Class ^UC.^7_._ fiook___A56 Cojjyright^I" COPYRrCHT DEPOSIT. HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION A BOOK OF SUGGESTIONS /;-- ^ BY ANNIE %NSOR) ALLEN BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1907 imHARY of CONGRESS I iwu Cnules Hsixlvod '( OCT 98 «90^ Cooyrnrhf Entry | J CLASS ^ *Xc., No. j COFY li. COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY ANNIE WINSOR ALLEN ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November JQ07 -Asfe CONTENTS Parent and Expert 3 The Nature of Schooling 22 A General Scheme of Education . . . .39 A Few Simple Facts 54 Pedagogic Theories 66 Home Teaching in Babyhood .... 89 Good Reading 105 Discipline 116 Amusements 160 Health 200 A Table of Beginnings 203 Index 213 THIS BOOK OWES ITS SUBSTANCE TO INNUMERABLE MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE SOUGHT IN EVERY AGE THE TRUE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION. AMONG SUCH WAS JOHN LOVELL MASTER OF THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL 1734 to 1775 TO HIS WISDOM I AM MUCH INDEBTED. SUCH ALSO ARE THOSE WHOSE UNTIRING AID HAS GIVEN TO THAT PURPOSE THIS PRESENT EXPRESSION. I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ALL THOSE WHO ARE OF LIKE MIND WITH US. If youth he grafted straight and not awry, the whole com- monwealth will flourish thereafter. Roger Ascham. This hook contains nothing novel or original. It is merely a collection or codification, as it were, setting forth in orderly form the well-estdblished commonplaces and essentials of a sound education, as they have heen known and practiced in all wise communities from the beginning, and as they are still practiced in successful homes and schools, — homes and schools, that is, which are successful in giving the world valuable citizens of more than merely natural good sense and efficiency. The vocabulary has been chosen solely for conven- ience, in order to secure clearness within the covers^ and consists merely of ordinary words in their ordi- nary significance. A nice nomenclature, exact, sys- tematic, and scientific, is impossible to the subject. I have attempted only to make my terms comprehen- sible and linguistically correct. I trust that they are consistently used and adequately defined. The book was begun as an assistance to myself, to make a clear path before me^ and I hope it may help others to see their own way among the dis- tracting opportunities of modern educational theory and practice. To me we seem just now to be liv- ing in a great educational metropolis^ with myr- iads of artificial attractions and conveniences but a plentiful lack of fresh air and open ground. We need to make a clearing promptly, in order that the children who are this year too young to go to school may come upon kindlier and more wholesome times. A. W. A. White Plains, July 1, 1907. HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION PARENT AND EXPERT Parenthood is not a profession. A pro- fession is a means of livelihood, chosen to serve some specific secondary need of the community. Parenthood is not a means of livelihood; it is a primary part of life itself, and its duties and preoccupations are not chosen; they come like eating and sleeping, working and loving, natural necessary parts of a full absorbing life. These duties and pre- occupations can never be counted and named, never be systematized, never be fully fore- seen. Therefore it is that parents can never be experts. Experts are persons of perpetu- ally reiterated experience in some one especial matter. The experience of any parent in the matter of guiding children is limited to one or a dozen in his own family. No one can collect statistics and deduce fixed principles from such a restricted number of cases. As well we might talk of an expert in living. Each 4 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION of us has but one life and comes a novice to every new phase. Real skill cannot be gained where experiences never repeat themselves and opportunities never come twice alike. A sense of this insuperable inexperience is what makes most parents stand helpless before the array of conflicting expert advice which is proffered them to-day on all the problems of their children's growth and guidance. This is why parents who have enough money believe it their duty to employ one from each kind of expert skilled in chil- dren's affairs. They intend that no amateur mistakes shall warp their child's development or risk his safety. This is why so many well- to-do children are accompanied always by some adult, and are definitely taught every- thing that it is desired they should learn. Ac- quisition of life's processes and protection from the experience of life's accidents is hired for them by the hour. "Why do you have a paid companion for your ten-year-old girl ? You never had one for yourself," the rich mother is asked ; and she answers earnestly, "Because I do not PARENT AND EXPERT 6 dare take any risks that I can avoid. My parents could not afford to pay for such pro- tection for me. I can afford it for Alice. I know that coddling children is bad; but when you have the money, where are you going to draw the line between mere coddling and proper care.^" A recently installed tutor for two nice little boys of eight and eleven takes them to walk in the country. They step evenly along by his side until he grows amazed at their in- activity. **Why don't you get up and run on that stone wall.^" he asks. "We've never been taught to do that." Two little girls of like age and condition spend two months learning to ride the bi- cycle, and in the end do not dare even mount without their teacher. On a balmy day in early spring, when the thermometer was at 70°, a sturdy four-year- old was brought in to his mother to be kissed. He was going out for a walk in his full winter toggery, fur coat and hood, gloves and veil. He received the kiss and went out. "Did n't he seem too warmly dressed.^" said the 6 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION mGther to a casual caller. "You see I am so helpless with these nurses. They know so much more than I do." For the same cause, an uninitiated mother, however wise, who had never herself been a teacher, is apt to feel equally helpless be- fore the question of schooling for her children. She wants to do the best for them, but she is not sure what is that best which should be done. She hears a deal of advice and many opinions. But the opinions differ, and the advice generally involves dependence upon experts. But what she wants is something which shall make her able to judge whether that expert's methods are really good. She cannot without aversion plan to put her child from cradle to college under the elaborated, uncorrected judgment of the trained nurse, the expert kindergartener, the experienced governess, the psychological pedagogue, the successful tutor, the famous professor, and the leading doctor. She dreads being reduced to helplessly loving her own child, — and doing nothing more for him. She looks for a simpler, pleasanter way. PARENT AND EXPERT 7 a way of common sense, and a way that will keep her children's lives within her own cog- nizance. She does not like the notion of fol- lowing novel, ingenious plans, and of having no authority within herself which shall make her look unafraid upon an expert, so that she can listen with composure to his alarmingly well-assorted ideas. Her inner sense of the relations of things tells her that somewhere a wisdom of parents is to be gained, larger and sounder for the children than any out- sider's wisdom can ever be. She is right. All professional experts are outsiders, outside the individual life for which they prescribe. A mother is not outside. She is part of the individual life. The experts are each and all properly zealous and learned in their own callings. Unless she is equally zeal- ous and wise in her responsibilities, who shall save the child from becoming a machine-made product, or from being submitted to a pro- cess totally unfitted to his individual needs ? She and his father are the only people who can know what the boy has been in all his stages from the beginning, and who can see him in S HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION all his occupations. Parents are not profes- sionals and they can never be experts; but they may have an undistracted, undivided, and unflagging interest in their own particular child. No one else can have that interest. This undivided, personal, totally unprofes- sional interest is necessary as a balance for the teacher's inevitable tendency to become doctrinaire and to mistake conformity for growth. No sincere parents need stand help- less before an educational expert. It is not a parent's part to propose methods in school- ing. If he knows clearly the ends which should be attained, then the means, the special peda- gogic devices, may be trusted to the expert, if he be a true expert, not simply a faddist. There are very many divergent and equally excellent methods of attaining an education. Only need it be remembered that no matter what advantage, mental, moral, cultural, or physical, an educational device may have, its use is unjustified if it omits to foster thorough- ness and self-reliance. Without fail the parent must understand the essentials to be reached by the child, and PARENT AND EXPERT 9 must see that they are being pursued. Next he must be sure that the teacher has a sound, wholesome mind and good common-sense. And third, let him insist that the classes shall not be too large. Then he need not concern himself about Pestalozzi, Herbart, Gruber, Froebel, or any of their recent variants. He can leave the schoolmasters to fight out those things. All he asks is that his child arrive at maturity adequately trained. But these three points are indispensable; a proper size to the classes, a good quality in the teacher, and the essentials of adequate training. The size of the classes is of imperative im- portance. In order to be personally taught, a pupil's mind must come into direct commu- nication with the teacher's mind. If a class of thirty recites to one teacher for thirty min- utes, each pupil can receive one minute of the teacher's attention (if all general class- instruction is excluded). When two minutes are given to one pupil's difficulties, then some other pupil must go from the class with his difficulties untouched. The pupils at the antique district school fared better. 10 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION The quality of the teacher is equally impor- tant. A brooding or an impulsive mind is charming and has plenty of use in the world; but neither is suited for a teacher of children. Their teacher must be sound and wholesome. Whimsies and sweeping emphatic theories are fascinating and valuable, sometimes; but a child's teacher must have a clear head, a keen common-sense, and a humorous dislike of all over-emphasis. The essentials of adequate training are clear in fact, but easily obscured by talk. They are simplicity, thoroughness, and seren- ity. These must appear in every part of a child's training. Neither is the purpose of training hard to see. Training exists in order to foster in the child self-use and balanced powers, self- reliance and efficiency; the first two, mainly for his own advantage, the last two chiefly for the advantage of his neighbors. In every child the training has to act upon the muscles the memory the senses the taste the will the mind the desires the intellect. PARENT AND EXPERT 11 In order to train these powers it must insist with simplicity, thoroughness, and serenity, upon physical exercise close attention alert observation nice experience steady discipline careful classifying good example independent judgment. The result of good training of good material will be bodily vigor knowledge keen perceptions culture self-control logical thought right behavior just understanding. Bodily vigor,^ keen perceptions, self-con- trol, and right behavior, an interested par- ent understands in substance, and he is sujQS- ciently capable of judging whether a school furthers these four first results of a good education. Knowledge, likewise, is a simple matter, and he is measurably fitted to find out whether a child is learning enough at school. Culture is more subtle, and its actual existence does not become established until after the child is past all schooling. Even in the making, it is mostly to be gained in social intercourse with family and friends, so that all that the parent can reasonably ask of 12 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION a school is that it shall give culture ample op- portunity for development. Training in ready reasoning and just understanding, on the other hand, is exactly what a school is well fitted to give, and the parent should expect that his child shall have constant exercise in school of these most recent powers of man. Upon these depends his real efficiency as an educated human creature. Bodily vigor, keen perceptions, self-control, and right behavior a good dog can have. A man may be well-in- formed and cultivated without being properly efficient; he is commonly enough efficient and full of knowledge without possessing culture; he can with fair ease be efficient and culti- vated without having much knowledge. But the well-educated man is all three at once, and, of the three, most emphatically efficient. We often fail to note the difference be- tween culture and efficiency in their relation to knowledge. For efficiency it is necessary to know thoroughly the skeleton of one subject in each branch. For culture it is not necessary to have a really thorough knowledge of any one subject, but we must understand the out- PARENT AND EXPERT 13 line and character of the principal subjects in each branch. To be sure, the more of this sort of knowledge we have, the more delight- ful it seems; it is delightful to be comfortably familiar with many languages, many sciences, many handicrafts, and many accomplish- ments; but it is not in the least necessary to culture, and it is really inimical to efficiency, except for very rare minds. A voluminous acquisition of entertaining knowledge may make pleasures richer and more varied, but it is apt to confuse the understanding. The judicious parent will feel clearly this difference between what is delightful and what is necessary. Education in every age, and clime, and time, has had the same spe- cial aim and the same result. It aims espe- cially to train the mind and intellect into full efficiency and to develop the will, — to help the man to self-use and balanced powers ruled by wholesome desires. Hiawatha, Con- fucius, or Gladstone had each the complete education of his time and clime, and each gained the result of education, — efficiency and poise. In education, culture, and even 14 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION knowledge, are secondary to efficiency, since culture varies in the same country with the varying generations; and as for mere con- venient knowledge, that is a matter of imme- diate surroundings. Tutored in the common- places of London, we are at a loss in Arizona. Moreover, culture, and even knowledge, can be gained at home; but thorough effi- ciency needs the help of a more formal, systematic method than home can easily supply. Whatever part of education can best be aided by formal treatment belongs to schooling. Whatever needs a free treatment, the school should regard as outside its duty, and if it admit, should admit with reluctance. To strengthen efficiencies school exists, and to that purpose it should adhere, unless forced by inadequate homes into doing clumsily the work which a good home does well. The very poor cannot make good homes. The very rich often do not. The ignorant like- wise cannot, and the frivolous do not. But intelligent, interested, educated parents can and do. Such parents, — not exceptionally intelligent, professionally interested, or highly PARENT AND EXPERT 15 educated parents only, but all normally de- voted parents who can give the time and thought, — such parents should watch the school narrowly, and guard against its en- croachments. For the normal children of normal parents in normal circumstances, a school should not be a corporate attempt to create home atmosphere and home oppor- tunities. "All the comforts of home" is just what the school was not invented to supply. For children and for elders, home is the place of adjustment, where Rigid System, Public Convenience, and Strict Impartiality, — the rulers outside, — yield to personal needs; where the father can be comfortably accom- modated according to his individual liking, and the children be variously treated accord- ing to their individual growth and mood and health. But school represents Necessity, the impartial force of public standards, public ex- pectations, and impersonal circumstance. It should mean primarily Duty and Justice, — not stern justice and pitiless duty, but steady, satisfying duty and even-handed justice. It should represent impersonal inducements to 16 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION effort, such as the nature of the case, the in- terest of the subject, and the absorbing at- traction of doing good work. The teacher must not purposely use personal charm as an inducement, or personal affection. Persua- sive vigor and endearing enthusiasm he must have, but they must not be put conspicuously in evidence. His chief dependence must be a silent confidence in the power and impor- tance of beautiful, gracious, mysterious in- fluences beyond himself, — the influences of order, wisdom, foresight, fidelity, growth, and achievement. Personal affection is an indi- vidual matter, and belongs to the sphere of friendship and home. This is not to say that a child should not be fond of his teacher and his teacher respond in kind. It is only to say that affection must not be used as an inducement to work. Schooling means train- ing, not persuasion. School is the children's training-ground for the outside, inconsiderate world that awaits them. They are there to have their minds trained, as it cannot be done under the looser instigation of home sym- pathy and natural inclination. They must PARENT AND EXPERT 17 enjoy their school, but not with a restless, excited pleasure. Their enjoyment must be of that all-pervasive, deep, strong, permanent sort, which is lifting and enlarging. Though family life is the normal life for every child, and departure from it is to be made only for specific insuperable reasons, yet the need of a good school is well-nigh imperative. Very few parents are capable of supplying the steady, progressive drill which is necessary for good mental training. Very few children can study at all well without the stimulus of numbers and necessity. Of course, all studies were first the natural in- terests of active minds. Then they were ar- ranged by their lovers in such shape that even persons who are not interested can ac- quire a working knowledge of them. And school was, originally, a device to expedite and make sure the acquisition of all such desirable knowledge. Its larger educative use is a late discovery. Not before the middle of the nineteenth century did most schools begin to see their great possibilities in this direction. Up to that time, mental training 18 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION had been only a by-product of schooling, though it was even then recognized as the school's most important result. Since then the power of well-directed training to develop the average mind has been well established. Even for a genius, a good school nowadays is not merely an opportunity; it is a regulator. For the average mind it is a stimulus. For the slow mind it is a necessity. But it should be a good school: it must be simple, serene, and thorough ; and it must not fritter away its function by trying to be the only educational factor in life. Since the epoch-making Centennial Ex- hibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, pedagogues have been so magnifying their office as to bring us to a general impression that edu- cation and schooling are synonymous. As soon as we discover something to be educa- tive which is not in the school curriculum, we promptly ask to have it included there. Whereas, since schooling is merely the formal part of education, we should rather ask of each school-subject why it is already there, whether it does not duplicate the training of PARENT AND EXPERT 19 some other subject, whether it ^cannot be better handled at home, whether it might not just as well be left to be '* picked up," or why home is unable or unwilling to teach it. This setting apart of so many interests and making them school studies, is giving an acquired air to all our knowledge. Instead of coming, we know not just how, and grow- ing into our culture, knowledge is put on consciously at school. This makes us think of it apart from our personal selves. Our culture smacks of the factory. It sits ill on us, like contract-made clothes. We apolo- gize for knowing things, and seem when we mention a printed fact to be reciting a lesson. The newspaper and the magazine are the only literature that we quote without self- consciousness. And now, even the news- paper and the magazine are being "taught" in school. This elaborate systematic teaching, step by step, of all skill and every separate procedure, gives us likewise an impression that no one can do what he has not been taught. We are not suflSciently self-dependent. We fancy 20 HOME, SCHOOL AND VACATION that there is something compUcated and re- condite about cooking a dinner or harnessing a horse. We suppose it to be necessary to go through a course before we can understand anything. This impression we get from the self-important solemnity of school systems and butlers. As a consequence, too, of this over-growth in self-importance, the school is eager to as- sume the whole control of education and to leave the parent nothing to do for the child. At best the typical modern school asks the parent [to cooperate. Yet parents who have the desire but not the opportunity to discover and practice for themselves what is sound and large in education, should properly find the school willingly at their service. In a truly wholesome order, the home would create and use the school. Perhaps the present reversed state of things really springs from indifference and igno- rance in the parents. In that case it is time that the schools ceased to encourage such indijfference, and time the parents overcame their ignorance. The task of actually doing PARENT AND EXPERT 21 away with the indifference will be hard of accomplishment; but to cure the ignorance is scarcely a diflScult matter. A sensible opinion about schooling is not beyond the reach of ordinarily intelligent, interested persons, even though they know nothing of practical teach- ing. It is possible to possess a complete edu- cational scheme, simple and flexible enough to give room for individual varieties of taste and emphasis, yet firmly based upon good sense and permanent necessities. Such a scheme follows the natural order of a child's development, and loses for him as few as possible of the speeding weeks while he is in tutelage. With such a plan, careful parents can take an intelligent stand against an opinionated school-teacher, refusing to have their natural privileges stolen and the avenues to their children's companionship taken out of their possession, and protesting against allowing the whole of learning to be made conscious. THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING A. MOTHER thinks of her child's life, while it is under her charge, as divided into rapidly merging strata like the rainbow, each band of years well defined at its centre and shad- ing off at beginning and end into an adjoin- ing band. First there is infancy, stretching from birth to the time when the child can no longer be carried about. Then babyhood, from the first self-confidence until he can be trusted alone on errands and visits. Next, childhood, from the time when he loses his baby roundness until he begins in earnest really to assert his personal independence. Then boyhood, from the beginning of his teens till his beard starts to grow. And then, at last, the few precious years of immaturity before she is to yield him full charge of his own life. She thinks of school as merely one inci- dent of this manifold rainbow interest. To her, school is a convenience which makes its THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 23 appearance just when the child's mind begins to need more constant attention, perhaps, than the people at home have time or inclination to give it. She has recourse to the school simply that the more formal parts of his edu- cation may be accomplished thoroughly and systematically. Or she sends him to school because she does not know what else to do with him. If the school, in like fashion, regarded all of the child's life as within its own province, it would put him systematically into classes, and would know exactly what he was to ac- complish in each year. Instead of being in- definitely divided into stages, his life would be succinctly tabulated somewhat in the fol- lowing manner: — SCHOOL PERIOD DURATION AGE Am> CLASS Nursery Infancy 3 years 0, 1, 2 Kindergarten Babyhood 4 years 3, 4, 5, 6, Primary Preadolescence 7 years 7, 8. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 Secondary Adolescence 4 years 14, 15, 16, 17 CoUege Immaturity 4 years 18, 19, 20, 21 A mother's natural way of viewing the mat- ter is too vague to be useful to her; the other way is too impersonal. But some orderly 24 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION way of dividing and tabulating may to great advantage be adopted by the mother in con- sidering what is owing to a child year by year, and what at each stage he should have accomplished; it is even well to think of schooling itself as beginning with the baby's first breaths. To do its best work for a child, schooling must be planned as part of the gen- eral scheme of his education; though educa- tion must not, conversely, be regarded as all a strict schooling. And everywhere, in all stages, at home and at school, education must be dominated by simplicity, thoroughness, and serenity. The teachers of infancy are the mother and the nurse, aided in the case of lucky in- fants by the father and the other children. It is a time of no definite tasks, when the new mind is learning what it can without con- scious effort, and when it must be given fit experiences to learn from. With babyhood, duties begin and gradu- ally multiply, and the rudiments of all ac- THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 25 complishments are learned. Perhaps a pleas- ant friend is added to the natural teachers, who appears in some homelike room for a part of every morning, and has school with the children and with some of their familiar friends. While they are little and simple, chey can learn the little and simple parts of everything, so that when they are larger and more complicated, they need not be belittled and bored by little simple things, but may be ready equipped for getting larger, more complicated knowledge. And, likewise, before they grow conscious of themselves as com- pared to others, before they learn to be dis- couraged by the glaring discrepancy between their performance and their model, they should be allowed to try their hands at many things. Thus they gain a manipulation of material, and a familiarity with its feel and character. A little child has no standards of perfection, and needs none. Unoppressed by the distant ideal, he may begin the piano, writing, drawing, painting, cooking, sewing, French, German, geography, botany, dancing, — everything; and incidentally he will be gain- 26 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION ing an unconscious, rudimentary sense of the unity of knowledge. It is best not to launch such small children in a large school if one can help it, nor even, at the very first, in any school at all. All the beginning can best be done at home, in the simple, familiar surroundings, as part of the unpremeditated inevitable course of natural life. Probably the ideal way for children of five or six is to be taught in little groups of from four to a dozen. To these little, pri- vate, personal, uncomprehending creatures, the world should seem little and private, very personal and matter-of-course. When childhood sets in, there come natural exactions, — the need of sterner compulsion than home can offer, the capacity for more difficult companionship than that of intimate friends, and the mental demand for a larger size to the known world. Yet their under- standings are still extremely simple. They ought still to live in a world unperplexed by complex considerations. In every possible way children under thirteen should live so that THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 27 the few simple truths of morals, conduct, and right thinking are brought undisguised to their understanding, over and over. So in the primary school, things are to be merely less familiar than at home, more formal. There are other children about, who are not intimates, and the teacher is not simply a family friend. Here begin definite study and entirely in- dependent work. For it is a poor practice to supply children with many teachers and to keep them at work almost all their school time being taught. Half the time they should be working by themselves, free from the pres- sure of a superior intelligence. Fortunately, the subjects actually to be taught in these lower schools are such that intelligence, ex- perience, natural fitness, and general culture are all they demand from a teacher; conse- sequently the teachers for each child can be few, and the total number of pupils should be so likewise. It is certainly not the best possible arrangement for primary school chil- dren to be in a really large school. In appointment, let the primary school aim 28 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION at simplicity, and disregard the many elabo- rations which . are counseled by the strong American desire for entirely irrelevant per- fections. The perfection at which to aim for childhood is the perfection of simplicity, — simplicity in curriculum and appointments, and simplicity in effect. Many schools miss this simplicity of effect in the complexity of their effort and the elaborateness of their "plant." They give their inexperienced pupils the impression that there is no end to the necessary things, and that there is no differ- ence of importance between good ventila- tion and polychromatic photographs. They provide an especial appliance for each sepa- rate thing that is to be done, instead of using the smallest possible number of implements and methods, in order to draw attention to essentials. This mistake is characteristic of our age. We are sadly without a sense of proportion; we make no sturdy insistence on relative values. And so we are easily and pathetically misled by the eager thoroughness of specialists, forgetting that perennially the "official doth magnify his office." For in- THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 29 stance, technical training of any sort is not really necessary to a sound liberal education; it is often a hindrance to it. The liberally educated mind can quickly acquire, at need, any desired technicalities. So the specialists are mistaken in supposing that subjects which involve elaborate outlay and para- phernalia are necessary to real education, or that such of them as are wished for younger children cannot be learned at home without the encumbrance of elaborate graded methods. If we try to make a child a perfect manu- factured article, through perfect grading and perpetual instruction, we shall do it at the expense of his imagination, his spontaneity, and his personal initiative. The school which is to supplement a good home should teach only those things which need competition and numbers to be learned successfully, and those things which can be taught only by an expert who is too expensive for individual use. As to methods of teaching, pedagogy and psychology are helpless to prescribe for the infinite variety of human type and human 30 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION opportunity. One teacher teaches best in one way, another in another. One child needs slow approach ; another apprehends quickly. Logi- cal systems are subtle snares of the tempter, and formal teaching itself is often out of place. Hints are often sufficient. Most of the things we know we have heard but once. Many things sink in without drill, and the mind "worketh while sleeping." Not all knowledge can be produced in recitation and made visible or audible, neither is all skill to be learned by practice. Much of the best skill is gained by passive watching. Per- fection comes but slowly, and to look for even final completeness is, of course, ridiculous. Saliency is the important matter. Therefore teaching is to be judged, not by method, but by the condition of mind that it produces in the pupil. If it produces wholesome eagerness, independence, accuracy, and intellectual mod- esty, it is good teaching. If it produces apathy or nervousness, mental attitudinizing and affectation, thoughtless repetition, servility of any sort, carelessness or bumptiousness, it is bad teaching. THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 31 In regard to subjects, the primary school will give most of its time to the obvious things. Good primary education supplies in every department of external life the mere ele- mentary and innocent, wholesome facts and methods. It touches on many subjects, but in none should it go below the surface, or let the children's minds feel puzzled or harassed. Throughout childhood the principal mental capacity is for reproduction, for memorizing, and other kinds of imitation. Children love disconnected facts, and do not apprehend the significance of more than the simplest rela- tions of cause and effect. Their intellects, being the latest of human acquisitions, de- velop later. So childhood is the time for storing up facts of all sorts, for gathering the material of future thought, and for training memory and attention. Consequently most of the tasks in a primary school can and should be such that perfection is imaginable by almost every scholar. The amount of ex- act knowledge necessary is very slight; the exactness and the training are all-important. Very few subjects should be studied^ and of 32 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION those subjects only the simplest portions. The school demands should be simple, unpreten- tious, unstruggling, and healthy, so that home joys and home purposes will not be swamped by a pervasive, insistent flow of school interests and school duties; and so that the children's minds will remain free and buoyant. The interest in school work should be steady and quiet. This is the normal, health- ful way to work, without using excited energy. It is as near as possible to the sort of interest that children have when they are playing by themselves. Perhaps children whose percep- tions are dull, need to be roused by stimulating methods. But children of intelligent parents are apt to be keenly alive in all their five senses. The mere using of their powers is a pleasure. The subject and an opportunity to accomplish something are stimulus enough for them. For this sort of child, the added excitement of a teacher's superimposed personality and simu- lated suspense is nervously injurious. For him there is no need of trying hard to make school pleasant. There is much more need of mak- ing it serious, and giving him a habit of hard. THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 33 steady work. For him life is already suf- ficiently pleasant; and he does not need to be taught most things laboriously. Interests crowd upon him. Moreover, a habit of having always some outside stimulus to urge it on to work, is bad for the mind's self-dependence. A teacher should teach a child how to learn, not teach him his lessons. The child should learn his own lessons, and the lessons should be within his capacity for that kind of learning. So work in a primary school should be done in a steady, thorough, interested kind of way, quiet and pleasant, and coming as a matter of course, like eating breakfast and going to bed. There should be reports to the home, but no rank- ing marks for the children's delectation, ex- hilaration, depression, and jealousy; no prizes, no sharp comparisons of any sort of child with child. Comparisons belong to later life, when the basis of just comparison can be understood and the power of comparison is developed. Children should not be made conscious and critical of themselves or of their neighbors. They should work together 34 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION in a spirit of mutual good-will. Competition, emulation, a wish to be foremost, are natural and necessary; but they are not first-rate mo- tives. In school, by virtue of the presence of others, they will always be healthily at work. They need not be fostered, and the only motives that a teacher of children should appeal to openly are the ones she most re- spects, — the desire to do things as well as you possibly can, and the desire to gain what you have seen to be good. Above all things, work must be earnest, sober, and important. At the outset of youth, life suddenly crowds and lengthens. This experience is universal. Looking back from maturity at our youthful selves, we seem to see long spaces between the happy child of twelve and the searching young creature of fifteen. There is not more difference between the babe of six months and the child of three years. Therefore, here may well come a break in all school sur- roundings, and a year of easy work with plenty of out-door exercise; a change in the spirit and method of the teaching, and even to THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 35 some extent in the personnel of companions. It is now that Hfe becomes compHcated, led by ideals impossible of fulfillment, redolent of questions and arguments, suggestive of com- parisons, difficult. School should change in like manner. A variety of teachers, a large company, a voluminous aspect in the studies, an aim beyond perfection, these should re- place the clarity and self-completeness of the earlier school. In appointments and subjects, the second- ary school is necessarily and desirably com- plex. The youthful mind is full of new powers and new kinds of interests. It needs to be fed from a full manger. As to methods of teaching, stimuli of various sorts are suitable enough and competition to a mild degree is not out of place. But the desire to do things as well as you can, must grow even stronger as the standard of performance rises. And the desire to gain what you have seen to be good must grow wiser, more independent, and more unselfish. To them must be added love of abstract truth, love of knowledge for its own sake, understanding of the relations 36 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION of things and of the reasons for things, a joy- in hard work. The youth must learn to know himself. He must accept and use his natural place among his fellows; not pluming him- self upon his talents nor blinding himself to his weak points, nor being out of patience with his stupidities, but looking upon his powers as tools to be put to the best use he can find for them. All this can be fostered at school, but the home expectation is what aids him most. Youth needs college, or if not college, then something equally worth while, equally com- plex and equally enlarging, something which will establish independence and enrich the mind by daily contact with the process of careful thinking. Colleges are foolish, it is true. But so is society, and so is business. Each is an inadequate device for the educa- tional purpose. But college has the deeper purpose, and is a more thoughtful and care- fully contrived device. Whatever a boy or girl does from eighteen years old to twenty-two, should be considered and managed as still a part of life's prepara- THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 37 tion. We human creatures have the privilege of prolonged infancy, and those of us who are not in the clutch of financial necessity may seize the full advantage of that probation for their children. This is something that they owe to themselves and to humanity. Unless those who are able, develop their children to the greatest advance they can reach, the whole race is retarded in its upward climb. Nothing has so hindered it in the past as the self-satisfied lagging of the vanguard group. We are too apt to rest content if our chil- dren are as well developed as ourselves, and often we do not make the personal exertion necessary to secure even that. Of course, if we are satisfactory to ourselves and com- pletely useful to other people, we may save ourselves the bother of puzzling over educa- tion : we need only reproduce for our children what we went through ourselves. If most of our friends are well-rounded and thoroughly valuable persons, so that we know that they have reached the fruitful use of every power they have, then we may feel satisfied that 38 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION the educated classes are doing their full duty toward their own individuals and toward their numberless fellows scrambling up behind them. But we know very well, each searching his own self and his acquaintance, that barely a person can be found who is able to do full justice to himself. Every one might be more satisfactory than he is, might easily be so. There is no one who would not have been bet- ter and happier for some wiser treatment in one respect or another while he was in tutelage. It the more concerns us to use all possible devices for preventing omissions in our chil- dren's education, and to see to it that their schooling at every stage supplements a wise home training and a rich home opportunity. The home training must be controlled by justice, sympathy, and a high standard of performance, debarring rigidity, indulgence, and good-enough-will-do. The home oppor- tunity must give ample room for personal tastes, spontaneous activity, genuine enthu- siasms, and unhampered experiments. Not a month must be unheeded. The child will never come to that age again. A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION To-day, if an average man is to feel thor* oughly at home in his environment and com- prehend the world in which his work must be done, he needs the greatest possible va- riety of conversance with human knowledge and skill, and his own powers must be well at his own command. The whole period of tutelage is not too long to equip him satis- factorily. Therefore the ingenuity of home and school must be combined to use all of his first twenty-one years economically and fruit- fully for him, so that he will be equal to the situation when he arrives. Such being the state of things, a compre- hensive outline of elementary learning is valuable at home and at school. At home it guards against omissions and time-wasting. At school it helps keep the effort modest and thorough. Its suggestions should include not 40 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION only the usual stock studies, but also all those less academic things which are best fitted not to be taught in school but to be absorbed as home interests. Such a catalogue has un- avoidably the ridiculous look of a complete guide to omniscience, covering "All Educa- tion FROM Cradle to College." But con- sidered soberly it is merely a sketch, not a rigid arrangement; it is a useful outline of all sorts of things that are desirable to teach and to learn. The one given at the end of this book aims to arrange the subjects in a sensible order, so that they can be comfortably and healthfully assimilated, taking into ac- count the usual abilities and limitations of each age, and emphasizing always what is salient. Each subject is inserted at the point where a healthy average child may well be introduced to it. If he shows no capacity to comprehend it then, it may be postponed, but not omitted. If he shows a capacity very much earlier, well and good; let him begin earlier, — if he is thoroughly healthy. For various reasons of convenience, also, the order may perfectly well be altered. The only purpose A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 41 of the list is to mention everything, at a sea- sonable moment, and to allow time enough for an adequate acquaintance with each. It does not intend, either, to put a terminal limit to acquaintance with any subject; once taken up, nothing is wholly dropped. A subject still continues as an interest after it has ceased to be a study. In this list school work goes side by side with home work, and vacation time is given plenty of occupation. Any parent who consults the plan will find a sug- gestion, not a direction, about what to do with a child's mind at any age, and about how to reduce to a proper minimum the formal teaching in a sound education. It is important to emphasize the fact that no one plan of education can suit equally any two children. Differences in talents, taste, and temperament, and accidents in outside opportunity, often make the needs different even for brothers close in age. Illness, lack of proper exercise, too rich food, second teeth, over-stimulation, over-study, or insuflfi- cient work, added to natural peculiarities of make-up which are part of a child's charac- 42 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION ter, all help to vary development and to make each child a separate problem. A mother must be plastic, constantly ready to change special plans according to circumstances. Talents must be fostered, — even small fleet- ing or superficial talents, — for it is through the unfolding of talents that each human creature gains self-confidence and strong enthusiasm. Tastes must be gratified, en- larged, and supplemented, for it is through our tastes that grace and charm come into life. Temperament must be used, modified, and reinforced, for temperament is the con- trolling factor in every life, the unchangeable centre round which character is built. The watchful mother's safeguard against foolish variety is in having a firmly fixed compre- hension of the final purpose, — self -use and balanced powers, ruled by wholesome desires. This catalogue takes for granted that a child's brain is as much a part of his body as is any other organ, and that his natural exercise of it can no more be surely trusted to give it good development than his other natural exercises can be trusted, undirected. A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 43 with the proper strengthening of the rest of his body. Likewise, to leave even a little child's mind without food or furnishings is to leave it without strength or comfort; and then his mind grows without shape and with no habits, only desultory inclinations. Consequently his formal acquisition of useful knowledge should generally begin before he is six years old. Sev- eral years of time can thus be saved at the beginning of life which have generally, these last thirty years, been allowed to go to semi- waste. It is possible to fill young minds so full of material and interest and simple skill that after life will not be puzzling, and in whatever estate they later find service they will be adequate and free. By the same principle the catalogue takes for granted that mental inactivity during fourteen long summer vacations is not salu- tary. Fourteen long summer vacations are the equivalent of almost five years. The scheme does not propose the apportioning of every hour in every vacation day to some allotted task. It merely urges the duty of experience toward inexperience, and warns 44 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION us not to let the child's mental energies be softened by mere repetition of familiar occu- pations and effortless acts, or even by the novel or vigorous pleasures of any merely physical and emotional experiences. That is sending the child to a school of mental va- grancy, and is as unjust as is driving him to restlessness by over-stimulation. It is true that time for germination and fructification is needed; time for the growing, eager mind to invent for itself joys and pastimes, prob- lems and purposes of its own, — plenty of time, in summer and winter. But there must not be so much of such time given that the mind never gains any new material with which to experiment or any new vigor with which to think. One of the most serious reasons for giving children tasks and urging them to difficult undertakings is that they may surely learn what longing is. The desire for what is high and far away, — this is the heart of life. The desire to attain, the courage to strive, the wisdom to desire and dare well, — these are what we want for our children. In consequence of failure to recognize the A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 45 principle that every mind needs steady regular exercise adequate to its powers, the weakest part of our educational methods to-day is in the first twelve years. Everywhere through this country, in both private and public schools, and even more flagrantly at home, so much time is wasted that the growth ac- complished in these years is cut down to less than half of what it should be, and the sec- ondary school above becomes a place of close pressed haste to make up for such wholesale losses. To go into the entire matter and pre- sent a reasoned proof of this condition and its causes, and then to give an elaborate exposition of a sounder policy and a better method, would pass the scope of a thousand pages. Any one who is interested need only consult all the best teachers of his acquaint- ance, — not the psychologists, pedagogists, superintendents, and merely directing prin- cipals, but the teachers who are trying to do the actual teaching. Suflace it to offer here the following convictions and a clear scheme based thereon. 46 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION UNDERLYING CONVICTIONS Systems of education which are logically reasoned out from a few fixed premises necessarily omit a multitude of important matters, and over-emphasize details of per- fection, for it is the nature of logic to be exclusive of all facts outside the assumed pre- mises, and exhaustive of all within. Educa- tion, therefore, cannot be logically systematic. It must be regulated by ordinary common- sense, balancing one consideration of experi- ence against another. Schooling exists to provide mental training by orderly procedure. It must train the child to steady work, continuous thought, voluntary application, and independent decision. No methods which omit or weaken such training are good methods. The sincere use of words, whether in study- ing from books or in expressing one's thoughts, is a more exacting and a more thorough mental education than any other occupa- tion can be, for it demands an unlapsing attention and uses all functions of the mind A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 47 at once, the later as well as the earlier powers. Complete knowledge and the complete understanding of any subject are impossible even to an adult. For educational purposes we must choose the salient, established, sim- ple parts of each subject and let the rest go. The power of the mind is injured by being left for seven years without learning volun- tary concentration. And it is a grave mistake to make no provision for regular mental exer- cise during fourteen long summer vacations. Each sort of knowledge should be encoun- tered three times before full freedom of choice and treatment is reached: — in Babyhood, to grow familiar with the general nature of the material; in Childhood, to learn the skeleton and general ar- rangement of the subject; in Youth, to learn the history and general theory of the subject, and its large relations to life. After that, the details may be mastered to any desired extent. By meeting halfway the eager, natural curiosity of a child between three and seven 48 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION years old, much of the early drudgery of school studies can be agreeably forestalled and the nervous crowding of later school work prevented. During primary and secondary education the various kinds of human knowledge and interest must become familiar to the con- sciousness in their healthful aspects, omitting what is perplexing, morbid, bare, or patho- logical in any way. But only the few indis- pensable subjects must be mastered {e. g., spelling), or even taught in such a way as to suggest mastery. Some few others must be mastered in their elements only (e.g., physics). Still other few must be learned briefly and in skeleton {e. gr., history). The vast majority of facts must be mentioned, not taught; opened to the consciousness, not made a part of re- quired study. Most of them should be met at home, not at school. Home and vacation interests and occupa- tions should run parallel to school work, and supplement it. So little work should be required at the upper end of the primary school that a child A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 49 could then have one easy year, with an extra amount of outdoor time. RESULTS Followed by parent and school, these con- victions may have the following results : — Before the approximate age of seven years, children may learn — to read and write childish English easily, and to repeat verses; to count, and to do simple sums both oral and written in numbers less than 100, and to tell time; to repeat some verses in French and German and to count in each language, also to name the days of the week and the months in each; to tell childish stories of famous children, etc.; to understand the globe and the map of the world, etc., points of the compass; to know the names of common birds, flowers, trees, and insects, and the parts of a flower, etc. ; to sing by note, following the hand, and to sing the scale, etc., to play little pieces; to paste, cut, sew cards, sew cloth, weave paper, etc., fold and cut paper, trace, color drawings with water color, etc., and to dance, march, etc., and to know right from left; to be familiar with very much first-rate prose and verse. 50 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION Between the approximate ages of seven and THIRTEEN, they may learn — to read fluently and intelligently any book whose sub- ject-matter is sufficiently comprehensible to them; to understand the simple terms and relations of gram- mar; to write correctly and naturally on any subject that interests them; to spell; to do arithmetic, oral and written, through compound numbers, but only for simple problems; to do inventional geometry, and algebra through quadratics, but these also only in very simple forms; to read simple French with ease (after seven years' lessons), and to speak it simply, without embar- rassment; to do the same with German, so far as two years less study make that possible; to read and write simple Latin; to know the skeleton outlines of English, American, Ancient, Grecian, and Roman history, and general modern history to the Renaissance; to be familiar with the use of maps, and with simple modern geography (commercial, political, and physical), as well as with ancient; to feel at ease in the mere elementary facts and terms of botany, physiology, zoology, simple physics and chemistry, physical geography, astronomy, and geology; A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 51 to sing songs in parts (by dint of a singing lesson every school day); to model a little, to draw in outline and in flat color, and to design patterns, also to carve a trifle per- haps, and to drive a nail, etc.; to do healthful calisthenics with the precision of daily practice. Between the approximate ages of thir- teen and EIGHTEEN, all the usual work may be done, except what has been anticipated, and there is time for several unusual studies. These results are attained by simplifying the material in each subject, by condensing the method, and by saying many things only once. The home is a large factor in these results. The school alone cannot accomplish them. DISTRIBUTION OF TIME This work can actually be distributed and accomplished without study at home until the age of eleven, and then with not more than an hour or so a week up to fourteen or fif- teen, leaving plenty of leisure of mind for every one concerned, as well as ample time for 52 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION outdoor games and exercise, and for home pleasures and duties. To accomplish this, children will need to be schooled — at 4 years at 5-6 years at 7 years at 8 years at 9-10 years at 11-18 years for ^ hour daily; for 1 hour daily; for 2 hours daily; for 3 hours daily; for 3 J hours daily; for 4 hours daily. Of course, for the younger children, as much more time in school could be arranged for as seemed desirable in special cases, by providing occupations of various sorts; but this is all that is necessary. The various studies would fall in, some- what after this fashion: — To come every day reading aloud and listen- ing reading silently writing and composition mathematics To come two or three days a week for an indefinite period history geography later science later languages A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 53 To come every day for To come one day a week for an three years indefinite period beginning French memorizing literature beginning German speaking or acting literature beginning Latin beginning Greek OCCUPATIONS To come every day for To come two days a week for an eighteen years indefinite period music early science exercise art information handwork In fact, there is no reason why the extraor- dinary enlargement of the intellectual field brought upon us during the past fifty years should make of education either a distressful scramble or a bewildered smattering. By sim- plification, calmness, and foresight the chil- dren can be given a modern liberal education without strain and without shallowness. A FEW SIMPLE FACTS The few principles here set down are chosen only because of their practical usefulness. They do not cover the whole ground, nor have they any systematic relation to one an- other. They briefly treat the questions which most often come up in the course of practical education. Manner is All Important. It is the manner of learning, not the material or even the method, that produces a sound educa- tion. (a) Manner, not Matter. It is the manner, not the material of learning, that is essential. All the schools of any one country teach substantially the same subjects simply for convenience. The Japanese for thousands of years based education on material which seems to us preposterous. In their little iso- lated island there were not enough large things to work upon, so they trained their minds A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 55 upon small matters, — elaborate punctilio of ceremony, infinite nicety of detail, countless steps and ramifications of procedure in every art, always and everywhere a multiplication of needless rules. But when their minds, trained by such exacting education, met the material of Western life, they grasped, handled, and managed it with a masterly perfection that amazed the Westerner, accustomed to> more large and careless mental motions, and hitherto impatient of being precise and par- ticular. (6) Manner, not Method. It is the manner, not the method of learning, that produces a sound education. Entirely well-educated per- sons may be produced by any one of a hun- dred current methods and pedagogic theo- ries; but no well-educated person can be produced by any method whatever, unless in the course of it, and all through the course of it, his mental powers are steadily, adequately, and equally exercised. We take thought over which method we shall choose for our children's schooling, not because one method educates and the others do not, but because 56 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION one method has certain valuable attendant consequences and another has others. At public schools the children get democratic experience. At private schools they get de- sirable friends, perhaps. At home they get personal attention, and hear nothing of which their parents wish them to be ignorant. So, too, special methods of actual teaching are chosen, usually for reasons outside pure edu- cation. One method gives quicker results, one gives wider range of knowledge, one is adapted to large classes, etc. But in all these places and all these ways the children can get a sound education if they have a good teacher. Schooling should deal primarily with Mental Powers. Primarily, school is to train the mental powers; culture and morals are only attendant possibilities of mental education. Of course, the less the home does for culture and morals, the more the school is tempted to do for them. And of course, in the capacity of friend, the teacher is constantly and necessarily an important factor in both culture and mor- A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 57 als. But school must aim first at mental training. The mental powers are memory, will, mind, and intellect/ Training them increases the capacity for accuracy independence attention initiative comparison judgment concentration (voluntary observation and acquired) orderliness discrimination promptness expression, power of recording, accuracy in foresight self-control imagination (reproduc- sense of proportion tive, constructive, and seriousness toward work creative) and their like. These capacities gain strength by exercise upon no matter what material and by no mat- ter what method. Desire is not a Mental Power. Mem- ory, will, mind, and intellect are mental powers; desire is not. Memory is the storehouse for material. Its use is in record, imitation, and reproductive imagination. Will is the force which causes voluntary action. Its exercise brings about attention, concentration, expres- * Here and in the next section the category is one of convenience, not of science. ^8 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION sion, initiative, independence, observation, promptness, and self-control. Mind is the capacity for sorting, classifying, general- izing, and reasoning logically, i. e., deductively. It is the power to see likeness and difference, the power, that is, not of seeing values, but of arranging commodi- ties. Its activity is necessary for accuracy, comparison, •constructive imagination, and orderliness. Intellect is the ability to see values, to reason induc- tively, and to make abstractions. Its application re- sults in creative imagination, discrimination, foresight, judgment, sense of proportion, and seriousness toward work. On the other hand. Desire is that personal preference which makes a child like one study better than another. It depends upon many things, his physical make-up, his inherit- ance of tradition, his home training, his health, him- self. And upon desire depends his capacity for affec- tion, moral action, culture, and good taste. Thought is the Use of the Mind AND THE Intellect. Not all mental power is power to think. Memory is not thought. Will is not thought. Thought is the use of the mind and the intellect. Thought is re- A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 59 arranging on some definite plan material found in the memory. The simplest form of thought is in exer- cising the mind's power to perceive likeness and difference. From thinking on this plan have arisen, through more and more compli- cated sequence, the various activities of the mind in sorting, classifying, generalizing, and reasoning logically. The more difficult forms of thought arise from thinking on the intellectual plan; that is, from using the power to perceive cause and effect. Out of this plan have come, at later and later stages of man's development, reasoning inductively, seeing values, making abstractions, and testing principles. Sensation is not Thought. All the stock of materials for the mind and intellect to think about is got through the senses and through the senses only, and is stored in the memory. But the material does not do any thinking, neither does the storehouse ; and the process of gathering the one to put into the other is not thought; it is observation or per- ception, the use of the senses. 60 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION The Senses are of Prime Importance TO Thought. All the material for thought comes through the senses, so if the thoughts are to be kept constantly sound and whole- some, the senses must constantly supply sound and wholesome material. The senses must themselves be kept sound, wholesome, and active, and they must be exercised upon sound and wholesome actualities. Mental is not Moral. Mental char- acteristics have no moral quality; and one of them is as valuable as the other. Even self-control and foresight are not moral; a skilled burglar must possess them both in a high degree. The school's primary aim is to give the child the most effective possible use of his characteristics, whatever they hap- pen to be. It intends to give him self -use. Whether he uses himself for good purposes is quite another matter, and not a problem for his mental training. Character is Alive. Every child has a multiple personality. To be sure, certain characteristics are cogent in him and stamp his character; certain talents are potent and A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 61 determine his bent; certain tastes are active and influence his enjoyments. But he has in him, besides, thousands of more or less latent characteristics, talents, and tastes, which can be brought into play by stimulus, accidental or intentional. Any one of them, once brought into play, acts with a modifying and some- times revolutionary influence upon the whole child. Thus, capacities and tendencies are not predetermined and rigid; talents and tastes alter and grow. Only temperament remains, and that itself can be submerged by faulty physical health. Completeness entails Balance. Com- plete development must be by genuine activity of all the mental powers. This cannot be gained by a process of uninterrupted imita- tion, conformity, and obedience; neither can it be gained through unmitigated free choice. The two must be balanced. Schooling aims at Self-Use and Bal- anced Powers. Schooling can foster self- use and balanced powers. It cannot provide characteristics or desires. It works primarily upon the mental characteristics as they already 62 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION exist in the child. Taste, talent, and moral character are beyond its direct province. An efficient man can be produced by judicious mental training, but not a cultivated man, a clever man, or a good man. The moral effect of a school is produced indirectly by the intensity with which it insists upon high and rigorous standards. The moral teach- ing of a good school is by practice, not precept. Real Teaching is by Guidance, not Conveyance. Three quarters of all skill- ful teaching consists in presenting opportuni- ties for mental action. A formed mind has a tendency to paralyze an unformed mind. The childish mind stands still when it is too much aware of an older presence. Therefore when children have been supplied with what they need at home or at school, they must be left as much as possible to themselves in the use of it. The less teaching the better, so long as they learn. The teaching should be just enough to insure steady progress and good mental habits. Often, once is enough. Unjaded minds. A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 63 alert and thorough in their habits, notice what is heard or seen the first time it appears, so that many things need no drill for children who are well educated. The salient or curi- ous fact stays by them because it is salient or curious. Again, most things need not be remem- bered. The importance of them for educa- tion lies in the child's having apprehended their existence and so used them to build up a conception and comprehension of the uni- verse as it actually exists and has existed. The Subconscious Area is Many Times Larger than the Area of Attention. A child notices and is aware of only what he happens to be paying attention to; but all the while whatever enters his mind through any avenue is being diligently recorded by his memory, sorted by his mind, and judged by his intellect. All that goes on alpout him is making its impression. The Standard of Performance should BE High. Each thing should be done as well as that child can do it. A wise teacher is satisfied with nothing less. There is no 64 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION more clear mark of the really well-educated man than his efficient power of performance. Partially balanced, semi-controlled persons laugh at the "particularity" of a high stand- ard, but when they want anything well done, from a well-cooked dinner to well-placed advice, they go straight to these same efficient people. Self-Reliance should be Habitual. The child must do for himself. When he is grown he will choose one special service which he can do best for others, and then will let others do most other things for him. While he is a child, he must, for many reasons, do everything possible for himself, — from buttoning his coat to learning his lessons. All that a grown person would need to know in order to shift for himself, a boy or girl must learn to do. This is not only true for practical and ethical reasons; it is urgent for mental and intellectual reasons also. The only limit to self-reliance must be his own temperament. Good Training leaves Four Marks. A ready practical imagination, an alert power A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 65 of complete attention, a test for the real mean- ing of words, and a quick, accurate sense of relative values, are the equipment in mem- ory, will, mind, and intellect which a child gets from good mental training. PEDAGOGIC THEORIES We all know from memories of our own childhood, if not from watching other little children, that the number of things happen- ing at once in the development of a child is as great as the number of his faculties and emotions, characteristics, tendencies, and tastes; all these things are developing at once. Yet lately it has been a common process of educational theories to start with the uncon- scious assumption that only one thing at a time can happen in a child's development. Some of these theories are so very untenable that it would be interesting to investigate how many of them were set going by childless persons of an ingenious turn, who had not even a niece or a nephew under familiar ob- servation. Still, no educational theory, however fan- tastic or rigidly logical, was ever without its solid basis in valuable fact. What is fantas- PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 67 tic readily disengages itself, and disappears by mere lightness. What is logical but un- sound is harder to dispose of. The very fact of its being logical makes it seem unavoidably right. The very word seems to involve rigid accuracy. Nevertheless, logical conclusions are not necessarily true conclusions. Logic ^ is a matter of words, not of facts. It is an excellent aid to investigation, but it cannot even test its own premises; once having started a course of logical thought from cer- tain premises, we are not at liberty to take up any further considerations along the way. Obviously such a device is not suited to be much used on educational problems, for all education is a perpetual process of taking fresh matter into consideration. Moreover, preconceived and carefully elaborated theories are a bar to unbiased observation. Sound educational methods are discovered by in- ductive reasoning, not by deductive logic * By this is meant deductive logic, the mathematical art of reason- ing from premises with precision. Inductive logic, so called, is not strictly logic at all. It is not a matter of words. It is a studying of the relations between facts, and should be called inductive reasoning. Logic proper deals with logi, i. e., words, and is carried on by the mind. Inductive reasoning is a matter of the intellect. 68 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION And the solid basis which is in all theories, however mistaken, is discovered by the same process of observation and real intellectual thought. The following survey aims to show, in re- gard to various current theories of the day, how they all have this double character of a true basis and an unsafe superstructure. All are worth using; none is to be pushed to a logical completeness of use. Of Natural Development. It is true that a child's natural impulses, tastes, and purposes should be given room to expand. It is not true that for this expansion he needs absorb the whole house, the whole day, or the whole comfort of his house- mates. Moreover, his powers of self-control, and of conforming to other people's purposes, also need room to expand. Of Lying Fallow. It is true that a child may be over-urged, over-trained, and over-occupied during his early years. It is not true that in order to avoid these dangers we must leave him unguided and PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 69 unrestricted in intellectual ways until he is eight years old, or, as one theory has it, even until he is twelve years old. Moreover, a child may be left inactive, inaccurate, and desultory so long that he is never after able to gain a thorough use of his own faculties. The mind, if it is to keep in health and grow, must from the be- ginning be exercised constantly and progres- sively. Of Early Learning. It is true that a child under seven years old should not be given obligatory tasks of long-continued men- tal effort ; and should not be put into the fixed machinery of a formal school. It is not true that a child under seven is injured by mental effort, and must be spared from acquiring any ideas except those which he can invent or discover for himself. Moreover, the natural curiosity of a child under seven will carry him easily through the beginnings of most knowledge, if he is given kindly opportunity. Of Learning to Read by a Special Method. It is true that a child will learn 70 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION to read quickly if he is taught by some sys- tematic method. It is not true that any one special method is vastly superior to all others or that a system- atic combination of all is not best. Moreover, some very quick methods foster inaccuracy, and, if a child begins to read nor- mally early, spontaneity takes the place of sys- tem or rapidity. Of Kindergarten. It is true that little children, like all human creatures, learn much unconsciously through games and amuse- ment; and enjoy using their fingers and their fancy. Systematic work, too, benefits them. It is not true that the unconscious way is the only safe and valuable way for them to learn, and the only kind of educative plea- sure which they can enjoy. Children, like all of us, enjoy steady conscious work. They delight in the victories of purpose and effort. Moreover, their capacities grow rapidly, and often a game or occupation which to- day is educative is mere repetition next week. Again, the impression that work should seem like play is a very dangerous one to insist PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 71 upon; it weakens the will and the courage. Also, there is danger in the spectacle of grown people, day after day making a whole morn- ing's occupation out of childish games and pleasures, and laboriously teaching what is perfectly easy to learn; it injures a child's sense of values and halts his self-dependence. Of Enjoying School. It is true that un- willing learning brings small gain, and that a child should be in the habit of enjoying his school work. It is true that his tasks should not seem a burden to him. It is not true that unwilling learning brings no gain, and it is not true that a state of exuberant conscious enthusiasm is a healthy mental condition, if pursued as a habit; or that doing what is easy is either peculiarly pleasant or particularly valuable. Moreover, a steady willing effort to do what is difficult and not in itself agreeable is one of the most pleasurable as well as one of the most valuable mental occupations. Of Racial Recapitulation. It is true that a child has within him the instincts of the earlier stages of civilization, and that he 72 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION is more like a savage at three years old than he is likely to be at twenty. It is not true that any child develops in orderly sequence and proportion, through the evolutionary stages of the race, or that he leaves behind him, as he grows, the more primitive powers. Neither is it true that any two children develop in the same order or at the same rate. Moreover, every child also contains the tastes, instincts, and capacities of the coming race, and is in himself a prophecy of men to be. If we condone his savagery, we are likely to lose the opportunity to develop his finer self. The study of history throws light upon child study, not because children are bar- barians, but because barbarians are children. The powers are well-nigh identical. The civilized nature is, however, more developed from the very start. Of Manual Training. It is true — fun- damentally and importantly true — that, since we have bodies and live in a material world which supplies us with all the substance of our thoughts and knowledge, it is necessary PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 73 for sound thought and action that we be fa- miliar through our bodily senses with the actual nature of this world and with the way to handle it eflficiently. It is true that manual training can be used to rouse dull brains and to steady the over-intellectual. It is not true that manual or any sentient training gives intellectual training or gives ethical training. It gives considerable men- tal training, and considerable training of the so-called moral qualities ; that is, it trains the brain and the instincts, but it involves scarcely any intellectual activity and has no moral purpose. It touches principally the perceptions and the will. It is in no particu- lar a substitute for book work or for good behavior. Moreover, if a large part of one's youth be spent in it, wandering thoughts and a prosaic mind are fostered. Of Laboratory Methods. It is true that the result of study which has omitted practical acquaintance with the material of which it treats, is barren and factitious. It is not true that in order to get practical 74 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION acquaintance with material, a student must go through all the work which the original discoverers had to endure. Nor is it true that an intelligent general knowledge of a subject cannot be gained largely from other people. Such knowledge is no bar to sub- sequent original work. Moreover, for general purposes technical knowledge is not necessary, and the time spent by a child or youth in learning the intricacies of several subjects by actual con- tact could be much better spent in learning the larger aspect of many. One subject of each branch, known by the intimate labora- tory method, serves as a type for all others. Of Foreigners as Teachers. It is true that a cultivated foreigner speaks his native language with a desirable accent, and that in speaking a foreign language a well- educated child should imitate a good accent. It is true that older pupils can benefit much from talking with a good foreign teacher in his own language. In this way they begin to get at the real genius of the foreign language, and to see the nation through its own eyes; PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 75 and so they may best get into sympathy with its point of view. It is not true that no cultivated person of the child's own nationality can speak a foreign language with a desirable accent so as to make a good model for pupils, or that a good accent is the chief desideratum in knowing a foreign language. Moreover, a foreigner almost never under- stands the habitual mental and moral atti- tudes of his pupils, and therefore is seldom a first-rate teacher for them, and is almost never a good disciplinarian. Of Culture Studies. It is true that some studies appeal more than others to the sympathies, to the aesthetic sense, and to the intellect as distinguished from the mind. It is not true that some studies are totally without such appeal, or that any make only this appeal. Moreover, any study, no matter how great an opportunity it gives for culture, can be so taught as not to suggest a hint of culture; and any study, no matter how apparently bar- ren of opportunity, can be so taught as to be 76 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION redolent of culture, — for culture lies more in treatment than in material. Of Adolescence. It is true that with adolescence comes a great change and ex- pansion of nature, fuller depth of personal feeling, increased self-consciousness, need of growing independence, and all the rest. It is not true that this change and expan- sion should be looked upon as consequent to the sexual development or that all the ex- aggerations of this period must be treated with reference to the sexual functions. It is a period of expansion and change in every function. The various changes, bodily, mental, or emotional, are merely concomitant ; no one of them is exclusively a cause of the others. Moreover, the sexual change, although it is the least ethereal part of the adolescent growth, is in itself dignified, normal, and without disadvantage. Looking upon it as a complicated misfortune and difficult prob- lem is entirely unnecessary and misleading, and is seriously unwise. Of Home Schooling. It is true that persons who have been educated wholly at PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 77, home by first-rate teachers are generally highly developed, sensitive, and single-minded, spon- taneous, eager, and independent, and are apt to have a keen sense of the reality of facts. It is not true that home education can be depended upon to produce such results, for they imply first-rate teaching. Few parents are willing to pay high enough to secure first- rate private teaching, and still fewer first-rate teachers are interested to confine themselves to private work. Consequently the home-taught child is usually a poorly trained child. Moreover, a child reared wholly at home misses every by-product of going to school, the good ones along with the deleterious. He is usually over-sensitive, and seldom catches in after life the natural sense of fellowship, or the ease of competition and the ready ac- ceptance of criticism, which a good school makes possible. Of Public Schools. (a.) It is true that to advance the common weal every demo- cratic community must maintain free schools for its children, and must aim to teach in those schools whatever proves most eflScacious in 78 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION the making of good citizens, — if the children cannot learn it elsewhere. It is not true that every child in that com- munity will necessarily be the better citizen for going to such schools, even when they are good. Moreover, very few communities main- tain really good public schools. Most public schools are simply better in varying degrees than no schools. (6.) It is true that in a homogeneous and enlightened community a public school can supply all the formal mental training neces- sary to any normal child, and that attendance upon such a school in such a community is on the whole desirable for every normal child. It is not true that this universal attendance is desirable in an ordinary American com- munity, where the amount of home training received by the children ranges from none at all to the most perfect yet attained in civili- zation. For a child does not always get the mental training he needs, simply by being taught suitable subjects. A highly developed, well-trained child, who constantly hears edu- PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 79 cated talk at home, is capable of a much more rapid and rich treatment of any subject than the child of an uninformed home can usually cope with. Moreover, a public school, the overruling majority of whose pupils come from positively primitive homes, must teach, and teach crudely, many things which a more fortu- nate child gets naturally and much better at home. (c.) It is true that a child who goes to a pub- lic school gets a varied experience of human nature, discovers that his own home ways are not the only ways, and learns to decide and choose for himself, since he finds no con- sensus of public opinion which he can or need respect. It is not true that this sort of personal inde- pendence is necessarily a good thing. It may engender that go-as-you-please self-confidence and disregard of other people's standards and tastes which is so much the mark of a crude, uncultivated mind. Or, on the other hand, it may make the undiscriminating youth con- clude that where there are so many opinions^ 80 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION it is not necessary to hold to any very strongly. The ameliorating and steadying effect of a strongly felt public opinion, such as exists in a well-established private school, is often very excellent; vigorous natures are ameliorated, weak ones are steadied by it. Moreover, the standards of a company of parents who have grasped and are using the full inheritance of civilization are many gen- erations more correct and discriminating than the standards of a heterogeneous mass, most of whom do not apprehend the signi- ficance of fine distinctions. "Being par- ticular" is a bugbear to undeveloped minds. BUT The tendency of private schools is to be conciliating and narrow. In order to be as good as a good public school, a private school must be vigorously exacting and sincerely democratic. Of Coeducation. It is true that boys and girls, youths and maids, men and women, should be upon terms of comfortable intel- lectual and social fellowship and of mutual understanding. Every means should be taken PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 81 to secure such a relation. It is true that one of the best means to secure such a relation is to provide their early schooling as well as all other early occupations in common. The Old World way of early separation has fostered much mutual misunderstanding, masculine selfishness, and feminine foolishness. The New World way has brought mutual under- standing, unprecedented masculine sympathy, and feminine common-sense. If we yield in this country to a tendency toward separation, we shall revert to the old conditions, forfeit- ing our obvious preeminence and clear ad- vantage. It is not true that going to school together necessarily forwards this relation, or that the fellowship cannot be had without common schooling. The behavior of the parents is the controlling factor. Moreover, when boys and girls reach their '* teens," the kind of interest which they take in one another begins to change, and no amount of care at home can prevent an element of excitement from creeping in. At this time intellectual work had generally best be done 82 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION apart, though the social life and intellectual interests should go on in common, as frank and friendly as before. Of Boarding Schools. It is true that the circumstances of many families make a boarding school the wise solution for some of their problems. It is true that a boarding school can give to a city child country surround- ings, or to a country child city surroundings. It can make the child's occupations well-regu- lated, wholesome, and well-proportioned. It can give all the influences of strong public opinion and the discipline of common duties, avoiding the home disadvantage of special criticism. It is not true that the ideal life for boy or girl could be to live always in a boarding school. Because of numbers, a boarding school must always be over-formal, over- regulated, and unnaturally impersonal. Uni- formity is its fixed limit, often reached, never out of sight, and kept away only by unending vigilant intelligence. Moreover, a boarding school seldom gives to a boy or girl unavoidable opportunity to PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 83 gain familiar knowledge of those who are different from themselves in sex, age, or con- dition. At school a boy need see no one un- officially except boys like himself. He is not forced to share any lives but those which are his own in kind. Girls cannot be seen in- formally, nor can women often be known with exceptional familiarity; all adults at the school must bear the same official relation to each boy that they bear to fifty or three hundred and fifty other boys, and frequently they bear no unofficial relation at all. Ac- quaintance with servants, laborers, trades- men, doctors, engineers, farmers, is only casual or non-existent. Consequently the boarding-school life, like all institutional life, tends to exaggerate the inmate's in- stinctive exclusiveness. Man thinks easily of those who are like himself. He thinks with discomfort of those who are different. So he looks upon his own kind, the people he is used to, with satisfaction. He looks upon out- siders with suspicion, scorn, or ridicule; or else he takes no account of them at all. So that, while boarding-school life is often 84 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION a happy issue out of serious difficulties, it is not a natural, all-round sort of experience, and in most boarding schools the inherent drawbacks are not sufficiently guarded against. Fortunately there is in America the long summer vacation to help keep the balance. Of Examinations. It is true that ex- aminations can be passed without a sound knowledge of the subjects concerned and with- out a good mental habit or training. It is not true that ability to pass an exami- nation interferes with sound knowledge or good mental condition. Moreover, wise examinations, wisely pre- pared for, give a definite comprehensible aim and form to school study, which is of great service in securing mental firmness, clear- ness, and accuracy. Of Pedagogic Theories in general. It is true that during the last fifty years close study of educational problems has immea- surably bettered the ideal of teaching, and has made wise teachers able to train average children to much more efficient use of them- PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 85 selves. Psychology, pedagogics, and child study have great and indispensable value. Educational theory enlightens and enlarges educational practice. It is not true that pedagogy has been re- duced to a science. In the nature of things, it cannot be other than a systematized series of suggestions, a condensed process of draw- ing attention to conspicuous facts and pos- sibilities in mental training. Teaching is an art. No art can be taught by words or re- duced to rules. It must be learned by instinct, perception, and practice. Educational theories are good as suggestion, not as prescription. Moreover, theory has had an unwarranted hold upon our school practice during the last twenty-five years. Numberless elaborated theories have been reduced to practice. Each was built upon detached observation of some isolated truth which had struck some in- genious-minded person. Each had a central stem of truth, surrounded by an artificial efflorescence of logical fancy. Each theory offered a more or less complete system of education, consistent within itself, but wholly 86 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION disregardful of a host of surrounding truths equally salient and potent in actual life. The builders of these insufficient theories were fascinated with the idea of consistent com- pleteness; they were in love with the vision of rounded perfection. Now, this building of systems by conformity and continuity, this classifying and arranging, is the special talent of the mind by itself. Active minds want to know a cause and a rule for everything. They try to understand everything and to put every- thing in its place. They see the beauty and use of order. Active intellects see this and more. They see that orderly systems of rule and logic are good in routine and in science. And they see also that in art and life such restrictions are impracticable and not to be desired. Completeness would limit life. Con- sistency would restrict art. Life and art are large, limitless, unrestricted. They must have free space to grow and shift, to change and interchange their parts. No art can be ex- pressed in any but its own medium. Each life presents new conditions. So every theory and all theories are too small and too special PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 87 to serve as guides in education. While they remain theories, however, they do good, for they stimulate practical imagination to action. But when they are put into logical practice, ardently, conscientiously, and exclusively, their limitations appear. Preoccupied with fresh-found truths, they fail to allow for the existence of time-honored facts. Thus, in the last twenty-five years, many children have received a limited advantage in some one portion of their beings, while several of the most obvious and important of their needs have gone unprovided for. A generation of youth has come up into the colleges and into the business world unprovided with some of the simplest tools of efficiency. That genera- tion has not yet passed by, for the schools have not yet come to their senses. It is not necessary to specify the theories that have done most harm to our schools and are still acting injuriously. Every one knows something of them. He has seen the results in himself, in his younger brothers, or in his children. It is these results that earnest parents and wise teachers work against. The 88 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION value of theory and discussion, speculation and cautious experiment, they fully recognize, but they seriously set themselves to prevent these eflScient aids from being put in posi- tions of absolute command. The need is that perception, experience, and common sense should rule, while theory urgently advises. HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD For children of three, four, or five years, all beginnings should be unconscious. Just as a child of three months does not know that he is beginning to be taught self-control, just as a child of a year does not know that he is beginning to walk and talk, so he should not be aware when he begins to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, French, Ger- man, history, geography, science, music, art of any sort. When at six or seven he goes to school, a child should find himself already interested in all these things and therefore happy to learn more of them. It is enough in his first months of school that the surround- ings and methods of learning are new; the task and strain of becoming self-aware are tax enough upon his energies. There should not be the burden added of unfamiliar subjects. Four generations ago, little children both in 90 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION England and America were taught the rudi- ments at home, as a matter of course. The mother, the aunt, or the older sister usually was the teacher. These unconscious beginnings require home guidance, — guidance by the mother or some one in the family, not by a specially provided and unfamiliar personality. By this means the first learning comes naturally as a part of life's adventures, and is wholly healthful for the child. He scarcely knows that he is being taught. But most mothers object that they cannot teach. They do not stop to observe that there cannot be anything difficult about such teaching, for the child of six teaches the child of five just such things. In a large family the younger children often pick it all up from the older, so that no one knows when they learned to read, etc. A self-dis- trustful mother forgets this, and imagines teaching to be a technical mystery. School teaching is indeed an art, but all early learn- ing is spontaneous, and requires in the teacher not art but friendship. It comes by active curiosity, active imitation, and eager experi- HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 91 ment. It asks from a mother only willing interest, which makes her cheerfully ready to impart and instigate. The result of it is, that working either with hand or brain becomes to the child an integral part of life. He can never think of it as a thing apart, required by outsiders and only in the obviously artificial existence of school hours. The spontaneousness of his learning gives him an eager sense of its reality, and the undirected, unsystematized, unrestricted way of it gives him independence and initiative. A second result is, that he is never without resources, for he has had an intimate com- panionship since his babyhood with a great variety of progressive occupations. Since the way is not a plotted and com- plicated path of system, any interested mother with the right implements can put her child in the way of these good beginnings. She has only to give her child the chance of being interested in desirable things, and then to en- courage curiosity, imitation, and experiment by her ready interest and sympathetic ad- miration, along with plenty of cheerful help- 92 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION ing. She will find they learn in a most curious way, by pauses and leaps. She gives them the clue and then lets them draw out the thread; lets them follow the trace themselves, thread- ing the labyrinth with all its surprises, and arriving alone and triumphant at the centre. Being taught actually hampers the rapidity of personal thought. A child well started learns many things fastest by itself. She need only be careful not to force attention or insist at first upon any learning as a task, and not to try to make them reason about the material. Even very simple reasoning is apt to strain their understanding. Little children do not compare things much. They learn each thing as it stands. Of course, there is a constant unconscious classification going on in their minds, but most of what interests them is noticing, imitating, reproducing, classifying, and recording. Observation and memory are their only really developed powers. Specifically, one may say that the method for home teaching in babyhood is as unme- thodical as this : — HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 93 FOR ENGLISH LITERATURE Have in the house any (or all) of the good collections of verse for children. Read or re- peat poems to the child. What he enjoys he will ask to hear again. Do not be afraid of what seems "too old," unless it has in it some- thing to frighten or burden a child. Repeat a favorite often, and as soon as he shows a power to repeat any part of it himself, be pleased. Do not insist at first on the learning. Merely admire. Do the same sort of thing with prose, al- lowing for the fact that for very little people prose is harder to follow and not so attrac- tive as poetry. Following the thread of a story is too taxing for a very inexperienced mind. Older children of from four to six should enjoy being read to for half an hour or more. FOR LEARNING TO READ Supply alphabet blocks, with pictures, as early as two years old. Call the letters by name often in playing with the child. Play games with them; e.g., turn all the pictures 94 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION down and guess what picture is under each letter, etc. To a child of three, sing the alphabet. When he wants to use a pencil, make the letters, printing or writing, sometimes for him to copy, or let him copy from the blocks, or from a primer. Get the primer before there are any regular times set for lessons. Often sound over simple words, phonetically, and let the child guess what they are. At four years, take the primer. It is best based on the letter and syllable method, not on the word or the picture method. Speak of the letters by name as well as by sound. Have the child sit down with you every day for ten minutes or as long as he is easily in- terested. Read to him, pointing out the words and often sounding the letters. Let him talk about it and ask questions and digress as much as he chooses. Little by little he will begin to catch the idea and begin to guess, imitate, and experiment. Praise and encour- age. Before the year is over, he has the idea of reading. Be sure that he knows the alphabet. HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 95 FOR WRITING From printing letters at random when he is three years old, let him go on to copying whole words when he likes. At four show him the writing letters. He will soon like to try copying them, too. Or begin at the very beginning with script, if you choose. A typewriter is most useful here, as a working plaything. FOR ARITHMETIC A child of two likes to learn to count as part of learning to talk. Encourage this, but try to make 10 the stopping place, until he has learned so far thoroughly. At about three years old begin to count things. He will probably understand already how many 3 is. Count things at the table; count beads, blocks, etc., at any time you happen to think of it. Now and then see if he can count them. If he can, show your pleasure. At six let him own an abacus, and count, add, subtract, divide, and multiply on it. At about four, having let him see the figures 96 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION often in order, and perhaps learn their names, let him learn to copy them, but not beyond 10. Take an interest with him in adding I's and in subtracting them. As he gains skill, try him with more difficult problems. During his fifth year, perhaps, show him about halves, thirds, and quarters, etc., with real things in the course of conversation. FOR LANGUAGES Children find one sound as good as another to represent an object. They quickly learn to understand one another's baby talk and special words. So the notion of a foreign language is easy to them. One word is as sensible as another to learn, and several words for the same thing do not seem out of the way. Is not a dish called also a plate, a saucer, a bowl, and what not.^ Say phrases, sentences, and little jingles to him in foreign languages. When he begins to pick up English jingles, give him a chance to learn French and German jingles, too. Have at least one picture book with jingles and counting, etc., in French and one in Ger- HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 97 man. Read them often, and explain them as you do the English ones. A single book or two of this sort, well selected, will give a child as useful a vocabulary and as much grammar as he would get at the same age from a foreign nurse. The nurses can be had, but there are serious reasons against them. The primers used by French and German children are good for this purpose. Some people find phonographs a great help; rolls for teaching foreign languages can be bought. FOR HISTORY When you are telling stories, tell some of them from history, from the Bible, and later from mythology. At five years old, put a simple history reader among the child's story books. FOR GEOGRAPHY In his play with blocks and sticks, a child outlines houses, stables, and roads for its dolls and itself, — mere plans without elevation. At four years or earlier, draw just such plans on paper when you are telling stories, and m HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION later make little maps of real places. Have a little pasteboard globe and tell him it looks like a little world. Show him places on it, €tc. Have books of geography stories. Have a primary geography among his books. FOR SCIENCE Show an interest in plants, beasts, birds, the sky, and the sea. Tell names. Give bits of desultory information. Answer questions if you can, or wonder with him. Pull flowers to pieces and call the parts by name just as you call him by name. In fact, share all your own pleasure and initial knowledge of these things. Have colored picture books of "Birds and their Homes," "Our Animal Friends," etc. Let him feel that you feel the beautiful sacredness, mystery, and wonder of life. Take him to a natural history museum if it is convenient, but do not exhaust him with too much or with many explanations. FOR ART Keep his voice gentle. The time to teach the correct use of the speaking voice is while HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 99 he is learning to talk. Sing to him. Play to him. See how soon he will sing a musical sound after you. Sing the scale often, or play it. Play and sing the intervals. Let him see music written. Encourage him to imitate you. At four years old, point out the written notes for the scale, etc. Some children will sort colors by the time they are a year old. Whenever the power comes, encourage it. Name the principal col- ors to a child under three, until he learns them. Afterwards do not hesitate to name shades if he is interested. Have reproduc- tions of good pictures in the house. Try to have his picture books, some of them, artis- tically good. Let him go to an art museum if convenient. Let him gaze and ask ques- tions, but do not try to be didactic. Give him a chance to learn to do all sorts of things with his hands, particularly things which will be permanent satisfactions, like painting, sewing, sawing, digging, etc. Let him take the implements and try to imitate you. Let him get the *'feel" of them before you try to teach him the very best methods. 100 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION Many of the kindergarten occupations are good and interesting. Froebel intended that they should be used at home with the mother. But a child should not be encouraged to keep on doing them, after he has grown capable of doing something more difficult. A young child's capability and skill grow rapidly. It is a good plan after he gets to be four years old to manage so that he always can have something visible accomplished at the end of the day, be it ever so slight, — something done which can be shown to his father, for instance. If the mind after this age is let to play all day, it rapidly grows averse to ordered application and submission to au- thority. Have him do every possible service for himself, e. g., undressing, dressing,^ feeding, etc. This is very important. A grown person, having learned all these things, may delegate them. A child must not. Encourage him to share the various house- 1 Until it is about ten years old a child should on all ordinary oc- casions be as imtrammeled by clothes as a puppy is untrammeled by his coat. The clothes should be made to suit his occupations, not his occupations made to suit his clothes. HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 101 hold activities. No matter how much paid service is employed, he must be allowed to help himself and others. Errands, little serv- ices, imitative activities, all are legitimate joy and education to him. Do not drive away this kindly spirit. Do not force him to learn afresh, late in life, after he has lost the knack, that there is no pleasure sweeter than help- ing other people. He knows it instinctively. Do not becloud him. Let him do, clumsily and slowly, it may be, what you or another can do readily. FOR EXERCISE Besides his spontaneous exercise of imi- tative play, a child needs some organized amusement. Let him learn to play compan- ionable games as soon as possible. Lead him on to act out his favorite poems, etc. Nothing is better exercise for all the powers at once than acting. In short, all that this early home teaching involves is companionableness between mother and child. Share with the child all the simple 102 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION elements of your own interests, pleasures, and accomplishments, — just as his next older brothers and sisters do. This solves most happily the difficult question of what to do with the child at table. He learns to talk about things which interest both himself and his elders. It does not involve trying to teach him much or systematically, nor does it involve trying to answer all his questions. A frank "I do not know," or "I cannot tell you that till you are older," is often the best answer. Nor need the teaching be continuously pro- gressive. A little child learns well by fits and starts. One day he tries and makes a boggle. Let him not try the thing again for three days or two weeks; when he comes back to it, he has often improved much in the handling of it. It does involve a half hour, or an hour, in most days, when the mother has occupations which will let her mind be given to the child. If she does the family mending, this is easy. If she does it not, she will probably have to make time to be with the children. That is not difficult, or a great exaction, for she must HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 103 have some way of knowing her own children, and the only way to do it is to share their occupations, — to do something with them. Her choice is between doing something which they suggest, and doing something which she suggests. If she simply follows their sugges- tions, there is a single gain of friendship. If they do what she suggests, the gain is double; not only she gains their friendship, but they gain new interests and powers. Whether she plays with them or works with them, she should expect them to be prompt and orderly, and to do well whatever they do. She should expect a high standard of performance, — high, that is, for the child, not high for a grown person. Lest all this should be misconstrued into a plea for the old rigid system of keeping chil- dren constantly at work, let the statement be here in words set down, that children and mothers both need time to themselves. The more children's play can be without oversight, the better. The more the days in which a mother gets an hour without companions, the better. But there is more time than one hour 104 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION in each day, and more things than play in each life. All the permanent satisfactions come through work. We owe it to the children to make work a natural customary part of their life, so that a day seems queer to them without some work in it. Finally, a child's originality is helped, not injured, by feeding in these ways upon the ideas of others. Original thinkers are always full of knowledge. They begin where others have left off. We all depend on our fellows for inspiration. Without them, thought is meagre and primitive. GOOD READING EvERY-DAY acts are not usually controlled by deliberate, responsible convictions. An ordi- nary man's ordinary working principles are based on what he conceives to be expedient for himself. These conceptions he has been accumulating from his innumerable experi- ences ever since he was a baby. He calls them all beliefs; but they range through personal prejudices, hasty conclusions, acquired prin- ciples, and accepted conventionalities. A very few of these he has thought out for himself. He can perhaps tell how he came by some few others. But most of them he has always had ; that is to say, he picked them up in his childhood. These he calls instinctive. But, instinctive or acquired or accepted, he does not have time or inclination to examine and compare them. He has a host of other more interesting and important things to do. So his beliefs remain as they happen to come, 106 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION and often they are inconsistent with wider experience, as well as mutually contradictory. He gets into trouble through them, without knowing why. So it matters very much what impressions and experiences he accumulates in his growing years. Because a child's impressions and experi- ences become in this way a part of himself for life, education continually concerns itself with selecting for him such experiences as will impress on him the best and most uni- versally true beliefs. And as books are the storehouse of all human experience, educa- tion concerns itself heartily with the books which a child reads. And reading is, indeed, a powerful purveyor of impressions. It is a process of vicarious experience, and to a child those experiences which his mind alone shares are quite as influential as what his senses share as well. Herein lies the reason for carefully selecting children's reading and rigidly allowing them only the very best; not only the very best as literature but the very best as ideas. A mother who changes the words of "Georgie Porgie" so that he teases GOOD READING 107 the girls instead of kissing them is not fan- tastical. It is of great practical importance that the little child's first associations with all words should be with those words at their very best. Kissing in its best estate is not a thing to make the girls cry, and with any other kissing a child should have nothing to do, — because with any other he should have no- thing to do at any stage of his life. He is to become the best kind of a man that he can, and he must be given the best possible chance to do it. So, too, with all ideas of cruelty, vulgarity, and unkindness. A little child should hear no hint of them, beyond what he has to cure in himself; because in his own best self they should never play a part. All of a very little child's reading should be about only gentle, brave, humorous, and right things, even to the minutest details ; because it is the de- tails, the single words, that children notice most. This rule holds, let us say, up to five or six years old. (A good way to insure a child against hearing the wrong kind of read- ing from chance visitors is to mark the read- 108 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION able parts of his books. Seldom mark things for omission. They then become food for curiosity.) From five or six years old to eleven or twelve, this rigid exclusion of the disagreeable is less and less necessary. They accept the facts in a sense of their own, for their imaginations are still unchecked, and they know nothing of the limitations of life. Romance, fancy, fantasy, is their natural realm, and they revel also in all the aspects of children and of childlike life. But they should catch nothing of the binding, saddening restrictions of later years. Pettiness, meanness, or shallowness of tone or substance are most objectionable, and all the sordid, hideous aspects of adult life are out of place in a child's reading. Likewise a child should be able to see quite clearly which of his books and which parts his parents like best, which they think trivial. From eleven to sixteen years the question of forbidding special books has to be grappled with. Up to that time it is fairly easy to keep a child so well supplied with thoroughly good reading that he is not eager to read GOOD READING 109 other things. After eleven, if he reads at all, he wants to read what his companions are read- ing, and he generally resents control. Prob- ably it is safe to say that no book should be absolutely forbidden. Proscription only gives it an exaggerated importance, making it seem to contain something of especial interest. Inci- dentally, proscription puts an unfair tax upon fidelity. "Trust!" is an even more exacting command for a boy than for a dog. The dog is not hampered by being able to think. Books undesirable for youth are of three sorts, — the paltry books, the profound books, and the perverted books, — each just about as undesirable as the others. Banalities, in- soluble problems, and evil practices are equally bad food for a growing mind. To pre- vent a young person from reading such things we must depend, first, upon a wholesome taste created by all his previous reading and mode of life, which will make him incurious and easily disgusted; second, upon his accu- mulated respect for our judgment, to make him believe us right when we strongly recom- mend postponement; third, upon a constant 110 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION supply of equally interesting but more desir- able books. In addition to positively undesirable read- ing (which varies according to the child), there is a large mass of books which are not positively objectionable, and yet we cannot recommend them. They do not amount to much. The youngster should understand very clearly the dijfference between our recom- mending and our simply allowing. A book which has the sanction of our recommenda- tion he will read with much more credence than the merely tolerated book. Herein lies the safety in letting a well-prepared child of any age browse in a library. On the other hand, when we are reading aloud to any age, it is well sometimes to skip passages which we cannot personally countenance. Finally, we need never fear to trust any one with first- rate things which he cannot understand. The fine spirit of them will breathe into him, and their power will seize him. After the age of six, reading should not be made specially simple for him either in words or in construction, nor must ideas be kept GOOD READING 111 entirely within his comprehension. Better Shakespeare at six than Miss Alcott at sixteen. Sometimes a httle fellow of ten or twelve is kept on books which are supposed to be suited to his age, when really his intellect is much beyond them. A child with a strong taste for reading should be given the best literature of past generations. He should never be kept on books written especially for children. On them his intellect starves, and he will show signs of being underfed, — peevishness, rest- lessness, nervousness, and lassitude. It is im- portant, too, that the books he reads should not be all in one style. He should early be accustomed to a great variety, and not falter before long sentences or long words, old- fashioned style, or even dialect. Beware of emulative interest. Beware for the child who listens because you want him to, or because he thinks it is grown-up to like grown-up things. There are the germs of intellectual hypocrisy and shallow culture. And do not let him get the habit of skipping, himself. Grown persons may skip in their reading, because they are able to judge what 112 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION part is worth reading. But for a child the habit of skipping is pernicious. It makes him lazy, inattentive, and desultory. It takes away all chance of his becoming a discrim- inating reader. There is no need of his read- ing many books, but what he does read he should read thoroughly. Whether he should be allowed, before he is fifteen, to read magazines and newspapers is a question upon which parents naturally differ very much. Undoubtedly the best re- sults, intellectually and mentally, are got by keeping him away from such heterogeneous masses of mixed-up good and poor stuff, until the judgment has a firm standard of compar- ison. The material of a newspaper does not pertain to childhood; the material of maga- zines is of very varying value. Whether Shakespeare and most of the older writers are best read in school editions, each child's parents will decide anew. But a parent who gives the child the full text takes a grave responsibility. Until the nine- teenth century our civilization had not reached a high level of feeling about sex. GOOD READING 113 Sacredness was recognized in many relations of life, but not in that one. So a child who reads those older writers just as they wrote gets a semi-civilized idea about sex, ugly and most inferior to the best understanding of his own generation. The comprehension of sex cannot be well established before the age of sixteen, seventeen, or even older, and just as we give a little child only the best ideas of manners and morals until its standards are clearly set, so the idea of sex should be kept at its truest and sweetest until it is well fixed among the beautiful and sacred possessions of the mind. The less the girls, especially, are made vividly aware through their reading of possible misuse of the life-giving power, the more help they are to themselves and to the boys. Boys, older boys, must be more aware, but they should not be over-loaded in pro- portion to the other contents of their minds. It is worth while to remember that the adult literature of one half-century becomes youthful literature in the next fifty years. George Eliot was food for mature minds in 1860. But now her methods and her wisdom 114 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION have become part of our general intellectual inheritance. She does not come as a totally new experience to this generation. In this way, all that is wholesome in the literature of past centuries is suited to young minds. What is not wholesome no one need ever read, ex- cept for historical interest. There is no foun- dation for the fear that wide reading and an early knowledge of literature will injure origi- nality and take off the bloom from enjoyment. All active original thinkers are wide readers; and good literature, like good art, good music, beautiful scenery, and fine character, grows more admirable the better it is known. There seems to be no good reason for mak- ing the reading of boys different from that of their sisters, and much reason for making it the same, so that the contents of each one's mind shall be familiar and dear to the other. The best books are all virile enough for a boy and warm-hearted enough for a girl. Of course there is a kind of book which is more sure to interest the average boy and a kind which is more sure to interest girls. But this is not a basis for a fixed distinction. GOOD READING 115 It is not important that a child should read many books, but it is important that he should read first-rate books; that is, books which are good as literature and good as thought. As he grows older he must read also an in- creasing number of second-rate books, just as his knowledge of what is second-rate in every direction must increase. But if a child cares to read at all, something to suit his taste at any time can always be found among the books that are most excellent. These he should never be without, however little he reads. He should never be without the pre- sent experience of what is first-rate. Never forget that his reading is an experience, not a pastime. DISCIPLINE The problem of discipline carries us out of the field of merely mental training into the undefinable, irreducible realm of personal relations. Social consciousness, a desire to be kind overruling the desire to follow one's own impulses, a subordination of one's own immediate convenience to the comfort of all or to the gaining of some distant good, a realization of future and past as equally alive with the present, a linking of foresight and imagination with will and love of right, pre- ference of good behavior to bad behavior, — in short, self-government with a moral pur- pose, — these create the aims of discipline ; and to help a child gain these affords a prob- lem almost entirely apart from questions of mental training. It is a problem of how to reach the child's desire, and having reached it how to direct it toward the most enduring things. Just as mental training cannot be in- DISCIPLINE 117 eluded in a science, so, and much more, the problems of discipHne cannot be solved by a system. Discipline is the process of regulating so- cial conduct. If desire possessed in itself judgment, so that it could ascertain for itself which are the most enduring things, then the discipline "problem would be no problem at all: all children would be born with a moral sense. But desire is at one end of the child's nature, and judgment is at the other. Desire is his most primitive spiritual possession, and judgment is his most civilized. There is no natural cooperation between them. More- over judgment bases its decisions upon expe- rience, and a child has no experience, either personal or imparted. His elders it is who must supply him with selected experience, and impart to him the conclusions of their own experience and of the experience of those who have gone before them. So he gets material upon which to exercise his own judgment. His desire can be depended upon to like best the best thing which it appre- hends, but unaided by judgment it cannot 118 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION ascertain what is best. By providing him with significant experience and convincing example, his elders can help create in him that combination of desire with judgment which is called moral sense. In many children it does not need to be created, it is there eagerly ready to be used. Unfortunately for the average child, the elders often do not know how to reach his desire or how to appeal to his judgment; that is, they do not know how to discipline him. In fact, trouble in managing a child is most often caused by the stupidity or igno- rance of some grown-up mentor, past or present. It is our incapacity to understand children instinctively that makes all the problems of discipline. We meet obstacles which we do not understand, and then, thwarted, we clumsily forget the ultimate object of our discipline in the confusion of that moment's discomfort. We are met at the outset, even in the littlest baby, by native independence, by conservatism, by tempera- ment mental and spiritual, and by change- ableness. DISCIPLINE 119 The first obstacle, his native independence, is strong in every normal American. Perhaps the little Japanese are docile ; our children are not. Their first instinct upon meeting a difficulty is resistance. If they fall in climb- ing a rock, they immediately go to climb that rock again. We admire and approve it in them. But when they come up against us, ourselves, as the difficulty, we protest that they should not treat us in the same fashion. But what do they know of the reasons for our demands ? What do they know of constituted authority.? A difficulty is to them something to be overcome. We owe them proof of our right to control, and if not proof, then a convincing persuasiveness which shall be to them as good as proof. We need not be in- dignant because children will not learn from our experience, will not take our word for it that this or that is good or bad for them. They have no reason whatever for believing us, except such as their very brief previous experience of us may have afforded. If in that brief experience we have told them with assurance many things which proved after- 120 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION wards not to be so, they certainly have no cause to trust us. All their own instincts prompt them to make their own experiments. Nothing but over-ruling proof of the wisdom of our advice will make them care to be directed by us. We ought to have a child's affection, ad- miration, and confidence, before we can be of full use to him. His desire is part and parcel of his general fund of feeling and goes with the current of his other emotions. What he loves, admires, and trusts, he will desire to follow. For with affection in all primitive minds comes allegiance; with admiration comes imitation; with confidence comes at least a measure of obedience. It is not hard to win him in these ways, for he is very inexperienced and uncritical. Affection comes of itself. We have only to keep it. A child loves, out of the fullness of his heart, everything and everybody that comes into his life if he is not forced to fear them. With his love goes his admiration. He knows no difference between these; what he loves he admires, what he admires he loves. He will admire any sym- DISCIPLINE 121 pathethic person who is in power over him. To hold his affection safe, gifts and favors will not serve. It asks sympathy, not kind- ness. There must be a mutual sharing of interests, his and ours. Then admiration will remain if only he sees that steadily as we urge him to good behavior, we try even harder to compass it in ourselves. Confidence, how- ever, requires in us justice and good sense. If in the event we prove to be usually right, he will give us his confidence, — his trust, that is to say, not his intimacy. Having his affection, admiration, and con- fidence on our side, we can then count upon numerous other allies: his natural love of being praised, of doing things the right way, and of seeing things come out right; his childish readiness to be interested and pleased ; and his native capacity to see reason when his temper is cool and the event remote. A great help, too, is his plentiful lack of preconceived ideas. And we hold in our own hands the cogent power of suggestion and of courtesy. With these numerous allies, we can over- come all that is troublesome in his native 122 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION independence. Independence itself is so val- uable that we must not even try to conquer it. It must be kept healthy and in happy case. The second obstacle is conservatism. One might also call it mental inertia. It springs from the human mind's incapacity to turn instantaneously, and to act immediately, upon unexpected material. This inertia gives the child an instinctive preference for the familiar over the strange, and enormously increases his desire to do what he is doing rather than what he is told to do. Added to this inertia is the actual time that it takes an inexperienced mind to translate heard words into its own thought and then to translate that again into action to fit the original words. Herein lies the chief part of children's reluctance to obey even a beloved mother. In grown people this inertia often takes days, weeks, months, years to overcome. It is an invaluable ele- ment of human nature, and needs only to be understood to be respected. It must be met with patience, courtesy, and reasonableness; and its disadvantages must be obviated by instigations to promptness and alertness. DISCIPLINE 123 The third obstacle, personal temperament, has to be overcome in each child separately. Unless we study it and adapt our treatment to it, we shall remain remote from the child and shall give him little help in conquering his world. Not only the same method can- not be applied to different children, but no special procedure can be held to rigidly with any one child. We must keep our observa- tion and invention constantly at work. The last obstacle is the comic element, changeableness. It is the element of phases and tricks. The child progresses through innumerable phases, mental and physical, and he takes on external tricks one after another, which have small relation to his inner self. These are all produced by tem- porary mental and physical conditions. We must learn to distinguish between what a child will outgrow, and what he must out- learn. We worry over how to conquer a child's temper, and suddenly, one day, it disappears. We are almost frantic because a child persists in holding its mouth open. Then the trick vanishes before we have de- 124 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION cided what to do about it. We should take as little obvious notice as possible of such things, and recognize within ourselves the humor of them. When their tendency or immediate result is so serious that we must take oflScial notice of them, we should still never treat them as on a par in ethics with really responsible faults. This obstacle is simply a troublesome manifestation of the invaluable power of reflex action. In fine, whether the obstacle be independ- ence, inertia, temperament, or trick, we can never reach his desire and direct it toward the most enduring things, unless we respect in his nature the characteristics which give us most trouble. They are obstacles to be provided against, not obstructions to be destroyed in the child. Recognizing them by no means does away with the necessity for discipline; it simply affects the method of discipline. In ourselves, there are obstacles which we seldom recognize and consequently seldom guard against. We do know that we have faults, and in our dealings with a friend or stranger, we try to recognize and allow for DISCIPLINE 125 them. In dealing with our child, however, we habitually ignore them, and expect him to assume that what we say and do is right. And we all too often assume it ourselves. Yet we are very like the children. We, too, love our own way. We, too, are stiff-minded. We have our own unseasonable moods and sense- less tricks, and moreover, on top of it all, an acquired sense of dignity which acts as a bar between us and the children. If we deserve their respect, they will give it. We need not concern ourselves so much about their be- havior toward us as about our own toward them. We must treat them with courtesy. They are our equals in everything but ex- perience, and we must regard ourselves as appointed to give them the results of expe- rience quickly, thoroughly, and beneficially, often rigorously, never roughly nor stupidly. This close resemblance between ourselves and the children should never be out of mind. Children are nothing but ourselves in smaller size and a little different proportions. Yet we continually make the mistake of thinking of them as apart from those of older growth. 126 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION If in speaking about their peculiarities we sometimes said "we" instead of "they," comprehension of them in many ways would open to us. If we thought of them as other people instead of as children, we should treat them more acceptably. We make the same mistake with almost all subordinates. Persons whose power compels our respect, we instinctively treat as we would be treated. But the further they get from equal power, the less we treat them as equals in humanity. It is wholesome to regard the children in this larger light as members of society like our- selves, for it would be hard to find a parent, no matter how gentle, sincere, and conscien- tious, who is not every day guilty of the sins of injustice and stupidity. We are unjust be- cause we have the immunity of tyrants, and we are stupid because we are not on our guard against it. It is the more highly im- portant that we keep strict watch over our- selves because, after all, the chief part of a child's moral training comes from seeing his parents try to do right. Another way in which it is well to think of DISCIPLINE 127 the child as if he were one's self is in realiz- ing his own idea of his own acts. We see his acts in their results. He sees them in their causes. His acts have not the same mean- ing for him that they have for us. We can- not impress upon ourselves too carefully that disobedience, naughtiness, untruthfulness, are simply our names for actions of the child. They show how the act strikes us. They indicate our desire and our outlook; that is, the objective aspect. If the child were giv- ing names, he would choose some word that would indicate his desire and his outlook, the springs of action in his own mind ; that is, the subjective aspect, a very different thing. We say, quite truly, that some act of his was diso- bedient to us. He says that it was agreeable to him. We say it was naughty; he says it was funny. We say it was untruthful ; he says it was necessary or perhaps mistaken. Or his cause of difference may be even simpler. He may have wholly misinterpreted a word that he used or we used. The child who merges the two words ask and tell will often seem impertinent or unreasonable. "I told 128 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION you to pick up my ball. Grandmother!" means to him "I asked you." In so many ways is his adjustment to the world made difficult by the very nature of things. It is our part to simplify, hasten, and perfect the adjustment, by discipline. It takes time and careful thought from him before he can see himself as others see him, before he can gain social consciousness and learn to see his acts objectively. The power to picture one's self as being a someone else to other people, as simply one of a goodly com- pany just as those others are whom we can see, — this power of imagining one's self from the outside, — is not natural. It is acquired laboriously, and in the end is at the very best only partially acquired. We remain always to ourselves intimate spirits, with troublesome, half-comprehended bodies; whereas other people are visible bodies with an obvious pro- pensity for crossing our path. The kindred, invisible spirit within them we only slowly apprehend. With that apprehension comes the desire to be kind, and the readiness to subordinate our own convenience. In like DISCIPLINE 129 way, the present is all we are naturally aware of. Only slowly do we learn the lessons of the past and the value of the future. And only with this knowledge comes the power to have foresight. This foresight joining with that sympathetic imagination which can conceive of others as having needs and rights, builds up a preference for good rather than bad behavior; and finally there issues forth in us self-government with a moral purpose. It is to simplify and hasten these developments that discipline exists. Sometimes a little child seems to have brought this social and moral sense with him into the world; but even such a rare child comes unadjusted. If he is left unaided, he promptly adopts the easiest behavior toward his universe, and he invents the most obvious explanations for its treatment of him. If he chances to be the child of a savage, he will re- main in this first simple state for the rest of his life. If, however, his surroundings are civilized, he will year by year come to adopt civilized methods and to understand more or less clearly their purpose and advisability. 130 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION He will grasp first the simple, then the more advanced methods. This process we may call following in his development the advance of the race through the ages, if we like that way of putting it. Perhaps a better way, though less striking, is to say that, since all children throughout the ages have come into the world in the same wholly unadjusted con- dition, therefore no child can avoid going through the same general process of adjust- ment that his predecessors followed, always having to add whatever new advance has been made by the adult generation immediately before him. The civilized child, the outcome of devel- oped parents, is not, however, at birth in the exact condition of a savage child. His mental faculties and his capacity for mental reaction are much more highly developed. And if the families from which he springs are rising, he is more developed in this way than his parents were at birth. He is a little prophecy, and in potentiality is ahead of his times. He is ready for the next step up. Practically what we owe to a child, then, DISCIPLINE 131 is not so much to recognize his likeness to a savage as to recognize his Hkeness to the coming man. We need to help him from the very beginning to understand about managing his environment in the most advisable ways known to the civilized world. The child of to-day is the man of to-morrow in two ways. He will be a man to-morrow and have to carry the responsibility of to-morrow's prob- lems. And he is to-day rife with the powers of to-morrow's man. He can appreciate to the full all the beneficence of discoveries which it has taken the race so long to amass. Little children, for instance, enjoy and reap the benefit of a tactful, kind treatment of one another quite as much as grown people do, and they can learn it very rapidly from sug- gestion, though they could not invent it for themselves. Babies of six months can begin to learn self-control. Boys of ten can take a quiet stand for decency. There is no need to wait. They can begin at once to be highly civilized ethically, and to be thankful for it. Then having learned all of good behavior that the race has to teach, they can spend 132 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION their own full manhood strength in discov- ering new nobilities of conduct. So the pro- phecy of the young life may be fulfilled and its potentiality become a reality of service. In the light of these considerations, disci- pline becomes an effort to give the child a good start, to give him the best of opportunities, by helping him to self-control and steady moral judgment ; and also to make the child agree- able to himself and others as he " goes along." In brief, then, the problem of discipline is triple: to reach the child's desire, to form his judgment, and to meet an immediate situation. In order to reach his desire, we must get his good- will. In order to form his judgment, we must give him clear reasons and make him understand cause and effect. At the same time, in order to meet the im- mediate situation and give him continuing practice in self-government and consideration for others, we must enforce good behavior, even against his desire and without his judg- ment if necessary. By right discipline he will gain social consciousness even if he does not gain social understanding. DISCIPLINE 133 MAXIMS OF DISCIPLINE Rules and maxims, counsels and regula- tions, have but small significance compared to the experience which they represent. As a handbook of botany is to a landscape, so must a manual of morals be to a life. Yet botany has its service, and if one were sure that maxims would be taken to enlighten rather than to determine conduct, to suggest rather than to direct action, one would not find the setting down of maxims so repugnant. At the risk of misuse, the following are held out, — to be read, considered, and then for- gotten as to all but their spirit. UNIVERSAL RULES OF CONDUCT A. universal rule is one which has no exception either from respect of persons or from consideration of circumstances. It is always valid. There can he only subjective reasons for not following it. 1. Never be Annoyed or Reproachful. Annoyance and reproach betray a petty 134 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION personal view of the offense and give room for suspicion that a less selfish mood would not have seen offense at all. Meet temper or obstinacy with firmness, not with temper. Meet thoughtlessness with gravity and kind- ness. Meet all with decision. Be emphatic, be impatient, be indignant, be peremptory, be angry, if occasion calls; but do not be pettish, reproachful, annoyed. It is the child's mistaken conduct which calls forth your pro- test, not his causing you discomfort. It is a real mistake to be always pleasant and gentle with a child. Thereby it never learns how others feel at its misbehavior. Neither is it well to be "grieved," often. This, like annoyance, betrays a personal point of view. It is a secondary result of their naughtiness only. Do not hesitate to behave the way you primarily feel, on occasion, pro- vided you have rightful provocation, and the mood is likely to reach the child. 2. Meet all Things with Latent Hu- mor. Humor is the power to see and be amused at the persistent contradiction that DISCIPLINE 135 lies in every situation. Whenever two minds join issue, there is this comic element of coun- ter currents. Our own shortcomings, our in- capacities and imbecilities, are always funny. One need not laugh if it be not suitable, but one may always smile inwardly. 3. Be in No Hurry. Give time for the other mind to receive your words, and, after that, to slow up, to stop, and then to reverse its motion. Then give a choice whenever pos- sible. Your abiding purpose is to increase the number of sensible, independent people; it is not to get your own special plan fulfilled in this particular instance in your own peculiar way. 4. Lay No Burden of Trust. Trust each one only so far as is serviceable, not so far as seems possible. Superfluous trust is merely temptation, and it is unjust to lay such a burden. Life swarms with temptations. We should not unnecessarily multiply them by asking of a child more self-restraint than he has yet fully learned. It is fair to trust a child of ten not to run away, but it is not 136 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION fair so to trust a child of three. It is not fair to leave "yellow journals" round and then tell a child of any age that you trust him not to read them. The temptation is too strong and constant. 5. Set a High Standard of Perform- ance. The innermost desire of every human being is for perfection. What truly is perfec- tion, only judgment can show; but we all love perfection as we understand it; we admire efficiency, we take pride in our own accom- plishments. This is a universal possession of the race; a love of perfection lies down at the bottom of every one of us. Other tenden- cies may overlay and conceal it, such as that inertia of mind or body which is called lazi- ness, or that deficient judgment which is called a lack of proper standard. But always, even though dormant, there is the love of perfection, ready to be reached and used. A high standard of performance is a boon to the possessor and to his world. Inculcate promptness, accuracy, perfection, no matter how far short of this ideal the individual DISCIPLINE 137 will always come. The world wants men who do their work right the first time. No matter how much we sympathize with the children's very human wish for laxness, we must not be lenient to their disadvantage. So we must not teach them to do things the easiest way, " to save themselves trouble.'* This fosters laziness. The line of the least resistance is the natural course of mind as well as matter. We need not draw attention to its beauties. Recommend instead the line of greatest effectiveness. 6. Guide, do not Force the Mind. Guide or restrain the mind, but do not thwart it. Remember the mind is to be reached and influenced. If you wish to hold control, run with it, in the same direction, as a man catches a horse. If you run counter, there will be a collision of wills, and something is sure to be injured. It may be the child's feelings, it may be his good- will ; and you will be lucky if you escape a fall yourself into ill temper or defeat. 138 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION GENERAL RULES OF CONDUCT A general rule is one that is usually valid but has exceptions, so that its application requires judgment. 7. Do NOT Use Physical Force. Re- member it is the mind, not the body, which is to be reached and influenced. He must learn to govern his body by his own will, and all independent children do prefer to direct their own steps. Let your motto be "Hands off." Illustrate just authority by controlling your own actions, and then expect the same control of him. 8. Do not Punish. Punishment is the infliction of an extraneous arbitrary pain of body or mind, in order to make the offender remember not to repeat the offense. Its result is apt at the best to be an unreasoning ac- quiescence; at the worst, rebellion and hatred of authority. It can never avoid being an ob- trusion between the deed and the real reason for not doing it. Therefore, if there be any other ejfficient way to make the offender re- member not to repeat the offense, avoid pun- DISCIPLINE 139 ishments. They irritate or subdue. Prescribed punishments — fixed penalties — are especi- ally to be avoided, because a child is able to reckon the cost of disobedience and decide that the forbidden pleasure is worth it. They think, too, that the punishment measures the enormity of the offense, and that if they do not much dislike the penalty the crime cannot be very bad. A child should know that dis- comfort or suffering of some sort is sure to follow willful disobedience, but he should not be able to foresee exactly its kind or degree. When master and offender are both un- reasonable, punishment is necessarily fre- quent. The more reason reigns, the less the need for punishment; so that children who are brought up under the rule of reason from the beginning are seldom punished. Punishment is sometimes necessary. It is often necessary, for instance, in the cure of superficial tricks, if the tricks are persistent and need curing. Tricks are undesirable ways of doing things, which spring from superficial reactions of various sorts, and have no immediate connection with the 140 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION personality. They are involuntary, and so dissociated from desire that they cannot be reached through the avenues of mind and will. It is for such things that swift, sharp punishments are often necessary. But where one has always had charge of the child, cor- poral punishment should not be necessary. It is always a makeshift, a stop-gap that blunts the perceptions of both parent and child. Disagreeable tastes and various other physi- cal discomforts are sometimes a good sub- stitute, when they bear some relation to the offense. If one plan of cure fails to work, try another. No matter how sensible the plan is or how often it has worked before, if it does not work this time there is something wrong with it in this case. In lieu of punishment, there is explanation, which is the appeal to reason; persuasion, which is the appeal to affection and kind- ness; non-interference, which is the appeal to nature and is often excellently wise; for many acts left to them- selves bring about immediate results which are ex- ceedingly unpleasant to their perpetrator; DISCIPLINE 141 " deus-ex-machina" which is the supplying of pseudo- natural results, such as depriving him of his dessert if he dawdles over his meat, sending him out of the room if he makes too much noise, etc. ; hygienic method, which is the removal of physical causes for " naughtiness," such as putting him to nap if he is fretful, letting him run three times round the garden if he is cross, opening the windows if he cries too much, etc. 9. (a) Do NOT Demand Implicit, Imme- diate Obedience to New or Unexpected Demands. Except in matters of routine, where by previous experience and habit the mind is already prepared to feel the fresh idea is a familiar one, time must be given for ad- justment. New ideas, unexpected changes of thought, cannot be acted upon suddenly. Time must be given for translation of words into thoughts and back into action, with all the various intervening brain processes. Some minds are very slow in such adjust- ment; some, very quick, but none is in- stantaneous. It is also well to lead the mind to the new idea slowly, beginning with what is familiar and acceptable and then linking each new 142 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION idea to one which has already been made famihar. For instance, Jack who i^ all ready to go on a delightful walk must be kept at home because an unknown cousin has come to see the family. "Wait," says the mother, "do you know who has come? It is a very nice cousin that you have never seen. He lives out where the cow-boys are. So if you put off your walk, you will hear all about it." This, instead of the curt information, "You can't go out. A strange cousin has come. Take off your things." Some people object that this makes obedience too easy and plea- sant. A child they think should obey cheer- fully, without asking for reasons. But that is a virtue which he will never need when he is grown. Grown people are almost never called upon to change their course suddenly without any understanding of the reasons. We first understand and then act, — much against our will and desire, it may be, but always for comprehensible cause. Children must give prompt obedience if necessary, but there is no need of multiplying these uncom- fortable occasions. How uncomfortable they DISCIPLINE 143 are any one knows who has set out for a day's pleasure and found at the pier that the boat has stopped running! (b) Demand Immediate, Implicit Obe- dience IN Customary Matters. Every one knows how hard it is to accept reversals pleasantly. So a habit of cheerful obedience in youth is necessary in order that one may learn how to yield gracefully and easily when one cannot have one's own way. It is also necessary in order that the ordinary course of life may proceed promptly and comfortably and in order that sudden emergencies may find the child entirely subservient to quick directions. In obedience also lie the founda- tions of faith. This rule cannot be enforced very early. To a child under three, all demands are new, unexpected, and unaccustomed. In cases of emergency he has to be taken up bodily. Neither should the rule be enforced late. In a child over thirteen, unselfishness and reason- ableness should have taken the place of obedience. A request or a representation should be all that is necessary. 144 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 10. Do NOT Explain or Persuade at the Time. Explain before the moment of com- mand or after the incident is closed, not in medias res, while disobedience and rebellion are regnant in the other mind. Reason when he is a reasonable being, unbiased by the vivid pressure of passing desire. Persuade before a command. If persua- sion follows a command, it usually betrays v^eakness and is consequently apt to meet refusal; certainly it will breed disrespect. Therefore, command but seldom and mostly in matters of course. When you command exact obedience. 11. Say "Do," not "Don't." "Don't" simply stops action. It suggests no counter action. "Don't run your head forward!" offers no aim to be accomplished. "Do draw your chin in," offers an ideal to be pursued. This follows the general principle that the excellent, not the execrable, is suitable ma- terial with which to stock the mind ; that hy- giene, not pathology, is fit for general study; that it is purposes to be pursued, not fates to be shunned, that urge us to good behavior. DISCIPLINE 145 12. Do NOT Present the Alternative. When one course of action is entirely the most desirable and the child is not able to see the full grounds of choice, do not give him a choice. Let the choice be between two ways of doing the one necessary thing. For in- stance, "We are going home now." "No, I don't want to go home." "I know it. I am sorry, but we must go. You would like to stay, I know. Shall we go past Charlie's house or round by the blacksmith's shop.^'* Nevertheless, in all matters which come within the range of his entire understanding, a child should be allowed and encouraged to use his own judgment and to act on his own initiative. Though his intellect does not reach full development till many years later, he has a meagre supply of it which is fully adequate to the demand of his legitimate amount of responsibility. 13. Do NOT Argue. Explain or persuade, but do not argue. Argument is for conversion, not for action. 14. Learn to be Silent. There is much power in silence. When the child knows that 146 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION you are displeased, and why, then there is no increased power in words. So long as you talk, he can talk back. 15. Do NOT Snub. Snubbing paralyzes the mental forces and checks the flow of natural feeling on both sides. It is most injurious to healthy development. 16. Do NOT Nag. Nagging numbs the mental sensibilities. It makes the receipt of reproach familiar, and the child becomes either indifferent or discouraged. 17. Do NOT Appeal to Base Motives. The base motives are fear, vanity, jealousy, selfishness, laziness, and their congenial fel- lows. An appeal to fear encourages weakness ; an appeal to vanity fosters conceit; and so through the list. These baser motives are operative and very potent in us all; but the more they are ignored the nobler the race will become. 18. Do not Bribe or Threaten. State the resulting benefit of acquiescence or the resulting pain of refusal, if necessary, but do not offer extraneous arbitrary goods or ills as a sequence of any conduct. Bribes appeal to DISCIPLINE 147 the base motive of greed, the desire to get something more than one's due. Threats ap- peal to the base motive of fear, the desire to avoid what is unpleasant, and the impulse to reckon the cost. 19. Do NOT Reward. A reward is some desired good following as an artificial sequence but not as a consequence upon right conduct. Thus rewards must always be an obtrusion between the deed and the real reason for doing it. Therefore, if the real reason can possibly be made apparent and attractive to the child, let that suffice instead of a reward. If not, let the gratification of those who do understand be sufficient to please him. A habit of expect- ing artificial rewards clouds the purposes and misleads the will of a child. The more reason reigns, the less need is there for rewards. Rewards are perhaps sometimes necessary to overcome a persistent trick or habit, such as slowness, absent-mindedness, or the like. But a child who from the beginning sees great pride taken in good performance, seldom needs any other spur than his own proud 148 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION satisfaction and the commendation of those whose commendation he values, — in addi- tion to the good of the gain itself. COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 20. Avoid Lies. (a) Avoid lies from yourself. The only excusable excuse for lying is def enselessness : we may sometimes believe that we are driven into lying to those who have the better of us. But lying to subor- dinates has no excuse; it is we who have the better of them: they are already in our power. Some persons say that they never lie except to children. By this they mean, of course, that they imagine a lie to a child is sometimes defensible because it seems neces- sary. But this is a policy which arises from timidity rather than wisdom. There is always some way of telling the truth which is fitted to the child. Anything, little or big, which gives to any human creature a mistaken idea about anything in the universe is an injury to him. The more accurate his ideas of things, the more fully and wisely he can live his life. Moreover, since we are very particular that DISCIPLINE 149 children shall tell the truth to us, and since we find it exceedingly inconvenient and exas- perating if they do not, it is as well to show them by our own example what we mean by always telling the truth. (6) Furthermore, do not tempt the child to lie by asking direct questions in difficult situations, or by showing anger, indignation, or amazement over his faults. Do not give him the lie, by hasty contra- diction or by deliberate unbelief. A child's mind is even less clear than a grown person's, and he often does not know that he has not told the truth. Sometimes he is telling the truth according to his idea of the meaning of your words or of his. Be patient and search carefully. Remember that in the matter of truth-telling, though the will be willing the mind is often weak. The natural, untrained mind cannot always distinguish between thought and reality. The natural mind be- lieves whatever it thinks ; and believes that saying a thing is so, is the same as its being so. Help the child to learn to see the truth, to distinguish between thoughts or wishes and 150 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION facts. Above all, do not confuse his mind by frightening him about it all. Never frighten him, and always help him to un- derstand what is the true answer and how earnestly you wish to have him find it. Teach him that the truth is more important and sacred than any possible personal con- sideration. 21. DiSCOUKAGE SUPEEFLUOUS HaBITS. We are all insufficiently adaptable to cir- cumstances. We need to distinguish more clearly and readily between necessary and merely convenient or accidental customs. So it is undesirable to multiply the number of things which seem necessary to a child. Whenever you possibly can, tell him it does not matter which way he does this or that. Let him realize that there are often a dozen equally good ways. Discourage his always putting on the right boot first, always taking his spoon in his right hand, always being sung to at night. Mere conveniences and pleasures must not be petrified into duties and neces- sities. To make a general rule into a uni- versal rule, stiffens us. DISCIPLINE 151 22. Teach Him to Bear Disappointment. Many persons conceal coming events from children, because the things may after all not happen and then disappointment is so hard to bear. Of course, if disappointment is thus treated as an experience to be avoided in every possible way, then disappointment will become an unbearable pain. But life is a series of disappointments, as it is a series of fulfill- ments and a series of surprises. Children should learn to meet disappointment as one of the in- teresting problems. They should grow accus- tomed to turn defeat to victory by filling every disheartening gap with something which could not otherwise have been had. If one is left at a junction by a delayed train, let him visit the sights of the town, or talk with a na- tive, or write an unusual letter, — instead of eat- ing apples of annoyance in the waiting-room. 23. Aim to have the Child Self-aware BUT NOT Self-conscious. Let your com- ments on his conduct be enlightening. Make the general situation clear, but do not focus his attention on a detached characteristic. What we commonly call self-consciousness is 152 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION an exaggerated consciousness of some part or aspect of ourselves. In order to lose self -con- sciousness, we must see ourselves in the large and as one of many who have a common na- ture. We must become less conscious of our- selves as separate individuals and more aware of ourselves as companions. Thus we become less self-conscious, although we become more self -a ware. Accustom the child, by appeals to his sympathetic imagination, to realize himself as having an outward external existence, which is visible to other people as they are visible to him, and which gives them their only know- ledge of him. Accustom him to realize that other people have an inner invisible source of action entirely apart from him, as his is apart from them and invisible to them. So create a spontaneous understanding of the need for kindness in order to understand others, and for self-expression, in order that others may understand him. Enlarge in all other ways, also, his rela- tions with the world. Accustom him to realize the future and to remember his past, and then to realize the distant past. This gives him a DISCIPLINE 153 larger basis from which to judge himself and other people, and by which to test all new and old ideas of conduct. 24. Avoid Competition and Comparison. Forced competition leads invariably to dis- couragement in those who must invariably come out behind, and to conceit in those who just as inevitably come out ahead. The winners are always those who have native talent. They deserve no credit for distancing the others who work with acquired powers, yet they get all the praise which really belongs to some one who made a great effort working against large odds. Competition is whole- some only in secondary things and between those who are evenly matched in talent. Comparisons between things and persons lead to various evils. ''Which do you like better, candy or ice cream.?" is a most usual sort of question. But it is really excessively silly. "Both" is the only rational answer. To ask such baseless questions of the inex- perienced only gives them a belief that su- periority and inferiority, a grading of some sort, must exist in all sorts of places where 154 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION there is really no ground of choice at all. It leads them to suppose that one quality is better to possess than another. The conse- quence is that we all bring up with us into adult life an impression, indefensible but ineradicable, that there is a better and a worse in everything. We are stuffed with groundless prepossessions and prejudices. 25. Avoid Criticism, (a) Avoid criticism of others in the child's hearing. He is entirely incapable of judging character, its causes and excuses. He is, and ought to be, uncompro- mising, intolerant, wholly external in his standards. Good is good and bad is bad for him. The shortcomings and peculiarities of his older friends and relatives and neighbors are none of his business. The best of them are to be loved by him and admired. This sort of hero worship is essential to forming his ideals. He must have tangible, visible em- bodiments of virtue to solidify his ideas upon. Only later can he learn the meaning of arche- (6) Avoid criticism of the child in the child's hearing. Unless you deliberately intend it to DISCIPLINE 155 serve some definite good for him, do not let him hear from you any remarks about his character, his talents, his faults, his appear- ance, or his health. Leave him the blessed immunity of unconsciousness, and the whole- someness of untroubled growth toward un- perplexed ideals. (c) Avoid criticism of the world in general in the child's hearing. Do not talk before him of sickness, accident, crime, private affairs, adult perplexities, of any sort. The reason for this is substantially the same as for (a). 26. Keep Pace with the Child's Mind. Every child rapidly outgrows, or ought rap- idly to outgrow, his previous mental states and his previous occupations. He needs to be freshly noticed, and not to be treated as if he were still in last month's state of mind. As new power develops in him and new ex- perience broadens him he sees himself dif- ferently, and needs to have others see him differently, too. Also all children need full occupation. As well-used powers grow stronger, they can be used more rapidly and less frequently. There 156 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION is room for new acquisition. The child who constantly asks "What shall I do?" or who is constantly without occupation, is he whose available occupations have become too easy for him, and who is not bred by experience into the knowledge that there is surpassing interest in doing what is creative and a little difficult. 27. Ignore Much. Beware of over-em- phasizing little faults and little duties. Often by over-emphasis, so much attention is centred upon a fault that it is intensified, — as a bi- cyclist increases his chances of running into something by thinking nervously about it. Likewise, little duties, desirable habits, are readily magnified into moral obligations by a learner, as the early Jews made a religion of their health regulations. One often sees a fine young girl who believes a courteous note to be more important than a truthful tongue. Human nature has a tendency to make each injunction moral, and to give most weight to those it hears most often! 28. Practice Much; Preach Little. Words rapidly become cant to the hearer, even if they remain sincere in the speaker. DISCIPLINE 157 Ideals which one discovers for one's self arise in the intellect and thence permeate one's whole nature. Ideals received in words from another may never get further than the memory. Say little of your ideals to a child, and that most soberly and reverently. Let him see clearly that you know that it is only deeds which prove sincerity. Prove your principles by your practice, not by your in- sistent desire that he shall practice them. Then when he discovers for himself what they are, they will be very convincing to him; the more that as a child he could not under- stand abstractions. 29. Do NOT Stand on your Dignity. It is salutary to carry with you always the supposition that you are possibly in the wrong. Then, when you prove to be actually in the wrong, you easily take the frank stand so provocative of confidence, and freely ac- knowledge your mistake. Apologies are right and useful to make, even to little children. (Excuses are another thing. The man who is full of excuses is generally not full of re- pentance.) 158 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 30. Bear no Malice. Do not visit your displeasure at one piece of conduct upon all else that he does, for a day or a week. Do not seem to be sulkily harboring a grudge as if he had done it to injure you and you were angry. Treat each error on its own merits, and let him see that you regard him as of more importance than any one of his deeds. 31. Use your Best Mood. Try not to discipline a child unless you are satisfied with your mood. First summon your own best state of mind, and then face the child. Your mood will be your best ally. In the same spirit, if he confesses to some misdeed, do not treat him just as if you had found out the wrong yourself. A confession is a sign of repentance. It may be selfish repentance, a mere desire to avoid the un- comfortable consequences of his misdeed. It may be generous repentance, a strong wish that he might undo the harm which he has done. In any case he needs to be handled in accordance with his state of mind. Non- repentance, selfish repentance, and generous repentance present three different problems; DISCIPLINE 159 for discipline is not mere policing, the pro- tection of public interests ; it aims at personal assistance. OUTLINE UNIVERSAL RULES 1. Annoyance 2. Humor 3. Hurry 7. Force 8. Punishment 9. Obedience 10. Explanation and Persuasion 11. Forbidding 12. Choice 4. Trust 5. High Standard 6. Guidance GENERAL RULES 13. Argument 14. Silence 15. Snubbing 16. Nagging 17. Motives 18. Bribes and Threats 19. Rewards COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 20. Lying 26. 21. Habits 27. 22. Disappointment 28. 23. Self-consciousness 29. 24. Competition and Com- parison 30. 25. Criticism 31. Keeping Pace Ignoring Practice and Preaching Dignity Bearing Malice Best Mood AMUSEMENTS The present well - recognized increase in nervous diseases indicates that we of these latest times are making some serious new mistakes in our way of life, that with all of our improvements through knowledge of bacteriology and hygiene, we are heedless of some essentials to steady health and rational life; we are habitually going counter to some necessities to full development. And this is true of all classes in the community. The increased tendency to neuritis, nervous pros- tration, and their fellows, heart-disease and insanity, is not confined to the rich or the idle, to the day's worker or the farmer's wife. Every community and occupation is attacked by it, but chiefly the dwellers in and near cities, who overwork their nerves and heart, and overtax their brains. Even the children show the strain. Before rapid transit was possible, when AMUSEMENTS 161 horses trotted "two-forty" and letters went not more than fifty miles a day; before mul- tiphcity was thrust upon us ; when newspapers had four pages and big cities held only one hundred thousand people, then the powers of civilized man were suflBcient to meet the suc- cession of events that came before him, and he could choose wisely without needing much wisdom. His brain was adequate to his civili- zation, his nervous system was adjusted to it, and the muscles of his heart were equal to the demand that his mental activity made upon them. The life of children was easily and naturally uneventful. But our modern con- ditions supply perpetually perplexing and conflicting demands upon our time and atten- tion, our sympathy and our imagination. Many modern appliances, like the automobile and telephone, are so elaborate that their use demands close, steady, anxious attention. Most of them release us from one or another natural necessity and from the restriction of natural conditions. The railroad train releases us totally from the natural necessity of staying within walking distance of home; the newspaper re- leases us from the natural condition of knowing and caring little about distant persons and events. Large 162 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION cities bring forty delightful acquaintances to our doors where one called upon our grandmothers; the mail- order department stores make it possible for the farmer's wife to procure any one of twenty different kinds of churns. With all this has come a new desire for beauty and brightness, pleasure and variety, born of the new opportunity in increased possessions and decreased drudgery. There is an eagerness for varied experiences and personal enlargement, for raciness and movement in life. The bewilderment of outward things, pleasing, complete, and desirable, has blurred our inner vision, and we lose sight of the real in the glare of the visible. A multitude of charms besets us and our children. The strain is growing to be more than the human constitution can bear. If the modern parent accepts for himself all that comes, he breaks down; if he sets no careful bounds for his children, the strain on them inevitably cripples their present and future health, hap- piness, and usefulness. He has to be perpet- ually making choice among the perplexing claims of conflicting opportunities. He is thus thrown upon the continual need of wis- dom. If he has no wise basis of choice, chaos in act and mind is the result, and nerve weakness in the rising generation. AMUSEMENTS 163 Just principles of choice are essential to steady health and rational life ; they are neces- sities to full development. It is of such prin- ciples that we are heedless in our generation. Many of us do not know what they are, so that we innocently imagine that whatever is good is good for us, and do not even try to strike a balance between our powers and our efforts. We ask for no equality between our capacities and our ambitions, we establish no proportion between time and occupation, between attentive power and things to be interested in, for we understand neither elimination nor balance. In fine, we do not know how to make a wise choice. We have no recognized principles in such matters. This lack of principle is the fundamental obstacle to proper regulation of ourselves and our children in the matter of occupations and amusements. We dislike the very idea of rules and regulations. Too many of us have, consequently, daughters who agree with the girl of fifteen who declared she "wouldn't have a mother who would n't let her go to things." 164 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION This dislike is characteristically American. The idea that all men are born equal has brought with it naturally the uneasy suspicion that no one man should control another. We are chary of talking of obedience; we avoid the words "master" and "servant." In this light, children seem to possess the personal right to choose their own pleasures and follow their own inclinations, being persons quite as truly as grown people are persons. So there has come about among respectable parents a curious irresponsibility toward the management of their children. Such parents seem to have learned little by experience, and they distrust and dislike the self-controlled practices of those who have learned from the experience of the race. In their American faith that there is always something better than what we now experience, they have thrown over conservatism in conduct, and seek to choose the ways of life afresh for them- selves and their children. They find the cus- toms and conventions of our forerunners clumsy and ill-fitted to the present time. They prefer a greater freedom of choice, but AMUSEMENTS 165 they have not that judgment which is neces- sary to wise choice, that power to weigh values and to see large issues and future con- sequences. The result is that they practically give up the management of their children, leaving them almost without regulation. How necessary is judgment to conquering new con- ditions, and how essential is regulation, may be seen on a large scale in our American railroad management. Our railroads are nine times as dangerous to trainmen and twelve times as dangerous to passengers, as Eng- lish railroads are. An authority writing very recently says that oflScials "watch the trainmen to see if their shoes are blacked and their faces shaved," but that no adequate measures are taken to see whether men are not daily disobeying some vital rule for the safety of passengers. After discussing the slight advantage that safety appliances can give without faithful operators, he says, " We are thrown back upon the hope of better discipline and a more highly developed morale among the employees. Who is at fault for the lowered tone of the whole service?" He does not answer his own question, but the fault clearly lies in our American dislike to authority. We are weak masters and slack servants. We cannot make our country a safe place to live in unless we overcome this fault. In all matters where we are ultimately responsible for the action of others, we must be willing to lay down rules for them and insist upon obedience. We owe this to ourselves, to 166 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION our servants, and to our children; we owe it to our country and to the progress of the race. Those whom we command may perhaps be as well fitted to rule as ourselves; but since we are in the master's position it is our duty to have true mastery, to rule well and thoroughly. In order to manage anything successfully, we need either a discriminating and uncom- promising use of general principles or a close adherence to the successful methods of others. There is no safety in trying to adopt wholly fresh ways all at once, for efl&cient new pro- cedures which shall avoid new errors, as well as escape the old ones, are hard to devise. The task needs ingenuity and exhaustless, patient fair-mindedness. It cannot be accom- plished in the happy-go-lucky humor so com- mon among us. We have an easy habit of believing that some new conduct would cer- tainly be better than the old ways ; and if we cannot see why it is not better, we conclude that it is. So we blunder ahead on the new course until it has itself taught us why not. We should avoid much trouble and frequent disaster if we studied the old customs long enough to get their secrets from them. AMUSEMENTS 167 Consequently, it is well in the task of managing children not to throw over any old custom until we have discovered the end which it was meant to serve, the evil which it was designed to avoid, and the principle on which it was based. Customs are essen- tially the expression of long experience. The only safe substitute for them is the adoption of that general principle whose wisdom un- derlies each special custom. When we have discovered this, we may be able to devise another line of conduct which will serve the same end and avoid the same evil, without so clumsily interfering with irrelevant con- cerns and innocent pleasures. But we must know the hidden principles — not guess at them. If the results are to be successful, the principles must be real. It is not enough to formulate handy generalities and call them principles. Such easily ac- quired general principles, personal and emo- tional in their origin, are useless. Such are the notions that "Whatever is good is good for us," "If a thing is good, the more of it the 168 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION better," "Children should be happy while they can," "If I see no harm in it, there is no harm in it for me," "I cannot see why I should not, so I guess I may," "Every one should be allowed to be happy in his own way," "He has got to do it sometime, so he may as well do it now." These are natural and amiable ideas; but they contain no thought and no wisdom. Parents who yield to them as guides lead their children into blind alleys. Two such generalities in particular, now widely accepted, are spreading their un- fortunate consequences all about us. The first is that children have a right to hap- piness, immediate and conscious and con- tinuous. The second is that children have a right to choose their own pleasures and to follow their own inclinations. Many parents who do not comprehend or do not trust the experience of the race, and are perhaps un- supplied with wholesome family traditions, habitually make choice of their children's amusements and occupations upon these two theories, which they mistakenly accept as sound general principles. AMUSEMENTS 169 These two involve the other common Amer- ican misapprehension, that children are per- sons in quite the same sense that grown people are persons. Children are not small grown people; they are no more like grown people than flour is like cake or grape juice like wine. They are different in body and mind. Even their forms, though resemblant, are unlike; and though their language be the same, their thoughts are different. Parents who do not recognize this fact are blind to the real nature of life. They do not understand that child- hood is not only different from maturity but that it is itself composed of various stages, all differing and each one caused by a natural progressive change in bodily formation. Each change in bodily formation causes a change in brain ability, and a consequent alteration in desires and in objects of atten- tion. At the same time a change in mental possessions, brought about by accumulating experiences, influences the use of mental and physical powers, and consequently alters the tastes and interests. 170 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION The infant is unfolding and learning to use its bodily powers; and its brain is becoming accustomed to make simple responses cor- rectly. Consequently its desires are exceed- ingly simple and physical, and its attention is taken up with action. In early childhood the body is changing from the roundness of infancy to the muscular activity of later child- hood. The brain is using its acquired powers to find out how its world is put together super- ficially, and consequently the chief desires are for occupation and the attention is taken up mostly with imitation. During later child- hood the body grows more compact and the various special abilities more marked. Dif- ferences of power in senses or muscles make increasing differences of ability between child and child. The brain grows more complex, and the interchange between its different parts is pretty well established. Its capacities grow more specific; consequently the desires become more individual, and the attention is largely fixed upon accumulating information about facts. During early youth the incipient powers of life-giving and life-producing de- AMUSEMENTS 171 velop; the nervous system grows much more responsive to mental conditions, the brain begins to react strongly upon the body, and the higher powers of the brain begin to appear. Consequently the desires become more com- plex and fitful, and the attention is fixed upon other people and upon the underlying reasons for things. The consciousness of the child, his soul itself, has to keep pace with these rapid changes. At first it simply observes and ac- cepts. Then it tries experiments of imitation on its own account. Then in childhood it begins to take an independent stand about external matters and to draw simple con- clusions of its own about relative values; new experiences come fast, and it must sort them and store them away for use. In the midst of this youth arrives. The testing and sorting is not half finished, but there rushes upon the unexpectant consciousness an inun- dation of wholly new experiences, feelings, and interests, a whole new world of new motives and sensations. Now all this amazingly complicated phy- 172 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION sical and spiritual process takes place in the short space of sixteen or eighteen years, from the infant whose only powers are to eat and digest to the grown youth ready to take up and comprehend the innumerable activities, responsibilities, and inheritances of civilized life. The more man grows civilized, the more obvious the stages are ; and every genera- tion of every nation from the beginning has marked the physical alterations by a change in the child's customs and occupations as he passes from one stage to the next. But the modern American, with his characteristic disregard of history, has decided that he will pay little attention to this process. Yet when once the process becomes clear to us, we should need no help in understanding that each stage should be dealt with according to its nature, and should not have thrust upon it circumstances with which it cannot properly cope. Sixteen or eighteen years of depend- ence and rapid development are none too many for the firm establishment of the child's individuality. "Prolonged infancy" is the peculiar privilege of civilized man, and is his AMUSEMENTS 173 time for gaining health and storing strength in every part of his being. It is his time for gaining ideals, fixing standards, strengthen- ing powers, discovering preferences. It is his lime for becoming a real person of depth and definiteness, and for working out the resources of his own inheritance before he begins to produce an inheritance for others. Those who have charge over him should see to it that he is not cheated of his chance to make from his inheritance something sound and whole. No parents are wholly content with their own bringing up or with their own capacity for joy in life and work. They can at least make a little advance for their chil- dren. Without exceptional insight, a father and mother can give to sons and daughters great and memorable happiness by securing for them a childhood unhampered by too many opportunities and too much pleasure. Childhood is scarcely more than a seventh part of the normal term of life. We all think folly of a man who exhausts himself with pleasure one day in seven so that the other six are useless to him. How much worse so to 174 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION exhaust a childhood with pseudo-pleasures that the other six parts of life are maimed and full of heaviness! The happiness of child- hood is no more important than the hap- piness of youth or of maturity. Our con- sciousness, our self, remains the same through life. Pleasure is pleasure, pain is pain, and at eighty we are even more thankful for health and affection than we were at eighteen. So will it be with our children; and we are responsible not only for making their child- hood the best of its kind, happy and pros- perous in itself, full of really complete satis- factions, but also for making it a progressive, sound preparation toward the greatest pos- sible number of happy, prosperous, and use- ful hours when they are grown. They do not even know what will make to-day really pleasant and satisfactory. As for the long period of their maturity, it is as far beyond their experience as it is beyond their develop- ment. We must protect them from their igno- rant misconceptions. It is not fair to let them follow their fancy when it chooses occupa- AMUSEMENTS 175 tions and amusements which will injure them now or in later life. Stated in this bald way, it seems as if no respectable parents could permit such injury to their children. Yet it is permitted con- stantly by parents who are not only respectable but solicitous and affectionate. They do not know that they are blundering because they are not used to studying either consequences or general principles; but their mistake is patent to the onlooker. Specifically it is over-stimulation. They over-stimulate a child by not fitting his occupations to his present powers: this is especially true of the amuse- ments which they permit or provide. What they should do, on the contrary, is to regulate his occupations and especially his amuse- ments by setting fixed limits beyond which as a matter of course he must not go. They should portion his time among his occupations so that all his powers shall be used in due pro- portion ; and they should teach him to control his desires and to depend on himself. Instead they make the mistake of under-regulation. 176 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION In dealing with the first stage of hfe, this mistake has gone pretty much out of use among conscientious people. It is no longer the custom to make of a baby a show for admiring friends at all hours, or to try per- petually to entertain him. We know that life as it comes is sufficient amusement to him, and that constant human intercourse is very exciting. This excellent change in the treat- ment of babies we owe to the baby hospitals and the lessons which they having learned have taught. We have here, at least, con- sented to listen to the voice of experience. It is after babyhood that the mistakes gen- erally begin. The errors are not flagrant, per- haps, but the little child often has too many clothes, too many toys, too much done to en- tertain him, too little regularity and mono- tony and solitude, — in fact, a congestion of opportunity. For the older children the school is usually dominant; but the school seldom aims at having a soothing effect on children. And many parents who can afford it, — and there is the trouble, they want to do all that they AMUSEMENTS 177 can afford to do for the child, — many parents add during the school year frequent and long lessons of various kinds and a variety of social pleasures and other "opportunities," including unwholesome things to eat. But early youth is where the great mis- chief is done. Seeing the youth's eager increase of desire for all sorts of novel ex- perience, and his new-born appreciation of human interest, parents take it as a sign of what is needed, and gratify the cravings to the limit of their purses. They feel that they must not deprive their children of any good that can be supplied. They forget that what is new-born is very delicate and must be sup- plied most cautiously with what it craves. There is no reason why any boy or girl should see every good play, all the available works of art, every remarkable performer or performance of any sort. Samples, suitable samples, are sufficient, a few notable experi- ences of each kind. Neither do the children need for social advantage a steady succes- sion of dancing parties, lunch parties, dinner parties, house parties, theatre parties, bridge 178 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION parties, any more than they need to smoke or to take wine. Physical advantage does not demand that girls should do fancy dancing in public, share in riding exhibitions, and take part in tournaments, nor that boys should run wild all summer in woods and lakes, or enter athletic contests before great audiences. Intellectual advantage does not require a full round of concerts, lectures, charities, problem books, and clubs of all kinds. So- cially, physically, and intellectually in our cities, both boys and girls are over-stimulated, they over-do. There is a far-spread lack of wise regulation, especially in the matter of social life among large numbers of mere acquaintances. Such social life is essentially adult life. For its proper use and understanding it needs all the accumulated knowledge of individual characters which has gradually been absorbed during the self -engrossed years of immaturity. To socialize a child — that is, to surround him with occupations which throw upon him social responsibilities — dazes his youth and dulls his maturity. In AMUSEMENTS 179 society, comfort and success demand a know- ledge of character, an understanding of moral issues, and a clear judgment about the relative values of aesthetic, financial, social, and eth- ical claims. Such knowledge, understanding, and judgment a child cannot gain. Society life puts upon him what he cannot carry, quite as really as if he were laboring in a coal mine. Child-labor stunts the body. Unchild- ish pleasure dwarfs the mind, the will, and the emotions, by over-stimulation. No parent can look too sharply into his own policy in these matters. We are each respon- sible for discovering our own share in the present distressing condition of nerve weak- ness throughout the community. It is caused by over-stimulation, and it must be cured by proper regulation. We must learn to observe consequences in our own lives, our friends* lives, and the life of the race; to balance one value against another, and so to choose the greater among admissible pleasures. By cul- tivating, in this way, a sense of true propor- tion, we shall establish broad lines of total 180 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION elimination, within which we shall have con- stantly in use principles of choice which will prevent us from planning for ourselves or the children more than we can justly perform, and will save us from accepting what we can- not freely use. The broad lines of elimination seem at first sight easy to establish. We have merely to avoid what is harmful, — to admit no pleasure which is bad for the health, bad for the morals, or bad for the inner self. This seems easy and eminently obvious. Yet such pleasures are exceedingly common, even among the children of solicitous parents. In practical application, wise elimination is not a simple task, for it necessitates shutting out not only the pleasures which are always harmful, but those which are unfit at each especial stage. For instance, although no one would choose an occupation, much less a pleasure, because it was bad for the health, yet it is common enough to choose one in spite of its being bad for the health. Grown people must often do what injures their health, because only so can AMUSEMENTS 181 they gain something more important than health. But our children have no such re- sponsibilities. Life for them now must hold only what is best for the whole self and for each part of the whole self. Consider going to the theatre, for instance. Going to the theatre a few times in a winter is good for older children, provided it does not interfere with the next day's duties and provided that the play is suited to their stage of development. But going to the theatre a dozen times in a winter cannot be good for any chil- dren, no matter how old, — even if there were by a miracle twelve plays given in one winter worth their seeing. Parents often do not take the trouble to find out beforehand what the play is like, and do not guess afterwards what harmful impressions have been left on the child's uncritical consciousness. There is most frequently the emotional harm of witnessing experi- ences which their own real life could not or should not bring for years yet. There is too often also the moral harm of receiving ideas of bad conduct and motives which they never would have invented for themselves and cannot estimate correctly. Then, too, there is unavoidably the physical disadvantage to them of sitting inactive in a crowded room for three hours, gazing at a bright light, and having their brains made unnaturally active by following an artificial rapidity of happenings. And there is, too, the deprivation of not being out-of-doors, muscularly active, or in bed. 182 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION sound asleep, laying up stores of strength all that time. The same considerations, of course, cover all late hours. Once or twice a winter to be up late is no harm even to quite a little child, but to be up late once a week is bad for any and all children. A growing body is like the body of a convalescent; it needs much sleep for recuperation. A maturity which shall be fit to meet all responsibilities and pleasures serenely and hardily can be built only on a sound nervous system, and a sound nervous system can be got only by spending a wholesome youth. Again, it is obvious that no solicitous parent would deliberately press upon children what is bad for their morals. But the incipient moral sense needs to be formed firmly along very simple lines of insistence before the judgment is in a condition to confront dijE- cult situations. Right principles and practice must be given full chance to become dear and necessary through familiarity and unbroken ascendency. The plays the children go to, the books they read, the conversations they hear, should all strengthen the impressions which are to govern them in the days of independence. We must not forget that much which grown people must face is confusing in its moral pur- port. Problem books and problem plays are not fit for minds that have as yet no trustworthy clues by which to AMUSEMENTS 183 solve the problems. Evil notions, sordid motives, low lives, should not be talked of lightly before them. This is the reason for shielding the chil- dren, — not in the wish that they might never know evil, but with the intention that when they do know, as know they should, they shall be clear and firm in judgment and choice. A hindrance with most grown people is that their moral sense is not clear and firm. They can- not be firm because they are not clear about relative moral values. If we deal fairly with the children in this matter of elimination, the next generation will know better than ours how to avoid graft and divorce and embezzlement, public mistakes and personal disillusion. An injury to the body has palpable con- sequences, and an injury to morals is a men- ace to the community. Therefore these two are recognized evils; but what is bad for the inner self has invisible consequences, and is therefore seldom vigorously decried. To talk of it has a somewhat sentimental sound. Theoretically, in a religious sense, most of us believe in our souls, but practically we are 184 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION liable to avoid making definite provision for their comfort and health. What is bad for the inner self is seldom recognized as harmful by a child till long afterwards, and is usually unacknowledged or unknown by the parent; commonly the good of the inner self is left almost to accident. Yet this inner self is to be the child's one unfailing companion through life, and his whole personal happi- ness depends upon its condition. We should be solicitous against what injures it. All that restricts it, injures it. The inner self must have space and leisure. In youth, our com- panions should be chiefly individuals not companies, friends not acquaintances. Keen adult knowledge of human nature and enjoy- ment of passing human intercourse can be had only after long companionships during child- hood and close intimacies during youth. Space and leisure for these must not be pushed out to make room for "desirable" acquaintances, much less to provide for showy accomplishments or brilliant amusements. A parent who encourages such accomplishments and such amusements is yielding to the nat- AMUSEMENTS 185 ural love of excitement. People, old or young, enjoy excitement because it makes them feel very much alive and relieves them from all sense of responsibility. But frequent excite- ment is bad, because it taxes vitality too much all at one time. Every one who has learned the dependable joy of wholesome pleasures and the satisfaction of responsibilities skill- fully met, gets a great distaste for frequent and factitious excitement. Any parent who has the courage to deny his children the in- jurious excitements need not fear that he is depriving them of rightful enjoyment, pro- vided that he substitutes the saner pleasures. Just at present, girls are especial sufferers from unsuitable amusements. Much harm comes from the notion that they may do with impunity whatever the boys may do without injury. But they cannot. They are not like boys. They are much more excitable; they are more personally sensitive in body and spirit; and more socially affectable, because their nervous centres are more completely inter-active. Public athletic com- petitions, for instance, well-conducted, may sometimes be good for boys over fourteen, but they are alto- gether bad for girls. The eagerness for winning and the excitement of publicity are both demoralizing to them. Again, private athletic sports, while they are 186 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION good for girls who conduct themselves like girls, are not good for girls who conduct themselves like boys, — not good either for their health or for their inner selves. Lunch parties and dinner parties are doubt- less very good fun to girls in their early teens. Scarcely older than children, they have not yet outgrown the zest of playing at being grown up. But apart from the gastronomical joys, the real pleasure of such parties consists in conversation, and conversation has signifi- cance and value only for the experienced mind, which can discern underlying, unexpressed thoughts and motives. Such experience can be got not from the touch-and-go intercourse of never-so-many gregarious occasions, but from the long leisures of individual and intimate companionships. Children who spend much time in company have little time for intimacy. Danc- ing parties, to be sure, have the advantage of vigor- ous exercise and lively comradeship; but in their ordi- nary form they have the disadvantage of late hours and artificial ambitions. House parties may be whole- some, but usually they are the opportunity for careless manners and irresponsible familiarities with mere acquaintances. After making, in such ways, wholesale elimination of all amusements and occupa- tions that are sure to be harmful, the next necessity is to get rid of all that are wasteful, by establishing a balance among those mul- titudinous pleasures any of which are good AMUSEMENTS 187 and desirable. Each possible pleasure has always to be considered in several aspects. It has to be judged not only for the harm it might do, but chiefly for its good conse- quences, so that we may decide whether it or another would just now bring the greater measure of advantage present and to come. Thus a gradual exclusion narrows down the list of pleasures, first in general principles, then further to fit a special character, then still further to suit particular circumstances. Even at last, the number of available plea- sures remains larger than any one person can possibly "get round to," more than the hours in the day can hold. The final deciding factor of practical choice will be at last the passing personal preference and convenience of the child, and your own convenience at the mo- ment. Thus at last by regulation a due bal- ance is established. First, by general princi- ples of elimination there is set the necessary fixed limit beyond which a child must not go ; then further by considering his special char- acter and circumstances, his time is portioned among his occupations so that all his powers 188 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION shall be used in due proportion; and finally by making him choose among his personal preferences and consider your convenience, he is taught to control his desires and de- pend upon himself. Among the countless tempting things which might wisely be chosen a child must take, on this basis, only enough comfortably to fill the waking time. Such careful choice does not make any less delight- ful the pleasures which are chosen. It in- creases and prolongs enjoyment. In trying to preserve due balance one has to be constantly on one's guard against the impression that it is well to have a great deal of whatever is good, — the more the better, — so that a good experience cannot be repeated too often. This is a complete misapprehen- sion. The truth is, on the contrary, that reiterated experience has almost always a constantly decreasing value; and, as it be- comes too often repeated, its disadvantages begin to operate. A medicine which is cura- tive when taken for a week, may grow sick- ening when continued for a month. A sample AMUSEMENTS 189 is often sufficient, and, as regards many a good thing, once is enough. Once is always enough to make the difference between have and have not. Once having seen snow, we can never return to a snowless consciousness; once having cared for a dog, we need not own all sorts of dogs, or also cats, rabbits, horses, and canaries, in order to experience affection for the lower animals; once having really learned to milk a cow, hem a handkerchief, or bake a cake, we need not keep on milking, or hemming, or baking, in order not to lose the experience. We must keep on if we wish to acquire special skill; but once having done any particular thing, we find that the value as an experience of each fresh repetition is almost in inverse proportion, as it were, to the number of times that it has been repeated. In fact, experiences are liable to be self- completing, so that repetition quickly be- comes reiteration. This is equally true of experiences so closely akin that they would come under the same general class — like hemming and overcasting, which are both simply experiences of sewing. 190 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION On the other hand, conditions, that is, states of mind, body, or emotion, can be continuing and progressive. If a condition be desirable, the value of it is generally in direct proportion, as it were, to the length of time it has endured. There is the desirable mental condition of clearness, for instance. The longer it endures, the more clear and therefore the more val- uable the mind becomes. It is produced not by any particular experience, but by exercis- ing the mind clearly upon each experience which offers itself. Some experiences, such as arithmetic examples, give more opportu- nity for this practice than others, such as shoveling coal. If, however, multifarious experiences of any sort offer themselves at once or in rapid succession, the mind is un- able to attend to them all, and cannot retain clearness. It becomes confused by over- stimulation. And as it is with clearness, so it is with all other desirable mental conditions. They cannot be continuing and strong if the attention is over-stimulated. Over-stimulation results in a sort of mental congestion. Another result of the notion that there can- AMUSEMENTS 191 not be too much of a good thing is mental stagnation. Congestion comes from having too many kinds of things to do; stagnation from having too much of one kind to do. While congestion is usually a city product, stagnation is naturally met oftenest in the country. It seems to be almost as injurious as congestion to the nerves, though it certainly does not over-stimulate the brain. Where it exists, the same amusement is provided or permitted for a child over and over again, without a step of progress, with all the stupid reiteration of marking time. Sometimes a girl who is fond of embroidery em- broiders summer and winter, never learns to sew or to knit, or to crochet, even uses always the same stitch and does the same sort of patterns. Or a small boy who has a literary taste is permitted to take his pencil up again as soon as he comes from school or to read a book all the afternoon. Little girls are often allowed to play dolls for months together. They do not even leam to make, wash, and iron the doll's clothes. They do not keep house nicely for them. They simply "play dolls," talk, walk, sit, and go visiting over and over again. This is bad not merely because of the fruitless reiteration in the mind; it provides no in- vigorating exercise for the body and gives a paltry 192 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION notion of grown-up life. Stagnation is not so common with boys. They have a natural bent toward variety, which outdoor life fosters. But many a boy who likes sailing goes sailing every day all summer; never walks, never rides, fishes, or plays games. A less daring nature stupidly repeats some tamer pleasure, as did two boys who walked the same four miles and back to the same restaurant and ordered the same refreshments, eighty- one days out of ninety-two of their vacation. Such things are merely filling time instead of filling life. This is ridiculous. The whole of life ought to be filled with something in- teresting and progressive. For instance, it is good for children to learn to dance and good for young people to have dances for social purposes. But some mothers send their children to dancing-school every winter for twelve years or more. This is done for social purposes ; but a dancing-school is seldom well fitted to social uses of children. It is suited to the needs and tastes of advanced youth when an interest in persons has set in, conversation begins to be a pleasure, and the oppositeness of sex is an agree- able factor. Children who go much to dancing-school are liable to be learning nothing but shallow ambitions; for the ordinary dancing-school lays emphasis on the aesthetic instead of the moral values, teaching that success in life for the girls is to depend upon good looks, good clothes, and glib tongues, coupled with the appreciation of these things by the boys. The vain AMUSEMENTS 193 are flattered and the self-distrustful go to the wall. To both boys and girls it is often a school for selfish- ness, both exciting and stagnating. These evils could be avoided if it were customary to build houses with large playrooms at the top, where wholesome, friendly home-dances and game-parties could be had for the children, — governed entirely by the spirit of mutual kindness and good-will. Here the boys and girls could learn in a natural school the true deportment of good breeding, which is based upon the dictates of unselfish- ness even toward mere acquaintances and strangers. Then when they came to large afiPairs and public gatherings they would enjoy the real and smile at the extraneous, carrying themselves with ease and not affectation. Indeed, with care, even dancing-schools can be made to yield the same advantage. Vacation is an especial opportunity for a stagnant mental condition. Vacations used scarcely to exist. Sixty years ago good schools had only three weeks' vacation. But teachers have recently taken education up so ardently and are compressing so much into one school day that they have to provide a long relaxation, and families have besides adopted the custom of sum- mer migration. Hence, the long vacation; which we actually take at its apparent meaning to be vacant time, and we let it be empty of profit. Yet there is plenty to do : outdoor science, with or without a teacher; languages, with or without a teacher; systematic read- ing; the keeping of records; creative work, mental or manual according to the child's taste; perfecting skill in sports ; making new excursions or improving old ones ; 194 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION — hosts of things. But dawdhng and reiteration and sitting about talking all day should be tabooed and impossible. The "gang" life of many girls and boys at summer hotels and summer resorts is stagnant, even if by good fortune it be not malarious. And so sometimes is even the camp life which is so common a resource now for parents with boys and girls whom they cannot occupy. Many camps have in them no com- pensation for depriving a boy or girl all summer of most of the influences which go to develop the civil- ized creature in them. In such camps, if they stay very long, all their finer faculties stagnate, primitive oppor- tunity reiterates, simple experience recurs. A well- managed camp guards against this by careful regula- tion, and is a most wholesome substitute for hotels and watering-places. Sunday, too, has become a vacant day or one which is meaningless in many homes which have done away with the old-time frequent church-going and prescribed sacred reading. Some- times the children spend Sunday in social dawdling, sometimes in week-day games and studies. This is a great loss of opportunity. The sacred character of Sunday can be and should be retained even in families which no longer recognize the sacred character of church. Sunday is a day for setting free the higher nature. Close human bonds of family affection or close friendship should be given a chance to strengthen. Serious, stirring thoughts should be brought upper- most. The depth and dignity of life should become apparent through special recognition. Sunday is a day of opportunity. It should not yield stagnation. AMUSEMENTS 195 for that is more unlovely, even if it be not more baneful than congestion. A stagnating day, a day without mental motion, should seem to a child or youth as unsatisfactory as a day without dinner. It should seem queer, unnatural, leaving him vaguely hungry. Outside the prescribed work of school, his occupations and amusements ought to be along the lines of self-chosen interests, thrown in his way it may be by others, but taken up of his own motion. His leisure time should not be empty. In short, the cure for stagnation lies in the conviction that progress is essential. Stagnation would not be possible if parents steadily remem- bered that the persistent human need is a constantly fresh exercise of power. Congestion and stagnation are both gross errors, easy to avoid when once they are recognized. But in the actual final choice it is difficult to be sure that one's decision will really secure a satisfactory balance. The task is so to choose that each power in the child shall be gratified in proportion to its durable 196 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION human value. This requires a sense of human values and a fine perception of what effect each gratification has upon the several powers. For each experience affects all the child's powers at once and alters the condition of each in varying degree. To judge of the probable value of any occupation or amuse- ment to any special child, we must have a lively conception of what the child is in his best estate and what sort of creature he is to grow to be. No special advice that is practi- cally useful can be given by an outsider. Our success must depend upon our own sense of proportion, upon the fineness of our feeling for balance and adjustment. It is possible by over-stimulus and want of regulation to rob a child of the best of all that immaturity has to give him, and so to send him into the world which must receive him, an obstructed creature, confused in thought and feeling, and with a nervous system so broken that little reliance can be placed on his assistance or his judgment. It is possible by elimination and balance to secure for him the best of all that childhood and youth can AMUSEMENTS 197 hold, and thus to bring him to the world which needs him, a developed creature, elas- tic and eager in thought and feeling, and with a nervous system so sound and whole that he is steadily able to fill the place that fits him and to reap the full yield of what life can offer him. This does not demand perpetual attention or profound thought. The point to establish is the kind of thing to be permitted for each stage. Then provide the simplest of necessary material, and the children's own unresting activity and zest will accomplish the desired end. Build them from within out. Give them a full chance to learn the spirit and heart of things before crowding upon them the accepted methods of expression. Do not let them get accretions of manners, opinions, tastes, or knowledge gained from imitation and passive observation through a mere desire to conform or to please. These make a wall of habit around a child's real understanding and impulses. Men who have been built up from within out, have an enduring centre of health and steadiness. Their childhood was 198 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION not over-stimulated or allowed to stagnate; they have a superior charm, and are to them- selves and others a constant invigoration. Always it must be remembered that, whereas adults are gregarious, complex, possessed of many faculties and much experience, children are self-centred, simple, with undeveloped powers and scanty experience. Childhood is very self-sufl&cing. The smaller the child is, the more this is true, though childhood in this sense does not come wholly to a legitimate end before the age of eighteen or even twenty. Its four stages are each a little more advanced toward maturity than the one before, but each is marked by the same necessity for being allowed a habitable world of its own, unper- plexed by the occupations, responsibilities, and pleasures of maturity. Let each stage begin with a little of the new which is to come during its progress, but let it not accumulate all until the end. Let each have toward its end a slight foretaste of what is to come in the stage beyond, but only enough to prevent shock when the change comes. Make amuse- ments as well as all other occupations corre- AMUSEMENTS 199 spond to age and development. To do this well, parents need to keep a clear vision of what is a normal, healthy, progressive child- hood, and of what is the full maturity toward which the children should be moving; and, above all, they need to remember that each child is a separate problem, altering at every stage. By holding these considerations steadily in mind, and putting them bravely into prac- tice, we shall take our fair share in the work of abolishing the present distressing condition of nerve weakness, and building up in our nation steady health, rational life, and full development. HEALTH So much has been said and so well said, dur- ing the past twenty years, about the physical care of children, that nothing detailed upon the subject is needed here. But a book on the training of children cannot rightly omit to emphasize the necessity for securing to each child the best health of which he is capable. A man in poor health can be efficient, cul- tivated, and full of knowledge. He can be good and useful, and self-dependent; and if his powers permit, he can be even great. But his inner self suffers. He cannot reach his own fullest self -use; he cannot know the joy of balanced powers; and he can never come into possession of the soundest judgment of which he is capable. Ill-health saps the nerves and wastes the attention. It makes a perfectly free, un- HEALTH 201 troubled mind impossible. Hence it makes thoroughly sound judgment impossible. Ill- health wastes time, and no matter how much happiness a sick man may compass, he would have more happiness if he had more un- troubled hours. In planning to give our children good health so far as in us lies, we need the same point of view that we need in planning for their mental benefit, — the home point of view. It is home, not the doctor, that secures them good health. The doctor merely saves them from sickness. And the home procedure toward health is also very simple. It requires no technical or professional knowledge whatever. Four things it requires for the child, in or- der to maintain health : — 1. Plenty of quiet sleep at regular hours. 2. Plenty of simple food at regular hours. 3. Plenty of fresh air at all hours. 4. A daily movement of the bowels. 202 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION Four things it exacts from the mother, in order to avoid sickness : — 1. Close watching of the color of the skin, especially, under the eyes, on the lips, round the mouth, the ears; the brightness of the eyes; the general bearing; the tongue and the temperature. 2. Sending for the doctor immediately, as soon as the mother wonders what to do. 3. Implicitly obeying the doctor's directions. 4. Not fussing. This is actually all that is required in the attempt to lay up in a child all those stores of reserve strength which constitute firm health. All other physical attention is either care of the child in sickness, or else assistance toward further development. A TABLE OF BEGINNINGS Every one who has charge of children feels the need from time to time of some reminder about the sequence of childish growth and interest. The following table should serve as a series of such reminders. The -figures on the dotted lines indicate the advancing years of child- hood. The words at the head of the columns indicate six different fields of 'progress. If the table be read between two dotted lines, across two opposite pages, a general list of suitable occupations and preoccupations for some one age is suggested. If it be read down one column, through three pages, a progressive list in some especial field is developed. The suggestions and developments are not intended as directions and must be considered always tentatively. Many things, for instance, are apparently too difficult for the age at which they appear. Rowing, of course, cannot serve any practical use at the age of six. But it is an experience of great advantage to a vigorous child if he rows for only ten or fifteen minutes without strain. Thus, at six he gets the idea and feeling of it simply as an experience; the next year he practices it more seri- ously, and by the time he is eight he can row a light load very well. But he must not be kept at it until it becomes drudgery. This distinction between experience, practice, and drudgery must be constantly in the parent's mind. Once mastering an idea or motion is an expe- rience for a child, valuable in itself. Exercising that mastery gives practice, and, combined with natural A TABLE OF BEGINNINGS 205 aptitiide, brings skill. Going on ivith the exercise to the point of loeariness and fast all possible interest is drudgery ; and that is permissible only for the gaining of some compensating ulterior good. Again, an interest may be here set down for an age much older than some especial child seized upon it. This must not be taken as an indication that such a child is harmfully precocious. It may simply indicate the familiar truth that the order as well 'as the rate of de- velopment differs widely between individuals. In short, regarded as a fixed schedule the table appears ridiculous; but if considered as a series of suggestions it may sometimes prove useful. Each matter is men- tioned at an age when an average child may well en- counter it for the first time; whether he does so or not depends largely upon circumstances. After it has once been encountered, it should seldom be completely dropped. Either at home or at school, it will continue to play its part, small or great. TABLE OF INFANCY {From birth to about three years old) BEHAVIOB, KTC. BEADING AND WBITING, BTC. SCIENCE, ETC. Submission Qualities of matter Obedience Idea of direction Self-control 1 Idea of distance 1 Imitation Beasonablenesa Self-amusement Talking; ....3 Idea of quantity Idea of causes Idea of number 2 Self-direction Courage Politeness Kindness Geutlenasa " Mother Goose," etc. Picture books Idea of reasons Idea of relation Distinction between past, present, & future 3 Cheerfulness Sincerity Unselfishness 4 EARLY CHILDHOOD {From about three to about six years old) ...3 3.... Listening to verses and very short stories Using alphabet blocks Reciting verses Knowing the days of the week .4 Distinction between fact and fancy Counting ten Distinction between right and left Idea of growth .4 listening to myths, fairy tales, etc., read aloud Reading Truthfuliiess Acting Mother Goose, etc. Knowing names of the months Printing with pencil 6 5 Counting things Names of common birds and flowers Adding and subtracting orally Making the Arabic nu- merals Idea of death ..5 Idea of birth Understanding simple maps and plans Combining numbers up to 10 Learning names of com- mon trees and insects, stones and sea-things Sense of proportion ..6 Trustworthiness Independence 6 Memorizing Writing .6 206 BEGINNINGS ABT, ETC. Perception of light Distinction between Bounds Using gentle voice 1 INFANCY (Frovi birth to about three years old) EXKKCISE, GAMES, ETC. Using the muscles Establishing hygienic habits Creeping Throwing ball ...1 BED HOUB, ETC. From 22 hours to 16 hours of sleep a day Lullabys Walking Using blocks, rings, toys with wheels, etc. Using spoon and mug Sleep from 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. Rest from four to two hours .2 Using pencil Stringing beads without plan Distinguishing tastes and colors Sewing cards Undressing 3. " Finger plays" " Mother plays " Animal toys EARLY CHILDHOOD (From about three to about six years old) Sleep from 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. Rest from four to two hours Reproducing singing tones Partly dressing Cutting Picking up toys Looking at good pic- tures Distinguishing smells " Button, button," " Barberry- bush," etc. Sandpile play Helping older people Running Taking walks Sleep from 6 p. m. to 7 a. m. Rest from three to one hours Singing scale Helping with dishes Coloring pictures " London Bridge," etc. Sewing cloth & buttons Mud pies More difiBcult kinder- Swinging garten work Singing songs 5 6 Sleep from 6 p. m. to 7 a.m. Rest from three to one hours Dressing entirely Clay work Weaving Pasting Listening to good Family singing 6 Dusting, Brushing up " Ooiug to Jerusalem," etc. .6. 207 Sleep from 6 p. m. to 7 a. m. Driving hoop. Climbing trees, Rest as needed ladders, etc. Marching BBHAVIOK, ETC. Reserve about private and personal matters Sense of responsibility Bespect Xoyalty to persons Kefinement 9 Sense of personal honor Precision in execution 10.. Reverence Perseverance with long plans lioyalty to principle !».. TABLE OF LATER CHILDHOOD {From about six to about twelve years old) EEADING ANB WRITING, ETC. SCIENCE, ETC. 6 6 Silent reading of poetiy, ^ to 100 °^ """""^"^ Writing Mtera maps and the globe Spelling Telling time Typewritmg Simple botany 7 7 French language Outline maps Reading both silent and loud, ^eaf collection and hstenmg to reading j, j arithmetic of any suitable books, especially books bearing gj j^ hygiene upon school studies Understanding birth 8 8 Making raised maps Slower collection Simple physiology 9 9 American Collection of history shells and stones Simple zoSlogy 10 10 Helping with a home-written Butterfly collection magazine. Stamp collection Inventional Ancient history geometry 11 11 Keeping a journal Simple facts of physics and Reading historical romances, etc. chemistry Greek history 18 la 208 BEGINNINGS LATER CHILDHOOD (From about six to about twelve years old) EXERCISE, GAMES, ETC. BED HOUB, ETC. ...6 6 Singing by note orally ^.T? l°T " ^Jjr^lr.?'^^'^^ Playing piano Using hammer, nails Elnitting Tracing, eto.^ Dancing, " French Tag,' " Hunt the slipper," etc. Roller skating. Jump rope Swimming Rowing Sleep from 6.30 p. m. to 7 a. m. Sight singing Hemming Crocheting Modeling 8 Calisthenics, " Blind man's Buff," etc. Battledore, Tops Bicycling, Ice skating Digging PicUng berries 8 Sleep from 7 p. m. to 7 a. m. Lessons on a special instrimieut Simple cooking Drawing Whittling 9 Afternoon concerts Darning Care of doll's clothes Color work Carpentry 10 Basketry Printing press Cane seating 11 Sweeping Card games, "Dumb Crambo," etc. Marbles Driving Weeding Harnessing 9 Sleep from 7 p. m. to 7 a. m. Washing dishes Ironing Animal game, " Coddam," etc. Sailing, Fishing " Scrub," etc. Care of small animals 10. Sleep from 7.30 p. m. to 7 a. m. Housework " Authors," " Stage coach," etc. Riding, Archery- Milking, Currying, etc. Kicking football 11 .10. Sleep from 7.30 p. m. to 7 a. m. .11. Part singing Turning lathe Embroidery Washing clothes " Logoraachi," " Spelling- ton," etc. Hockey, Baseball Cutting grass. Pruning Sleep from 8 p. m. to 7 a. m. la 13 13 1 Beginning at this age, some constructive work should be done every day. 209 TABLE OF EAKLY YOUTH (From about twelve to about eighteen years old) BEHAVIOB, ETC. 13 Chivalry WomanlineBB IS Sense of official honor 14 Democratic spirit 15. Sense of relative values in moral and social distinctions 16. Jjoyalty to ideals 17., Sense of respon- sibility toward humanity Idea of self-culture READING AND WRITING, ETC, .13 Acting small plays at home Beading foreign language alone Writing whatever original composition is natural Grammar .13 Novels of the simpler realistic sort Simpler poets Latin Roman history .14 Simpler great masterpieces SCIENCE, ETC. Famous passages in English and in foreign languages General history .15 German language Simpler essayists Afternoon theatre — comedies and romantic plays .16 Biographies Lectures Evening theatre Bhetoric .17 Serious English novels of the first three quarters of the 19th century Serious poets and essayists Civil Government .18. Tragedies Problem novels of real moral and literary worth. English Literature 210 .13 Keeping accounts Understanding sex Simple algebra .13 Keeping records of weather, etc. Simple physical geography .14 Serious hygiene and physiology Idea of various and sequent causes for one result, and vice versa Geometry .15..... Names and natures of chief stars and constellations Simple geology .16 Solid geometry .17., Following special or general scientific interests Trigonometry .18 Biology Domestic Science BEGINNINGS EARLY YOUTH {From about twelve to about eighteen years old) ART, ETC. 18 Sketching^ Scroll saw 13 Carving 14. Following some special talent 15. Design 16 Erening concerts Culture of singing voice 17 EXEBCISB, GAMES, ETC. .12 Sewing on machine Cooking meals "Geography game," "Andros- coggin," etc. Tennis Hoeing Care of large animals .13 General care of bouse Fancy dancing " History game," etc. Golf BED HOUR, ETC. .14 Evening game parties " Crambo," " Capping verses," etc. Competitive running, jump- ing, etc. Mowing .15 Basketball Football Plowing .16 Ordering meals Evening dancing parties Long tramps .17 Private theatricals, Lunch parties concerts, etc. Camping out alone 18. .18. Philanthropic interests Housekeeping Dinner parties House parties .13. Sleep from 8 p. m. to 7 a. m. .13. Sleep from 8.30 p. m. to 7 p. m. Sleep from 9 p. m. to 7 a. m. .15. Sleep from 9 p. m. to 7 a. m. .16 Sleep from 9.30 p. m. to 7 a. HL Semi-occasional late hours .17 Sleep from 10 p. m. to 7 a. m. Occasional late hours .18 Sleep from 10 p. m. to 7 a. m. More frequent late hours 211 INDEX Adolescence (see Infancy), ped- agogic theory of, 76. Aims (see Motives), of education, 13 ; of schooling, 14 ; of good school, 18 ; of parents, 21; suit- able to babyhood, 25; suitable to primary school, 28 ; suitable to vanward group, 37 ; of tute- lage, 39 ; of education, 42 ; for character, 44; of home teach- ing, 103 ; of good reading, 115 ; of discipline, 116. Annoyance, maxim of, 133. Argument, maxim of, 45. Arithmetic, home teaching of, 95. Art, home teaching of, 98. Babyhood (see Infancy), duties of, 25 ; teachers of, 25; characteris- tics of, 26 ; schooling for, 26 ; can forestall school, 48 ; special interests and mental powers of, 92 ; method of home teaching in (see Teaching), 93 ; as a stage of development, 170; false plea- sures in, 176. Balance (see Proportion), is ne- cessary to completeness, 61 ; we do not understand, 163 ; value in pleasures, 179 ; among plea- sures, 186 ; by regulation, 187 ; satisfactory, 195. Beginnings, should be unconscious, Cf 89; table of, 206. Beliefs, accumulated unconscious- ly, 105 ; education selects, 106. Brain, must be exercised, 42; over- taxed, 160 ; change in ability of, 169 ; in infancy, childhood, and youth, 170. Bribes, maxim of, 146. Changeableness, obstacle to disci- pline, 123. Character, is alive, 60 ; natural, 118. Childhood, characteristics of, 29- 34 ; needs of, 27 ; schooling for, 27-32 ; subjects to be studied by, 31 ; interests suitable to, 32 ; hours of schooling for, 52 ; phy- sical stages of, 170 ; should be happy and progressive, 174 ; self-sufficing, 198. Children, have no experience, 117 ; are like ourselves, 125 ; are pro- phecies, 130 ; can be ethically civilized, 131 ; are not like our- selves, 169; must be protected from pleasure, 174; over-worked, 176 ; socialized, 178 ; need lei- sure, 186. Choice, maxim of, 145 ; modem need of, 162 ; no principles of, 163 ; on false principles, 168 ; of harmful pleasures, 180; care- ful, 188 ; principles of, in plea- sures, 197. 214 INDEX Classes, should be small, 9 ; give stimulus of numbers and ne- cessity, 17 ; educated, are not faithful, 37. Coeducation, pedagogic theory of, 80. Comparison, children need make none, 25 ; belongs to later life, 33 ; not natural to children, 92 ; maxim of, 153. Competition, uudesirable in child- hood, 32 ; may be used in youth, 35 ; maxim of, 153 ; bad f orgirls, 185. Completeness (see Perfection), im- possible, 47 ; entails balance, 61 ; undesirable for small chil- dren, 102. Consciousness, social, 116 ; slowly gained, 128 ; self-, maxim of, 151 ; means of gaining, 152. Conservatism, obstacle to disci- pline, 121 ; is mental inertia, 121 ; its cure, 122 ; desirable in managing children, 167. Convictions, concerning education, 46-48. Criticism, unsuitable in children, 33 ; maxims of, 154 ; impossible for children, 182. Culture, contrasted with know- ledge and efficiency, 11-14 ; best acquired at home, 14; studies, pedagogic theory of, 75. Desire, wholesome, a final pur- pose, 42 ; importance of, 44 ; not a mental power, 57 ; must be reached by discipline, 116 ; remote from judgment, 117; seeks the best, 117 ; follows affection, admiration, and confi- dence, 120. Development, training to suit, 21 ; different views of, 22 ; incom- plete, 37 ; different in each child, 41 ; natural, pedagogic theory of, 68 ; full, not now at- tained, 160 ; four stages of, 169-174 ; of moral sense, 182 ; of inner sense, 184; of social sense, 186 ; of natural self, 197. Dignity, maxim of, 157. Disappointment, maxim of, 15. Discipline, regxUates social con- duct, 117; ignorance about, 118; obstacles to, 118-125 ; based on affection, admiration, and con- fidence, 120; necessary, 124; helps adjustment to life, 128 ; helps development, 131 ; gives a good start, 132 ; triple prob- lem of, 132 ; maxims of, 133. Drudgery, decreased, 162 ; expe- rience, practice, and, 204. Education, different for each indi- vidual, 41 ; logical system of, impossible, 46 ; advanced by the use of words, 46 ; need not be a scramble, 53 ; matter of, not im- portant, 54 ; method of, not im- portant, 55 ; must be based on inductive reasoning, 67 ; selects beUefs, 106. Efficiency (see Self-dependence, Independence), fostered by training, 10; result of logical thought and just understand- INDEX 215 ing, 12 ; more important than knowledge or culture, 12, 14 ; demands thorougli knowledge, 12; strengthened by good school- ing, 14 ; causes self-dependence, 19. Enjoying school, necessity for, 17; good way of, 32 ; pedagogic theory of, 71. Essentials, of schooling, 8 ; of training, 10, 11, 18 ; of learn- ing, 31 ; for home teaching, 102 ; of steady health are ig- nored, 160 ; of steady health are principles of choice, 163 ; to maintain health are four, 201 ; to avoid sickness are four, 201. Examinations, pedagogic theory of, 84. Excuses, feeble things, 157. Exercise, in babyhood, 101. Experience, as opposed to condi- tion, 188-190. Experts, have reiterated experi- ence, 3; employed by par- ents, 4 ; as teachers, 6 ; are outsiders, 7 ; may be trusted, 8 ; steal privileges of parents, 12 ; mistaken thoroughness of, 28. Explanation, maxim of, 144. Fallow (Lying), pedagogic theory of, 68. Fear, never to be used in disci- pline, 150. Forbidding, maxim of, 144. Force, maxim of, 137. Foreigners, as teachers, pedagogic theory of, 74. Geography, home teaching of, 97. Guidance, maxim of, 137. Habits, maxim of, 150. Happiness, children have a right to, 168; of unhampered child- hood, 173 ; of maturity, impor- tant, 174 ; factitious, 185. Health, pleasures injurious to, ISO; requires four tilings, 201. History, home teaching of, 97. Home, inadequate, 14 ; place for adjustment, 15 ; not suited for mental training, 16-17 ; being encroached on by school, 18- 20; should create the school, 20 ; opportunity and training, 38 ; should supplement school work, 48-51 ; schooling, peda- gogic theory of, 70 ; teaching unsystematic, 102 ; dances, 193; secures good health, 201. Humor, maxim of, 134. Hurry, maxim of, 135. Ignoring, maxim of, 156. Independence (see Efficiency, Self- dependence), an obstacle to dis- cipline, 119-122 ; overcome by affection, etc., 120. Infancy (see Adolescence, Baby- hood, Tutelage), teachers of, 24; tasks of, 24; "prolonged," 37, 172. Instruction (see Teaching). Intellect (?ee Mind), what it is, 58 ; use of, in thought, 59. Judgment, necessary to moral sense, 117; separate from de- 216 INDEX sire, 117 ; based on experience, 117 ; must be appealed to, 118 ; moral, 128 ; miust be formed, 128 ; appealed to by explanation, 140 ; encouraged, 145 ; of others learned slowly, 152 ; unsuitable for cbildren, 154. Keeping Pace, maxim of, 155. Kindergarten, pedagogic theory of, 70. Knowledge, contrasted with cul- ture and efficiency, 11, 12, 13, 14 ; not necessarily gained at school, 14 ; has an acquired air, 19 ; repetition of, necessary, 47 ; suited to childhood, 47. Laboratory (see Method). Languages, home-teaching of, 96. Learning, outline of, would be useful, 39 ; outline of, would in- clude, etc., 40 ; manner of, is all-important, 54 ; pedagogic theory of early, 69 ; the little child's way of, 92. Literature, English, home teaching of, 93. Lying, maxim of, 148. Malice, maxim of, 158. Maxims of Discipline, 138 ; outline of, 159. Memory, what it is, 57. Method, laboratory, pedagogic theory of, 73. Mind (see Intellect), what it is, 58 ; use of, in thought, 59 ; slow to move, 122, 141; to be guided, 135 ; dwarfed by unchildish pleasure, 179. Mood, maxim of, 158. Moral, as distinguished from men- tal, 60; purpose, 114, 132; sense, 117 ; training comes from example, 126 ; considerations objective, 127 ; judgment, 132 ; all injunctions become, 156 ; pleasures injurious to morals, 182. Mother (see Parents), her idea of her child's life, 22 ; thinks she cannot teach, 90 ; can make all a child's beginnings, 91 ; teaches by sharing interests, 101; guards health, 201. Motives (see Aims), for education, 13 ; for study, 16 ; of good school, 18; suitable to childhood, 32 ; suitable to youth, 35 ; suit- able to home training, 38 ; for early learning, 43 ; for vacation study, 4.3 ; for tasks, 44 ; social, 116 ; maxim of base, 146 ; for keeping Sunday, 194 ; for regu- lating amusements, 196. Nagging, maxim of, 146. Natural, necessity, 161 ; condition, 161. Nerves, increase in diseases of, 160 ; were adjusted to civiliza- tion, 161 ; weak, 162 ; become more responsive, 171 ; respon- sibility for weakness of, 176; cause of, weakness in children, 176; need wholesome youth, 182 ; specially excitable in girls, 185 ; injured by congeBtion, 190 j INDEX 217 injured by stagnation, 191 broken, injure judgment, 196 sound, make sound life, 197 sapped by ill health, 200. Obedience, reluctance to, 122; maxim of, 141 ; foundation of faith, 143 ; replaced by unself- ishness, etc., 143 ; Americans chary in teaching of, 164. Once, is enough, 62, 189. Parents (see Mother), not experts, 3 ; dependent on experts, anec- dotes, 4; ignorant about educa- tion, 6 ; a wisdom of, 7 ; inside interest of parents, 8 ; educa- tional knowledge necessary to, 8 ; guard against encroachments of school, 15, 21 ; perhaps indif- ferent and ignorant, 20 ; should select child's reading, 112 ; often imjust and stupid, 126 ; who do not learn from experience, 164 ; mislead children, 168 ; can se- cure children's happiness, 173; under-regulate, 176 ; must be re- sponsible, 179; permit stagna- tion, 195 ; make the childhood, 196 ; need a clear vision, 196. Perfection (see Completeness), unnecessary in babyhood, 25 ; impossible, 26, 45 ; irrelevant, 28 ; possible in childhood, 31 ; aims beyond, 35 ; love of, is uni- versal, 136 ; counsels of, 148. Personal inducements, not to be used in school, 15-16. Persuasion, maxim of, 144. Powers, balanced, a purpose of training, 10 ; using, is a pleasure, 32 ; balanced, a final purpose, 42 ; mental, chiefly concern the school, 56 ; list of mental, 57 ; desire not a mental power, 57 ; aimed at by schooling, 61 ; spe- cial, of babyhood, 92 ; constantly appearing, 155 ; well-used, can be set aside, 155. Practice and Precept, maxim of, 156. Proportion (see Balance), we lack a sense of, 28 ; not established in occupations, 163 ; powers should be used in, 175 ; sense of, 179; gratifying powers in, 195. Punishment, maxim of, 138 ; sub- stitutes for, 140. Racial Recapitulation, pedagogic theory of, 71 ; in mental devel- opment, 72 ; in moral ideas, 129. Reading, learning, by special method, 69 ; pedagogic theory of learning, in babyhood, 93; home teaching of, 93 ; is process of vicarious experience, 106 ; for a little child, 107 ; for older chil- dren, 108 ; for youth, 108 ; un- desirable kinds of, 109 ; first- rate, is safe, 110 ; must not be too simple, 111 ; emulative. 111 ; of magazines and newspapers, 112 ; school editions, 112 ; ear- lier classics, 114 ; different for boys and girls, 114 ; much, 115. Repentance, not the cause of ex- cuses, 157 ; is of three kinds, 158. 218 INDEX Results, of sensible distribution of studies, etc., 49. Rewards, maxim of, 14*7. Rules, universal, of conduct, 133 ; general, of conduct, 138 ; of per- fection, 148. School (see Schooling-), a conven- ience, 23 ; tabulation of child's life, 23 ; wastes time, 45 ; can- not do all the schooling, 51 ; should train mental powers, 56 ; public, pedagogic theory of, 77 ; boarding, pedagogic theory of, 82 ; is seldom soothing, 176 ; dancing, 192; supplemented by vacation, 193. Schooling (see School), question of, perplexingto parents,6; methods not the parent's affair, 8; must foster thoroughness and self- reliance, 8 ; three points of good, 9 ; should be formal and sys- tematic, 14 ; should not be like home, 15 ; represents necessity, duty, and justice, 15 ; should be enjoyed, 17 ; is necessary, 17 ; not synonymous with education, 18 ; recently overemphasized, 19 ; only a part of education, 24 ; dominated by simplicity, thor- oughness, and serenity, 24 ; should supplement home, 38 ; exists to provide mental training, 46; aims at self -use and balanced powers, 61 ; home, pedagogic theory of, 76. Science, home teaching of, 98. Self-aware, child should become, 152. Self -consciousness, maxim of, 151. Self - dependence (see Self-reli- ance, Efficiency, Independence, Self -use), of primary impor- tance, 10 ; injured by elabo- rate teaching, 19; in amusements, 188. Self-government, aim of discipline, 116, 129. Self-reliance, must be fostered by school, 8 ; a purpose of training, 10 ; should be habitual, 64. Self -use, a purpose of training, 10 ; a final purpose, 42 ; aim of schooling, 61. Sensation, is not thought, 59; is important to thought, 60. Serenity, an essential of adequate training, 10 ; necessary at school, 24. Silence, maxim of, 145. Simplicity, an essential of ade- quate training, 10 ; necessary at school, 24; especially charac- teristic of babyhood, 25 ; ex- ceedingly necessary to child- hood, 28. Snubbing, maxim of, 146. Socializing, a child, 178. Specialists (see Experts). Stages, of development, 169-173. Standard, of performance should be high, 63 ; of performance for a child, 103; of performance, maxim of, 136. Stimulus, such as is desirable for childhood, 32 ; undesirable if artificial, 33 ; such as is desir- able for youth, 35. Subconscious area, is large, 63. INDEX 219 Subjective view of naughtiness, etc., 127. Talents, must be fostered, 42. Tastes, must be gratified, 42. Teacher, responsible for methods, 8 ; must have wholesome qual- ity, 10 ; must not appeal to per- sonal affection, 16 ; must depend on influences beyond himself, 16 ; must not superimpose him- self, 32. Teaching, may be overdone, 27- 32 ; methods of, good for sug- gestion, 29; should produce eagerness, independence, accu- racy, modesty, 30 ; is by guid- ance, not conveyance, 62; for babyhood, 89, — (arithmetic, 95 art, 98 ; English literature, 93 exercise, 101 ; geography, 97 history, 97 ; language, 96 ; read- ing, 93 ; science, 98 ; writing, 95. ) Technical training, not necessary to education, 29. Temperament, the controlling fac- tor, 42 ; must be used, etc., 42 ; obstacle to discipline, 123. Theories, educational, often un- tenable, always based on some fact, 66; pedagogic, 66, — (ado- lescence, influence of, 76 ; be- ginning early, 69 ; boarding schools, 82 ; coeducation, 80 ; culture studies, 75 ; early learn- ing, 69 ; enjoying school, 71 ; examinations, 84; fallow, ly- ing, 68 ; foreigners as teach- ers, 74; home schooling, 76; in general, 84; kindergarten. 70 ; laboratory methods, 73 ; learning to read, 69 ; lying fal- low, 68 ; manual training, 72 ; natural development, 68; pub- lic schools, 77 ; racial recapitu- lation, 71 ; read, learning to, 69.) Thoroughness, must be fostered by school, 8 ; an essential in ade- quate training, 10 ; necessary at school, 24 ; of specialists, mis- leading, 28. Thought, what it is, 58 ; is not sensation, 59 ; is meagre with- out knowledge, 104. Threats, maxim of, 146. Time, distribution of, among sorts of occupations, 51. Training (see Technical), essen- tials of, 10 ; powers acted on by, 10 ; means employed in, 11 ; results of, 11 ; must aim at effi- ciency, 12, 13, 14 ; mental, a modern discovery, 17 ; too self- conscious and elaborate, 19, 20 ; if good leaves four marks, 64 ; manual, pedagogic theory of, 72. Tricks, often transient, 123 ; not moral faults, 123 ; sometimes need punishment, 139; some- times need rewards, 147. Trust, maxim of, 1.35. Truth, hard to discern, 149. Tutelage (see Infancy), wiser treatment in, 38 ; not too long for preparation, 39. Vacation, must not be empty, 43 ; should supplement school work, 48 ; must not be stagnant, 193. 220 INDEX Will, what it is, 57 ; injured by unchildisli pleasure, 179. Words, use of, important form of education, 46 ; not always understood by child, 127, 149 ; soon become cant, 156 ; stop in memory, 157. Work, independent, for children, 27 ; interest in, should be quiet, 32 ; should be steady, not stimu- lated, 33 ,* must be earnest, 34 ; easy at youth's outset, 34 ; joy in, 36 ; should not be con- stant, 103 ; customary for baby, 104. Writing, home teaching of, 95. Youth, complex characteristics of, 35 ; schooling for, 35 ; interests suitable to, 35 ; as a stage of development, 170 ; injured by unlit pleasures, 177. ®5e tfiitoerjsitie ^xe0 CAMBRIDGE • MASSACHUSETTS U • S • A ROUTINE AND IDEALS By Le Baron R. Briggs, President of Rad- cliffe College. i6mo, ^i.oo, net. Postage 9 cents. " Common sense enriched by culture de- scribes everything which Dean, or, as he ought now to be called, President, Briggs says or writes. The genius of sanity, sound judgment, and high aim seems to preside over his thought, and he combines in an un- usual degree the faculty of vision and the power of dealing with real things in a real way." — The Outlook, New York. SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND CHARACTER By the Author of " Routine and Ideals." i6mo, $1.00, net. Postage 8 cents. " With the soundest good sense and with frequent humorous flashes, Dean Briggs takes students and parents into his confi- dence, and shows them the solution of col- lege problems from the point of view, not of the 'office' but of a very clear-think- ing, whole-souled man in the ' office ' " — The World's Worky New York. Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York THE COLLEGE MAN and THE COLLEGE WOMAN By William Dewitt Hyde, President of Bowdoin College. i2mo, ^1.50, net. Postpaid, $1.61. This book contains sixteen papers which, taken as a whole, represent what twenty years of life in a college and in college ad- ministration have taught President Hyde, and what in turn he has tried to teach to others. What college students mean to be and what college graduates may be expected to become are questions which are very close to many people. President Hyde's clear-sighted and able handling of many vexed questions on the relations between college life and the world of affairs is likely to be widely read, coming as it does from a man of so long and brilliant a career in the field of education. Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York OCT 23 m'i