CHAPTER VIISELFISHNESS AND PROPERTY
I comenow 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 theexternal 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 wayis 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 thedemand 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 dispeldifficulties, 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 spoilit. 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 otherwhich 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 thatare 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.