Concerning Children

The discipline of life lies before us all. The more carefully and wisely we teach and train our children, the less they and others need suffer afterward. But there does seem to be some grave deficiency in our method of domestic discipline. Here is little Albert being educated. He is not going to school yet. He is "not old enough." That is, he is not old enough to be taught anything systematically by persons whose business it is to teach; but he is old enough to be learning the a, b, c of life at the hands of those with whom he chances to be. A child learns every day. That cannot be helped. What he learns, and how, we can largely dictate; but we cannot keep his brain shut until he gets to school, and then open it for three or four hours a day only. What does little Albert learn? Put yourself in his place for a little while. Here are new sensations coming to him momently, through the eager nerves of sense. Here is a new brain, fresh to receive impressions, store them, and act upon them. The pleasure of perceiving is keen, the pleasure of his limited but growing reflection is keen, and the pleasure of action is best of all. Life is full of interest. All the innumerable facts which form our smooth background of behaviour, in the knowledge of which we avoid the water and the fire and go down hill circumspectly, are to him fresh discoveries and revelations. He has to prove them and put them together, and see how they work. The feelings with which we have learned to associate certain facts and actions do not exist to him. He knows nothing of "should" or "should not," except as he learns it by personal trial or through the reaction of other persons upon him.

This open state of mind we early destroy by labelling certain acts as good and others as bad; and, since we do not see our way to exhibiting the goodness or badness to the baby brain in natural colours, we paint them in sharp black and white, with no shading. He has to gather his sense of relatively good and bad from the degree of our praise and punishment; and strange, indeed, are his impressions.

The loving and cuddling which delight his baby soul are associated with so many different acts, and in such varying proportion, that he does not clearly gather whether it is more virtuous to kiss mamma or to pull grandpa's whiskers; and it takes him some time to learn which dress he must not hug. But, if the good things confuse him, the bad ones are far more complex and uncertain.

Little Albert is, we will say, investigating his mother's work-basket. A tall object stands before him. He just bumped his head against it, and it wiggled. He felt it wiggle. He reaches forth an inquiring hand, and finds graspable wicker legs within reach. To grasp and to pull are natural to the human hand and arm. To shake was early taught him. Things were put in his hands, the shaking of which produced an agreeable noise and admiration from the beloved ones. So he shakes this new object; and, to his delight, something rattles. He puts forth his strength, and, lo! the tall, shakable object falls prostrate before him, and scatters into a sprawling shower of little things that clink and roll. Excellent! Lovely! Have not persons built up tall creations of vari-colored blocks, and taught baby to knock them down and rejoice in their scattering!

But mamma, to whom this group of surfaces, textures, colours, movements, and sounds, means much besides infantile instruction, asserts that he is "naughty," and treats him with severity. "If you do that again," says irate mamma, "I'll whip you!" If Albert has not already been whipped, the new word means nothing. How is an unwhipped child to know what whipping means? She might save her breath. The lesson is not taught by words. But if she promptly whips him, and does so inevitably when he repeats the offence, he does learn a definite lesson; namely, that the act of pulling over a work-basket results in a species of physical pain, via mamma.

Then the unprejudiced young brain makes its deduction, – "The pulling over of things causes physical pain, named whipping." This much being established, he acts on the information. Presently he learns, with some little confusion, that going out of the gate without leave is also productive of whipping, – dissimilar acts, but the same result, – and lays this up with the other, – "Pulling over things and going out of gates are two causes with the same result, – whipping."

Then comes another case. He begins to investigate that endless wonder and attraction, the fire. If ever cause and effect were neatly and forcibly related, it is in this useful and dangerous element. So simple and sure is its instructive and deterrent action that we have built a proverb on it, – "The burnt child dreads the fire."

But the mother of Albert has a better plan than mother Nature. She interposes with her usual arbitrary consequence, – "If you play with fire, I will whip you," and Albert learns anew that this third cause still produces the same unpleasant result; and he makes his record, – "Pulling things over, going out of gates, playing with fire, result in whipping." And he acts accordingly. Then one day he makes a new and startling discovery. Led by some special temptation, he slips out of the gate and safely back again, unseen of any. No whipping follows. Then his astonished but accurate brain hastily revises the previous information, and adds a glaring new clause, – "It is not just going out of gates that makes a whipping come: it is being seen!" This is covertly tried on the other deeds with the same result. "Aha! Aha!" clicks the little recording machine inside. "Now I know! Whipping does not come from those things: it comes from mamma; and, if she doesn't see me, it doesn't come! Whipping is the result of being seen!" Of course, a little child does not actually say this to himself in so many words; but he does get this impression very clearly, as may be seen from his ensuing behaviour.

The principle in question, in considering this usual method of discipline, is whether it is better to associate a child's idea of consequences with the act itself or with an individual, and conditioned upon the chance of discovery. Our general habit is to make the result of the child's deed contingent upon the parental knowledge and displeasure rather than upon the deed itself. As in this hackneyed instance of the fire, instead of teaching the child by mild and cautious experiment that fire burns, we teach him that fire whips. The baby who is taught not to play with fire by the application of a rearward slipper does not understand the nature of the glittering attraction any better than before; and, as soon as he learns that whippings are contingent upon personal observation, he fondly imagines that, if he can play with fire without being seen, no pain will follow.

Thus the danger we seek to avert is not averted. He is still liable to be burned through ignorance. We have denied the true lesson as to the nature of fire, and taught a false one of arbitrary but uncertain punishment. Even if the child is preternaturally obedient and never does the things we tell him not to do, he does not learn the lesson. He is no wiser than before. We have saved him from danger and also from knowledge. If he is disobedient, he runs the same risk as if we had told him nothing, with the added danger of acting alone and nervously. Whereas, if he were taught the simple lesson that fire burns, under our careful supervision to see that the burn was not serious, then he would know the actual nature of fire, and dread it with sure reason, far more than he dreads the uncertain slipper.

This has been dwelt upon so fully by previous writers that there would seem small need of further mention; but still our mothers do not read or do not understand, and still our babies are confronted with arbitrary punishment instead of natural consequence. The worst result of this system is in its effect on the moral sense. We have a world full of people who are partially restrained from evil by the fear of arbitrary punishment, and who do evil when they imagine they can do so without discovery. Never having been taught to attach the evil consequence to the evil act, but instead to find it a remote contingency hinging on another person's observation, we grow up in the same attitude of mind, afraid not of stealing, but of the policeman.

If there is no slipper, why not tip over the work-basket: if there is no policeman, why not steal? Back of slipper and police we hold up to the infant mind a still more remote contingency of eternal punishment; but this has to be wholly imagined, and is so distant, to a child's mind, as to have little weight. It has little weight with grown persons even, and, necessarily, less with a child.

The mental processes involved in receiving by ear an image of a thing never seen, of visualising it by imagination and then remembering the vision, and finally of bringing forward that remembered vision to act as check to a present and actual temptation, are most difficult. But where a consequence is instant and clear, – when baby tries to grab the parrot, and the parrot bites, – that baby, without being promised a whipping or being whipped, will thereafter religiously avoid all parrots.

A baby soon learns to shun certain things for reasons of his own. What he dislikes and fears he will not touch. It is no effort for the young mind to observe and remember a prompt natural consequence. We do make some clumsy attempts in this direction, as when we tie up, in an ill-tasting rag, the thumb too often sucked. If thumb-sucking is a really bad habit and a general one, we should long since have invented a neat and harmless wash, purchasable in small bottles at the drug store, of which a few applications would sicken the unhappy suckling of that thumb most effectually. But thumb-sucking we do not consider as wrong, merely as undesirable. When the child does what we call wrong, we think he should be "punished." Our ideas of domestic discipline are still of the crudely savage era; while in social discipline, in penology, we have become tolerably civilised.

Some will say that the child is like a savage, and is most open to the treatment current at that time in our history. It is true that the child passes through the same phases in personal development that the race passed long ago, and that he is open to the kind of instruction which would affect a primitive-minded adult. But this means (if we are seeking to benefit the child), not the behaviour of one savage to another, but such behaviour as would elevate the savage. One of the most simple and useful elements in primitive discipline is retaliation. It is Nature's law of reaction in conscious form.

To retaliate in kind is primitive justice. If we observe the code of ethics in use among children, it resolves itself into two simple principles: that of instant and equal retaliation; or, when that fails, the dread ultimatum which no child can resist, – "I won't play!" A child who is considered "mean" and disagreeable by his fellows meets the simple and effectual treatment of snubbing, neglect, ostracism.

These two principles may be applied in domestic discipline gently, accurately, fairly, and without ill-feeling; and their effect is admirable. "What is the difference between this and the other method?" will be asked. "Is not this also descending to the plane of childishness, of savagery, to which you were just now objecting?" Here is the difference.

To apply a brutal and arbitrary punishment to the person of the offender is what savages do, and what we do, to the child. To receive a just and accurate retaliation is what child and savage understand, are restrained and instructed by. We should treat the child in methods applicable by the savage, not with the behaviour of savages. For instance, you are playing with a little child. The little child is rude to you. You put him down, and go away. This is a gentle reaction, which, being repeated, he soon learns to associate with the behaviour you dislike. "When I do this," observes the infant mind, "the play stops. I like to play. Therefore, I will not do the thing that stops it."

This is simple observation, and involves no ill-feeling. He learns to modify his conduct to a desired end, which is the lesson of life. In this case you treat him by a method of retaliation quite perceptible to a savage, and appealing to the sense of justice without arousing antagonism. But, if you are playing with the little one, he is rude to you, and you spank him, he is conscious of a personal assault which does arouse antagonism. It is not only what a savage could understand, but what a savage would have done. It arouses savage feelings, and helps keep the child a savage. Also, it helps keep the race a savage; for the child who grows up under the treatment common in that era finds it difficult to behave in a manner suitable to civilisation.

Discipline is part of life; and, if met early and accepted, all life becomes easier. But the discipline which the real world gives us is based on inexorable law, not on personal whim. We make the child's idea of right and wrong rest on some person's feeling, not on the nature of the act. He is trained to behave on a level of primitive despotism, and cannot successfully adjust himself to a free democracy. This is why our American children, who get less of the old-fashioned discipline, make better citizens than the more submissive races who were kept severely down in youth, and are unable to keep themselves down in later life.

There is a painful paucity of ideas on child-training in most families, as clearly shown in the too common confession, "I'm sure I don't know what to do with that child!" or, "What would you do with such a child as that?"

If we may not use the ever-ready slipper, the shrill, abusive voice, the dark closet, or threat of withheld meal, what remains to us in the line of discipline? What is to be done to the naughty child? We need here some knowledge of what naughtiness really is. The child is a growing group of faculties, the comparative development of which makes him a good or bad member of society. His behaviour has, first, the limitations of his age, and, second, of his personality.

A child is naturally more timid than a grown person, and a given child may be afflicted with more timidity than is natural to his age. Acts which indicate such a condition show need of training and discipline. A certain amount of selfishness is natural to childhood: acts indicating unusual selfishness call for correction.

So with the whole field of childish behaviour: whatever acts show evil tendencies need checking; but the acts natural to every child only show that he is a child, – which is not "naughty"! If we considered the field beforehand, asked ourselves what we expected during this day or this year in the behaviour of such a child, and were not displeased when he behaved within those lines, much unnecessary pain and trouble would be saved to both parties. Then, when things really indicative of evil were done, we should carefully examine and test the character so manifested, and begin to apply the suitable discipline.

For example, it is natural to childhood to be inconsiderate of others. The intense little ego, full of strong new sensations, has small sympathy for the sensations of his associates. The baby may love the kitten, and yet hurt it cruelly because he does not know how kittens feel. This is not naughty, and needs only the positive training which shall hasten his natural growth in extension of sympathy. To show him the right methods of handling the pet, and especially of not handling it; to teach him to enjoy watching the kitten's natural activities and to respect its preferences, – all that is education, and needs no "discipline." But, if the child shows a pleasure in hurting the kitten after he knows it hurts, then you have real evil to deal with. A character is indicated which may grow to callous indifference to the feelings of others, and even to their actual injury. These acts are "wrong"; and wise, strong measures are necessary.

There are two main lines on which to work. One is to take extra measures to cultivate sympathy, using nature study, and to examine and care for such pronounced cases of suffering as must arouse even the most dominant interest. The too-callous child might be taken to a children's hospital, and helped to minister to the needs of the small sufferers. His pets, meanwhile, should be large and strong creatures, which he would depend on more or less, and his enjoying their company made absolutely contingent on right treatment. Special attention should also be paid to all such acts as showed consideration of others, – to encourage and reward them.

Again, if a child shows a too violent or sullen temper, or is distinctly sly and untrustworthy, these are serious indications, and need careful and thorough treatment.

But the great majority of acts for which children are punished are not at all evil. "Carelessness," for instance, is incident to the young brain, – essential to it. The power always to properly co-relate and remember is an adult power, and not always strong in the adult. We need, of course, to encourage a growing carefulness, but not to expect it nor punish its natural lack.

Clumsiness is also incidental to the young nerve connections. The baby drops things continually, the child frequently: the adult will hold an object even while the mind is otherwise engaged, the habit of the flexo-motor nerves being well established. Enterprising experiment is not only natural to childhood, but a positive virtue. That is the quality which leads the world onward, and the lack of it is a Chinese wall against progress. One enormous field of what we call naughtiness in our little ones lies in offences against things.

First and foremost, clothes. Wetting, soiling, and tearing clothes, – what a sea of tears have been shed, what wails and sobs, what heavy and useless punishments inflicted, because of injured clothing! Yet almost every accident to clothing comes from the interaction of two facts: first, the perfectly natural clumsiness and carelessness of childhood; and, second, our interminable folly in dressing a child in unchildish garments, and placing him in unchildish conditions. There is no naughtiness involved except in the parent, who shows a stupidity abnormal to her age. Children are frequently reproached for wearing out their shoes. What does the intelligent parent expect? Is the child to sit in a chair, lie down, or ride the bicycle continually? If the child is seen to cut his shoes with knives or grind them on a grindstone, that may be discouraged as malicious mischief; but the inevitable stubbing and scuffing of the eager, restless, ungoverned little feet should have been foreseen and allowed for. We do strive to buy the heaviest possible mass of iron-shod leather for our boys, and then we scold them for being noisy.

To surround a growing creature with artificial difficulties, to fail to understand or allow for the natural difficulties of his age, and then to punish with arbitrary retribution the behaviour which is sure to appear, this is not the kind of discipline which makes wise, strong, self-governing citizens.

V

TEACHABLE ETHICS

Our general knowledge of ethics is small and unreliable, and our practice in ethics even smaller and more unreliable. The good intentions of mankind are prominent; but our ideas of right behaviour are so contradictory and uncertain, our execution of such ideas as we hold so partial and irregular, that human behaviour continues to be most unsatisfactory. This condition we used to cheerfully attribute to the infirmity of human nature, taking ignominious consolation from the thought of our vicious tendencies and hopeless weakness.

The broad light of evolutionary study has removed this contemptible excuse. We now know human nature to be quite as good as the rest of nature, wherein everything is good after its kind; and that, furthermore, our human kind has made great improvement in conduct so far, and is capable of making a great deal more. We are not weak: we are strong. We are not wicked: we earnestly desire to be good. But we are still very ignorant of the science of ethics, and most inept in its practice.

We learn mathematics, and apply our knowledge with marvellous results. We learn physics, and use what we know therein to work miracles in the material world. Ethics is as plain a science as physics, and as easy of application. Ethics is the physics of social relation. The cause of our slow growth in ethics is this: —

The prominent importance of right action and constant need of some general standard to appeal to, strongly impress the human mind in its very earliest stage of development. Incapable as yet of scientific methods of study, ignorant, supremely credulous and timid, conservative and superstitious to a degree, primitive man promptly made "a religion" of his scant observations and deductions in ethics, and forbade all further study and experiment. Where other sciences have their recognised room for progress, a slowly accumulating and often changing knowledge behind, and a free field of uncertainty in front, ethics was promptly walled in with the absolute and the super-natural. The few lines of action then recognised as "moral" or "immoral" were defined in the most conclusive manner, and no room left for later study. It is most interesting to note the efforts of conscientious men in later ages to make an intelligible, consistent scheme of ethics out of these essentially incorrect early attempts. By these efforts a religion grew from a simple group of dogmas and rites to the complex ramifications of many commentators; and the occasional vigorous and progressive brain that saw more light has always had to suffer and struggle long to introduce new truth. We have forbidden, under awful penalties, all open-minded study in these lines; and this especially hindering mental attitude has kept the most general and simple of the sciences in a very backward condition, so that we go through school and college with no real enlightenment on the subject.

Thus a young man, quite proficient in languages, physics, and the higher mathematics, will be shamefully deficient in even the lowest ethics (right behaviour in regard to himself), and show no acquaintance whatever with the higher branches of the subject. We err very commonly in right treatment of ourselves, more commonly in treatment of one another; and our confusion of idea and behaviour increases with the square of the distance, our behaviour to other nations or other kinds of animals being lowest of all. We have a common scheme of behaviour, coming from various influences and conditions, which we cannot ourselves account for by any ethical rules; and this every-day working ethics of ours shows how social evolution unconsciously developes needed conduct, even where our conscious intelligence fails to recognise or recommend such conduct as ethical. Thus we have developed many stalwart and timely virtues in spite of rather than because of religious approval, and many serious vices flourish without religious opposition.

A conspicuous instance of this is in the pious contentment of a wealthy church corporation, the income of which is derived from tenement houses which are hotbeds of evil; and in the often observed conduct of an irreligious man, who practises the commonplace necessary virtues of daily business life. But this power of social evolution developes the immediate virtues essential to close personal intercourse more quickly than the higher range of virtue, needed in national and international affairs. Thus we often see "a good family man," friend, and perhaps even an honest business dealer, shamefully negligent or corrupt in political duty.

It would seem that the same brains which have brought us forward to such enormous knowledge in other lines might have made more progress in this. Some special cause must have operated, and be still operating, to prevent a normal growth in this deeply important field.

Much might be said here of the influence of religious custom; but the still closer and more invariable cause lies not in the church, but in the home.

Where in social relation our necessary enlargement and progress have forced upon us nobler characteristics, in the domestic relation small change has been made. The privacy and conservatism of the family group have made it a nursing ground of rudimentary survivals, long since outgrown in more open fields; and the ethical code of the family is patently behind that of the society in which it is located. The primitive instincts, affections, and passions are there; but justice, liberty, courtesy, and such later social sentiments are very weak.

New truth is seen by new brains. As the organ we think with grows from age to age, we are able to think farther and deeper; but, if the growing brain is especially injured in any one department in early youth, it will not grow as fast in that one line. As a general rule, – a rule with rare exceptions, – we do thus injure the baby brain in the line of ethical thought and action. In other sciences we teach what we know, when we teach at all, and practise fairly; but, in teaching a child ethics, we do not give even what we have of knowledge, and our practice with him and the practice we demand from him are not at all in accordance with our true views.

In glaring instance is the habit of lying to children. A woman who would not lie to a grown friend will lie freely to her own child. A man who would not be unjust to his brother or a stranger will be unjust to his little son. The common courtesy given any adult is not given to the child. That delicate consideration for another's feelings, which is part of our common practice among friends, is lacking in our dealings with children. From the treatment they receive, children cannot learn any rational and consistent scheme of ethics. Their healthy little brains make early inference from the conduct of their elders, and incite behaviour on the same plan; but they speedily find that these are poor rules, for they do not work both ways. The conduct we seek to enforce from them does not accord with our conduct, nor form any consistent whole by itself. It is not based on any simple group of principles which a child can understand, but rests very largely on the personal equation and the minor variations of circumstance.

Take lying again as an instance. 1. We lie to the child. He discovers it. No evil is apparently resultant. 2. He accuses us of it, and we punish him for impertinence. 3. He lies to us, and meets severe penalties. 4. We accuse him of it, rightly or wrongly, and are not punished for impertinence. 5. He observes us lie to the visitor in the way of politeness with no evil result. 6. He lies to the visitor less skilfully, and is again made to suffer. 7. He lies to his more ignorant juniors, and nothing happens. 8. Meanwhile, if he receives any definite ethical instruction on the subject, he is probably told that God hates a liar, that to lie is a sin!

The elastic human brain can and does accommodate itself to this confusion, and grows up to complacently repeat the whole performance without any consciousness of inconsistency; but progress in ethics is hardly to be looked for under such conditions. It is pathetic to see this waste of power in each generation. We are born with the gentler and kinder impulses bred by long social interrelation. We have ever broader and subtler brains; but our good impulses are checked, twisted, tangled, weighed down with many artificial restrictions, and our restless questionings and suggestions are snubbed or neglected. A child is temptingly open to instruction in ethics. His primitive mental attitude recognises the importance of the main principles as strongly as the early savage did. His simple and guarded life makes it easy for us to supply profuse and continuous illustrations of the working of these principles; and his strong, keen feelings enable us to impress with lasting power the relative rightness and wrongness of different lines of action.

Yet this beautiful opportunity is not only neglected, but the fresh mind and its eager powers are blurred, confused, discouraged, by our senseless treatment. Our lack of knowledge does not excuse it. Our lingering religious restriction does not excuse it. We know something of ethics, and practise something, but treat the child as if he was a lower instead of a higher being. Surely, we can reduce our ethical knowledge into some simple and teachable shape, and take the same pains to teach this noblest, this most indispensable of sciences that we take to teach music or dancing. Physics is the science of molecular relation, – how things work in relation to other things. Ethics is the science of social relation, – how people work in relation to other people. To the individual there is no ethics but of self-development and reproduction. The lonely animal's behaviour goes no farther. But gregarious animals have to relate their behaviour to one another, – a more complex problem; and in our intricate co-relation there is so wide a field of inter-relative behaviour that its working principles and laws form a science.

However complex our ultimate acts, they are open to classification, and resolve themselves into certain general principles which long since were recognised and named. Liberty, justice, love, – we all know these and others, and can promptly square a given act by some familiar principle. The sense of justice developes very early, and may be used as a basis for a large range of conduct. "To play fair" can be early taught. "That isn't fair!" is one of a child's earliest perceptions. "When I want to go somewhere, you say I'm too little; and, when I cry, you say I'm too big! It isn't fair!" protests the child.

In training a child in the perception and practice of justice, we should always remember that the standard must suit the child's mind, not ours. What to our longer, wider sweep of vision seems quite just, to him may seem bitterly unjust; and, if we punish a child in a way that seems to him unjust, he is unjustly punished. So the instructor in ethics must have an extended knowledge of the child's point of view, – that of children in general and of the child being instructed in particular, and the illustrations measured accordingly. It ought to be unnecessary to remark that no more passion should be used in teaching ethics than in teaching arithmetic. The child will make mistakes, of course. We know that beforehand, and can largely provide for them. It is for us to arrange his successive problems so that they are not too rapid or too difficult, and to be no more impatient or displeased at a natural slip in this line of development than in any other.

Unhappily, it is just here that we almost always err. The child's slowly accumulating perceptions and increasing accuracy of expression are not only confused by our erroneous teaching, but greatly shocked and jarred by our manner, our evident excitement in cases of conduct which we call "matters of right and wrong." All conduct is right or wrong. A difference in praise or blame belongs to relative excellence of intention or of performance; but the formation of a delicate and accurate conscience is sadly interfered with by our violent feelings. It is this which renders ethical action so sensitive and morbid. Where in other lines we act calmly, according to our knowledge, or, if we err, calmly rectify the error, in ethics we are nervous, vacillating, unduly elated or depressed, because our early teachings in this field were so overweighted with intense feeling.