DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Concluded_)
§ 1. DISHONESTY
Many parents appear to think that the child's concepts of property
rights and of fair dealing are without importance. Habits of pilfering
are permitted to develop and success in cheating wins admiration. Low
standards are accepted and religion is divorced from moral questions.
The family attitude practically assumes that all persons cheat more or
less and that it is necessary only to use wisdom to insure freedom from
conviction.
Responsibility lies at home. We shall never have an honest generation
until we have honest men and women to breed and train it. It is folly to
think we can lay on the public schools the burden of the moral education
of the young. Much is already being attempted there; yet little seems to
be accomplished because the home, having the child before and after
school and for a longer period each day, furnishes no adequate basis in
habits, ideals, and instruction for the moral work of the school. If
parents assume that one cannot succeed with absolute integrity, that
dishonesty in some degree is necessary to prosperity, then children will
learn that lesson despite all that may be said elsewhere. Honest
children grow where, in answer to the false statement, "You will starve
if you do business honestly," parents say, "Then we will starve."
But the very home life itself can be a teacher of dishonesty. Is it
largely a matter of sham and pretense for the sake of social glory? Does
it prefer a cheap veneer to a slowly acquired genuine article? Is the
front appearance that of a dandy while the backyard looks like a
slattern? Is the home striving for more than it deserves? Is it trying
to get more out of life than it puts in? Evading taxes, avoiding duties,
a community parasite, does it commend to children the arts of social
cheating and lying? Such homes teach so loudly that no voice could be
heard in them.
Given the atmosphere, ideals, and practices of the honest life in the
home itself, the problems of conduct, in the realm of these rights, are
more than half solved. Here in the home the real training for the life
of business takes place. Not for an instant can we afford to lower
standards here, nor to lose sight of the life-long power of our ideals,
our habits, and our attitudes on the conduct of the next generation. Do
parents know that the problems of lying, cheating, quarreling are the
great, vital questions for their children, much more important than
industrial or professional success in life; that on these all success is
predicated? If they do, surely they cannot regard the problems which
arise as mere incidents; surely they will provide for the culture of the
moral life as definitely as for the culture of the physical or the
intellectual!
§ 2. LESSONS IN HONESTY
But children also acquire habits from their playmates. Whenever the act
of pilfering appears, the wrong must be made clear. Some sense of
property rights is necessary; not the right, as some assume, to do what
you will with a thing because you have it, but the right to enjoy and
usefully employ it. Help children to see the difference between mine and
thine. Slovenly moral thinking often comes from too great freedom in
forgetful borrowing within the family. In this little social group the
members must first acquire the habits of respect for the rights of
others. Through toys, tools, and books the lesson may be learned so
early that it becomes a part of the normal order of things.
Children can learn that the game of life has its rules and that the
breach of these rules spoils the game and prevents our own happiness.
They can learn, too, that these are not arbitrary rules; they are like
the laws of nature; they are the conditions under which alone it is
possible for people to live together and to make life worth while.
Gambling is wrong because it is unsocial; it is the attempt to gain
without an equivalent giving. Cheating is wrong, no matter how many
practice it, just as surely as cheating is wrong in the game on the
playground.
Children are really peculiarly sensitive to the social consciousness. In
school under no circumstances will they do that which the school custom
forbids or the older boys condemn. In the home, despite contrary
appearances, the opinion of elders, brothers, sisters, and parents is
the recognized law. Every small boy wants to be like his big brother.
Children's conduct may be guided by an understanding of the social will
outside the school and home. Help them to know that all people
everywhere in organized society condemn cheating and dishonesty.[49]
Sentiment and emotional feeling must back up all teaching of conduct.
Your stories and readings should be selected with this in mind. The
approbation of parents and of the great Father of all enters as an
effectual motive.
But parents seldom understand these problems; they attempt to deal with
each one as it arises until they are weary of the seemingly endless
procession and abandon the task. Their endeavors are based on faint
memories of such problems in their own youth or on rule-of-thumb
proverbial philosophy about morals and children. Does not the
development of moral ability and culture deserve at least as much
attention as any other phase of the child's life? After all, what do we
most of all desire for all our children--position, fame, ease? or is it
not rather simply this, that, no matter what else they do, they may be
good and useful men and women? Then what are we doing to make them good
and useful?
A clear view of the need for moral training, a belief that is possible,
will surely lead to serious attempts to learn the art of moral training.
In this they need not be without guidance. There is a number of good
books on character development in the child.[50] The foundation for all
such training of parents ought to be laid in an understanding of what
the moral nature is, and then of the laws of its development. Later the
specific problems may be separately considered.
§ 3. TEASING AND BULLYING
Teasing is the child's crude method of experimentation in psychological
reactions; the teaser desires to discover just how the teased will
respond. It degenerates, by easy steps, into a thoughtless infliction of
pain in sheer enjoyment of another's misery, and then into brutal
bullying. When only two children are together mere teasing will not
last long; either the teaser will tire of his task or his teasing will
turn to that lowest of all brutalities, delight in inflicting pain on
weaker ones.
But teasing is a serious problem in many families; the whole group
sometimes lives in an atmosphere of ridicule, derision, and annoyance.
Teasing is likely to appear at its worst wherever a group is gathered,
for the guilty ones are under the stimulus of the praise of others; they
inflict mental pain for the sake of winning approbation.
Teasing has a pedagogical basis. A certain amount of ridicule acts
healthfully on most persons. Even children need sometimes to see their
weaknesses, and especially their faults of temper, in the light of other
eyes, in the aspect of the ridiculous. But children are seldom to be
trusted to discipline one another; freedom to do so is likely to develop
hardness, indifference to the sufferings of others, and arrogance from
the sense of lordship. The corrective of ridicule is safe only as it is
a kindly expression of the sense of humor. The ability to see and to
show just how foolish or funny some situations are will turn many a
tragedy of childhood into a comedy. Whenever children laugh at the
distresses or faults of others, help them to laugh at their own.
Cultivate the habit of seeing the odd, the whimsical, the humorous side
of things. A sound sense of kindly humor often will save us all from
unkind teasing.
§ 4. SOME CURES FOR TEASING
Help the habitual and unkind teaser to see how cowardly the act is, to
see how it is against the spirit of fair play. Call on him to help the
weaker one. If he is teasing for some fault of temper or some habit,
show him the chance that is afforded to do the nobler deed of helping
another to overcome that fault.
Let the cowardly teaser reap the consequences of his own act; he must
bear the burden of the critic, the expectation of perfection. Teasing
him for his own shortcomings will sometimes cure him, but usually he
loses his temper quickly. Make him feel the injustice of the teaser's
method. If he is a bully he needs bullying. If ever corporal punishment
is wise it is in such a case. He who inflicts pain simply because he can
deserves to endure pain inflicted by someone stronger. But one must be
careful not to confirm him in the coward's code. The injustice of it he
must see, see by smarting under it. If ever punishment before others is
wise it is in this case; for surely he who delights in humiliating
others must be humiliated. But though justice suggests this course,
experience shows that it does not always work; the bully only bides his
time, and, cherishing resentment, he wreaks it on the weaker ones.
The best cure for brutal teasing will take a longer time than is
involved in a thrashing. Besides, the teaser will get his thrashings
very soon from other boys. It requires time to change the habits that
make bullying possible. Try gradually helping him to see the beauty and
pleasure of helpfulness. Give him a chance to give pleasure instead of
pain. Help him to taste the joy of praise, the praise that helps more
than all teasing criticism. Help him to see that it is more truly a mark
of superiority to help, to cheer, to do good, than to oppress and tease.
Take time to habituate him in helpfulness.
In dealing with teasing in the family, two other things are worth
remembering: First, the teased must be taught the protective power of
indifference. Teasers stop as soon as their barbs fail to wound; the fun
ends there. Laugh at those who laugh at you, and they will soon cease.
Secondly, the atmosphere and habit of the family determine the course of
teasing. Where carping criticism and unkindly ridicule abound, children
cannot be blamed for like habits. Where the sense of humor lightens
tense situations, where we sacrifice the pleasure of stinging criticism
for the sake of encouraging those who most need it, children are quick
to catch those habits too. The teasing child usually comes out of a
family of similar habits. On seeing our children engaged in teasing
others, our first thought ought to be as to the extent to which we may
have been their example in this respect. Constant watchfulness on our
part against the temptations to tease will have an effect far more
potent than all attempts to talk them out of the habit; it will lead
them out.
I. References for Study
1. HONESTY
P. Du Bois, _The Culture of Justice_, chaps. iii, x. Dodd, Mead &
Co., $0.75.
E.P. St. John, _Child Nature and Child Nurture_, chap. viii.
Pilgrim Press, $0.50.
2. TEASING
W.L. Sheldon, _A Study of Habits_, chap. xvii. Welch & Co.,
Chicago, $1.25.
II. Further Reading
ON GENERAL MORAL TRAINING
Sneath & Hodges, _Moral Training in School and Home_. Macmillan,
$0.80.
E.O. Sisson, _The Essentials of Character_. Macmillan, $1.00.
H. Thisleton Mark, _The Unfolding of Personality_. The University
of Chicago Press, $1.00.
Paul Carus, _Our Children_. Open Court Publishing Co., $1.00.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. Of what importance is the child's sense of possession?
2. What are the first evidences of a consciousness of property
rights?
3. How do homes train in dishonesty?
4. What is the relation between cheating and dishonesty?
5. What is a child seeking to do when he teases another?
6. What are the unfortunate features of teasing?
7. What is the relation of teasing to bullying?
8. What cures would you suggest for either?
FOOTNOTES:
[49] Parents will be helped by the practical discussions of cheating,
cribbing, and other boy problems in Johnson, _Problems of Boyhood_.
[50] See "Book List" in Appendix.