Parental Vanity
Such a line of conduct presupposes, of course, that the parent considers only the child's best welfare, and not his own parental vanity. He is not desirous that his son shall do anything so well as to attract the attention and admiration of the neighbors. He is desirous merely that the boy shall grow up wholesomely and happily, showing such superiority as there may be in him when the fitting time and opportunity present themselves. He will not attempt to make a musician of an unmusical child, nor a mechanic of an artistic child. He will not object to the brilliant and impractical dreams of the young inventor, but will help to make them practicable; and though he may squirm at some of the investigations of the budding scientist, he will not forbid them.
Development of Intellect
For such a parent recognizes that the important thing, educationally, is to secure the reaction of expression upon thought and feeling. That is, he is not trying to secure at this time—at any time during youth—perfect expression of any thought or feeling, but only to deepen feeling and clarify thought by encouraging all attempts at expression. He does not wish his child to make a finished picture or a perfect statue, but to acquire a greater sensitiveness to color and form by each attempt to express that color and form which he already knows. Thus whatever studies and accomplishments his child may be in the act of acquiring are seen to be nothing as acquisitions, but the child himself is seen to be growing stage by stage within the clumsy scaffolding.
The financial training of children ought really to be considered under the head of moral training, but in some respects it can come equally well under the head of intellectual training; for to spend money well requires both self-control and intelligence. Some persons seem to think that all that a child can be taught in this regard is to save money, and they meet the situation by purchasing various shapes and styles of savings banks. But it is entirely possible to teach the child too thoroughly in this respect and to make him so fond of his jingling pennies safe within a yellow crockery pig or iron cupolaed mansion that be will not spend them for any object, however laudable. Others evade the issue as long as possible by giving the child no money at all; while most of us pursue an uncertain and wabbly course, sometimes giving money, sometimes withholding it, sometimes exhorting the child to spend, and sometimes to save.
Regular Allowance
In truthspending wisely is a difficult problem. As a rule the child may safely be induced to lay by for a season and then encouraged to spend for some generous purpose. Christmas and other festivals offer excellent opportunities for proper disbursement of the hoarded funds. These may be supposed to have accumulated from irregular gifts; but as the child grows older he should come into receipt of a regular definite allowance, perhaps conditioned upon his performance of some stated duty. A certain part of his allowance he may he permitted to spend upon such frivolities as are naturally dear to his young heart; another part of it he should be encouraged—not commanded—to put aside for larger purposes.
The giving of this allowance must not be confused with the pernicious habit of bribing the child to the performance of those little daily courtesies and duties which he ought to be willing to perform out of love and a sense of right. A certain part of his daily work, such as seeing that the match-boxes all over the house are filled, or some similar share of the general labor of the household, may be regarded as that for which he is paid wages; and any extra task which does not justly belong to him, he may sometimes be paid for performing; but not always. For instance, he ought to be willing to run to the grocery for mother without demanding that he be paid a penny for the job; yet sometimes the penny may be forthcoming. The point is that he should be ready to work, even to work hard, without pay, and yet that he should never feel that his mother withholds pay from him when she can give it and he receive it without injury.
Spending Foolishly
When the money is once his, he should be allowed to feel the full happiness and responsibility of possession, and if he insists upon spending it foolishly, should be allowed to do it and to suffer to the full the uncomfortable consequences. If, on the contrary, he will not spend it at all, his mother must use every means in her power to lessen the desire for ownership and to increase his love for others and his eagerness to please them.
As judgment develops the allowance may well be increased to provide for necessities in the way of incidentals and clothing until at the "age of discretion" he is in full charge of the funds for his personal expenses. He should be encouraged to apply his knowledge of commercial arithmetic in the keeping of personal accounts.
Experience in spending a fixed amount of money is especially needful for the daughters. Most young men have the value of money and financial responsibility forced upon them in the natural course of events, but too often the young wife has not had the training qualifying her for the equal financial partnership which should exist in the ideal marriage.
THE INFANT GALAHAD—FIRST SIGHT OF THE GRAIL From the mural paintings by Edwin A. Abbey in the Boston Public Library
THE INFANT GALAHAD—FIRST SIGHT OF THE GRAIL From the mural paintings by Edwin A. Abbey in the Boston Public Library
Sunday School Teachers
If the common school is not sufficient for the secular education of the child, certainly the Sunday School is not sufficient for his religious education. In the common schools the teachers are more or less trained for their work. It is a life occupation with them; by means of it they earn their living, and their daily success with their pupils marks their rate of progress toward higher fields of endeavor. Nothing of this sort is true in the Sunday School. While occasionally it happens that a day school teacher becomes a Sunday School teacher, this is seldom true, for most teachers who teach during the week feel that they need the Sunday for rest; and while some Sunday School teachers betray a commendable earnestness and zeal for their work, and associations and conventions have latterly added somewhat to the joint effort to better the conditions, still it remains true that the teaching in the Sunday Schools is far below the pedagogic level of the common schools. Yet the subject which is dealt with in the Sunday Schools, instead of being of less importance than that dealt with in the common schools, is of pre-eminently greater importance. Because of its subtlety, its intimacy with the hidden springs of conduct, it calls for the exercise of the very highest teaching skill.
Some sort of recognition of these two facts—that Sunday School teachers are in most cases very inadequately trained for their work, and that the work itself is of great importance, and of equally great difficulty—has led to the issuing of many quarterlies, International Lesson Leaflets, and other Sunday School aids. Necessary as such help may be under present conditions, they cannot possibly meet the many difficulties of the case. If the central committees, who issue these leaflets, were composed wholly of the wisest men and women on earth, it would still be impossible for them to give lessons to the millions of children in their various denominations which should meet the personal needs, and daily interests of these young people.
Sunday School Training
As a consequence, Sunday School teaching is and must be largely theoretical and still more largely exegetical, and with neither theory nor exegesis is the young mind of the developing child very much concerned. What he needs is not the historical side of religion or of that great body of religious literature which we call the Bible, but a living faith which links all that was taught by the prophets and apostles, centuries ago, with what is happening in the child's own town and family at that very moment. It is a wide gap to bridge, and it cannot be bridged by a semi-historical review backed by picture cards, golden texts, and stars for good behavior. These things are merely the marks of an endeavor to fitly accomplish a great task, an endeavor almost absurdly out of proportion to this aim, rendered significant, however, because it is the earnest of a great faith and a great hope.
So far as Sunday Schools help children, it is because of this spirit of faithfulness, and not because of the form which it has assumed.
In choosing, then, whether you shall send your child to a Sunday School, choose by the presence or absence of this spirit. If you know the teachers of the Sunday School to be earnest, loving, and devoted, you may with safety assume that their personal influence will make up for what is archaic in their method of teaching. Where the spirit is present only in a few, or where it manifests itself only occasionally, as at seasons of revival, you may well hesitate to let your child attend. A great improvement would come about if parents would show a greater interest and encourage proper teachers to take charge of classes. It is a thankless task at present.
Theory Not Practice
There is one great danger in the teaching of any Sunday School—one which the best of them cannot wholly escape—and that is, that, in the very nature of things, they teach theory and not practice. Harmful as this may be, indeed as it surely is in adult life, it does not begin to be so harmful as it does in youth, for the young child, as we have seen, is and should remain a unit in consciousness. His life, his intellect, and his will are one—an undivided trinity. The divorce of these three is at any time a regrettable occurrence; the divorce of them in early life is an almost irreparable disaster.
Useless Truths
The current theory is that children will learn many truths in the Sunday School which they will not put into practice then, perhaps, but which they will find useful in later life. This fallacy underlies, of course, almost all conventional education and has only been overthrown by the dictum of modern psychology, that there is but small storage accommodation in the brain for facts which have no immediate relation to life. What may be termed the saturating power of the brain is limited, and after it has soaked up a rather small number of truths, it can contain no more until it has in some way disposed of those that it still has—either by making them part of its own living structure, which is done only by making immediate application of them; or by dropping them below the threshold of consciousness, that is, in common language, forgetting them. Moreover, the brain may form the habit of easily dropping all that relates to a given subject into the limbo where unused things lie disregarded, and when this becomes the habitual method of disposing of religious instruction, the results are particularly deplorable.
The Mother as Teacher
Feeble as her own knowledge may be, a mother has certain advantages as a teacher of her children over any but the exceptional Sunday school teacher. For, first, she knows the children, and, knowing them, knows their needs. Secondly, she knows their daily lives and continually during the week can point out wherein they fail to live up to their Sunday's lesson. And again and most important, she loves them tenderly, and from love flows wisdom. Usually the mother gives her own children a love far beyond that given by anyone else, and this deeper love sharpens her intellectual faculties and makes her both a keen observer and a good tactician. Giving her children some simple lesson on Sunday afternoon, she finds a hundred opportunities to make the lesson living and vital to them during the succeeding week.
Religious Enthusiasm
In the early years of the child's life, the mother is usually the one to decide whether he shall attend Sunday School or not, but as he approaches adolescence he is likely to take the matter in his own hands, and if it happens that some revivalist or a new stirring preacher comes in contact with his life at this time, he is very likely to be swept off his feet with a sudden zeal of religious enthusiasm, which his mother fears to check. The reports of memberships, baptisms, etc., show that a large number become converted and join the church during adolescence. While this does not in the least argue that the conclusions that they reach at that time are therefore unsound—for adolescence is not a disease, nor a form of insanity, but a normal, if excitable, condition—still it does prove, when coupled with the further fact that in adult life these young converts often relapse into their previous condition, that a more lasting basis for religion must be found than the emotional intensity of this period of life. A religion to be lasting must be coldly reaffirmed by the intellect: the dictum of the heart alone is not sufficient. Religious enthusiasm, like all other forms of enthusiasm, tends of itself to bring about the opposite condition, and to be succeeded by fits of despondency and bitterness as intense and severe as the enthusiasm itself was brilliant and ecstatic. The history of all great religious leaders amply proves this. They had their bitter hours of wrestling with the powers of darkness, hours which almost counter-balanced the hours of uplift. Only clearly thought-out intellectual convictions reinforced by the habit of daily righteous living can secure the soul against such emotional aberrations.
Danger of Reaction
Therefore, although the religious excitability of adolescence must not be thwarted lest it be turned into less helpful channels, and lest religion lose all the beauty and compelling power lent to it by the glow of youthful feelings, yet it must be so balanced and ordered by a clear reason, and especially by the habit of putting each enthusiasm to the test of conduct, that the young mind may remain true to its law of growth, developing harmoniously on all three sides at once.
The danger of permitting a young boy or girl while under the influence of this emotional instability to enter into any special form of religious service is the danger of reaction. He will discover that all is not as his early vision led him to suppose—because that early vision was of things too high and holy for any earthly realization—and he may turn against what seems to him to be hypocrisy and pretense with a bitterness proportioned to his former love. Many honest, faithful men and women remain in this state of reaction for the rest of their lives.
A Difficult Period
Nevertheless, it will not do to thwart these young beginnings. They must neither be nipped in the bud nor forced to a premature ripening. Above all they must not be suffered to endure the killing frost of ridicule. The period is a difficult one, but, asDr. Stanley Hall points out, it is supremely the mother's opportunity. If she can hold her boy's or her girl's confidence now, can ease their eager young hearts with an intelligent sympathy, she can probably keep them from any public commitment. Perhaps they may desire to confide in the minister; if so, let the mother confide in him first. Perhaps they have bosom friends, passing through the same stirring experience; then let the mother win over these friends.
Her object should be to shelter this beautiful sentiment; to keep it safe from exposure; above all, to utilize it as a motive-power—as an incentive to noble action. The Kindergarten rule is a good one: as quick as a love springs in a child's breast, give it something to do. When the love of God awakes there, give it much to do. Usually, the only way open is to join the church, to make a public profession. The wise mother will see to it that there are other ways, urging the young knight to serve his King by going forth into the world immediately about him and fighting against all forms of evil, giving him a practical, definite quest. The result of such restriction of public speech, and stimulation of private deed, will be a sincere, lowly-minded religion, so inwoven with the truest activities as to be inseparable from them. Such a religion knows no reaction.
Bible Study
Now is supremely the time for a study of the Bible. Interesting as a Divine Story Book to the young children, it becomes the Book of Life to these older ones. In teaching it at home, a few simple rules need to be borne in mind. The first is that the Bible must be thought of not as a series of disconnected texts and thoughts, but as a connected whole. The division of King James' Bible into verses and chapters is but poorly adapted to this purpose. The illogical, strange character of the paragraphing, as measured by the standards of modern English, is apparent at a glance, for often a verse will end in the middle of a sentence, and the sentence be concluded in the next verse. The chapters in the same way often fail to finish the subject with which they deal, and sometimes include several subjects. Therefore, the mother who undertakes to read the Bible to her children needs first to go through the lesson herself, and to decide what subject, not what chapter, she will take up that day. There is a reader's edition of the Bible, and one called the "Children's Bible," both of which aim to leave out all repetition and references and to arrange the Bible narrative in a simple, consecutive order, nevertheless employing the beautiful Bible language. These editions might prove of considerable help to mothers who feel unequal to doing the work by themselves.
Children's Bible
Second, comparable to this in importance is the reading of the Bible and talking about it in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice; for what you want is to make the Bible teachings live in to-day. You must not, therefore, suggest by your tone or manner that they belong to another day, and that they are, in some sense, to be shut out from common life and speech. This does not mean such common use of Biblical phrases in every day conversation as to cause it to grow into that form or irreverence known as cant, but it does mean simple usage of Bible thought, and the effort to fit it to the conditions of daily life. Such a habit in itself will force any family to discriminate as to what things in the Bible are living and eternal, and what things belong rightly to that far away time and place of which the Bible narrative treats, thus practicing both teacher and pupils—that is, both parents and children—in the art of finding the universal spirit of truth under all temporal disguises. Without this art the Bible is a closed book, even to the closest student.
Making Lessons Real
Again, every effort should be made to help the home Bible class to understand the period studied in that week's lesson, and to this end secular literature and art should be freely called upon, not only such stories, for example, as "Ben Hur," but other stories not necessarily religious, which deal with the same time and place; they are of great help in putting vividly before the children and parents the temporal setting of the eternal stories. Cannon Farrar's "Life of Christ" is a very great help to the realization of the New Testament scenes, as is also Tissot's "Pictorial Life of Christ." In short every art should be made to deepen and clarify the conceptions roused by the study of the Bible.
In Conclusion
The mother who undertakes the tremendous task of rightly training her children, will need to exercise herself daily in all the Christian virtues—and if there are any Pagan ones not included under faith, hope, charity, patience, and humility, to exercise those also. With these virtues to support her, she will be able to use whatever knowledge she may acquire. Without them she can do nothing.
The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the lesson.
Read Carefully.In answering these questions you are earnestly requestednotto answer according to the text-book where opinions are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.
1. How can you bring the influence of art to bear upon your child?
2. What is the influence of music? How can you employ it?
3. Do you believe in fairy tales for children? State your reasons.
4. How would you encourage the love of nature in your child?
5. What is it that the Kindergarten can do better than the home?
6. Suppose that your child had some undesirable acquaintances, how would you meet the situation?
7. What can you say of accomplishments for children?
8. If manual training, physical culture, domestic science, etc., are not taught in your schools and you wish your children to get some of the advantages of these studies, how will you set about it?
9. What do you understand to be the correlation of studies?
10. Should parents become acquainted with the teachers of their children and their methods? Why?
11. How may children be taught the use of money?
12. State the advantages and disadvantages of Sunday schools. What have they meant inyour ownexperience?
13. How will you train your child religiously? Can anyone take this task from you?
14. What rules must be borne in mind in teaching the Bible at home?
15. Give some experience of your own (or of a friend) in the training of a child wherein a success has been achieved.
16. Are there any questions you would like to ask or subjects which you wish to discuss in connection with the lessons on the Study of Child Life?
Note.—After completing the test sign it with your full name.
In this "Study of Child Life" we have considered some of the fundamental principles of education. When we think of the complex inheritance of the American people it is, perhaps, no wonder that many families contain individuals varying so widely from each other as to seem to require each a complete system of education all to himself. We are a people born late in the history of the race, and our blood is mingled of the Norseman's, the Celt's, and the Latin's. Advancing civilization alone would tend to make us more complex, our problems more subtle; but in addition to this we are mixed of all races, and born in times so strenuous that, sooner or later, every fibre of our weaving is strained and brought into prominence.
In the letters from my students this fact, with which I was already familiar in a general sort of way, has been brought more particularly to my attention. In all cases, the situation has been responsible for much confusion and difficulty. In a good many, it has led to family tragedies, varying in magnitude from the unhappiness of the misunderstood child to that of the lonely woman, suffering in adult life from the faults of her upbringing, and the failure of the family ties whose need she felt the more as the duties of motherhood pressed upon her. If it were possible for me to violate the confidence of my pupils I could prove very conclusively that the old-fashioned system of bringing up children on the three R's and a spanking did not work so well as some persons seem to think. I could prove that the problem has grown past the point where instinct and tradition may be held as sufficient to solve it. Everyone, seeing these letters, would be obliged to confess, "Yes, indeed, here is plain need of training for parents." Yet, at the same time, these same persons would be tempted to inquire, "But can any training meet such a difficult situation?"
Here is despair; and some cause for it. When one's own mother has not understood one; when one has lived lonely in the midst of brothers and sisters who are more strange than strangers; when one's childhood is full of the memory of obscure but intense sufferings, one flies for relief, perhaps, to any one who offers it hopefully enough; but one does not really expect to get it.Cantraining, especially bycorrespondence, meet the need?
Not wholly, of course, let us be frank to admit. No amount of theory, however excellent, can take the place of the drill given only in the hard school of experience. But when the theory is not merely theory, but sound principle, based on scientific observation, confirmed by the wide experience of many persons, it is as valuable in practical life as any rule of mathematics to the practical engineer. We all know that the technical correspondence schools really do fit young mechanics to move on and up in the trade. By correspondence he is given what Froebel calls the interpreting word. The experience in application the student has to supply himself.
So in the matter of education. There are genuine principles which underlie the development of every child that lives—even the feeble-minded, deaf, and blind. Read Helen Keller's wonderful life, if you want to see the proof of it. Just as surely as a child has two legs and has to learn to walk on them by a series of prolonged experiments, just so surely he has (a) a sense of justice, (b) an instinct for freedom, (c) a love of play. Every kind of child has all these instincts, as much as he has love for food and drink; and to educate him consists in developing these instincts into (a) the habit of dealing justly by others, (b) the right use of freedom, (c) love of work. The particular methods may differ. The principlesdo not and CANNOT DIFFER.
She who wouldsucceed in child training must hold to these truths with all her might and main—making them, in fact, her religion, for they are the doctrines of the Christian religion as applied to motherhood. To hold them lightly, or even experimentally, will not do. One most walk in faith. And that the faith may not be blind, but may be based on experience and understanding, let me suggest this means of proof: Instead of asking yourself how the laws laid down in these little books would fit this or that particular child, your own or another's, ask how they would have fitted you, if they had been applied to you by your own mother. Take the chapter on faults, pick out the one which was yours, in childhood—oh, of course, you've got over it now!—think of some bitter trouble into which that fault hurried you, and conceive that, instead of the punishment you did receive, you had been treated as the lesson suggests—what, do you think, would have been the result? And so with the other chapters—even with that much-mooted question of companionship. Test the truth of them all by their imaginary application to the child you know best. When you can, find the principles that your own mother did employ in your education, and examine the result of what she did. Some of the principles will suddenly become luminous to you, I am sure; and some things that happened in the past receive an explanation.
Such a self-examination, to be of any value, must be rigidly honest. There is too much at stake here for you to permit any remnants of bitter feeling to influence your judgment—and you will surely be surprised to find how many bitter resentments will show that they yet have life. The past is dead, as far as your power to change it is concerned; but it lives, as a thing that you can use. Here is your own child, to be helped or hindered by what you may have endured. It will all have been worth while, if by means of it you can save him from some bruises and falls. Every bitterness will be sweetened if you can look through it and find the truth which shall serve this dearer little self who looks to you for guidance.
Then, when you have found the principles true—and not one minute before!—put them rigidly into practice. I say, not one minute before you are convinced, because it is better to hold the truth lightly in the memory as a mere interesting theory you have never had time to test, than to swallow it, half assimilated. Truth is a real and living power, once it is applied to life; and to half-use it in doubt, and fear, is to invite indigestion and consequent disgust. Take of these teachings that which you are sure is sound and right, and use it faithfully, and unremittingly. Be careful that no plea of expediency, no hurry of the moment, makes you false. If you are thus faithful in small things, one after the other, in a series fitted to your own peculiar constitution, the others will prove themselves to you; for they are coherent truths, and not one lives to itself alone, but joins hands with all the rest. Being truths, they fit all human minds—yours and mine, and those of our children, no matter how diverse we may be.
Isn't it ridiculously true that, as soon as we get enlightened ourselves, we burn to enlighten the rest of the world? We do not seem to remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our power of comprehension. It is really comforting to my own sense of impatience and balked zeal to find how many of my pupils are dreadfully concerned about other people's children. This one's heart burns over the little boy next door who is shamefully mismanaged and who already begins to show the ill effects of his treatment. That one has a sister-in-law who refuses to listen to a word spoken in season.
Between my smiles—those comfortable smiles with which we recognize our own shortcomings—I, too, am really concerned about the sister-in-law's children. It is true that their mother ought to be taught better, and that, if she isn't, those innocent lambs are going to suffer for it. Off at this distance, without the ties of kindred to draw me too close for clear judgment, I see, though, that we have to walk very cautiously here, for fear of doing more harm than good. Better that those benighted women never heard the name of child-study, than to hear it only to greet it with rebellion and hatred. Yet to force any of our principles upon her attention when she is in a hostile mood—or toforcethem, indeed, in any mood—is to invite just this attitude.
Most of us, by the time that we are sufficiently grown up to undertake the study of child life, have outgrown the habit of plainly telling our friends to their faces just what we think of their faults; yet this is a safe and pleasant pastime beside that other of trying to tell them how to bring up their children. You stand it from me, because you have invited it, and perhaps still more because you never see me, and the personal element enters only slightly and pleasantly into our relationship. I sometimes think that students pour out their hearts to me, much as we used to talk to our girl friends in the dark. I'm very sure I should never dare to say to their faces what I write so freely on the backs of their papers!
You see, the adult, too, has his love of freedom; and while he can stand an indirect, impersonal preachment, which he may reject if he likes without apology, he will not stand the insistence of a personal appeal. I've let "Little Women" shame me into better conduct, when I was a girl, at times when no direct speech from a living soul would have brought me to anything but defiance—haven't you? We have to apply our principles to the adult world about us, well as to the child-world, and teach, when we permit ourselves to teach at all, chiefly by example, by cheerful confession of fallibility, by open-mindedness. Above all things, we have to respect the freedom of these others, about whom we are so inconveniently anxious.
It is fair, though, that the spoken word should interpret what we do. It is fair enough to tell your sister-in-law what you think and ask her judgment upon it, if you can trust yourself not to rub your own judgment in too hard. If you are unmarried, and a teacher, you will have to concede to her preposterous marital conceit a humble and inquiring attitude, and console your flustered soul by setting it to the ingenious task of teaching by means of a graduated series of artful inquiries. Don't, oh don't! seek for an outspoken victory. Be content if some day you hear her proclaim your truth as her own discovery. It never was yours, anyway, any more than it is hers or than it is mine. Be glad that, while she claims it, she at least holds it close.
If you are a mother, you are in an easier case. You can do to your own children just what she ought to do to hers, and tell about it softly, as if sure of her sympathy. If you are very sincere in your desire for the welfare of her child, you may even ask her advice about yours, and so gain the right to offer a little in exchange—say one-tenth of what she gives.
All these warnings apply tounsought advice—a dangerous thing to offer under any circumstances. Except there is a real emergency, you had better avoid it. If your nephew or little neighbor is winning along through his troubles fairly well, best keep hands off. But if you absolutelymustinterfere, guard yourself as I suggest, and remember that, even then, you will assuredly get burned, if you play long with that dangerous fire of maternal pride!
When your advice is sought, you are in a different position. Then you have a right to speak out, though if you are wise and loving you will temper that right with charity. No one can be too gentle in dealing with a soul that honestly asks for help; but one can easily be too timid. Think, under these circumstances, of yourself not at all; but put yourself as much as possible in her place; be led by her questions; and answer fearlessly from the depths of the best truth you hold. Then leave it. You can do no more. What becomes of that truth, once you have lovingly spoken it, is no more of your concern.
Always convinced of the importance of this subject, convictions have deepened to the point of dismay since learning, through this school, of the many women who have suffered and who continue to suffer, both mentally and physically, because, in early girlhood, they were not taught those finer physiological facts upon which the very life of the race depends. Yet, strangely enough, these very victims find it almost impossible to give their children the knowledge necessary to save them from a similar fate. It is as if the lack of early training in themselves leaves them helpless before a situation from which they suffer but which they have never mastered.
Of course such feelings, in themselves morbid, are not to be trusted. Faced with a task like this we have only to ask ourselves not "Is it hard?" but "Is it in truth my task?" If it is, we may be sure that we shall be given strength to do it, provided only that we are sincere in our willingness to do it and do not count our feelings at all.
It is preposterous to have such feelings, in the first place. They are wholly the product of false teaching. For we have no right—as we recognize when we stop to think about it in calmness of spirit, and apart from our special difficult—to sit in scornful judgment upon any of the laws of nature. When we find ourselves in rebellion against them, what we have to do is to change the state of our minds, for change the laws we cannot. If we women could inaugurate a gigantic strike against the present method of bearing children—and I imagine that millions would join such a strike if it held out any promise of success!—we still could accomplish nothing. To fret ourselves into a frazzle over it, is to accomplish less than nothing;—it is to enter upon the pathway to destruction.
In teaching our children, then, we have first to conquer ourselves—that painful, reiterated, primal necessity, which must underlie all teaching. Having done so, we shall find our task easier than we supposed. The children's own questions will lead us; and if we simply make it a rule never to answer a question falsely no matter how far it may probe, we shall find ourselves not only enlightening but receiving enlightenment. For nothing is so sure an antidote to morbidness as the unspoiled mind of a child. He looks at the facts with such a calm, level gaze that proportions are restored to us as we follow his look.
Many of my letters show that adult women, wives and mothers, still grope for the truth that lies plain to the eyes of any simple child—the truth that there is no such thing as clean and unclean, only use and misuse. Others, through love, and the splendid revelations that it makes, have risen so far above their former misconceptions that they fear to tell a child the facts before he has experienced the love. I can imagine that in an ideal world some such reticence might be good and right—but this is far from an ideal world. We have to train our children relatively, not absolutely, in the knowledge that we do not control all their environment. I think the solution of the difficulty is to teach the facts of sex in a perfectly calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, just as one teaches the laws of digestion. When knowledge of evil is thrust upon our child let us be sorry with him that those other children have never been taught, and that they are doing their bodies such sad mischief. But don't exaggerate it; don't be too shocked; don't condemn the poor little sinners, who are also victims, too severely. Charity toward wrong-doing is the best prophylactic against imitation. We never feel the lure of a sin which grieves us in another; but often the call of a sin which we too strongly condemn. Because the very strength of the condemnation rouses our imaginations, is in itself an emotion, and, since it is certainly not a loving one, must necessarily be linked with all other unloving and therefore evil emotions. As far as possible, let us keep feeling out of this subject, until such time as the true and beautiful feeling of love between husband and wife arises and uplifts it.
And now comes the editor of these lessons and accuses me of neglecting the fathers! Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts. Not only do I agree with him that "all ordinary children have fathers, and it might be well to put in a paragraph;" but I am cheerfully willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere modicum of readers can be assured me. I fairly ache to talk to fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad to conduct it.
Joking aside, however, I truly feel that the saddest lack many of our children have to suffer is the lack of fathers; and the saddest lack our men have to suffer is the lack of children. So little are most men awake to this subject that I am perfectly convinced that much of the prevalent "race suicide" is due to their objections to a large family, rather than to their wives'. Upon them comes the burden of support. They get few of the joys which belong to children, and nearly all of the woes. Seldom do they share the games of their offspring, or their happy times; and almost always the worst difficulties are thrust upon them for solution. Not that they often solve them! How can we expect it?
There is Edgar growing very untruthful and defiant. We have concealed all the first stages of the disease for fear of bothering poor tired papa. At last it reaches such a height that we can conceal it no longer. We fling the desperate boy at the very head of the bewildered father, and then have turns of bitter disappointment because the remedies that are applied may be so much cruder, even, than our own. Here is a boy who gets close to his father only to find the proximity very uncomfortable; and a father who becomes acquainted with his son only through the ugly revelations of his worst faults.
Not but that the fathers are somewhat to blame, too. Without urging by us, they ought, of course to take a spontaneous interest in the lives for which they are responsible. They ought to, and they often do; but the interest is sometimes ill-advised, and consequently unwelcome. There are fathers whose interest is a most inconvenient thing. When they are at home, they run everything, growl at everything, upset, as like as not, all that the mother has been trying to do during the day. I know wives who are distinctly glad to encourage their husbands in the habit of lunching down-town, so that they can have a little room for their own peculiar form of activity. And maybe we all have times of sympathizing with the woman in this familiar story: There was a man once who never left the house without a list of directions to his wife as to how she should manage things during his absence.
"Better have the children carry umbrellas this morning; it's going to rain," said he, as he went out of the door. "Be sure to put on their rubbers. And since the baby is so croupy I'd get out his winter flannels, if I were you."
"Yes, dear," said the patient wife. "Make your mind easy. I'll take just as good care of them as if they were my own children." Of course this is an extreme case.
There are other fathers whose whole idea of the parental relation seems to be indulgence. No system of discipline, however mild, can be carried out when such a man wins the children's hearts and ruins their dispositions. It is he, isn't it? (I don't quite recollect the tale) who was sent, after death, to the warm regions, there to expiate his many sins of omission. And his adoring children, who had been hauled to heaven by the main strength, let us say, of their mother, found that the only thing they could do for him was to call out celestial hose company number one and ask them to play awhile upon the overheated apartments of poor tired papa.
The truth is—sit close and let no man hear what we say!—that these fathers are much what we, the mothers, make them. If, under the mistaken idea of saving father from all the worries of the children, we hurry the youngsters off to bed before he comes home in the evening, conceal our heart-burnings over them, do our correspondence-school work in secret and solitude, meditate in the same fashion over plans for their upbringing, talk to our neighbors but never to him about the daily troubles, how can we expect any man on earth, no matter how susceptible of later angelic growth, to become a wise and devoted father? Tired or not, he is a father, not a mere bread-winner. Whether he likes it at the moment or not, it is for his soul's health for him to enter into the full life of his family, including those problems which are at the very heart of it, after his day of grinding, and very likely unloving, work at the office. Here love enters to interpret, to soften, to make all principles live. Here alone he can give himself to those gentler forms of judgment which are necessary as much to the completion of his own character as to the happiness and welfare of his wife and children. Someone has said that we wrong our friends when we ask nothing of them; and certainly it is true that we wrong our husbands when we do not demand big and splendid things of them.
That word demand troubles me a little. So many women demand—and demand terribly! But what they demand is indulgence, sympathy, interest—I think sometimes that they crave a man's utter absorption in themselves much as a man craves strong drink. It is their form of intoxication. Such demanding is not, of course, what I mean. Demand nothing for yourself, beyond simple justice. Not love, for that flies at the very sound of demand, and dies before nagging. But demand for the man himself, call upon his nobler qualities, and don't let him palm off on you his second-best. Many a man is loved and honored by his business associates whose wife and children never catch a glimpse of the finer side of him. Demand the exercise of these fine traits in the home. Demand that he be a fine man in the eyes of his children as in the eyes of his friends. Be sure that he will rise to the occasion with a splendid sense of having, now, a home that is a home, of having a wife who is wived to the man he likes best to be.
This bids fair to be—as I knew it would, if once I permitted myself to write at all on the subject—not a paragraph, but a whole essay—or perhaps, if I did not check myself, a whole volume! But after all, what I want to say is merely that as no child can be born without a father, so he cannot be properly trained without a father's daily assistance. And that, since most fathers come to the task even more untrained than the mothers, some training must be undertaken. By whom? By the mother. It is, I solemnly believe, your duty to go ahead a little on this part of the journey, find out what ought to be done, and teach, coax, induce your husband to co-operate with you in these things. No one knows better than you do that he is only a boy at heart after all—perhaps the very dearest boy of them all. This boy you have to help while yet the other children are little—but be sure that, as you teach him, so, all the time, will he teach you. Every principle laid down in this book, above all others the principle offreedom, will apply to him. He will take the lessons a trifle more reluctantly but more lastingly than the younger boys; and in a little while you will be envied of all your women friends because of the competency, the reliability, the contentment of your children's father.