Study of Child Life Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CARITAS"

From a Painting in the Boston Public Library, by Abbot H. Thayer]

STUDY OF CHILD LIFE.

PART I.

Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly requested _not_ to 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 does Fiske account for the prolonged helplessness of the human infant? To what practical conclusions does this lead?

2. Name the four essentials for proper bodily growth.

3. How does the child's world differ from that of the adult?

4. In training a child morally, how do you know which faults are the most important and should have, therefore, the chief attention?

5. In training the will, what end must be held steadily in view?

6. What are the advantages or disadvantages of a broken will?

7. Is obedience important? Obedience to what? How do you train for prompt obedience in emergencies?

8. What is the object of punishment? Does corporal punishment accomplish this object?

9. What kind of punishment is most effective?

10. Have any faults a physical origin? If so, name some of them and explain.

11. What are the two great teachers according to Tiederman?

12. What can you say of the fault of untidiness?

13. What are the dangers of precocity?

14. What do you consider were the errors your own parents made in training their children?

15. Are there any questions which you would like to ask in regard to the subjects taken up in this lesson?

NOTE.--After completing the test, sign your full name.

STUDY OF CHILD LIFE

PART II.

CHARACTER BUILDING

[Sidenote: Froebel's Philosophy]

Although we have taken up the question of punishment and the manner of dealing with various childish iniquities before the question of character-building, it has only been done in order to clear the mind of some current misconceptions. In the statements of Froebel's simple and positive philosophy of child culture, misconception on the part of the reader must be guarded against, and these misconceptions generally arise from a feeling that, beautiful as his optimistic philosophy may be, there are some children too bad to profit by it--or at least that there are occasions when it will not work out in practice. In the preceding section we have endeavored to show in detail how this method applies to a representative list of faults and shortcomings, and having thus, we hope, proved that the method is applicable to a wide range of cases--indeed to all possible cases--we will proceed to recount the fundamental principles which Froebel, and before him Pestalozzi,[A] enunciated; which times who adhere to the new education are to-day working out into the detail of school-room practice.

[Sidenote: Object of Moral Training.]

As previously stated, the object of the moral training of the child is the inculcation of the love of righteousness. Froebel is not concerned with laying down a ma.s.s of observances which the child must follow, and which the parents must insist upon. He thinks rather that the child's nature once turned into the right direction and surrounded by right influences will grow straight without constant yankings and twistings. The child who loves to do right is safe. He may make mistakes as to what the right is, but he will learn by these mistakes, and will never go far astray.

[Sidenote: The Reason Why]

However, it is well to save him as far as possible from the pain of these mistakes. We need to preserve in him what has already been implanted there; the love of understanding the reasons for conduct.

When the child asks "Why?" therefore, he should seldom be told "Because mother says so." This is to deny a rightful activity of his young mind; to give him a monotonous and insufficient reason, temporary in its nature, instead of a lasting reason which will remain with him through life. Dante says all those who have lost what he calls "the good of the intellect" are in the Inferno. And when you refuse to give your child satisfactory reasons for the conduct you require of him, you refuse to cultivate in him that very good of the intellect which is necessary for his salvation.

[Sidenote: Advantage of Positive Commands]

As soon, however, as your commands become positive instead of negative, the difficulty of meeting the situation begins to disappear.

It is usually much easier to tell the child why he should do a thing than why he should not do its opposite. For example, it is much easier to make him see that he ought to be a helpful member of the family than to make him understand why he should stop making a loud noise, or refrain from waking up the baby. There is something in the child which in calm moments recognizes that love demands some sacrifice. To this something you must appeal and these calm moments, for the most part, you must choose for making the appeal. The effort is to prevent the appearance of evil by the active presence of good. The child who is busy trying to be good has little time to be naughty.

[Sidenote: Original Goodness]

Froebel's most characteristic utterance is perhaps this: "A suppressed or perverted good quality--a good tendency, only repressed, misunderstood, or misguided--lies originally at the bottom of every shortcoming in man. Hence the only and infallible remedy for counteracting any shortcoming and even wickedness is to find the originally good source, the originally good side of the human being that has been repressed, disturbed, or misled into the shortcoming, and then to foster, build up, and properly guide this good side. Thus the shortcoming will at last disappear, although it may involve a hard struggle against habit, but not against original depravity in man, and this is accomplished so much the more rapidly and surely because man himself tends to abandon his shortcomings, for man prefers right to wrong." The natural deduction from this is that we should say "do"

rather than "don't"; open up the natural way for rightful activity instead of uttering loud warning cries at the entrance to every wrong path.

[Sidenote: Kindergarten Methods]

It is for this reason that the kindergarten tries by every means to make right doing delightful. This is one of the reasons for its songs, dances, plays, its bright colors, birds, and flowers. And in this respect it may well be imitated in every home. No one loves that which is disagreeable, ugly, and forbidding; yet many little children are expected to love right doing which is seldom attractively presented to them.

The results of such treatment are apparent in the grown people of to-day. Most persons have an underlying conviction that sinners, or at any rate unconscientious persons, have a much easier and pleasanter time of it than those who try to do right. To the imagination of the majority of adults sin is dressed in glittering colors and virtue in gray, somber garments. There are few who do not take credit for right doing as if they had chosen a hard and disagreeable part instead of the more alluring ways of wrong. This is because they have been mis-taught in childhood and have come to think of wrongdoing as pleasant and virtue as hard, whereas the real truth is exactly the opposite. It is wrongdoing that brings unpleasant consequences and virtue that brings happiness.

[Sidenote: Right Doing Made Easy]

There are those who object that by the kindergarten method right doing is made too easy. The children do not have to put forth enough effort, they say; they are not called upon to endure sufficient pain; they do not have the discipline which causes them to choose right no matter how painful right may be for the moment. Whether this dictum is ever true or not, it certainly is not true in early childhood. The love of righteousness needs to be firmly rooted in the character before it is strained and pulled upon. We do not start seedlings in the rocky soil or plant out saplings in time of frost. If tests and trials of virtue must come, let them come in later life when the love of virtue is so firmly established that it may be trusted to find a way to its own satisfaction through whatever difficulties may oppose.

[Sidenote: Neighbors' Opinions]

In the very beginning of any effort to live up to Froebel's requirements it is evident that children must not be measured by the way they appear to the neighbors. This is to reaffirm the power of that rigid tradition which has warped so many young lives. She who is trying to fix her child's heart upon true and holy things may well disregard her neighbor's comments on the child's manners or clothes or even upon momentary ebullitions of temper. She is working below the surface of things, is setting eternal forces to work, and she cannot afford to interrupt this work for the sake of s.h.i.+ning the child up with any premature outside polish. If she is to have any peace of mind or to allow any to the child, if she is to live in any way a simple and serene life, she must establish a few fundamental principles by which she judges her child's conduct and regulates her own, and stand by these principles through thick and thin.