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring the
events into the light of larger areas of time and circles of life, help
him to see them related to all his life and to all mankind and to the
very fringes of existence, to God and the eternal. That cannot be done
in a moment; it is part of a habit of our own minds or it is not really
done at all. At the moment we can, however, make the deepest impression
by insistence on the importance of the actual, the real, the exactly
true.
I. References for Study
E.L. Cabot, _Every Day Ethics_, chaps. xix, xx. Holt, $1.25.
W.B. Forbush, _On Truth Telling_. Pamphlet. American Institute of
Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.
J. Sully, _Children's Ways_, pp. 124-33. Appleton, $1.25.
II. Further Reading
G.S. Hall, "A Study of Children's Lies," _Educational Problems_, I,
chap. vi. Appleton, $2.50.
E.P. St. John, _A Genetic Study of Veracity_. Pamphlet.
J. Sully, _Studies in Childhood_.
E.H. Griggs, _Moral Education_. Huebsch, $1.60.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. Are there degrees of lying?
2. When is a lie not a lie?
3. How can we discriminate among the statements of children?
4. How can we help them to recognize the qualities of truth?
5. In what ways are parents to blame for forcing children to
protective lying?
6. What of the relation of the thought of God to the demands for
truth?
7. Would you punish a child for lying and, if so, in what way?