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TEACHING IN THE HOME
TEACHING IN THE HOME
A Handbook for Intensive Fertilization
of the Child Mind
for
Instructors of Young Children
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ADOLF A. BERLE, A.M., D.D.
FORMER PROFESSOR OF APPLIED CHRISTIANITY IN TUFTS COLLEGE
Author of “The School in the Home,” “Christianity and
The Social Rage.” Director of the Berle
Home-Correspondence School.
NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YA RD AND COMPANY
1915

Copyright, 1915, by
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
W. F. BRAINARD
ÚOOK MANUPACTUREA
MEW YORK
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VIII
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XII
XIII
XIV
CONTENTS
PAGE
A LETTER, TO TEACHING PARENTS . . ix
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES . . . I
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! . . . . 37
GRAMMAR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
LANGUAGES . . . . . . . . . . . 85
GEOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . 112
HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
SCIENCE IN GENERAL . . . . . . . . I'73
PHYSIOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . I96
BOTANY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
ZOOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
GEOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
GEOMETRY . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
ETHICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . 34.1
A LETTER, TO TEACHING
PARENTS
My dear Friends:
This volume has come into being by your
own request. In my “School in the Home”
I was, perhaps unwisely, led to remark that
some day I might write such a little book as
this, for the guidance of parents who believed
in the doctrines I taught in that book, with the
result that many hundreds of letters were re-
ceived urging that it should be written at Once.
For a long time I hesitated about acceding to
these requests, because I feared that all I should
do would be to add another to the already
countless books on dealing with children, when
I know that the results depend vastly more
upon the consecration and ambition of the par-
ents for their children, than upon any other sin-
gle element of the problem. Indeed, I often
wrote exactly this to the many inquiring par-
ents. But I was met so often with the state-
ment that it was merely guidance that was
needed, and that while my book was stimulat-
ing and inspiring, on the whole what was
- ix
X A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
now needed was a handbook of some sort which
should tell the parents “what to do.”
After a good deal of travail of soul I have
attempted to do just that; in fact, I have done
more. I have tried to tell substantially what
I did do and what I still do, whenever I have
the opportunity to direct the instruction of lit-
tle children. If it sometimes seems blind to
you, or halting in meaning, you will under-
stand that this arises from the necessary limi-
tations of the case. We do many things with-
out knowing that we are doing them, and con-
vey a great deal by our attitudes and our in-
clinations, either for or against, any given sub-
ject. This of course cannot be conveyed in a
book nor is it desirable that it should be. But
in so far as I am able to tell what I have ac-
tually done with little children, this book tells
the story. I have tried not to preach and
when I seem to be preaching, you will under-
stand that I am merely making a zealous ef-
fort to make you feel as I feel myself.
NEGOTIABLE ENOWLEDGE
The essence of this method of mine is, that it
always deals with what I have called nego-
tiable knowledge. It is one thing to know a
thing practically, but it is quite another to
know it in a form which makes it educationally
A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xi
negotiable. Examinations are the test of ne-
gotiable knowledge. They aim to find out
how much the student knows, in the form in
which the world has decided that it must be, to
be knowledge. This form I grant you, is often
stupid, cumbersome and senseless from many
points of view. But so long as the educational
institutions, the scholars of the world, hold to
their present ideas of what constitutes knowl-
edge, and particularly since they will not rec-
ognize your possession of their particular kind
of knowledge, unless you are able to patter it
back to them in the agreed vocabulary of their
science, it is useless to do anything other than
master it in their way. You know how often
your child will tell you that their teachers will
not recognize the fact that they know all about
a given thing, unless they can say it in the pre-
cise terms which the teachers lay down. It is
stupid, foolish and irrational. But you and I
must make up our minds to accept that fact as
a fact, and deal with it as we do with a great
many other foolish and stupid things in this
world. That is the reason why in these chap-
ters I am constantly urging you to use the ter-
minology which the schoolmen themselves em-
ploy, since they will never know and will not
even try to find out whether your child has the
knowledge it is supposed to have, unless you
xii A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
talk in the only tongue they understand.
When you have knowledge in this form
you have negotiable knowledge, education-
ally speaking. Without it you are help-
less when you strike the educational machine.
Even then you will have some very curious ex-
periences. One of my children, while a fresh-
man was taking the singular course of train-
ing in English in Harvard University which
is called English A. It was devised because
the young freshmen come to college not know-
ing anything about their mother tongue and
by this means are hurriedly whipped into some
sort of a working knowledge of educational
English. Well, I sent up a boy whose Eng-
lish was highly developed and who wrote
themes which were in the tongue of the schools.
You would have supposed that his instructor
would weep for joy at finding a boy who did
not need the petty corrections in spelling and
Ordinary blunders which should be eliminated
before the grades are left. But no, the aca-
demic mind, insane on the subject of correction,
finding none of the petty things, found fault
with what do you suppose? Why with the
faultless English of course! This boy's fresh-
man year came perilously near being upset
nervously, and would have been had we not
been on the ground, by the constant nagging
A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xiii
at the boy with this criticism, “This is not the
language of a boy of fourteen. It is the lan-
guage of a man. Write naturally!” In vain
the youth protested that it was his natural
tongue, that he did not know any other, asked
if the words were misspelled or wrongly used
and the like, no one of which corrections were
needed. In vain! He was hammered right
and left because his English was not the Eng-
lish of a boy of fourteen! All this meant was
that the instructor was not used to that kind of
boys. To do this particular gentleman jus-
tice, he came afterward to see his error. But
he was the educational machine incarnate.
Now, it being the fact that the educational
machine will recognize no other tongue than
that of the schools, there is nothing to do but
to master it. Hence you will speak to your
little children about conduct but when you dis-
cuss the subject of conduct, you will say ethics
because presently your boy or girl will have to
deal with some half-baked young doctor of
philosophy, who does not know any other word
than ethics and if you don’t say ethics he will
assume that you don’t know what you are talk-
ing about. So also when you build blocks with
your children talk about squares, triangles and
polygons because these are the words which
will have to be used. Thus it is not so ridicu-
xiv. A. LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
lous as it looks at the first glance to ask you
to instruct your children in Geology, Botany,
Physiology, and the rest. These are the stand-
ardized terms for that kind of knowledge. It
is the ability to use them accurately and care-
fully which makes, what I have called, nego-
tiable knowledge.
HELP, DON'T FIGHT, THE SCHOOL
For this very reason, too, you must help, not
antagonize the schools, especially the elemen-
tary schools. They are held in the grip of this
machine as tightly as your child will be when
he gets to it. When they make their demand
upon you for what you see clearly is foolish
and irrational, I beseech you do not waste your
strength in fighting them and make trouble for
yourself, your child, and them, and most of it
to no purpose. Always remember that the
public school represents the lowest possible at-
tainment for the groups with which they work.
It cannot be otherwise and a superior child is
penalized by being in them. Every teacher
will tell you that, and she cannot help her-
self. It is her business to bring her class at the
end of the year to a certain point. If your
child can do that work in six months, she has
no other resource than to neglect your child
and give his time to the lazy, the careless and
A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS XV
the undisciplined. Your business then, is to
study the school to which your child is to go
and understand its plan and working and fit
for that. You must know their method and
their aim and give them what they want in their
own tongue, because they won’t understand
any other. I know this, too, to my cost. I
tried to send my own children to a High School
which had not altered some of its terms of ad-
mission since 1853! But fortunately there was
another near, where there was a sane enlight-
ened principal in charge, and in this household,
the name of Benjamin Sumner Hurd, of the
Beverly, Mass., High School is enrolled upon
our calendar of educational saints. Just re-
member that the more unusually capable your
child is, the harder it will be for the ordinary
public school to know what to do with him.
Don’t blame them for this but help them.
And do not expect that they can make un-
usual conditions for your child. Just fit him
for the place to which his attainments entitle
him and then place him there. Ask no conces-
sions. And that you may not need to ask con-
cessions, learn their tongue!
Along the pathway you will occasionally
find sympathetic souls among the teachers, who
are groaning under the standardization lunacy
quite as much as you are. But in any case
xvi. A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
remember that your travail will not be without
results. Your child, trained by superior home
care and nurture, will soon excite the envy of
other parents, and that will make them ask
what there is about your children that is better
than their own. And when the inquiry begins
to be general, the methods will begin to mend.
It only needs enough intelligent discontent to
get changes made; but it must be backed
by understanding and sympathy. So I advise
you not to fight with the schools, their officers
and teachers; just try to understand them, pity
them a little, if you can, and help them to a
more excellent way.
THE LAUGHTER OF FOOLS
You will, unless your experience differs from
that of most pioneers, or in fact any people
who want something finer and better than the
average, have to encounter a good deal of ridi-
cule, from mild amusement to jeering words,
because of your attempt to make a superior
person out of your child. Indeed many letters
which have come to me have indicated that
this is a not uncommon experience and it some-
times gives great pain to timid persons. But
do not be discouraged and above all do not be
pained by the laughter of fools. There are
people still who think the use of a toothbrush
A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xvii
foolishness and you cannot ride for any length
of time in an ordinary railway train without
becoming aware that there are scores of people,
too, who do not believe in bathing. Well, you
do not on that account abandon your bath, I
hope! So in like manner do not yield your am-
bition for your child to the senseless comments
of people who have neither your character nor
your ambition, to surrender many of the ab-
surd social diversions for the intellectual wel-
fare of their children. Just keep it clearly be-
fore you that the future struggles of the world
are going to be won by brain power! And if
your neighbors think you rather foolish for giv-
ing up their tiresome entertainment for your
child’s well being and mental growth, just let
them think what they please. You have a seri-
ous purpose in life and you want your child to
have the equipment for capable and effective
living. That is all you need to think about and
what light-minded social butterflies think about
anything is not worth considering in any case.
This applies particularly to those people who
are climbing socially and who darken the air
with crazy counsels about social advancement!
Be not like unto them and remember that there
always comes a time for everybody in this
world when they have to live with themselves.
Give your child the opportunity, that when he
xviii A. LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
has to be alone he is in good company, because
he has with him the resources for finding the
best in any situation.
THE FUND OF SYMPATHY
You all have, as your letters show, an over-
flowing fund of sympathy and love for your
children. Nothing in these many letters has
given me more satisfaction and joy than has
been shown in the unbounded willingness on the
part of parents to sacrifice for their children.
The note of overflowing love has been every-
where full and wonderful in what reserves of
emotion it revealed. Now this fund of sympa-
thy with your child is your alabaster box. Keep
it for the Highest. Sacrifice when you must
but never for anything but the best. Do not
make sacrifice for the child, the support of lazi-
ness, self-indulgence or deceit. Don’t sacrifice
for the joy of sacrificing. Hold your precious
Ointment for the highest purposes and only for
these. Everything your child can do himself
not only let him do, but make him do. There
will be occasions enough for sacrifice under the
very best conditions. But do not pour out
your costly emotions over trifles and let them
become your own undoing. One of my pro-
fessors in the theological seminary, a wise and
devoted man, himself a pastor of many years'
A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xix
experience and a sympathetic soul if ever one
breathed, once delivered a lecture upon the
ministry to the afflicted in which he dealt with
a class of people who “hug their grief.” I
did not then know what I now know about
such things. But there are people who simply
luxuriate in their grief. In the same way
many parents, notably mothers, luxuriate in
their sacrifices for their children to the ex-
tent of robbing them of honor, self-reliance,
truthfulness and capability in many directions.
They call it being a “good” mother. Some-
times it is a “good” father. As a matter of
fact it is often a form of self-indulgence.
Now I believe in good mothers. In fact much
of the credit given to me, in this matter of
child training, belongs to such a mother and
while I have thundered more in the index, she
has been a silent effective ally in everything
that I did, when I was not merely the ally my-
self. But sympathy is a powerful stimulant.
Used rightly it does wonders in the way of re-
cuperation, uplifting and pacifying life. But
because it is so powerful it must be used with
great discretion. Always keep in mind that
when your boy gets out into the world, he won’t
get any kind of “sympathy” for anything.
He will be judged by the merciless standard
(the only one possible) of whether he is what
XX A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
he purports to be, can do what he is set to do,
do it wisely, honorably and effectively, and be
a livable human being at the same time. No-
body ordinarily speaking will take the trouble
to “understand” him. For this reason he must
understand himself and be able to lean on his
own understanding, always, of course, remem-
bering that man proposes but God disposes.
Do not risk his ultimate success by providing
a fountain of sympathy which he can turn on
at will, whether there be adequate cause or not.
Costly things should be sparingly used. You
know of course what I mean.
FINALLY
I would not be true to myself or to you, if I
did not add one little word on the spiritual
greatness of this task of yours. You are rear-
ing a child, who is not only yours, but also a
child of God. Make it worthy of the God
whose child it is and who gave it. That will
often mean for you much thinking in the still
silent hours of the night, when your heart is
thumping with anxiety or expectation, and
then you will know whether or not you have
done your work in the love of God and whether
in dealing with this little soul entrusted to you,
you have been faithful in that which is least,
that you might be entrusted with the greater
A LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS xxi
glory of seeing the matured, glorified results of
your work. When any child of mine or one
entrusted to me went up for examinations, I
always felt that it was not they, but I, who was
on trial. It was the judgment upon my own
fidelity and obedience to my task as a father or
teacher. What travail those hours contained!
How anxiously I waited for them to emerge
from their examination rooms and eagerly
looked into their faces, to find out whether
they bore the joy of triumph or the fear of de-
feat! Your letters, many of them, show me
that you have the same anxieties. Keep the
big fund of your heart's love for these times
and then let yourself and your child know that
love is the greatest thing in the world and that
when love has done her best, there can be only
joy in what comes, be it success or be it failure.
But you will not fail! You are doing God’s
work and taking up a God-appointed task.
In His cause there is no defeat.
For the numberless kind words directed to
me personally, I can only return sincere and
cordial thanks. Somehow, through space,
there has been established between you and me,
a bond of affection because of our common love
for little children. Let us together be always
mindful that the Great Teacher showed the
xxii A. LETTER TO TEACHING PARENTS
world, the value and importance of the child.
We shall know the child best, viewing it
through His eyes, and loving it with His spirit.
Faithfully yours,
A. A. BERLE.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.,
June 1, 1915.
TEACHING IN THE
HOME

CHAPTER, I
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
To set out upon the business of training a
parent teacher is not as simple a task as it often
appears. That must be evident to all from the
results which we get in the training of our
public School teachers who are held to regular
hours, regular studies, and regular discipline.
The result even under these conditions to which
may be added authority and other forms of
direct control, is not always good or even cred-
itable. In trying to discuss this matter with
parents there are many difficulties which are
not present in the situation just mentioned.
Most parents are persons mature enough to
know their own minds, especially with refer-
ence to their own children. That often means
that they are not teachable though they would
be the last to admit it. Then again, they love
their children often unreasonably and irration-
I
2 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ally, and when they are very young, harmfully
mistake their affectionate indulgence of the
children for love of the children, when, in fact,
it is nothing but laziness or self-indulgence.
It is very much easier to admire your children
than to train them! It is very much simpler
to think of their present guileless and attrac-
tive youth than their incapable and undisci-
plined maturity. The parent as a subject of
instruction is a very distinct problem, because
the parent must operate from force of charac-
ter not by reason of compulsion or external
authority. There is nobody to call him or her
to account and inflict a penalty if the duty to
the child is not done. Superior authority
yields but hardly to other authority. Army
officers will tell you that a general officer is
the hardest man in the army to command. He
is used to giving not receiving commands.
That is the reason. It is just so with parents.
They are accustomed to give orders not to re-
ceiving them. Hence they find it hard to do
what they are told, even though they recognize
what is told them as desirable and just. The
wise and ambitious parent will keep this con-
stantly in mind. With your own child you are
liable to be warped in judgment, make excuses
where none are possible, and invent reasons
where none exist, for not doing what reason
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 3
and conscience command should be done.
Children come out of the exercise of the high-
est and dearest affections and emotions of
which mankind is capable. For this reason
they need to be carefully guarded from the un-
wise influence of those emotions.
Then again, the parents, being subject to no
rule but their own disposition, are constantly
in danger of altering their plans for the chil-
dren and their programs with them, to meet the
changing conditions from day to day. They
are aided in this, by the fact that the children
are unable to make any effective protest.
Thus a mother may plan to teach her child a
given lesson at a given hour. Something oc-
curs to her as desirable perhaps even necessary,
in a qualified way, which conflicts with this
arrangement. Nobody but her own con-
science—that is, herself—can hold her to her
task. Now, of course, this does not refer to
emergencies which cannot be denied, but mere
conflicts which could be met and provided for
or if not provided for, could be resisted. What
usually happens—I think I may say usually—
is that the child is neglected on the subcon-
scious theory that there is plenty of time. But
what has taken place is the surrender of the
program itself, the child as the major interest,
and in time, this sort of thing will break up the
4. TEACHING IN THE HOME
program entirely. Nobody can teach, least of
all a parent, in a desultory way.
In a similar manner, the child often breaks
up the arrangement by what seems like indis-
position or ill health, which in the parental mind
is instantly exaggerated into a danger and the
program abandoned. Real things, of course,
must be heeded. But it is in times like these
that the real battle is being fought. The child
very soon learns whether the parent takes the
duty seriously or lightly, yields it readily or
otherwise and adapts itself accordingly, espe-
cially if there is any natural disposition to re-
sist specific and direct control. That of course
is fatal to any effective work. Parents may
be sure that nine out of ten such instances
when they arise, come out of their needless
fears. Stick to the program until the signs of
trouble are tangible enough to be diagnosed.
That is what your doctor would do. That is
all he could do. Just see the program when
you make it through, until something very de-
cisive intervenes. The number of such things
is very small. Practice makes perfect in this
as in most things.
The routine of the child training should be
incorporated in the general routine of the home,
precisely as every other thing is provided for,
meals, recreation, sleep and the like. Not so
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 5
to incorporate it is to leave it to caprice, acci-
dent or inclination, any one of which is fatal to
successful home training. Routine is not
everything but it is the base upon which suc-
cessful work is built. Regularity as to time, is
as important as to mental training, as it is in
diet and the care of the body. It is even more
important, because the steady impact of the
parent mind with the child mind makes for
understanding and settles the preliminary mat-
ters of disposition, ability to persist, skill in ex-
position and reveals not only the defects of
the child, but what is quite as essential to be
known and understood, the defects of the par-
ent. The mother needs to know her own
strong points and her own weak ones as well
as those of the child. Only regularity can dis-
cover these and upon this discovery rests very
considerably all efficiency.
Steadiness and regularity moreover are ab-
solutely necessary if the teaching parent is to
know what measure of progress is made. For
this purpose, a record of each day’s experiences
should be kept at least for a year. The last
thing of each day, should be a careful reflective
Summing up of what the day has brought
forth. If this can be done by both parents
together, it will be more than doubled in value.
Comparison of ideas and observations by both
6 TEACHING IN THE HOME
parents, brings both into the task and makes
each the corrective of the other. It will be
found also to make each parent more observ-
ing, and in general, the father who will gen-
erally be out of the home a good portion of
each day, will be able at meals to test and com-
pare results at given periods from his own
standpoint. The mother can by daily com-
parison, direct this observation by the father,
and often find the reason for things which
elude her because she is constantly with her
child. It will be seen at once that this is quite
as needful for the parents as for the children,
though the benefits accrue to all.
Wherever it is possible to alternate the par-
ents in teaching this should be done. The rea-
sons for this have already been suggested.
But there is the special reason that it makes
for unity of purpose and tends to organize the
home for the intensive development of the child.
It tends to prevent the development from be-
coming one-sided. It affords the child an op-
portunity for comparing, without knowing
how or why, the differences of attitude and
approach between the father and the mother.
It softens the mental attitude of a child nat-
urally tending to resistance, and strengthens
that of a child which naturally yields. A
“mother's boy” should have a good deal of con-
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 7
tact with his father. A “father's boy” should
have a good deal to do with his mother. Any
one-sided development should instantly be at-
tacked by emphasis on the other. Wisely
done this yields unity of family life and this
atmosphere is the one in which the greatest
development is secured.
I
Coming now more directly to the principles
governing the parent teacher, the first is, do
not underestimate the capacity of the child.
You will never accomplish anything in which
you do not heartily believe. Take it as an
axiom, that most children can do many times
more of serious mental work than most people
and especially their parents, give them credit
for. Never permit yourself to doubt this.
Most of the talk about overwork has to do,
not with productive work of the child, but with
the things which have nothing whatever to do
with the growth and expansion of the child's
mind. Many adult persons are tired out with
meetings, social engagements and other worth-
less things, which sap their strength and leave
no increment of knowledge, experience or per-
sonal quality. It is just so with the child. Do
not let its energies be sapped by worthless
things. Its play can be made just as produc-
8 TEACHING IN THE HOME
tive as anything else. Its social companion-
ship should be looked to, not merely with ref-
erence to relaxation. You know the story of
the man who boasted that he had not drawn a
pail of water for thirty years? The simple ex-
planation was, that he attached his well-sweep
to his front gate and every person who came in
and every one who went out had to draw a pail
of water by that act. Make every act tell
toward your main end! Nor does this mean
that you are making a machine of your child,
though that is exactly what you do with ref-
erence to its muscular development. But you
get the steady gains, small gains often, but
always something gained. All this rests
upon an unshakable belief that your child has
large possibilities. Believe that with all your
heart. Assume that no prodigy ever discov-
ered is superior to your own child, except in
the degree of attention which it received or the
opportunities with which it was surrounded.
Whatever skepticism there has been in edu-
cational and other interested circles on this
matter of child capacity, is rapidly being dis-
pelled. But you can readily convince your-
self, by simply comparing the work which is
being done in the high schools to-day with
that which was done twenty years ago. This
is especially true when you examine the text-
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 9
books on science. But it is hardly less true
about everything else. That must mean sim-
ply that children to-day have shared in the
general advance in knowledge to such a de-
gree that much higher work can be attempted
to-day than was possible twenty years ago.
But always keep in mind that the public school
represents the lowest rate of advance. It has
to provide for the lazy, the indolent, the in-
capable, the vicious, and defective. That,
you must understand, means a rate of growth
which is necessarily very much lower than is
possible to a normal, healthy child, reared in a
home where the parents take an active, vigor-
ous part in the home education. Dismiss,
therefore, any doubt on this point. Of course,
if your child is sick or defective or otherwise
maimed, that is another question. I am now
speaking of healthy, normal children. As-
Sume that the capacity of that child should
be a generation greater than your own. As-
sume that whether it gets that heritage de-
pends upon you and you alone!
For this reason you should never see “How
much better our Willie gets along than the
Jones's Willie.” Compare, if you must com-
pare, with the superior children of your ac-
quaintances, those commonly supposed to be
specially highly endowed, and find out
10 TEACHING IN THE HOME
whether this is true or whether there is some-
thing at work for this superior child which is
not at work for yours. In fact, never think
about the inferiors in anything. Keep your
mind steadily on the fact that not one person
in ten thousand ever develops to his full capa-
bility, by reason of the lack of careful over-
sight and correction. Your faith in your
child’s capacity in this matter will very quickly
communicate itself to any healthy, normal
child. But it must not be simply foolish
pride! It must be linked with steady and
often rigorous discipline. The communica-
tion of faith in himself to the young child is
a great step toward the achievement of almost
anything he undertakes. Therefore you
should cultivate it and keep the ideals you
have formed for the child steadily before him.
If, for example, you are planning to send this
boy or girl to college, let that be assumed from
the beginning. Never argue it, just take it
for granted, as “When you get to college,” or
“When you are in college,” or the like, never
opening the question as being a matter of
doubt. Even stupid persons, very many of
them, stumble through on this basis, because
they never think of the possibility of doing
anything else. The value and necessity of
study as a part of youth should be assumed in
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 11
just this way. Do not now imagine that this
is a suggestion toward playing with this mat-
ter. You must believe it yourself, because
there is sound reason for it. Faith does all
sorts of wonderful things, not only in religion,
but in life. But here we are on the sound
ground of experience. It will not do to start.
in “to see if this can be accomplished”! You
must start in to train your child in certain
things definitely, clearly, and effectively.
You must keep these things steadily in mind.
You must repeat them to yourself till you can-
not think of anything else in that connection,
and automatically set about it. This is exactly
what you do in everything else. Do it here.
President Eliot has stated with exactness
what the elementary training should do. He
says, “These, then, are the four things in
which the individual youth should be thor-
oughly trained, if his judgment and reasoning
power are to be systematically developed:
observing accurately; recording correctly;
comparing, grouping and inferring justly;
and eaſpressing cogently the results of these
mental operations.” Get those four things
firmly fixed in your own mind and see what
kind of a grip they have on your own mental
operations. How accurately can you observe
1 American Contributions to Civilization, p. 219.
12 TEACHING IN THE HOME
things about you? How correctly can you re-
cord those observations? How justly can
you compare, group, or infer, from these Ob-
servations? How cogently can you express
the results of these mental operations? To
ask yourself these things is the quickest way
to understand what you must do for your
child. And you will be astonished to find
how speedily these processes can be developed
and with what wonderful results. But you
cannot begin all this by saying either actually,
or subconsciously to yourself, “Well, he could
not be expected to see that,” or “He could not
be expected to do that,” and the like. You
must expect him to begin right and steadily
help him till he habitually gets on the right
track. When he gets on the right track,
things will go swiftly enough. The hardest
part of this work is patience and faith in the
beginning. Over and over again, you will
say to yourself, “It can’t be done,” and then
you must simply recover by answering, “It
can and it has been done,” and begin again.
Your belief in the child’s capacity for knowl-
edge will grow by leaps and bounds, when you
have once established in your own mind that
you have it and have communicated it to your
child. According to your faith, so be it unto
you, is a sound maxim in this as in other things.
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 13
Sustained ability is often developed by con-
stant trying. Mere failure at any given time
means nothing. The ultimate development of
anything is what shows the real result. But
you will not fail, because here is your highest
task in the world placed entirely in your care
and keeping, with you in Supreme command,
to make it or mar it.
“Whatever success I have had in life,” wrote
Lord Westbury, Lord High Chancellor of
England, “is due to the care and skill with
which my father formed and disciplined my
mind.” Lord Westbury was the son of a
poor physician, in debt much of the time, with
an invalid wife, who could give him little or no
help, who, at six years of age was so sick that
he was not expected to live! Yet he was ma-
triculated at Wadham College, Oxford, at
fourteen, and graduated with distinction at
eighteen, never having had the so-called “pub-
lic school” education. It was the father's faith
and pride which made this possible. “On see-
ing the small, eager-faced lad in his round
jacket and frilled collar, the warden of Wad-
ham, Dr. Tourney, turned to the father and
remarked that children were not admitted to
the college. “You will not find my son a child,
sir, when he is examined; moreover, he has de-
1 Life of Lord Westbury, Vol. I, p. 11.
14 TEACHING IN THE HOME
termined to win a scholarship for himself,” was
the reply. “What,” exclaimed the astonished
warden, “you will allow him to try for a schol-
arship at his age? Do you know that he will
have to compete with young men of seventeen
and eighteen? You must indeed think your
son a prodigy.” “Sir, I do think him a prod-
igy,” was the proud rejoinder."
That is the spirit which must inaugurate the
work of the parent as teacher. Here was a
case where there were few of the supposed con-
ditions out of which “prodigies” come. Yet
the father's persistence and oversight never
flagging, gave to his son the care and the at-
tention which produced one of the most re-
markable lawyers of England. Nor is this an
isolated case. Many such, of course, to a
lesser degree, have come to my own knowl-
edge, where the deep and abiding faith of the
parent reacted as a most powerful stimulant
upon the child, and this created power, where
none existed before. The parental faith is not
faith alone for the parent. It is mental capi-
tal for the child, which breathes in, daily, the
unshaken belief of the parent in its powers,
and consciously and subconsciously organizes
its little life to meet those expectations. Out
of the effort come quick powers of comprehen-
1 Life of Lord Westbury, Vol. I, p. 13. /
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 15
sion and observation of the parental require-
ment and thought which are both, stimulant
and fertilizer.
II
A second principle of utmost importance,
is one which has to do with a careful and sys-
tematic record of the child. No amount of de-
votion can take the place of the matter of writ-
ing daily, or at least weekly, a record of what
the day or week has brought forth. The last
thing each day after the conversation already
hinted at, is that the teaching parent shall
make a careful and accurate record of what has
happened of importance in the mental life or
exhibit of the child. Things that seem trivial
enough as they occur, assume a vast importance
when they are repeated many times. Nobody
has the memory to recall all the interesting
things that appear as lessons are given, or hab-
its formed. Some of the most striking will lin-
ger in the mind, of course. But, even so, they
will hardly be remembered exactly, and will
form the basis, unless carefully written down,
of legendary tales. “Writing,” says Lord Ba-
con, “maketh an exact man.” You will re-
member, perhaps, that at the head of every
patient’s bed in a well ordered hospital, there
is a chart which records temperature, pulse, diet
16 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and various other things, so that the examin-
ing physician on his rounds can know exactly
what has occurred in the previous twenty-four
hours, and be governed accordingly. You
will observe, too, that these things are con-
nected by a line which, at a glance, shows
whether the temperature went up or down, or
remained stationary. Something of the same
kind should be done by the parent-teacher, es-
pecially as regards certain things which will be
mentioned hereafter. With a little child, the
first use of new words should thus be recorded.
The unusual happenings of speech, singular
questions, moments of quickness or moments
of dulness, and the subjects in which they oc-
cur, should be thus recorded. The things that
enlist interest most quickly should be set
down, and the things where most effort is
required should be similarly noted. These
are but a few. But in any case there should
be a record of observation. This is not only
interesting in itself, but may, as it grows,
indicate with almost absolute precision how
further progress is to be made. It may show,
for example, what subjects require the least at-
tention, and those which require most, and thus
simplify the matter of expenditure of time.
It may indicate, as it grows, with precision
the line of further development. It may re-
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 17
veal special aptitudes and inclinations. It
may show recurrence of moods. It may show
subjects around which habits of resistance
most readily form, and all this is most valu-
able, not merely for saving time, but for get-
ting results.
How important this is may be judged from
another illustration from the field of medicine.
Formerly, when an operation was performed,
it was thought needful merely to supply good
conditions, and careful provision for the per-
formance of the operation itself. Now it is
the rule in well-appointed hospitals, before any
operation is performed, to make a careful and
complete inventory of everything in the room
and check up after the operation everything
that is left! Why was this necessary? Sim-
ply because even skilled men, actuated by the
very best intentions possible, were not able to
remember everything, and often sponges, some-
times instruments, and sometimes still other
things, were left in the wounds, and infinite
damage done to the patient. Wise doctors do
not take these risks any longer. Hence a
careful and complete record! Precisely the
same principle applies here. Write what you
find from day to day. Defects of enunciation
or vocalization are most important to be noted,
and corrected. The progress of their elimina-
18 TEACHING IN THE HOME
tion can be noted only by going back over the
record, to find out what has been the experi-
ence of the past. It must not be supposed, let
me say in passing, that this is a hardship. It
will, in fact, be found a genuine pleasure as it
grows, because the parent will often find it as
true an index of herself, as of the child. She
has thus an absolutely true transcript of her
own fidelity and devotion, and to a certain de-
gree, of her own efficiency. She will be able to
note whether certain efforts of hers have been
successful or not. She will be able to see re-
sults which will encourage and cheer, to say
nothing of making a personal study which may
be of high value to others when it is complete.
Besides it may be a family possession which
may become priceless.
Write then, and write freely. Do not be
afraid of recording trivial things, because
many things seem trivial and unimportant
which are not so at all. Just consider how
they do these things in a psychological labora-
tory. Here they will take a worm, for ex-
ample, and carefully try out all sorts of experi-
ments with it, watch every movement, and
make an accurate and detailed record of it.
How long it took to find the hole out of the
little box where there was a light, how long it
took to find out that it must not go to a hole
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 19
where there was a little electric wire which
gave it a slight shock, how long it took to de-
velop this habit, or that habit, and the like.
Now, if it is worth while to do that for the sake
of human knowledge with a worm, what ought
a parent to be willing to do for a child? Šimi-
larly, think how laboriously investigators have
to watch, day after day, plants, animals, and
other natural phenomena, many days, with no
result at all, apparently, except the lapse of
time. Surely the parent ought to be willing
to give a fraction of such attention to the child!
Or, think how laboriously animal trainers take
time and effort to train horses, dogs, and even
fleas, to get a certain result. Now, if it is
worth while to write down daily all these
things for a horse or a dog, it ought to be pos-
sible to get a parent to write down every day
what is of highest interest in the life of a child.
Keeping a record develops habits of obser-
vation in the parent which will become more
valuable the more they are exercised. These
habits will appear in other things besides the
child training, and will influence, and often
revolutionize, the household life. “You see
that young woman over there,” said an attrac-
tive young mother to me some time ago. “I
grew up with her, and I don’t think I ever.
heard a serious bit of conversation from her in
20 TEACHING IN THE HOME
my life, until she began to take up the inten-
sive training of her baby. From a mere but-
terfly, she has become one of the superior wom-
en of this town.” That was interesting
enough, but by and by, I drifted around to the
“transformed butterfly” in question, and in a
confidential moment she turned to me and said,
pointing out the recent commentator upon her
own habits, “You see that young woman over
there? I grew up with her. She never had
any serious aims in life, but since she took up
the careful training of her little boy, she has
been made over.” Comment is needless.
Here were two people who recognized the
transformation in others, but were not con-
scious of their own. The interesting thing to
me was that they were developing remarkable
powers in connection with the training of their
babies. I had laid down certain rules for
them, a year or two before, and they had been
faithfully following them. They got quite as
much out of it as their children!
It is important to write all these things
down, because that fixes them in a form which
can readily be consulted. It makes the work
of comparison very much easier. In fact,
trusting to memory in these matters is entirely
futile. Most men do not even know with ex-
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 21
actness the ages of their children, and have to
think about their birthdays and the like. It is
even less probable that they could recall other
things in connection with their mental develop-
ment. Such a record, kept over a period of
two years, will yield invaluable material for ex-
tending the area of knowledge both about the
parent and the child. Much of the so-called
“advanced work” in universities is, in fact,
nothing more than this, except that the ob-
server is a trained observer. The difference be-
tween a good physician and a poor one usually
follows this line of their training, other things
being equal. Leave nothing to accident or
chance. Don’t trust that the interesting char-
acter of any occurrence will bring back the cir-
cumstances surrounding it. Write, and write
often, and fully, and write everything you can
think of about the subject matter. Some of it
may be worthless, of course. But much of it
will be valuable and you will soon distinguish
between what is worth recording and what has
no value. But in any case write! There are
also many incidental benefits from this
process. Your own memory will be strength-
ened by it, and you will find your own growth
in clear and cogent expression showing itself.
All this will reflect itself in your dealings with
22 TEACHING IN THE HOME
the child. You will learn to be precise, clear
and brief. Words will mean more to you, be-
cause you will choose them more carefully.
III
Discipline and interest come next in the mat-
ter of subjects of fundamental importance.
The subject of discipline is a very large one and
it is not the intention to take it up fully here.
But one general rule may be laid down which
should be very deeply considered. Conflict
which leads to or requires physical correction
should be avoided if it possibly can. But if the
question of ultimate authority is raised, there is
but one thing to do, and that is, to put it
plainly, win. But the main use of the superior
mental power of the parent teacher is to pre-
vent such a conflict from arising. This does
not mean cajolery or coaxing or bribing or any
other expedient that is really nothing more or
less than yielding to the child, but the careful
foreseeing of such possible troubles and pre-
venting them from coming to a head, by creat-
ing interest in the subject in hand, or changing
the subject, or avoiding the final issue. But
keep in mind that this does not mean that au-
thority is to be sacrificed or steady pressure
relaxed! In Germany, the pressure is too
strong, in America it is too lax. Here we have
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 23
yielded so much to children that we have sub-
stantially lost all real authority and control in
many cases. This is the source of so much
juvenile delinquency. The Commissioner of
Police in Boston, to meet these cases when they
come to police attention, has proposed the per-
fectly sensible remedy that instead of arresting
and punishing children for breaking windows,
destroying property and the like, that the
parents should be arrested and fined ' That he
thinks will settle the matter. This is my own
opinion and gives the point to what has just
been said. But in the case of little children,
the first great instrument of power is the rec-
ognition of obedience. Here, again, there is
no disposition to destroy the child’s personality,
or prevent its full and free development.
Quite the contrary. Nobody will ever know
what freedom is who has not been taught abso-
lute obedience. But this kind of obedience,
that it may not become something worse, is not
to be secured by brute force, though it may re-
quire severe physical discipline at some point
along the line. My own opinion is that most
healthy children need a thorough spanking
Occasionally to remind them that there is a
higher power than individual inclination or
caprice. But be that as it may, the important
thing is to keep the authority unimpaired.
24, TEACHING IN THE HOME
Discipline is itself a part of teaching. Pa-
tience, self-control and especially the use of
Superior knowledge, and the understanding of
the child better than it understands itself, will
usually supply the means and the method by
which the ultimate appeal may be avoided. It
should be avoided at all hazards if it can be.
The best way to set about this is good humor
and especially the use of other interests. The
natural curiosity of any child is readily excited,
and when the tension grows hard, then the test
of devotion and skill comes for the teacher.
Then is the time to bring up your reserves.
Bring out the interesting things you know,
weave your own experiences into the subject,
call to your aid something that demands action
On the part of the child, give it something to do
with its hands, and deflect the course of things
away from what is making the tension. That
is what a superior mind is for chiefly in this
world, anyway. Only the weakest and least
disciplined minds are always facing eventuali-
ties. Larger minds know that there is noth-
ing really final in this world, and keep the ques-
tion open. Time settles many things and in
the matter of the relation of the teaching
parent to the child, many things must be taken
into account. Often seeming resistance
merely means that the diet is bad or that some
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 25
other untoward circumstance is upsetting
things. But even at such times be very care-
ful that your authority is not being lost. Most
children take from their parents severe disci-
pline, with the feeling that the very relation
makes it probably right. The natural love be-
tween the parent and child makes it possible
for the parent to do what nobody else in the
world can do. Decisive measures leave least
pain. Don’t spin out punishment. In fact,
don’t spin out anything. Sharp, short and de-
cisive is a good rule here as in other matters.
But in the main the principle is that the greater
knowledge of life, the greater knowledge of the
child itself which is possessed by the parent,
should so shape up the relations that the con-
flict is avoided in any acute way. -
This result can generally be attained best by
holding in reserve the things known to be spe-
cially interesting to the child. When a matter
begins to go hard, especially with a little child,
it may be a sign of weariness and there should
be no heavy pressure in that case. If it is
merely wandering in mind, showing that the
subject has lost interest and something else is
appealing and creating resistance, then the case
becomes one where it is a question whether the
parent can interest the child more than it can
interest itself. Of course the main object in
26 TEACHING IN THE HOME
teaching at all is to interest the child in what
you want him to know and do. That is your
problem. If he can get more interest in some-
thing he himself devises or while you are talk-
ing, forget you and your matters to watch or
attend to something else, it is still your prob-
lem, because you ought to be able to think
more quickly than he and keep a considerable
distance ahead of him. Every teacher in
school knows this. But you have a better op-
portunity than the school teacher, because you
are at home and have one, and she has little or
no authority over her pupils, and has forty!
Then, study up interesting things. This
means fertilizing your own mind and storing up
interesting things. You are reading a news-
paper and read something that you thought of
interest. Clip it and put it by. Have it at
hand for any emergency. The European War,
the Italian earthquake, the innumerable stories
of the habits, manners, customs, dress of the
many lands now in turmoil, or hereafter trying
to get settled again, will all furnish abundant
material. Our own land has thousands of
“thrillers” in its history and development.
Learn some of them if you don’t know them,
but in any case have them at hand. A young
assistant in Radcliffe College recently an-
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 27
nounced to the freshman class that the instruc-
tor “felt no obligation to make the course inter-
esting.” No mature person needs to be told
that he is very young and that everybody is
finding that course extremely stupid and will
be glad when it is over! But whether a course
in college should be interesting or not there is
no doubt that with the balance so vastly in your
favor there is no excuse if you do not make
your instruction interesting to your little child.
You have many years the start and with your
superiority in mind and maturity, there is not a
shred of reason why you should have any diffi-
culty, provided always there is the will to do the
work. There is nothing that so instantly com-
mands a child’s attention as when the father
begins, “When I was a boy,” because this is
personal, concrete and has all the elements of
interest ready made. What would you not
give if somebody had made such a record as I
have suggested about you? Children love
these things and the personal element is the
most attractive to them. If they relate to
books, travel, to observations and other ma-
terials of knowledge, they can all be used to
interest the child, not only for the knowledge,
but even more for maintaining, without weari-
ness, a steady pressure which is making slowly
28 TEACHING IN THE HOME
but surely the one instrument by which the
whole problem will presently swing along by
itself almost. That instrument is habit.
IV
“Habit,” says Professor James, “is the enor-
Tmous flywheel of society, its most precious con-
servative agent. It alone is what keeps us
within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the
children of fortune from the envious uprisings
of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and
most repulsive walks of life from being de-
serted by those brought up to tread therein.” "
If you have not already his little book on this
subject get it and ponder it well. Professor
James told me that many thousands of letters
had come to him, of appreciation for this chap-
ter from his “Psychology.” Every parent
will be benefited by reading it. Now, the main
importance of habit for the purpose which we
are discussing, is that whatever becomes ha-
bitual releases the attention for new things.
This is why you don’t have to think about num-
berless things about dressing or eating or going
about your daily tasks. They have become
matters of habit and you do them without hav-
ing to think about them. But there was a
time when you did not walk to your dress-
1 Psychology. William James, Vol. I, p. 121.
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 29
ing table in the dark, as you do now un-
erringly There was a time when you did
not know exactly how your hat was go-
ing to look when set on at a certain angle,
or in a certain way! Frequency in doing
it has made it possible for you to do it at the
theatre, without a glass and to do it exactly
right, too! The same rule applies to the mind.
The habit of expecting to do certain things, at
a certain time, to submit to instruction and to
make certain efforts, begins very early in life.
Much earlier than most persons yet believe!
The value of habit lies, for this purpose, that it
Teleases the mind for attention to other things,
saves time and strength and friction and a
great variety of other things. I need not say
how important it is in the matter of behavior
and conduct. Therefore make the habits of
the child its friends, not its enemies, as I sup-
pose you have made your own habits your
friends and not your enemies!
You have doubtless observed the close resem-
blance in manners, often, between some parents
and their children. The imitative faculties of
little children are very strong. Give them
something worth imitating and make that de-
sire to imitate a habit. This done in the mat-
ter of speech, for example, is all the difference
between clean, careful and precise utterance
30 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and slovenly, clumsy and unattractive vocaliza-
tion. And here I venture a suggestion that
nothing will so make for the kind of mental
habits, and aid gaining the knowledge and the
development of intelligence which we want, as
the systematic effort to win the admiration of
the child not only for the matter, but the man-
ner of your instruction. Though it may not
know the reason, the child knows when a mat-
ter comes with all the force and skill of the per-
sonality behind it. You yourself know it, and
cannot help conveying that knowledge if you
have made special preparation for the event.
Was any woman ever well-dressed without be-
ing conscious of it? Did she ever have to ap-
pear not at her best without being conscious
of that? And did she not know that every
other woman present knew exactly how she
felt? Was there not a deft and penetrating
truth in the witty saying of the Cambridge
woman who said that there was “a conscious-
ness of repose in the knowledge of being well-
dressed which even religion could not bestow”?
I have often seen children stand off in a corner
and admire their parents in a detached kind of
a way which was very suggestive. But con-
versely, I have also seen children cringe and
blush for their parents, which was also very
suggestive! Be very sure that the contrasts be-
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 31
tween yourself and some other parent are not
lost upon your children. Therefore be worthy
of their admiration, even though they may not
know upon what it is based. The emotions
have an office here, which is not very clearly
understood yet, I think. We all like to see
those we love appear well and are grieved if
they do not. A normal child has much this
same feeling about its home, its parents and
everything pertaining to both. Now if the
child sees your own mind working smoothly
and beautifully, if it sees you pouring out of a
full mind interesting things and showing how
much you have profited by being in the world,
the very first sensation is, “I’d like to be like
that,” and your office is to take that desire, ele-
mentary though it be, and organize it into a
purpose of the will, and hold it down long
enough to become a habit.
This leads me to speak of the thousands of
letters I received after the publication of “The
School in the Home,” in which parents urged
me to write this little book and pleaded their
own incompetence for the task. They all
wanted some fixed rule to follow. They
all craved a guide. This very fact made me
hesitate about writing one for the reason that
many such persons now having this one will
simply do what it says instead of doing the
32 TEACHING IN THE HOME
more important thing of fertilizing their own
minds and being themselves the greatest in-
centive to their children to become what they
wish them to become. But that will be a great
mistake. The greatest single influence is
going to be yourself, your patience, your indus-
try, your habits, and your attractiveness.
Most people, even parents, think they can let
down in these things in the presence of chil-
dren. If you must let down, choose any other
society, because older people can make excuses
and qualifications which children cannot and
should not. Give your best and grow from
that onward. You will find the world taking
on new interest to you, because you will be see-
ing it all over again with the child’s eyes.
But all this must be reduced to system. You
cannot keep on furnishing beauty pictures of
animated, well-informed mentality forever.
There is a limit for even the most capable.
But you can do it long enough to make the
habits you want established and then you may
do something else. Very probably, by that
time, you will have become so habituated to the
practise yourself that you cannot stop and will
go on for the rest of your life adding to your
knowledge, and filling your mind, and so will
insure for yourself what you never dreamed of
when you started, a beautiful happy old age
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 33
with a well-stored mind, acquired and devel-
oped under the happiest conditions possible.
“A new cask,” says the poet Horace, “will
long preserve the tincture of the liquor with
which it is first impregnated.” A young mind,
similarly, will get its first notions of mental
habit from the mind which it sees oftenest at
work. That is the reason why the parent
should be the first teacher. The parent,
whether father or mother, has the largest num-
ber of reasons, to say nothing whatever of the
affections, for impregnating the young mind
with the tinctures which are to give taste to its
subsequent life. And let no such person be
discouraged by want of what is called “equip-
ment.” If half the pedagogy were thrown into
Boston harbor, nobody would be the worse for
it and many thousands of persons would be
better off. I have nothing whatever to say
against pedagogy, but I insist that, like all the
sciences, if it is a science, and like all the arts,
if it is an art, it was made for man and not man
for it. Most of the early years of life are ex-
perimentation by the child, by the parent, and
by everybody else, that has anything to do with
it. All that I am urging is that your experi-
ments shall be educational experiments and
that you shall bring your maturity and your
experience and your failures as resources for
34 TEACHING IN THE HOME
this little one. The moral elements of this
matter I shall discuss a little later on in the
chapter on ethics. But for the present may I
say that, in the last analysis, this matter turns
on the moral quality of the parent, of ability to
subject himself or herself to the self-imposed
duties of child training. How much it shall be
may depend upon circumstances; of what qual-
ity it shall be does not. Whether you have
many or few accessories to your work, likewise,
may depend upon your station or wealth. But
whether you shall bring to this work fidelity
and devotion, and prepare yourself for it with
diligence, depends only on yourself. But even
the accessories are easily obtainable. Books
are numerous and not costly. The average
household will supply most of the materials
for the handicraft and there is no need for ex-
pensive materials from elsewhere. As I have
advised you not to underestimate the powers
and capabilities of the child, so I now advise
you not to underestimate your own. Conse-
crated parenthood brings with it a kind of ped-
agogy of its own. Think what the mothers of
the pioneers did and what they had to find out,
without our costly and innumerable accessories
of to-day! And think what men and women
they reared! Of course their method will not
do to-day, but their spirit will do in any home
SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 3.5
what they did in the wilderness! There is
hardly a community that has not a library, how-
ever Small. Good books and great books are
within the reach of almost every one. Read
them, study them and make their contents your
own for your sake and the child's. Nobody
can do it so well as you. And after all, what-
ever you get from other sources must be assim-
ilated by you and made your own, just as what
you bring to the child must be made its own,
not by being pushed in by force, but planted to
grow in its own natural way. I can close this
chapter with nothing better than by the follow-
ing quotation from the great Pestalozzi:
“In the new-born child are hidden those fac-
ulties which are to unfold during life. The in-
dividual and separate organs of his being form
themselves gradually into unison, and build up
humanity in the image of God. The education
of man is a purely moral result. It is not the
educator who puts new powers and faculties
into man and imparts to him breath and life.
He only takes care that no untoward influence
shall disturb nature’s march of development.
The moral, intellectual and practical powers of
man must be nurtured within himself and not
from artificial substitutes. Thus faith must
be cultivated by our own act of believing, not
by reasoning about faith; love, by our own act
36 TEACHING IN THE HOME
of loving, not by fine words about love;
thought, by our own act of thinking, not by
merely appropriating the thoughts of other
men; and knowledge by our own investigation,
not by endless talk about the results of art and
science.”
Thus it may be seen that the training of the
child is not a process but a growth, and the rela-
tion of the parent to the child, being an organic,
not an artificial relation, affords the natural
means for the symmetrical growth of the stem
from the parent tree. What the branch shall
be depends wholly upon the nature and nurture
which it receives from the source from which it
Sprang.
CHAPTER II
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH! ENGLISH!
“IT is instructive,” says a footnote in a very
useful and inspiring book,” “to study one’s
own vocabulary, making a list of (1) those
words which we feel sure we learned in child-
hood, (2) those which we have learned in later
life but not from books, (3) those which have
entered our vocabulary from books. We shall
also find it useful to consider the difference be-
tween our reading vocabulary and our speak-
ing vacabulary.” Here we have several very
important things indicated, which the parent
teacher will do well to observe at the outset of
the task. This classification is suggestive be-
cause it indicates how we shall secure the great-
est measure of progress for the child and we
can readily see the process by comparing Our
own experience. That there is a decided dif-
ference between the speaking and the read-
ing vocabulary will be readily perceived by
everybody. But why should that be, un-
less it is that the things we read about we do
1 Words and Their Ways in English Speech, Greenough
and Kittredge, p. 21.
37
38 TEACHING IN THE HOME
not talk about? When a lawyer is speaking in
a court room his speaking vocabulary is the
vocabulary of the text-books or the law reports
which he reads; both vocabularies are the same.
When a doctor is writing a medical report or
addressing a medical Society, his speaking vo-
cabulary and his reading vocabulary coalesce
in exactly the same way. What makes the
great chasm which most people feel to exist
between the words they use when they talk
and the words they use when they read?
Simply that they do not talk about the things
they read or they do not read about the things
they talk about or the latter are not written
about and have no reading equivalent. Now
as a matter of fact, it is just here that the busi-
ness of the parent teacher begins. The reason
why it begins here is that the distance between
the reading vocabulary and the speaking vo-
cabulary is usually the distance that has to be
travelled before knowledge becomes organized
and ceases to be mere miscellaneous informa-
tion, having no relation or significance with
reference to anything else.
I have already discussed the matter of lan-
guage * as such, but I am now dealing with
Bnglish as the special instrument of intensive
training. It is probable that few people asso-
1 School in the Home, Chapter I. -
ENGLISH! ENGLISH! ENGLISH 39
ciate the vocabulary of their maturity with their
childhood unless as, in some cases to which I
have referred, the professional pursuits of the
father, for instance, were such as afforded pe-
culiar opportunity to the child to master a
special or technical group of words. But
many more people do not associate their read-
ing vocabulary with their childhood. And yet
why should this be the case? What is there
about pure and clear English that it should not
be spoken by children? What is there about
the vast majority of even so-called “learned”
words that children should not know them and
understand them? Nothing except that they
are withheld from the child! But that with-
holding is a costly process for the child, because
organized knowledge, by which I mean the
knowledge that is prepared for transmission in
text-books and the like, is for the most part in
this reading vocabulary. The longer the child
is kept a stranger to it, the harder it will be to
acquire in the end and the greater the time lost.
Therefore the beginning of English training in
the home should start with the deliberate choice
of the learned or reading word, well knowing
that speech in general will supply the popular
word when it is needed. This whole subject is
very fully discussed in the volume referred to,
which I advise every parent to read. For ex-
40 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ample take the choice involved between words
like the following conflagration and fire, select
and choose, building and edifice, annihilate and
destroy, stiff and rigid, try and endeavor, piece
and fragment, teacher and instructor, air and
atmosphere, and many others which are given.
Now in comparing these synonyms nobody will
be at a loss to select the words which are “pop-
ular” and those which are “learned,” if we may
say so. The ordinary child will be very sure
to come in contact with the popular ones, but
when he reads he will as surely strike the
learned ones. There is nothing about the
learned ones which is difficult of understanding
and the child that masters them first will have a
great advantage over the child that comes to
them later. e
Now it must be reasonably clear that if
books are to be used in the later education, the
first thing to do is to get the ability to read
them. Therefore the child trainer will see to it
that wherever a choice is possible, the choice
will fall upon the word which will be used in
books, rather than in colloquial assemblies. I
think I have said elsewhere that half the chil-
dren in our high schools cannot read their text-
books, and this is undoubtedly true. Through
our entire grade system we stick to the col-
loquial habit when we should be making the
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 41
book habit. But it should be made even before
that, namely in the home. At first sight, this
seems like making the home conversation stiff,
and void of the vivacity which is said to be the
chief charm of non-bookish talk. But my ob-
servation and experience lead me to think that
exactly the reverse is true. No conversation is
so bright, so sparkling, or so enjoyable, as that
which uses words with precision and enables
the thought to play swiftly and with discrimi-
nation upon the fine shades of meaning.
Nothing enables one to use quotations with
such telling effect. Nothing moves the mind
to greater expertness or appreciation. One
reason why an older generation had so much
purer speech than ours seems to have was be-
cause the fine old habit of reading aloud pre-
vailed then, which introduced the reading vo-
cabulary into the area of common conversation.
Children heard their elders use not only pure
speech but the dialect of knowledge. They
gained from hearing poetry and fiction and Ser-
mons and classic literature, read at the family
fireside, a great instrument of comparison
which was a thought-builder, second to noth-
ing.
Obviously then intensive training must think
first and foremost and all the time of English,
and that not merely the pure English of pop-
42 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ular speech but the English of books. Yes,
books, but what books? Certainly not the
“best sellers” and the cheap fiction, but the
English of the classical English authors, of the
statesmen and publicists, of the scientists and
the discoverers, of the public speakers of repute
and the like. Who these are does not need
much exposition here. How shall this process
begin?
I
It is one of the happiest accidents for the
English speaking nations that their greatest
classic is also a book that has had the widest
daily and almost hourly use. “We Ameri-
cans,” says Professor Barrett Wendell, “are
English speaking and English speaking we
must always remain. An accident of language
and nothing more, this fact may seem to many.
To those who think more deeply it can hardly
fail to mean that for better or worse the ideals
which underlie our blundering conscious life
must always be the ideals which underlie the
conscious life of the mother country and which
for centuries have rectified and purified her
blunders. Morally and religiously these ideals
are immortally consecrated in King James's
version of the Bible.” Nor is this all. “As
1 A Literary History of America. Barrett Wendell, p. 8.
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 43
English literature has grown to maturity the
working of this law (the law of creative im-
pulse) throughout its course has become evi-
dent. The first impulse, we have seen, gave us
the work of Chaucer; the second, which came
Only after generations, gave us the Elizabethan
lyrics and dramas, Spencer and Shakspere and
the final form of the English Bible. This last
is probably the greatest masterpiece of transla-
tion in the world; it has exercised on the
thought and language of English speaking
people an influence which cannot be over-
estimated.” " |
Here is the beginning point, therefore, for
the mastery of English. What has been true
of the influence of the Bible over English
speaking people as a whole, is even more true
of the individuals who have steeped themselves
in its thought and language and have therefore
become masters of its superb diction and shared
in the endeavor of the translators to dip into
the literatures of the whole world and incor-
porate into it the best that they could gather,
for this is exactly what the impulse that gave
us the English Bible did. It is therefore the
best and will remain for generations the best
text-book of English that can be found. That
it is so linked with the literary as well as the
1 Ibid., p. 5.
44 TEACHING IN THE HOME
moral and spiritual ideals of the English speak-
ing race not only doubles its value as a text-
book but gives it an inestimable creative power.
Now before books became as numerous and
as cheap as they now are, the only way families
could share a book was by hearing it read aloud
just as to-day in the trenches a single soldier
will read to his companions the newspaper that
comes rarely to them at the front. No One
who has not camped out in the woods and lis-
tened to a good reader bringing the message of
some classic, as the listeners sat around the
campfire, will ever know the wonders that are
embodied in reading aloud, unless it is they
who have had the same experience at home, sit-
ting at the knee of father or mother and had a
similar sense of pleasure and satisfaction.
The intensive training in English for which I
am now pleading begins with reading aloud by
the parent teacher, first and foremost, the Bible
and always the Bible. And I mean of course
the King James version, which is the one not
only best known but the one which is embalmed
in and irrevocably linked with the greatest
epoch of English literature and which lives in
every English masterpiece of any kind in exist-
ence. Begin then by reading the Bible out loud.
Take the parts which you know best and get
some analysis of its contents which will tell you,
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 45
if you do not already know, what kind of
material may be found in its various books.
Here you will find matter for every mood; you
will find poetry and prose, history, tragedy,
comedy, drama and allegory, things joyful and
things sad, things for inspiration and things
for instruction, but all of them classic and
builders of thought and together forming the
substratum for a full round reading and classic
vocabulary. There is no one thing that will
educate so much and educate so variously and
educate so soundly a little child as hearing daily
tead the English of the English Bible. I am
not trying to direct your religion or make your
theology! I am speaking now to the parent
who wants to give her child the best training
for the intellectual life. I know no way in
which so many things may be done simultane-
ously for the intellectual development of chil-
dren as reading to them the Bible. Of course
the reader must read well and understand-
ingly; she must not blunder along not knowing
what is coming next and wondering herself
what the words mean. But having chosen her
material, and linking it consciously with what
she knows to be the interests of the child, she
has made for her the best instrument that could
possibly be devised.
The words which find a place in books are
46 TEACHING IN THE HOME
usually those of the class called “learned
words,” and the Bible is full of these. These
same words are generally of foreign origin and
the translators of the King James version
consciously chose words of classical significance
and for this reason every other language from
which the learned words in the Bible come will
be made easier by familiarity with its English
derivatives. Hearing these words read will
naturalize them in the ear and will instantly
create an affinity in the mind of the child be-
tween the word heard at the mother's knee and
the Latin or Greek stem from which it comes
when it meets that stem later on. This is, in
fact, the simplest gate to Latin. Acquaint-
ance through the English derivatives of a con-
siderable number of Latin stems, will im-
mensely simplify the study of Latin, and make
it interesting where now it is stupid. But-
this process can be only made interesting by
familiarity with the English, and this is the
earliest and best way to secure it. Read
aloud, then, constantly, and enunciate care-
fully, using the lips rather than the throat, and
making the distinctions of sound clear and pre-
cise. This reading, for little children, should
be slowly dome, and when explanations are
needed, freely given. The reading of some of
the Old Testament stories are thus made the
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 47
medium for telling all sorts of things, beside
teaching English. They open the way to the
largest capabilities of the parent. Personally,
I should leave out the “moral” teaching in the
reading hour, simply letting the story teach
its own moral. You are thus freed from the
everlasting dread of the hour as one of moral
exhortation, which has killed so much natural
interest in the Bible. The stories in Genesis,
or even the sensational stories in the Book of
Judges, may be permitted to stand simply by
themselves. Of course, they may need a little
preliminary explanation. Dramatize while
reading aloud, and let the climax come just as
you would wish it to come in a play. But re-
gard it as literature read for that reason only.
The rest will take care of itself.
It will be most excellent practise in this
connection to have the child repeat the story
itself before taking up the next one. Notice
how it will repeat it in the words in which it
was heard, and thus gain the use of the words.
Try in this manner the interesting stories in
the Book of Daniel, picturesque and thrilling
tales, which offer infinite pleasure not only in
reading, but in listening to, when repeated.
Be sure to make your notations in your record
as to what happens when the child tells the
story back to you. When such a story has
48 TEACHING IN THE HOME
been read, try to use some of the interesting
words in conversation at meal times, and see
if they awaken remembrance, and if they
arouse thought. Here you will have much in-
terest in noting what words linger, and which
are forgotten, and also when mistakes are
made, what the nature of the mistakes is. Not
infrequently you will find the mistake due to
your own intonation, or lack of clear enuncia-
tion, and that will help you to avoid those
things in the future. But you will have pleas-
ure in this work possibly above anything else
that you do.
Next to the Bible there are many other
standard English classics which may be read.
Read poetry as much as possible, especially
poetry that lends itself to rhythmic utterance;
standard passages from Shakspere lend them-
selves readily to this work. They can readily
be memorized also both by yourself and by
the child. Select for young children passages
that are picturesque, that convey something
that can easily be imagined. Always tell
its connection, if you read an isolated pas-
sage. It is good practice, both for the parent
and the child, to tell the plot or sub-plot of a
Shakspere play as nearly as possible, by means
of passages from the play from which the
story is drawn. Don't simplify but amplify!
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 49
That is, don’t bring the thing down to the puer-
ilities which are commonplace, but give expla-
nations which will move the child to wish to ac-
quire the ability and dignity of doing the
things as it actually is. You will be surprised
to find out how often this can be accomplished
in matters that at first seem unlikely.
Repetitio est mater studiorum. Repeat
these things many times by reading them fre-
quently, for this is the key to the development
of the memory. Apart from this, you will
acquire facility and comprehension in reading
them, and you will read them better every
time, with more feeling, with more discrimina-
tion, and with better expression. All this is
so much clear gain for the little listener. Not
infrequently you will have a demand for an
encore. Give it promptly, but never care-
lessly, because that is the best evidence you
could possibly desire that you are getting what
you desire. Often it will be found interesting
and satisfactory to ask the child to tell the
story, as it usually will, in the terms in which
it has been heard. Cultivate this disposition,
because a good memory is not a matter of nat-
ural endowment, as many people suppose, but
a matter of habit and practise. Cultivate ear-
act memory. Do not let yourself say, “Well,
he has the substance of it,” because the sub-
50 TEACHING IN THE HOME
stance of it, at this stage, won’t do. What
you want is exact memory, because exactness
in memory will be found of very great use
later on, in things which depend almost solely
on exact memory, like the multiplication table
and mathematics, generally, which have very
little to do with education as such. But re-
peat and repeat again. But let it not be vain
repetition, but each time more intelligent,
more discriminating, and more reflective.
Often the child itself will note the changed
emphasis, and ask the reason why. Be ready
to give it.
There are many kinds of memory which it
is worth while to know something about.
There is visual memory, which comes from see-
ing things repeatedly, and remembering how
they look. Many persons commit pages to
memory by their appearance, recalling how
the words look, and about where they ought to
come. For little children, of course, who can-
not read, this is not usable at the first stages.
When children can read, it should be culti-
vated. But the earliest form is that acquired
through hearing. Before written language
came into existence, this is the manner in which
history, literature, and folk-lore were trans-
mitted, one generation repeating to another
what it had heard. In the Bible, the Israel-
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 51
ites are often enjoined to remember things,
that “ye may tell it to the generation follow-
ing.” The Homeric poems are said to have
been preserved in this way before they were
committed to writing. Certain it is, that
much of our knowledge of the ancient and
primitive world has come down to us simply
through the memory wrought by the hearing
of the ear. Some teachers employ this
method in teaching modern languages by hav-
ing correct speakers make records for grapho-
phones, that there may be no mistakes of pro-
nunciation made. These can be repeated over
and over again, and thus the ear trained to
recognize the correct forms. The parent-
teacher gets the same result by reading out
loud, but with the human interest and the op-
portunity for interrogation and explanation
added.
The aural memory is more potent than any
other in childhood, because it brings to its as-
sistance all the natural interest of the child in
the parent. The reading mother conveys not
only what she reads, but what she is, to the
child. She unconsciously betrays in her voice
and manner and emotions, to the child, what
affects her, and what interests her, and what
has significance to her. As a good reader, she
cannot help doing this, and as a good mother,
52 TEACHING IN THE HOME
she does not want to help it. She knows that
this is the way she is building up the closest
possible bond between herself and her child.
If she can memorize some of the things she
wants the child to hear, and recite them, so
much the better, at times, because then she vis-
ualizes to the child what a gift good memory
is, and the pleasure her listener experiences
in seeing the mother do these things creates
a desire to do them also. Sometimes words
sound their meaning. For instance, you can-
not say “whistle” without making a sound
which resembles the thing. Wherever you
meet a word which has the capacity for this use,
link the thing and the word together. Sound
and meaning going together fix the word, but
do more; they cause the child to be on the watch
for other words whose sound and meaning are
linked together.
In discussing the subject of memory, Pro-
fessor James says: “The first point to be
noticed is that for a state of mind to survive
in memory, it must have endured for a certain
length of time.” And again, “all the intellec-
tual value for us of a state of mind depends on
our after-memory of it. Only then is it com-
bined in a system, and knowingly made to con-
tribute to a result.”.” What this means for
1 Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 643–644.
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 53
our purpose is, that you must not expect that
mere “touch and go” with anything will leave
any impression on the child’s permanent intel-
lectual strength. That anything may be
memorized and leave a result, it has to be con-
veyed clearly, slowly, and definitely. A cer-
tain measure of time has to be allowed for it
to sink into the mind. Repetition does this,
but it should not be neglected on this account
to read slowly, and with precision, at the be-
ginning. The real value, as Professor James
says, lies in the after-memory, which merely
means that part, which remains after the con-
ditions which have produced it, or in which it
arose, have passed away.
This is the explanation why so many things
are so absolutely and easily forgotten. They
were told all right, but told too quickly, and
not allowed to have their proper right of way
in the matter of time allowance, and so soon
passed out of the mind, just as they came into
it. It is the time element which makes suffer-
ing, for example. Pain for an instant is not
recognized as pain. A mere momentary shock
is never called pain. But when it has time to
make itself perfectly clear, though the time re-
quired for this is not long, its nature is clearly
recognized. We never think of a brief, un-
pleasant sensation as pain. In a similar way,
54; TEACHING IN THE HOME
we never think of a mere instant of pleasant
sensation, as pleasure. The time element
makes them both. It is the same, though the
medium is somewhat different, with ideas. If
you want a thing remembered, say it slowly,
say it clearly, say it distinctly, and say it often!
Rapid speakers thrill the imagination and stir
the emotions, but slow speakers, other things
being equal, convey ideas, and influence opin-
ions. The simple reason is that one gives a
momentary sensation of pleasantness, the
other impresses the message.
II
This whole process is made interesting by
the careful study of the growth and variation
of words from particular stems. A more de-
tailed explanation of this matter is given un-
der the chapter dealing with the teaching of
language. For the present purpose, it is im-
portant to note that words have a history, just
like human beings. If they come from a for-
eign language, they have what is called a stem,
and from this stem many other words are
formed, and this is due to the fact that every
such change indicates the need for a new dif-
ferentiation of meaning. All our prefixes
and suffixes are due to this need. Every such
variation shows that something has been
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 55
added, or subtracted, or altered, in the root
meaning of the word. Take for example such
a word as position. Now just work out from
position how and why you get com-position,
dis-position, ap-position, and then compare
these with such words as pose, suppose, dispose,
repose, and the like. Now, all these come from
a common stem. Then add comparison of
such words as positive, suppositive, appositive,
and the like. From these many more can be
worked out. Almost any Latin grammar will
give the number of the principal stems, and
the reading of almost any book will furnish the
laboratory for the working out of many such
analyses. The intelligent guide of young
children, when one such word is met the first
time, will immediately use all her own knowl-
edge to bring to the attention and suggest for
reflection, many similar words and derivatives
from the same stem, and thus build up the
habit of observing words in their similarities
and dissimilarities. This can be made the
most interesting practise for the child, and
makes a dictionary one of the most fascinat-
ing of books. While this is being done, the
difference between nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, and other parts of speech, can be
taught, which will presently show to the
teacher and the child alike, that grammar, so
56 TEACHING IN THE HOME
far from being a dull, uninteresting study, is
one of the most rewarding, as well as one of
the most alluring.
It does not take long for children to become
interested in this process, which is really a kind
of elementary philology. Then again, almost
any dictionary will give the origin of words,
and this will give the material for many an in-
teresting discussion and exposition as to how
any word reached its present form. But there
are not only words of this kind, but there are
words that have lost, or changed their mean-
ing, that is, changed their character. Some
words which once had a perfectly good mean-
ing, have now come to mean something bad or
of sinister intent. Similarly other words have
come up in the social scale, and now have good
standing, where once they had no character.
There are degraded words and there are res-
cued words, and there are fossil words, all of
which are to be met with constantly in books,
and the study of English in this manner brings
this out, to the constant delight of the child.
But you will have quite as much pleasure and
satisfaction yourself, if you take the trouble
to do this a few times, and the chief result is,
that the habit is formed of looking at the form
of the word, and finding out what the original
part of it was, and how much has been added,
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 57
either in front or behind. It does not need
any argument to convince the reader that, in
this way, the science of grammar is made in-
teresting, and for the most part, without the
child’s consciousness that it is studying gram-
mar, and the immense value of this later on
can hardly be overestimated. When the
study of syntax is formally taken up, this
preparation is most valuable, because it is
really the beginning of syntax. It would be
a good plan for the teacher to take half a dozen .
such words daily—though this is a large num-
ber at first—and go through this process, and
it will be found that the child’s vocabulary in
this fashion grows by leaps and bounds. It
may be made almost a kind of play, but the
important thing is that it is playing with real
knowledge, and building up the one instru-
ment by which knowledge is most effectively
approached.
The building up of the English base here
suggested, should be carried on with every
other study. If you are teaching history, let
every history lesson be also a lesson in Eng-
lish. If you are teaching science, let every
science lesson be also a lesson in English. If
you are teaching geography, let it also be a
lesson in English. Keep this constantly in
the foreground of all your teaching. By this
58 TEACHING IN THE HOME
persistent emphasis on the nature, origin, com-
position and character of words, you are mak-
ing a tool which will enrich every other study,
because in studying that particular branch,
the interest is increased by the observing
watchfulness of the medium by which it is con-
veyed. In this way the child will gradually,
without knowing why, notice how words of
general meaning come to have a special sense,
and are used in that special sense quite as
often as they are used in the general sense.
How slang words become words of good usage
in this manner is a very interesting study, like-
wise. Use the dictionary a great deal, be-
cause this is the beginning of the habit of con-
sulting authorities. As a writer in Black-
woods Magazine remarks: “A dictionary is
not bad reading on the whole. It is much
more endurable than a good many of what are
called lighter books, and not much more un-
connected. In the hands of a patient reader,
it would form almost a course of study in it-
self, and very far from a dry one; he would
make the acquaintance in its pages with a good
many English authors to whom no one else is
likely to introduce him; and though this ac-
quaintance would certainly, in One sense, be
very superficial, it would not in that respect
differ from popular knowledge in general,
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 59
and would at least have the advantage of being
accurate and critical, so far as it went in point
of style.” -
This is nothing more than the literal truth.
Anyone who will read the preface to Johnson’s
Dictionary of 1755 will have a fresh and in-
spiring renewal of respect for dictionaries and
dictionary makers, especially if he will turn
to “Grub Street,” pathetically connected with
Johnson himself, and find, as one writer has
said, “The personal element verging on the
side of pathos,” as where Grub Street is defined
as “a street much inhabitated by writers of
small histories, dictionaries, and temporary
poems; whence any mean production is called
Grub Street,” and leavicographer, as a “writer
of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.”" By all
means use and teach the use of dictionaries.
III
But in this process of mastering English,
and getting the feeling for English words,
there must be great care taken to avoid its be-
coming mere verbal merchanics. The imita-
tive faculties in children are very strong, and
soon awaken a more positive force, called de-
sire; therefore, it must be kept in mind, that,
unless you want to train a little prig who will
1 Tucker, Our Common Speech, p. 114.
60 TEACHING IN THE HOME
simply bewilder people and make himself un-
livable, all these acquisitions must be made
really his own; that is, he must be given a
chance to exercise himself in them, blunder, if
necessary, in them, but use them, and make
them a real and genuine part of himself. “I
would not only have him (the teacher) de-
mand an account of the words contained in his
lesson,” says Montaigne, in his great essay on
The Education of Children, “but of the sense
and substance thereof, and judge of the
profit he hath made of it, not by the testimony
of his memory, but by the witness of his life.
That what he lately learned, he causes him to
set forth and portray the same into sundry
shapes, and then to accommodate it to as many
different and several subjects, whereby he
shall perceive whether he have yet appre-
hended the same, and therein enfeoffed him-
self.” What this means is, that as soon as the
child begins to have any verbal treasures he
shall use them in general conversation, and
shall be made to apply the skill he has acquired
in one direction in as many others as possible.
“I would have the scholar narrowly sift all
things,” he adds, “with discretion and harbor
nothing in his head by mere authority or upon
trust.” For this purpose, practice is very es-
sential. Table talk is the very best time and
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 61
place for this sort of thing. You can play
back and forth with language as you can with
tennis balls, and can have all kinds of enjoy-
ment and profit in the exercise with language,
which will quickly incorporate what is learned
into common and general use.
Cultivate in this manner, the spirit and
habit of inquiry and reasoning. What I have
said in my previous volume on the subject of
questions and answers, may be here used with
telling effect. Even a little child will quickly
discern the different uses of the same word.
Let it work out how the difference arose, and
make occasions for the inquiry. This is what
the Greeks did with their children, and we
should do it especially with the mother tongue.
Whether you have been teaching grammar,
or geography, or history, cultivate the habit
of having the child tell the result of its studies
to the family, perhaps to the other parent, and
let the child thus have the pleasure and the ex-
ercise of being teacher of the things he has
been taught. This will bring fluency in use,
as well as clearness of ideas, and will furnish
the best manner conceivable, for observing
what the tendencies of the child are, and what
to emphasize, and what to avoid.
One of the commonest defects in this con-
nection with young people is that they are per-
62 TEACHING IN THE HOME
mitted in replying to questions, or giving in-
formation, to use ejaculations, or disconnected
words. The corrective for all this is to re-
quire and have all information spoken in com-
plete sentences. That calls for a recapitula-
tion in thought of what has gone before, clari-
fies the mind, and helps to clearness and pre-
cision in speech. It makes for reasoning
power, too, because it calls for logical sequence.
Do not permit your questions to be answered
in a single word. Require them to be an-
Swered in a form which may be committed to
writing, showing what the question was. In
fact, it is evidence of a good answer to any-
thing, that it indicates with reasonable clear-
ness what induced it. Many letters, for ex-
ample, are utterly unintelligible, because they
are disjointed replies to something contained
in a previous letter, which has either been for-
gotten or is remembered so vaguely, that the
ground has to be gone over again if the mat-
ter is at all worth while. It would be inter-
esting, if it were possible, to find out how
many needless business letters are written, be-
cause of just this failure to make clear in re-
plies, what the subject matter or the particu-
lar phase of the subject matter, the reply has
reference to. In family conversation, where
children are present, it is a good habit, when
ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! ENGLISH ! 63
any subject is discussed, to pause when the
material becomes too mature or complex, and
explain what is being discussed. By this, I
do not mean that the conversation shall be
interrupted or made infantile, but when an
unusual idea or word appears, explain it as
you go along. It is then seen in actual use,
and probably more surely fixed in the memory
for that reason.
With all these eavercises and habits, taste
develops, and on this point too much emphasis
cannot be laid. The habitual use and hearing
of good English not only makes good taste to
develop naturally, but does more; it soon cre-
ates impatience, with bad taste, and makes
children notice false English usage and bad
forms of speaking. Hearing good selections
read to them regularly, and having these dis-
cussed in good English, and then having the
verbal sense steadily developed, there is
formed insensibly a standard of language and
reading which soon requires sufficient momen-
tum to take care of itself. Good matter will
commend itself, and the matter that is not good
will lead to its own rejection. But here, as
in other things, there should be persistence in
getting rid of false conceptions of language
and of words, and the models chosen should
be of a kind which recommend themselves.
64 TEACHING IN THE HOME
Dwell on beautiful images in any work you
happen to be reading, an apt illustration, a
fine figure of speech, something that lends it-
self readily to repetition and memorizing,
and make all these practices work together.
The results will be astonishing, even after a
little faithful work, but it will be an increasing
delight to see the unfolding of the child mind
as the linguistic sense grows, and the pleasure
with which its exercise is extended. Even the
blunders made will be interesting, and often
illuminating and instructive. But at each and
every turn, whatever the subject, whatever the
occasion, whatever the object, whether it be
formal study, informal speech, or play, keep
it in the region where it admits of noble, pure,
and clean English expression.
CHAPTER III
GRAMMAR
“PRECISION,” says Professor Austin Phelps,
“especially, is one of those products of schol-
arly taste which is not apt to attract a man for
the first time in middle life or old age. Youth
must plant it, or it will not flourish in mature
age.” In opening the subject of grammar
for young children, I suppose there is no
doubt that this is the one which has gathered
around it most traditions of dislike, unless it
be the barren and worthless study of arith-
metic and its adjunct senseless problems.
But grammar, so far from being an uninter-
esting study, is really a very interesting affair,
especially if it be begun in the right way.
And even more so, when it is allied with ety-
mology, and the uses of words, and the form
and derivation of words, long before formal
composition is begun.
Grammar is language conscious of itself.
Usage, of course, makes for correct and gram-
matical speech more than all other things com-
bined, but attention directed to form and ar-
65
66 TEACHING IN THE HOME
rangement and structure of speech, at an early
age, makes for the kind of precision which
makes the study of grammar interesting in it-
self, and takes off the edge of the dreari-
ness of the necessary preparation for the study
of foreign languages later on in the course.
The reason why the classics have dropped out
so extensively, is, that young people who were
brought to them had no linguistic preparation,
knew no English to speak of, had no feeling
for the use of words, had no appreciation of
when a thing was well-said or ill-said, and that
made all attention to such matters stupid and
apparently useless. It was not strange, and
it will not be changed until we come to the
matter from a different road.
What has just been said indicates where the
study of grammar should really begin. It be-
gins in the appreciation of style. I see peo-
ple smile when I talk of appreciation of style
in little children. But you can readily prove
the truth of the possibility of such apprecia-
tion, by taking pages from various authors
and reading them to children, and see what
they like, and what they dislike, and then ask-
ing the reason why. You will find, generally
speaking, that a clear, lucid style which con-
veys its ideas with the least confusion of
thought, which says what it means, and says
GRAMMAR 67
it with clearness and force, holds the attention,
and causes reflection about the matter of the
composition, while a style that is involved and
confused, does not produce this result. You
will find, for example, that in compositions
that are specially intended for young children,
the use of adjectives tends to make for atten-
tion and interest, while the use of successive
clauses tends to destroy it. The newspapers
have found this out long ago, and have worked
it to the detriment of their readers. They
make their reporters write crisp, direct sen-
tences. They make them deal with concrete
things. They enforce the use of names.
They write around personalities. They use
adjectives often innumerable. That makes a
paper “readable” for many persons who other-
wise would never read at all.
Now this style culture comes from reading
steadily, often a single author whose style is
good. Franklin is said to have formed his
style from the study and influence of Defoe.
Professor Phelps quotes Max Muller as say-
ing, “That a well educated person who has
been at a public school in England, and at an
English university, who reads his Bible and
Shakspere, and all the books in Mudie’s li-
brary, that is, nineteen-twentieths of all the
books published in England, seldom uses more
*
68 TEACHING IN THE HOME
than three or four thousand words in actual
conversation.” That is interesting as show-
ing how easily the vocabulary may be ac-
quired, which will meet all the exigencies of
contact with persons like those described, and
the standard in America is probably much
lower. It has recently been shown that chil-
dren can readily acquire the requisite number
of words, and if they are interested in the
words themselves, their arrangement and use
through the medium of grammar is a very in-
teresting process. What has made it unin-
teresting in the past, is, that children and
young people have known nothing about
words! The very vocabulary of the gram-
mars they were studying was unknown to
them! This is true about most of the text-
books children study at this moment. Once
interest them in the units of language as ob-
jects themselves worthy of study, the rest fol-
lows naturally. wºº Y
The infallible test of style is, that one does
not need to read a sentence twice. Of course,
this rule may be pushed too far, and there are
Some sentences which must be read many
times, whose style is good and whose wealth
of meaning requires such intensive study.
But, roughly speaking, clearness is tested by
the fact that it requires no repetition. Every
GRAMMAR 69
time you have to ask yourself, “Now, what
does that mean?” you prove conclusively one
of two things, either your own defect of Eng-
lish or the author's want of precision and clear-
ness. You will find this defect many times
illustrated in this book, and the reason is, that
I am dealing with so illusory a problem, as try-
ing to tell in words, what so often in teaching
children I did with no conscious intellectual
effort. I know exactly what moved me in do-
ing the particular things I did. How to make
that clear, so that others may be similarly
moved, is not so easy as it appears, because so
many elements were combined in the process.
In cultivating and teaching the grammatical
sense, you must keep in mind not only that
you are to use language intelligible to the
child, but at the same time convey what you
finally want to be mastered, which is some-
thing more than can be put into words. It
must be assumed, therefore, for the purposes
here in mind, that there is habitual reading
aloud, and habitual effort to interest both the
parent and child in words for their own sake,
and the making of frequent experiments in
such words, usage, entirely apart from the
purpose of teaching grammar. Now, the only
reason for teaching grammar is, that it will
prove a tool for further linguistic study, and
70 TEACHING IN THE HOME
linking it to the process of formal education,
and make the linguistic knowledge acquired,
current coin of intellectual interchange. It
is important not only to know it, but know it
in such a way that it may be applied to the
larger uses of education. Knowledge comes
in this way only. Behind all real knowledge
there is form and classification, and conscious
choice of one thing, rather than another.
Grammar is that conscious choice, applied to
words, their arrangement in groups called
Sentences, clauses, paragraphs, and the like.
It is both dissection and construction of spoken
and written speech.
I
Grammar with young children should be-
gin with a careful, though simple, definition of
words, as parts of speech. It may seem curi-
ous, but on this simple classification many
children of ten or twelve are very much in the
dark, though there is not the slightest reason
why they should not, long before that time
have thoroughly mastered the rudiments of
grammar. Now, the definition of the parts
of speech has, itself, been made irritating and
complex. Nouns may simply be called name-
words, though when it has been made perfectly
clear that nouns are name-words, the word
GRAMMAR 71
nouns should be constantly employed. A
noun, I used to say to my own children, is a
name, or something that stands for a name.
JHere you begin with all kinds of illustrations,
perhaps calling for all kinds of objects, and
having them named, and then having it under-
stood that when such words are referred to in
grammar they are nouns. You can do that
easily with children of three, as I did. Hav-
ing thus made it clear that a noun is a name-
word, you can gather all kinds of nouns, and
classify them, in turn, as having one or an-
other kind of classification. I recall that the
children had special pleasure in picking out
collective nouns, such as fleet, flock, herd, and
the like. But, in any case, make it clear that
this noun is the visible symbol, the name of
a thing complete in itself.
In a similar way, a verb is a do-word. That
is enough for your present purpose, and opens
the field of words of action and gets the funda-
mental idea safely established. You follow
the same plan about all kinds of verbs, and
you will not be surprised if your little pupil
takes the words he has heard you read about,
and link nouns and verbs together in simple
sentences quite without any instruction what-
ever. When this happens, you may at once
tell the child that when such a simple state-
72 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ment is made, it is a sentence. It was on this
account, that before the parts of speech were
thoroughly learned, my children had turned
simple sentences into various forms, and soon
knew how to recognize a declarative sentence,
an interrogative sentence, one that contained
an eaclamation, and one that expressed a
command. It used to be a great pleasure for
them to try themselves out with this kind of
play, and find out their limitations, and also
what can and what cannot be done, with the
same words. Just remember that you are
simply making the child acquainted with the
wsual momenclature of the science of gram-
Tmar. That is your main business now, and
everything else is clear gain.
Having thus established your bases, you
will build around them. In taking up the
subject of adjectives, I used to take the word
“adjective,” and analyze it, and show what it
meant, and so link adjectives with nouns as
neighbors and dependents. The qualities or
size of objects lends itself very readily to this
sort of teaching. Sometimes, their form or
substance made the thing more interesting.
And so, by easy stages, the child came to rec-
ognize that adjectives are words that tell some-
thing about a moun. That is all they need to
know at the outset, and it is a simple and un-
GRAMMAR 73
complicated idea. Upon that base you can
build the whole conception of modifiers. The
more adjectives you use, the wider your scope
will be, and incidentally you will have your
chance made to teach about the object itself.
Color in this way is useful, because it comes in
handily later on in describing birds, or plants,
or animals, and helps to lay the foundation for
the ideas of botany or zoölogy. Number tells
also in the same way, as you count the petals
of a flower or the legs of an insect. In short,
you simply get the idea fixed that an adjective
tells something about a moun. Practice and
play at this subject will be found a great
amusement, as you explain why some kinds of
adjectives cannot apply to some kinds of
IlOUII].S. -
And just as you have fixed the word adjec-
tive in relation to nouns, so you fix the word
adverb in relation to verbs. An adverb sim-
ply is a word that tells something about a verb.
Here you introduce adverbs of manner, de-
scription, or what not, and group them around
verbs. So the adverbial idea is built up, and
it needs only a little practice to make the ques-
tioning and the answering mutually interest-
ing and entertaining. -
Sometimes I used to draw little pictures in-
dicating the noun or the verb, and then group
74 TEACHING IN THE HOME
around them all the adjectives or adverbs ap-
plicable to each, and march and counter-march
them, picking up fresh ones as they were
found applicable, or dropping those that were
found not to be useful. Your main object is
always to accustom the child to think of nouns
as nouns, or verbs as verbs, or adjectives as
adjectives, and adverbs as adverbs. Hence,
when you use a dictionary, you always note
what the part of speech is, so that the new
word is classified from the start in its broadest,
most general uses. That is getting gram-
mar instruction by the wholesale, so to speak.
Every fresh word thus takes its place in
the general language scheme, and you build
up the linguistic habit almost unconsciously.
Merely saying this, gives the idea that this is
very stupid formal work for four- or five-year-
old children, but it will not be found so by any
manner of means. Often, the children them-
'selves will break in upon you, and tell you the
part of speech before you mention what it is.
Similarly a pronoun is a word that stands
for a moun. There is nothing complex about
that. The personal pronouns are very readily
understood. And because they are so readily
understood, you can, in passing, teach all that
need be known about number, because singu-
lar and plural are easily grasped, and easily
GRAMMAR 75
recognized. At the same time, you can teach
all that need be known about gender, because
the masculine and feminine are ideas easily
understood, and applied almost with the be-
ginning of speech. Neuter is a little more
difficult, but taught simply as applying to
things chiefly without life is all that you need
to do with it. But you still see at once how
many of the elements of parsing you have
here taught, and how easily you can, in get-
ting the child to tell all about a word, tell sub-
stantially all that the ordinary high school pu-
pil knows about it, and sometimes a good deal
more. This sort of thing may easily be in-
jected into the study of any other subject,
and may be more informally taught than
almost any other subject, as indeed it should
be.
Here you have already five of the parts of
speech, and the principal ones. The rest can
be dismissed in passing. About conjunctions,
prepositions, and interjections, I taught sim-
ply by examples. I kept, however, referring
to them, merely to impress the name of the
part of speech. Person, meaning the speaker,
the person addressed, or the person or thing
spoken about, you take along without compli-
cating it with special definition. But you
should occasionally remind the child of the
76 TEACHING IN THE HOME
first, second, or third person, just to keep the
classification in mind.
In all this, bear steadily in mind that what
you are teaching is the momenclature of the
science of grammar, so that when your child
begins to study grammar in connection with a
foreign language, let us say, Latin, and from
the beginning, the parts of speech are talked
about, it has already, as a part of its own intel-
lectual equipment, these distinctions made,
and does not have to be told anew, and told
stupidly, what the parts of speech are, or what
their attributes are, or how they are related.
Keep it simple, of course. But keep it clear,
and keep it in the form in which it must be
used later on.
There is no objection to your taking up
cases, if you find that you can, and care to do
it—personally, I did it, and believe it to be
useful in connection with the practice of show-
ing how words change their form. In this
way you show the difference between declin-
ing a noun and conjugating a verb. A rather
useful thing to know, and which, if taken up
with the study of Latin, in an elementary way,
teaches many more things than grammar.
You have already, in your habitual investiga-
tion of words, shown the varieties of form, and
now you can show why they take on these
GRAMMAR 77
changes of form. You can show what a prefia,
is and what a suffia is, and the many kinds of
them, and some of their more obvious uses.
And thus, by easy stages, you prepare the way
for something else, namely, the building up
of sentence structure, and the elements of such
structure, and their proper relations. When
this is done, it should be done with the ma-
terial the child himself supplies, by getting
him to make some statement about some ob-
ject or plaything with which he is familiar,
and then taking the classification. Build sen-
tences, and take them apart, just as you would
blocks.
In a similar way you can teach all that needs
to be known about the article. The use of the
and a or an is not difficult of explanation.
Nor is the making clear of definite and indefi-
mite, this, and that, as pronouns, very hard.
Simply get the idea that the ideas of definite
and indefinite are expressed in such words,
and that is all you need to do at this stage.
It will develop of itself a little later on. So
also the use of interrogative words, which,
what, where, and the like, are easily linked
with the idea of interrogation, and that is the
essential thing.
When the child that has so much equipment
as I have here outlined, fairly fixed in mind,
78 TEACHING IN THE HOME
before it is seven years of age it will never
find the subject of grammar dull or uninter-
esting, because the word sense, and the instinct
for form, will have been so cultivated that the
more formal study will lend itself to experi-
mentation in the form of composition, which
children love almost above all things. Of
course, for a long time, this will be oral compo-
sition, telling of stories, and I often used to
make the acquisitions in some other study the
means of getting this oral composition.
When a child is invited to tell the story of
anything, you have begun the subject of com-
position, and if there are, as there were in my
family, more than a single child, each child
will often interject something, or modify
something, or supply a missing word, or alter
the form of the statement, which is the very
best practise imaginable for formal composi-
tion. Incidentally, it trains the ear also, and
makes for a demand for pure and clear state-
ment. While “The Story,” which ran on for
four years in our nursery, after the children
had gone to bed, I used to listen with great in-
terest, how first one child, and then another,
added an idea, or supplied one, when the nar-
rator for the evening ran out of ideas, or of-
fered some obvious contradiction of something
that had already been said, or that seemed in-
GRAMMAR 79
congruous with the narrative. I believe, that
in that continuous story-telling to each other,
the children got the best language training
they ever received. I am very sure they got
exactly what the freshman English teachers
afterward tried to teach them in Harvard, and
got it more explicitly and more effectively.
II
You will always keep in mind that you are
doing all this merely to build up the use of
the tool of knowledge. You will keep in mind
that your main task in all these matters is to
prepare the child for the use of books when
he comes to the more formal and serious in-
struction. You will, by this means, take off
the strange, confused atmosphere with which
the study of grammar is begun, and take out
of it the stupidity with which the subject is
often invested. Your little boy at seven,
when he begins Latin, though he should begin
Latin before this, but assuming that he begins
Latin at seven, will not be staggered by the
confused mess which usually confronts him,
but will understand how language is made,
and what its parts are, and why it is needful
for him to know something about those parts.
He will seek, naturally, the things in the for-
eign language that resemble his own, and he
80 TEACHING IN THE HOME
will bring what you have taught him about
his own language to bear upon the One he is
about to begin. He will have in the back-
ground of his consciousness a great deal of
material which is familiar to him, and it won’t
seem so meaningless to him as it often does.
I think it is a very good plan in connection
with this study to master a good many words
in a foreign language, Latin again, for choice.
Any child can learn fifty Latin nouns, and
these fifty will make themselves over into a
thousand shapes in English. But their Latin
form, and often its resemblance to English
forms, helps to make the grammatical sense.
It is not so easy with Latin verbs, though
there, too, is a field worth your exploitation.
If you don’t know anything about Latin,
study it with your child. That is one of the
very best ways of going about anything. We
had, or perhaps it would be better to say that
I had, no natural interest in a good many
things till my children began to show interest
in them, and since that interest was there, I
cultivated it in its scholarly form. Thus they
got the ea'act and accurate names of things the
very first time. A friend of mine has taught
his little girl a perfectly amazing amount of
knowledge of chemistry, that being his field,
by simply telling the child all about the things
GRAMMAR 81
he was working with at any given time. That
little girl, probably, after a few experiments,
will be able to pass a college entrance examina-
tion in chemistry before high school age. If
the examination were oral instead of written,
she would probably pass with a high mark.
The lower mark will come probably, not from
lack of knowledge, but from inability to write
quickly in a given time and in a satisfactory
manner what the child actually knows and
knows exactly. But no single child should
ever, on that account, be held back. Most peo-
ple of mature years cannot write as well as they
speak, nor use the skill and precision in writing
which they use habitually in speech.
While I am on this subject of writing, I
may as well say now that all I have to say
upon it. It was the weak spot of my own
plans of training. But as I think it through,
it was simply because I did not realize early
enough that ultimately the tests must be made
in writing. If I had to do it again, I should
begin very early with writing, and make that
go hand in hand with the mental acquisitions.
Dr. Montessori has shown that it can be done,
and I believe it can generally be done. But
it takes more time than I had to give, and this
because the exercises should be frequent rather
than long continued. But as all examinations
82 TEACHING IN THE HOME
have to be taken in writing sooner or later, let
this grammatical study go along with the writ-
ing, and this, because it will chiefly be with
single words rather than long sentences, and
hence may be done with less weariness and less
drain on the strength and attention of the
child. I do not believe complicated apparatus
is necessary for this purpose. In fact, you
don’t need costly appliances at all. Your
own skill and the child, will supply almost
everything you need, and just as a child al-
ways loves its rag doll the best, so generally
the things devised at home have the keenest
interest.
Drawing goes well with grammatical study,
odd as that seems to sound. Tracing words
helps to make their names and forms linger in
the memory. Also supplies the “busy” work
for recreation. Let the child copy by means
of tracing paper, parts of maps, with the
names, and then use these results in connec-
tion with your instruction as to the names, and
their relation to other things.
In this discussion of grammar study, I have
laid emphasis only upon the merest outlines,
but you will determine yourself by the measure
of interest aroused how much farther you can
and care to go. I need not point out that
while you are doing all this you are teaching
GRAMMAR 83
spelling and showing, as you go along, how a
word that has one spelling has several mean-
ings and how much pleasant information and
experiment you can work up out of all this. I
have often gone, while visiting a public school,
into a third grade room, or even into a kinder-
garten, and proved that you could beguile chil-
dren by the hour with what was really serious
and Scientific knowledge about the language.
And I have been met months after such a talk
by the children who heard it who said to me
that they remembered what I had told them,
and proudly gave evidence of the truth of what
they were saying. º
The analytic habit applied to language will
also go hand in hand with the same habit when
you deal with birds, insects or plants. And
you get habits of attention, concentration and
intellectual curiosity which are really what you
are trying to make. The reason why you must
do it in the way of formal terms, queer as it
sounds to have a three-year-old recite to you
that “a noun is a name word” and that “a verb
is a do-word” is that you must get the child’s
knowledge into usable form for the educational
mill into which he will presently have to go.
The educational institution has to use the
ordinary coinage of intellectual interchange.
It has to have a certain standard of uniformity.
84 TEACHING IN THE HOME
It has to use the language of books and the
formulas of science. There is no other way.
Hence you must not only have the child learn
the thing, but learn to ea press its knowledge in
the form which is the only one in which the
schools are able to recognize it. No public
school can take account of the individual child
to any great extent. Hence you must produce
what they want and must have in the only
way they are capable of recognizing it. It is
sad that this is the fact, but since it is the fact
the sooner you recognize it the better.
CHAPTER IV
LANGUAGES
LANGUAGE, as I have said in a previous vol-
ume, is the tool of knowledge. All that is
suggested in this chapter is to be taken in con-
nection with what has already been said in the
chapters on English and grammar. Though
there are varieties of designation, generally
speaking, the principles of One language apply
to all. The parts of speech, though varying in
their operation and function, are the same.
The fundamentals of grammar are not essen-
tially for practical purposes different. Hence
what has been said about English grammar
applies with equal force here.
Now in teaching a language what do we
notice first? Simply that long before lan-
guages are written they are spoken. Hence
language by the vocal method is the natural
gateway. The reason why so much so-called
language teaching in the schools fails is because
the teachers have no consciousness of it, and this
applies almost as much to English as any other.
But while it is not possible that every teacher
85
86 TEACHING IN THE HOME
will be able to use the language colloquially, it
is possible to get such a grasp upon it, through
perfectly natural methods, as will make the
approach to it very easy and perfectly natural,
taking away the strangeness and the hopeless
feeling which comes to so many children when
they attack an alien tongue. It is therefore
wise and helpful to begin with things which are
not strange and which do not make for hope-
lessness, but which make for familiarity and
hopefulness. This is best accomplished for
little children in connection with their English
and history. Here, through the narratives
which you will read, the newspaper articles by
which you will brief the news, which you will
cull and give through the medium of your own
information and understanding to the children,
you will naturally come upon many things
which you know well enough but which you
have not transformed into what I have called
negotiable knowledge. Let us say you want to
teach German, knowing something about it or
perhaps knowing nothing about it.
Let us say that you are doing this while the
great European War is in progress. Hardly
a daily paper or magazine comes into your
home that does not bring with it scores of Ger-
man words which have now become so familiar
that you know them by sight, and almost their
LANGUAGES 87
meaning. You hear or read such terms as
Landsturm and Landwehr, or you see the ref-
erence to a submarine as Untersee, or you see
the names of cities like Hamburg and Ludwig-
shaven, or you see references to the German
Taube or the Kreutzer Emden or the Krieg-
schiff Braunschweig and the like. Now it is a
perfectly simple thing to take all these words
made vivid by dealing with matters of natural
conversation and discussion, and take a census
of what you have gained by this excursus, as I
now do, because I got all these words from a
single newspaper article. And what have you
secured? You have got the German equiva-
lent for land, storm, defence, city, harbor, dove,
cruiser, war, ship, under and sea, all at the first
attempt. Now to make a list of these and find
their compounds, is to make a pretty interest-
ing collection in the way of varied vocabulary.
It is pretty much of a single character to be
sure, but the striking thing about it is that it
immediately starts the linguistic sense. To call
an aeroplane a dove is an interesting fact to any
child. Warship readily suggests steamship
and sailing ship, and other kinds of ships.
Think of the linguistic possibilities of Untersee
when you divide it into unter, under; see, sea,
and then into the well known submarine which
again becomes Sub, under suggesting at Once
88 TEACHING IN THE HOME
Subway, and marine with the Latin maris and
the English mariner, maritime and the like.
And you got all this out of the article which you
read at the morning meal as the news of the
day! And for repetition you have these terms
occurring in some form or another every day,
making the best kind of practise for yourself
as well as your child. What you thus do with
German you can as easily and readily do with
French. In a word you begin the language
just as a child should begin it and begins its
native tongue, by the use of it.
Now that the Italians have gone into the war
we shall have also references to the same events
simultaneously in several languages—German,
French, Italian, and English. What better
opportunity could possibly be made for natur-
alization in linguistics? And the knowledge
can be visualized, too, because the words can be
written down side by side and their resem-
blances and differences noted. Almost any
child can be made very quickly to learn from
glancing down three parallel columns to find
the related words or variants of the same word
and put them together and when that has been
done your lesson work is made for you.
It is not to be understood that all this re-
quires exceptional scholastic training or ability.
How academic does one have to be to see the
LANGUAGES 89
resemblance between ship and schiff? Or be-
tween haven and hafen? or between kreutzer
and cruiser? Anybody with a fairly good
Ordinary education can do this, the only thing
necessary is to do it. This can be done with
hundreds of words in any one of the three mod-
ern languages which I have named. If the
teacher has even a little knowledge of Latin the
work is made by so much, more interesting and
a Latin vocabulary can be built up at the same
time. All that is required is a little reflection
and a little practice which very soon will grow
to be a most interesting personal enjoyment as
well as equipment for the instruction of the
child.
You will understand that what you are here
doing is by easy and natural stages showing
that the same facts have various forms of
visualizing and uttering themselves. You are
planning to take off the strangeness with which
a child for the first time, having had no pre-
vious experience, hears a strange language.
And by taking away that foreign feeling you
at once stimulate the ears to catch resemblances
and listen for suggestive sounds and the eyes
look for suggestive signs by which one equiva-
lent may be exchanged for another. I have
taught very young children a hundred words in
two or three languages in a day, in this fashion,
90 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and the knowledge thus gained made them
proud of their equipment and made the acqui-
sition of the next hundred a joy to them and
to me.
The simplest manner of doing this will be by
means of word-lists which are now very easily
obtainable in almost any language, and select-
ing the words which by reason of sound and
appearance most nearly resemble English.
In fact learning a foreign language begins
with the mastery of a vocabulary just as it
does with the vernacular. The less a child
has to think about what the words mean, the
more readily it can begin to think about the
relations of the words to each other in the
structure of the language, and the more read-
ily you can begin to teach that structure in
the form of grammar, and this applies to all
languages alike. Professor W. R. Harper,
afterward President of the University of
Chicago, literally revolutionized the study of
Hebrew by means of his word lists, in which
he simply took the words that are most fre-
quently used in the Hebrew Bible and created
the materials out of which the language, as
such, was studied. If on a given page for ex-
ample a single much-used word occurs 100
times and there happen to be 1000 words on
that page, you have by mastering that word
LANGUAGES 91
learned one-tenth of a whole page. So by
taking the most used words of any language,
and learning these, you annex whole acres of
text-books because the same word occurs many
times. The acquisition of a working vocabu-
lary in this manner is really a very simple thing,
and when it has been done you have the ma-
terials for language study. This is really what
you do in your home, and without knowing it,
when your child first begins to talk. You sim-
ply give to it the working words, hot, cold, look,
and the like. You can do much in this way
that will make any language attractive, and if
you choose one with which you have some famil-
iarity yourself, the task will be simpler and
more interesting.
I have just referred to German words. I
have before me a very interesting word list
prepared by one of the best elementary teach-
ers in the land, Dr. H. C. Bierwirth of Har-
vard University. From this list of 270 of the
commonest nouns I select the following just to
show that one does not need to know much, or
indeed anything, about German, as such, to see
instantly how an English and a German word
may be acquired together by a very young
child. Here are such words as apfel, apple,
arm, arm, bett, bed, blut, blood, brot, bread,
bruder, brother, ding, thing, doktor, doctor,
92 TEACHING IN THE HOME
general, general, grab, grave, hand, hand, hilfe,
help, hut, hat, mond, moon, macht, night, paar,
pair, prinz, prince, rose, rose, Schild, shield,
schaf, sheep, tochter, daughter, water, father,
wagen, wagon, wasser, water, welt, world,
wunsch, wish,_just to select at random from
the alphabetical list. Now just look at the
variety of words given here which almost inter-
pret themselves. The same thing may be done
with other parts of speech, these being simply
nouns. But what you do in this case is some-
thing more than merely to learn word equiv-
alents. You are establishing the fact that
there is a natural linguistic affiliation between
English and German. As you teach English
these resemblances will constantly appear and
you will, in whatever language you are teach-
ing, and in fact whatever you are doing, build
up linguistic power in the form of negotiable
vocabularies. The importance of this cannot
possibly be overestimated for purposes of gen-
eral culture and reading knowledge and power.
As a mind fertilizer this process has possibilities
which are simply without limit. Five or six
hundred words thus acquired in early child-
hood will readily be made the basis for use in
language study which will make all subsequent
work a joy instead of drudgery, because there
will be in existence already a linguistic con-
LANGUAGES 93
sciousness which will be always reasoning from
what is obviously clear to something that has
fascinating possibilities.
From the singulars given above, it is an easy
and natural step to the plurals, and through
this process to the genders all the while without
recourse to formal grammar, but merely in the
way of fertilizing and scouting on the frontiers
of the ultimate minute study of the language
structure. The trouble always comes in cross-
ing the frontier of anything. Once you have
really crossed the border line, the march is
easier. &
Turning now from a modern language to an
ancient one, namely, Latin. Here the thing is
of much greater importance, because Latin is
the base of so much English and is notably the
language of knowledge. All that I am about
to suggest in this connection can easily be done
with little children and very certainly with chil-
dren who have reached the age of six years.
From another word list I take the verbs dico,
speak, facio, do and video, see, which are used
1000 times or over in the works of Caesar and
Cicero. Think what the acquisition of those
three words really means. Just by way of
illustration, let us see what can be found on the
surface of those three stems, dic, fac, and vid.
I turn to the dictionary and I pick up at a
94. TEACHING IN THE HOME
glance, dictate, dictation, dictator, dictatorial,
dictature, diction, dictionary and dictum. I
turn from my dictionary to a hand-book of
English synonyms, and I find dictate; com-
mand, Order, enjoin, ordain, decree, prescribe,
direct, point, urge, enforce. You can readily
See how this business expands, and how I have
now in hand the material for all kinds of in-
struction about that single stem dic as applied
to but a single word. But with these syno-
nyms I have a great many other things at my
command, namely, the practical historical and
literary illustrations of the use of these various
synonyms. And all this comes out of the stem,
to speak. Well, I take the stem fac. Again
just glancing along the columns of a dictionary
I get such a collection as this; fact, faction,
factious, factor, factored, factorship, factory,
factotum, factual, factuality, faculative, and
faculty. Just imagine what a mass of thought
is here linked together for your unspinning!
Once more I turn to my English synonyms
and I get fact; deed, performance, act, event,
incident, occurrence, circumstance, reality,
truth. You can work out yourself how much
interesting matter can be extracted from that
list, and you will remember that I have taken
but a single word. What I have done with
this single word can be done with each in turn.
LANGUAGES 95
In this way your child, by having these distinc-
tions pointed out, gets by leaps and bounds an
insight into thought and the expression of
thought which is nothing but marvelous.
Let us now take the stem vid. Here the
connection is not quite so clear because the
stem most used is the supine vis. So I turn to
vis in the dictionary and I take again at ran-
dom; visage, visible, vision, visional, visionary,
visit, visitor, visitant, visible, visitation, and the
like. I take visionary to my dictionary of
synonyms and I find visionary; imaginative,
romantic, dreamy, fanciful, imaginary, fantas-
tical, baseless, shadowy, unreal, ideal, chimer-
ical. It only takes a little imagination to indi-
cate what wonderful things can be drawn out
of this list. But here again, I ask you to re-
member that I have used only three words in
this whole process. But the three Latin stems
have even greater possibilities than those here
indicated because I have said not a word about
compounds as yet. Take such Latin stems as
cred from credo, believe, or defend from de-
femdo, defend, hab from habeo, have, ten from
teneo, hold, pet from peto, seek, laud from
laudo, praise, dubit from dubito, doubt, and
others which can readily be suggested, and see
to what a wealth of language they will lead,
and it all will be language of quality, namely,
96 TEACHING IN THE HOME
language of good repute found in books of
knowledge which must be known and under-
stood if there is to be any association with
knowledge, as it is administered by the schools.
I need not pursue this process further be-
cause the method has been indicated enough to
show how the language study unfolds itself.
It follows, of course, that you will have to
study out some of these things yourself and it
is not unlikely that you will find yourself get-
ting acquainted with what is a new vocabulary
to you, as well as the child. So far from this
being a disadvantage, I think it a positive ad-
vantage in some cases, because then you will be
learning with your child and that simultaneous
approach to the subject is the most powerful
stimulant of interest which a child can receive.
Its analogy may be seen when any child is per-
mitted to go into the father’s workshop and
see him doing things. Here you are doing
things together and your own interest is the
pledge to the child that there is something in-
teresting presently to come forth.
What I have already said about synonyms
will indicate the immense importance of this
use of words for language study. Generally
speaking, the various synonyms of a given
word merely represent the various depart-
ments of language in which they are used, that
LANGUAGES 97.
is, in science, in the arts, in literature, in com-
mon speech and the like. They also generally
are divided into words of Saxon origin and
those of classical origin. By this means you
can very readily give yourself any amount of
material for the particular language you are
studying, but more especially for Latin, be-
cause, as stated, Latin is the language in which
education developed for so many centuries
that it is the base of the scholastic vocabulary
which it is your business to teach the child at
the earliest moment.
It will be found very helpful and instructive,
and as a practical exercise, very fertilizing, to
take a given word and use its synonyms as in-
dicating the general usage. Thus I have be-
fore me the word empty; and as synonyms I
have void, vacant, unoccupied; then, unfur-
mished, unsupplied; then again, destitute, bare;
and again, hollow, unsubstantial, unreal, vain,
waste, desolate; then again, senseless and silly.
It will be interesting to notice this grouping
and find out the reason for it and other sim-
ilar grouping of synonyms. By this means
you will find the leading ideas which have led
to the grouping and discover once more how
meanings divide and usage develops.
All this you will do yourself and by usage
and illustration show the child how the same
98 TEACHING IN THE HOME
meaning changes in its ea pression when ap-
plied to different things and so steadily lead
upward from material to spiritual things and
finally to pure ideas as such. You need have
no fear as to the possibility of all this, for I
have done it repeatedly. And you will find a
perfectly astonishing response, and not a little
amusement, in the attempts to apply the differ-
ing shades of meaning to various objects in the
attempt to match the thing with the idea.
But by this process you are building up the
reasoning power and training linguistic ob-
servation.
Here again I must return to the Bible as
your best tool for language training. For a
very small sum you can get copies of the New
Testament in German, French, Italian, or, in
fact, any other language. In the use of the
Bible you have an immense advantage because
there are large portions of it which most
people know, like the Lord’s Prayer, the
Twenty-third Psalm, Thirteenth Chapter of
First Corinthians and the like. These you
will, of course, have had the children memorize
in English, as also many other passages like
the Beatitudes and the Decalogue. The child
knowing these and their meaning will find it
an interesting exercise to learn them in various
languages. By the time the child reads, the
LANGUAGES 99
resemblances and differences linguistically will
be made available for the eye as well as for the
ear. You can thus use at the same time all the
knowledge thus acquired in English by bring-
ing it into the field of the study of another
language. Take familiar stories like that of
David and Goliath, the Prodigal Son, and
other parables and stories of Old Testament
worthies, and having read them in English re-
peatedly, which you will do as a matter of
English training, read them also in the partic-
ular language which you wish to emphasize.
You may do this by letting the little learner
follow your reading in the foreign tongue,
having the English version before him. By
and by you will reverse this process, all the
while noting how readily similar words are rec-
ognized and using your opportunities for mak-
ing verbal changes clear, and explaining the
manner in which words change their form,
through racial habits of speech and other influ-
€I]CeS.
Your use of the Bible in this manner will
have many indirect results which are mot con-
templated in the language study itself, but it
will all react upon this very powerfully. The
practical effect, too, of the use of the Bible is
very great because when you are dealing with
the subject of Ethics you will have your
100 TEACHING IN THE HOME
material made for you again, and in this way
the same ideas keep recurring and giving fre-
quent chances for correction, for expansion,
and for comparison. The Bible is the univer-
sal text-book.
All this will be made more effective by the
memorizing of certain passages, either of the
Bible or of the other works read, not merely to
get the vocabulary, but also to train the eye and
the ear to the usage and the position of the
various words in the language which you are
studying. This can never be taught. But it
can be mastered by usage and usage alone per-
fects it and creates the feeling for it. Now
the memorizing of passages entire, whether
|Bible verses, passages from Shakspeare, from
German or French poems and stories, creates
the sense of relation of words in the expression
of ideas. Idioms and common conversational
phrases help in this matter, but in any case in
addition to the memorizing of words get the
memory trained in the committing of entire
passages. How easy this is in English we all
know by the passages from the Bible or Prayer
Book which we repeat at church, or the orders
of service in other formal assemblies. We
soon do them mechanically and often even
without thought. But this may be done with
classical passages also. The amount of neces-
LANGUAGES 101
sary knowledge for such a performance, of the
grammar of a language, is very slight. The
more the better of course. But it is a fact that
not a few teachers of Latin insist that the right
teacher can get to sight reading in Latin in six
weeks.
What I have in mind is indicated in a very
interesting introduction to a little book by Pro-
fessor Post on Latin at Sight,” in which he
says: “The Roman boy grasped the thought
not by reasoning as to the relation of the
clauses, but naturally, that is without con-
scious reasoning and in the order of the Latin
words and clauses. We may presume that he
did this, as we ordinarily do in English, at first
sight or first hearing. For us to learn to do
this is harder than for the Roman—just as it is
apt to be hard for one to do it in any language
not his mother tongue—because we do not and
cannot acquire the necessary elementary Latin
in the same natural way in which the Roman
boy acquired his, for the reason that no one now
begins to study Latin until he has passed the
age in which a child acquires a speaking knowl-
edge of his vernacular.”
Now here you have the key to what you are
to do. He says that a child to-day usually
studies Latin at a period when the acquisitive
1 Page 13.
102 TEACHING IN THE HOME
faculties have passed beyond the time at which
the Roman boy sets himself to learn his mother
tongue. That is true and that is the reason
why the road is made so needlessly hard.
Latin should be studied early, very early.
And if you begin in the way I have indicated
at six, your boy will read Latin easily and with
pleasure at the time most children begin it.
It is true that we do not acquire the elementary
Latin early enough, but while we cannot do it
as well as the Roman boy did it, it is not true
that we cannot do a great deal more than we
do and I have shown you the way. Moreover
I have proved that it can be done.
But the main contention here is sound: that
you must come to it naturally, and that natural
approach comes by taking the language
known, that is English, and seeing and using
the equivalent in the language you wish to
study. A Latin New Testament will help in
this, also, though, of course, it is very different
from classical Latin. But for the purposes
I have in mind it will naturalize the tongue and
great strides can be made which will make sub-
sequent progress much more rapid and much
more satisfactory. By usage alone you ac-
quire the sense of the relation of words in
speech or in writing. When you smile at a
foreigner's use of English, even though his
LANGUAGES 103
every word is correct, you feel simply that
he has not had the practice in usage which
teaches the right order and relation of the
words which he knows perfectly. Therefore
have the child memorize passages about all
sorts of things, passages from Caesar, passages
from Virgil, passages from Cicero, all of which
you will first have carefully caused to be mem-
orized and understood in English. With little
children this process works wonders in the later
study of the language. Sometimes you can
set easy poetry to simple tunes and sing them,
which makes a pleasant variation, but the
special thing to keep in mind is to memorize
passages because these present ideas and rela-
tions of words together.
Let me at this point once more guard you
against letting this matter become so formal
that it takes on the aspect of a dry duty or a
task. Do not stay long on anything in which
there is no interest. Judge of the effective-
ness of your work by the interest you excite.
For this reason, while you will look at the text-
books again and again to refresh and en-
lighten yourself, you will put the subject
matter of these books before your child
through the medium of your own under-
standing rather than merely repeating what
the book says. You will remember what
104. TEACHING IN THE HOME
I have said about keeping within the vocabu-
lary which you must acquire, as indeed there
is nothing else to do under some conditions.
In our kindergartens, for example, the little
children talk about cubes, cylinders, and the
like perfectly scientific terms, because nobody
has been able to corrupt them into something
which is not scientific. That principle you will
never overlook. But at the same time you will
not become merely a talking teart-book. You
will know the thing yourself and through the
medium of your own understanding you will
teach.
For this reason you will employ the mo-
ments not formally given to study if indeed
there is in this entire method such a thing as
what is commonly understood by “formal”
study, though it is not less real on that account,
in recapitulation and ea perimentation. For
years, by way of illustration, I went weekly
into a certain section of an American city
where there were no English signs and kept
my visual and other acquaintance with all
kinds of languages by studying out the signs.
Modernized and corrupted as the languages
often were, they nevertheless served the pur-
pose very well. You may do this while walk-
ing with children in reading signs in a foreign
tongue, or analyzing names of foreign origin,
LANGUAGES 105
in the naming of common objects, in the recall-
ing of a favorite passage suggested by some-
thing you see. These unofficial studies are not
the least important of all. Every house on the
street where I live stands to me for an histor-
ical event because I associate the numbers with
a date that has historical significance.
For this practise we have also a most excel-
lent authority not only in the life of Karl
Witte but hardly less in that of John Stuart
Mill. In the Autobiography of the latter he
says: “My father's health required consider-
able and constant exercise, and he walked ha-
bitually before breakfast, generally in the green
lanes toward Hornsey. In these walks I al-
ways accompanied him, and with my earliest
recollections of green fields and wild flowers is
mingled that of the account I gave him daily of
what I had read the day before. To the best
of my remembrance, this was a voluntary
rather than a prescribed exercise. I made
notes on slips of paper while reading, and from
these, in morning walks, I told the story to
him;’ “ . . . “In the course of instruction
which I have partially retraced, the point most
superficially apparent is the great effort to
give, during the years of childhood, an amount
of knowledge in what are considered the higher
1 Autobiography, p. 7.
106 TEACHING IN THE HOME
branches of education, which is seldom ac-
quired (if acquired at all) until the age of
manhood. The result of the easperiment shows
the ease with which this may be dome, and
places in a strong light the wretched waste of
so many precious years as are spent in acquir-
ing the modicum of Latin and Greek com-
monly taught to schoolboys; a waste which has
led so many educational reformers to entertain
the ill-judged proposal of discarding these lan-
guages altogether from general education. If
I had been by nature extremely quick of ap-
prehension or had possessed a very accurate
and retentive memory, or were of a remarkably
active and energetic character, the trial would
not have been conclusive; but in all these
matural gifts, I am rather below than above
par; what I could do assuredly could be dome
by any boy or girl of average capacity and
healthy physical constitution; and if I have ac-
complished anything, I owe it, among other
fortunate circumstances, to the fact that
through my early training bestowed on me by
my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an
advantage of a quarter of a century over my
contemporaries.” " .
I have cited this passage at length, though
the whole chapter is worth careful reading to
1 Autobiography, p. 30.
LANGUAGES 107
reassure all my readers of the great value of
language, especially classical study. In
America there has been for years so strong a
movement against the classics that many peo-
ple who have never thought the matter through
begin with a prejudice against Latin and
Greek. But nothing, to my way of thinking,
is so enriching and so valuable not only for lit-
erary equipment but hardly less so for careful
and logical thought as classical training.
With the many adjuncts to such study to-day,
and the study begun early in life, the classics
should be a joy to children, not a cross; and
where Mill’s father had to make his list of “vo-
cables,” that is, word-lists, these are now avail-
able in print, of almost every language and the
young student to-day may start a whole cen-
tury in advance of the child John Stuart Mill
in mere equipment. The main difference was
in the method and the belief of the elder Mill
in the training of his boy and his giving himself
to it. In this same chapter, Mill says that his
father believed that he was better off without
many youthful associates, because by this
means he was saved from vulgarisms and from
the lowering of his own habits and standards.
In a general way I believe this principle also
sound, and for this reason the careful guard-
ianship of associations is most important. But
I08 TEACHING IN THE HOME
that is another matter. Just now I wish to im-
press the fact that it was by language study—
keen insight into the use of words, distinctions
of usage, definition and area of application,
there was developed one of the most logical
thinkers of whom we have any record. Mr.
Mill also thought that this was vastly better
for him, when applied to the study of logic,
than the study of mathematics because “in
mathematical processes few of the real difficul-
ties of correct ratiocination occur.” This ac-
cords perfectly with President Eliot's opinion
and should cause all parents to place special
and peculiar emphasis on language, words and
their uses, clearness in expression, and this, will
be best done by the collateral use of one or
more languages. Where the language is so
composite as English this is not only desirable;
it is absolutely necessary.
The spirit, in which all that has been indi-
cated in this chapter is to be done may well be
illustrated by liberal quotations from another
lover of literature, and an especial lover of
Greek. What he says about Greek, in the es-
say from which I quote, may with suitable vari-
ations be applied to any language. It is An-
drew Lang's Homer and the Study of
Greek. He says: “Philology might be made
fascinating; the history of a word, and the
LANGUAGES 109
process by which its different forms, in differ-
ent senses, were developed might be made as
interesting as any other story of events. But
grammar is not taught thus: boys are intro-
duced to a jargon about matters meaningless
and they are naturally as much enchanted as
if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans
in vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere
buzz in a chaos of nonsense. They have to
learn to buzz by rote; and a pleasant process
that is—a seductive initiation into the myster-
ies. . . . Our grammar was not so philologi-
cal, abstruse and arid as the instruments of tor-
ture employed at present. . . . We fortu-
nately had a teacher who was not wildly enthu-
siastic about grammar. He would set us long
pieces of the Iliad or Odyssey to learn, and,
when the day’s task was done, would make us
read on adventuring ourselves in “the unseen”
and construing as gallantly as we might with-
out grammar or dictionary. On the following
day we surveyed more carefully the ground
we had skirmished over, and then advanced
again. . . . The result was not the making of
many accurate scholars, though a few were
made; others got nothing better than enjoy-
ment in their work, and the firm belief, op-
posed to that of most schoolboys, that the an-
cients did not write nonsense.” . . .
110 TEACHING IN THE HOME
“Judging from this example, I venture very
humbly to think that any one, who, even at the
age of Cato, wants to learn Greek, should be-
gin where Greek literature, where all profane
literature begins—with Homer himself. It
was thus, not with grammars in vacuo, that
the great scholars of the Renaissance began.
It was thus that Ascham and Rabelais began,
by jumping into Greek and splashing about
till they learned to swim. First, of course, a
person must learn the Greek characters.
Then his or her tutor may make him read a
dozen lines of Homer, marking the cadence, the
surge and thunder of the hexameters—a music
which, like that of the Sirens, few can hear
without being lured into the seas and isles of
song. Then the tutor might translate a pas-
sage of moving interest, like Priam’s appeal
to Achilles; first of course explaining the sit-
uation. Then the teacher might go over some
lines, minutely pointing out how the Greek
words are etymologically connected with many
words in English. Next he might take a sub-
stantive and a verb, showing roughly how their
inflections arose and were developed, and how
they retain forms in Homer which do not oc-
cur in later Greek. There is no reason why
even this part of the lesson should be uninter-
esting. By this time the pupil would know,
LANGUAGES I 11
more or less, where he was, what Greek is, and
what the Homeric poems are like. He might
thus believe from the first that there are good
reasons for knowing Greek, that it is the key
to many worlds of life, of action, of beauty, of
contemplation, of knowledge.” "
You may not, of course, do all this with little
children, and every language has not a Ho-
mer; but every language has its great lit-
erary figures and masterpieces, and you may
do as much or as little as you are capable of
doing or make yourself capable of doing. But
in the spirit portrayed here, and with the en-
thusiasm which should be yours as the custo-
dian of your child’s intellectual future, who
can say what you may not do?
1 “Essays in Little,” pp. 80–83.
CHAPTER V.
GEOGRAPHY
GEOGRAPHY is one of the studies that should
be among the first entered upon in the instruc-
tion of little children. The reason for this is,
that geography offers so many opportunities
for utilizing all the child’s powers effectively at
the same time. Through the use of maps, it
uses and trains the eyes, through the use of
blocks or dissected maps it trains the hands
and the memory, and through its natural join-
ing with history, manners, travels, pictures,
and literature, there is almost no subject that
cannot be touched upon in the teaching of this
science. Handled with even a moderate de-
gree of skill, it may make the whole course of
geography as taught in the grades needless.
The materials necessary, too, are so simple and
so easily obtainable that it is not strange that
the globe was found in every library, and is
found now in almost every modern home. It
lends itself readily to the teaching of the ele-
ments of geometry and geology also, and these
will be discussed a little later on. It is the all-
112
GEOGRAPHY 113
inclusive study, because it is a study of the
earth's surface in the first instance, and by nat-
ural association the study of everything on the
earth's surface. That includes pretty much
everything. .
But there is a reason for the early use of
geography, which is much more far reaching
even than the inclusive character of the subject.
And this is, that it is the best science for illus-
trating and embodying what Herbart calls the
four moments of instruction, namely, the mo-
ment to show, the moment to associate, the mo-
ment to teach, the moment to philosophize.
These constitute, according to this educator,
the four steps in instruction, and geography
lends itself most readily to them, and makes
it easy to learn the manner and method of suc-
cessful teaching. There is almost nothing
that you cannot teach under this heading.
You may take, for example, your own sur-
roundings, your own city, county, state, or
country, and beginning with this you can roam
over the whole of creation, coming back home
whenever it is convenient to do so. You can
bring to your aid the numberless works of
travel, of all kinds; those which have pictorial,
those which have historical, and those which
have biographical interest. You can deal
with the manners, habits, customs, religion, or
114 TEACHING IN THE HOME
what not, of any nation or race under the heav-
ens. You can deal with the fauna, the flora,
of any region, and what, with plants and ani-
mals of the innumerable varieties, you can
make any region in the world alive and full of
interest. On the other hand, you can deal
with its physical features, its mountains, its
valleys, its earthquakes, its glaciers, its forests,
its gold mines, its diamond mines, and fill the
mind with an endless procession of wonderful
things, and all the while you can point at the
precise spot where all this happens!
Then again, through this gate you can come
to governments, laws, and all manner of racial
and national questions. Indeed, there is no
limit. Through photographs, very cheap and
easily obtainable, you can make any country
you wish so vivid that the child will never for-
get it, and what it stands for, and you can
choose what it shall stand for, in the child’s
mind. If you want to go into the economic
side of geography, you can teach what it pro-
duces, and what it does with it, to whom it sells,
from whom it buys, and so on almost without
end. I merely suggest these things out of the
thousands of things that suggest themselves,
as showing what can be done with geography
if you go about it with any sense of what it
contains. Think of all there is to tell about,
GEOGRAPHY 115
in the ordinary adult's mind, from the North
Pole to Patagonia! Think of the fascinations
of the Arctic Zone. Think of those of the Tor-
rid Zone! And think of all that lies between!
Just turn to Prescott's History of Peru or
Mexico, and see if you can find anything more
interesting in this wide world to tell children
than the stories of the Incas, or the Montezu-
mas and their destruction by Pizarro and Cor-
tez! Selected portions from these two works
will make Peru and Mexico forever interest-
ing to the child that hears them. But you can
do the same thing with almost any other por-
tion of the earth's surface. Geography should
be the child’s wonderland.
But contemporary geography is hardly less
interesting. Think what an education the
whole world is getting at this very moment,
in the geography of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
through the thrilling events of the great war!
Here is a struggle that is exciting world inter-
est, and every morning brings fresh news
and fresh happenings from every quarter
of the globe. Now it is a battle of Chili,
then one off the Falkland Islands, then it
is a battle in Persia or Turkey or South
Africa, to say nothing of the thrilling events
in Belgium, France and Poland. What
possible material could be better than to
I 16 TEACHING IN THE HOME
take these ordinary every-day events, and
fix them in the mind of the child now, events
that in ten or twenty years will be history!
But it is not alone the interest of the land and
the people, but the opportunity for learning
what is going on in the world, and how the
world behaves, and what motives are govern-
ing it, and whether these motives are good ones
or bad ones. Probably more people are get-
ting instruction in geography, of which they
have never known anything before, than at
any time in the previous history of the world.
But they are getting all the by-products
of that geographical knowledge. They are
learning about buildings, ancient and mediae-
val art, through cathedrals and public architec-
ture and old world structures, of which they
previously knew nothing. Then again, they
are learning about habits and national charac-
teristics of the great powers of the world as
they never knew them in their lives before.
And they are learning it concretely, through
the maps that almost every metropolitan daily
prints. Think of the material accessible in
this fashion that only a few years ago was not
even obtainable except at a great cost! But
this can be done also with ancient lands and
peoples. There is something going on all the
time in some part of this old earth, which is
GEOGRAPHY - I 17
full of human interest. Geography is the
basal science through which all these things are
understood, because it localizes them. You
can point to the spot and say, “There is the
place,” and that goes a great way toward in-
tegrating it permanently in the mind. The
mere color scheme of maps, in this way, is a
kind of education.
Notice again, the personalities that are en-
gaged in this great struggle. Here are the
men whose names will live in the history of the
world, and will be talked about when the child
of to-day is a man, even an old man. Just as
the mature people of to-day are talking about
Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Sumner,
Garrison, John Brown, and the host of the fig-
ures of our Civil War period, so twenty or
thirty years hence they will be talking about
Raiser Wilhelm II, Gen. Joffre, Gen. Von
Hindenburg, Mr. Asquith, Winston Churchill,
the Grand Duke Nicholas, and a multitude of
others. All this will come in naturally in dis-
cussing the mere geography of the war and
its stirring events. And if with all this, we
include the innumerable writings of the Ger-
man professors, the English professors, and
the American professors, who have spoken or
written about the war, what a vista is opened!
It is not to be supposed the child can take in
I 18 TEACHING IN THE HOME
the full significance of all this, of course. But
it can learn the names and master some of the
connections, and that is a great deal.
but what seems to me even more important,
think of the public documents that are being
made accessible, just for the labor of picking
them up. The official documents like the
White papers, the Yellow papers, and the offi-
cial statements of the various governments,
there you have the raw material, from the
study of which many an historian of the future
will write the text-books which these very
babies of to-day will have to study. Think of
the interest and pleasure they will have when
they come to some citation, and remember to
have heard it read or discussed or even talked
about in childhood! There is literally no limit
to this matter, when one once gets a real con-
ception of how these things are interlinked with
each other. In this manner, the Russo-Turk-
ish War of 1876 was impressed upon my own
mind. So I fixed the South African or Boer
War into the minds of my own children. So
the wise parent of to-day, the teaching father
or mother, will utilize the world’s activities to
fertilize, enrich, and occupy with real knowl-
edge the child mind. The mere recital of these
things makes the blood tingle and excites the
imagination.
GEOGRAPHY 119
I
The visible symbol of geography is a map
or a globe, or both. Under such a review of the
subject as I have described, it signifies world
life. “Everywhere there is life, life full and
free, everywhere delight in beholding the mul-
titude of scenes which are unfolding them-
selves before the child.” Get a large map of
the world, and hang it where it meets the eye
most frequently. Ours hung in the dining
room, and was made most use of at meal times,
chiefly because that was the time we were all
together, and the meal hour was usually the
instruction hour. But hang it, in any case,
where it is easily accessible and where the
forms of the continents and the various lands
are easily and readily seen, and where the child
will be soon accustomed to think of the size and
shape of the various portions of the earth's sur-
face. Always use a map, and whatever the
subject you happen to be discussing, use the
map, because it objectifies what you are talk-
ing about, and makes the question and answer
method easy and simple. It also stimulates
the imagination and provokes reflection upon
the things seen and handled, as it were, in this
way. Map instruction is always concrete.
In presenting the physical aspects of geog-
120 TEACHING IN THE HOME
raphy, for instance, land and water are always
before the child. Soon mountains and valleys
are taken for granted. Soon also rivers and
river basins are differentiated. Take the fa-
miliar ones of our own country and familiar-
ize the child with them, through stories about
them and their discovery. Thus about the
Mississippi, tell the stories of the early explor-
ers. Here is a rich field for literary lore
and interesting facts. Most early discovery
followed the rivers, because it was the easiest
form of travel. As you come to particular
points, pause, and tell about them, and then
have the child try to do the same thing. It
will be found rare sport for him and for you!
Or start at any well-known point and make all
sorts of excursions from it. But get the
greater things first, and then gradually take
in the more specific and lesser points and di-
visions. Trace the mountain system around
the whole earth. Pause long enough at va-
rious stations at things of interest, and make
the journey a sort of pictorial tour. Plenty
of material for this purpose is easily to be had.
After the great divisions have been clearly
outlined, take particular countries, and get
your material about them together, and take
them in detail. Your only trouble will be
that you won’t be able to deal with all that you
GEOGRAPHY 121
have to give, because you will be led along into
all sorts of side inquiries about them, and their
people, and their natural history and phenom-
ena. This is really philosophizing about these
lands and should be encouraged. When you
can, use some extract from literature in con-
nection with it, as when in Spain, and talking
about the Alhambra, have a picture of it, and
read some selection from Washington Irving's
volume on that wonderful palace. So with
other places and countries. But always be
pictorial, concrete, fastening on something
particular and interesting. “Interest,” says
Compayré, “is the liking one may conceive for
a thing, and that causes one to take pleasure
in it. To interest is to arouse the hunger of
the intellect. Let us mark well that its aim is
not to amuse or divert and make teaching into
play. . . . Interest, as Herbart understood
it, is at once the characteristic of things which
captivates the attention, and a feeling of cu-
riosity, of alertness and activity of intellect
manifested in the mind. . . . It is interest
which is the spring of mental activity, the prin-
ciple of the intellectual life.” "
Take time enough to arouse this kind of in-
terest. Do not let it get to be mere diversion
or amusement, though it may have this ele-
1 Compayré, Herbart, p. 48.
122 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ment, too. But keep to the facts, and keep
to the principle that you are dealing with
knowledge, and that it is not less knowledge,
because it is highly colored and interest-
ing knowledge. Whenever it is possible to
link such information to something that
relates to childhood, do that, as the com-
parison of the child’s own life with the life of
childhood in some other time or country or
historical epoch. The social life of various
countries may thus be made the subject of in-
numerable interesting lessons and informing
talks. But don’t do it all yourself. Let the
child do as much of it as you can get him to do.
If you can bring to this kind of teaching ob-
jects of one kind and another illustrative of
the thing you are teaching, so much the
better. Blank maps are easily obtainable,
whereby children can be given the specific
hand-work of coloring maps after the pattern
of the large map before them. That often
gives relief and supplies “rest work” from
thinking too consecutively. In fact, in this
matter children can do what most freshman do
in college in history courses, in fixing histori-
cal geography. Sometimes it may be inter-
esting to take a single country, like France,
and show how often it has changed shape un-
der different rulers. All this will visualize all
GEOGRAPHY 123
the time, the land and its meaning, and its his-
tory, but the thing for this period you must
keep in mind is the geographical interest.
Indeed, in all the various studies the period
for any one study is simply the temporary
emphasis upon that portion of it, rather than
upon some other, instead of being an entirely
different subject. Thus the knowledge be-
comes coordinated knowledge, and all things
are seen to be linked with one another.
Trace out from time to time, the great voy-
ages of the discoverers, like Columbus, Ves-
pucci, Magellan, and others. Take trips
from one point on the globe to another, and
take in the interesting things on the way.
After reasonable familiarity with this on the
plane map, do it with the globe, and open up
the subject of the sphericity of the earth.
More about this when we come to the study of
geometry and other applied mathematics.
But already you can point out what the spher-
icity of the earth does, as to distances, and
trade routes, and the like. You can show
what canals have done, the Suez and the Pan-
ama and the Kiel Canal, and others. This
opens up a fresh and vast chapter of material,
which will at once occur to every mature
mother or father. But don’t come to any-
thing suddenly and without context. Lead
124 TEACHING IN THE HOME
from one thing to another, the simple things
first, those biggest and most easy of under-
standing and differentiation, and the more
complex later on. You are not giving a mass
of fragments unrelated to each other. You
are teaching, in a connected way, the science of
geography. Never let that fact get away
from you. This is a fundamental principle.
II
Names should figure largely in your teach-
ing of geography. Have you ever thought
that the whole world’s life, and much of its his-
tory, politics, and civilization, has turned on
names? I hope I need not tell you what you
can do when you come to the great names of
the world capitals, like Rome, Athens, Paris,
Vienna, Berlin, London, St. Petersburg, or
Petrograd, as we shall hereafter have to say,
and others. Here your work is cut out for
you, because there is so much of history, art,
science and the rest suggested merely by the
simple name. Just to tell the story of these
cities with pictures, photographs, and the like,
is to open a whole new world to any child.
But just now you are teaching their geograph-
ical location and position in the world. Show
their relation to the sea and the great roads of
travel. Work out for yourself why they are
GEOGRAPHY 125
where they are, rather than somewhere else.
Put it is hardly less interesting to take them
up from the linguistic point of view. Person-
ally we have found linguistic geography the
most interesting of all. Take, for example,
a name like Lincoln, which is really Lin-
colonia, and in England marks the site of
a Roman colony. Take the names that end
in burg, which really means a fortified place,
and work out why. Look up in any encyclo-
paedia the history of names, and you will find a
mine of information both for yourself and the
child. In a country like ours, the history of
Indian names is full of interest. Or, point out
that all cities that end in ville the termination
comes from the French, which means city or
town. Or those which end in polis, which is the
Greek word for city, like Indiana-polis or Min-
nea-polis. Or, if you want to dip into ecclesi-
astical history, take the names of cities that are
named after saints, like St. Louis, St. Paul,
St. Joseph, or St. (San) Francisco. Trace
out the history of the names in your own vicin-
ity, and find out by way of illustration that
Danvers, Mass., is really D'Anvers, the
French form of Antwerp. This is the way
President White first interested the students
of Michigan University in the study of history
with some most astonishing, and often amus-
136 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ing, results. Almost any locality, in this way,
can be made the beginning of very interesting
and fruitful investigations.
This is especially true when you are deal-
ing with Old World names, almost all of
which, especially the Asiatic, have some spe-
cial significance. Find out why you sing in
your hymn book about “Araby the Blest.”
Compare the Straits of Bab-el Mandeb with
Bab-el. Take some of the commoner names,
and trace them to their origin, and you will have
amusement and instruction made to order for
you. Almost any gazetteer of names or ency-
clopaedia will give you these facts in great abun-
dance. Everything is raw material for your
own assimilation, and then for the fertilization
of your child’s mind. The older the names
are, the more interesting they are, because in
the youth of the race this was the simplest way
of fixing anything in the mind and conscious- .
ness of the people most interested. Thus you
can infer that Heliopolis was the site of a great
temple of the sun, when you remember that
helios is the Greek word for sun and polis
means city. Still in Egypt, link Alexandria
with its founder and you open the whole sub-
ject of Alexander, his conquests and life, and
make it concrete with the existing city of to-
day. Many names in themselves tell a story
GEOGRAPHY 127
of absorbing interest. Where the name is
linked with a personality, make the linkage
clear, and use it again when you come to study
history. But just now you are teaching geog-
raphy; keep that in mind and keep the physi-
cal relation in the foreground of your teaching
and talk.
You will find the Bible specially rich in this
sort of thing, because almost every Bible name
has some significance, which is supposed to be
derived from the circumstances surrounding
its foundation. Thus Kiriath Sepher indi-
cates that it was the seat of a library which is
now lost, because it means Book City. Let
nothing of this sort get by you, as you go
along. As you travel over the continents, no-
tice these things and jot them down for your
own investigation, and you will be surprised
how much use you will make of them. The
whole history of the ancient religions can be
reconstructed, almost, from the surviving
names of the deities, and a good deal of the
same sort of thing can be done for nations
through the names of their principal places.
Geographical teaching should always be
vivid, picturesque, and ea'act. You can make
as much of a “story” of it as you please, pro-
vided you are always exact about it. This
is of very great importance, because unless
I 28 TEACHING IN THE HOME
you are exact, you will mix things up in the
young mind and simply get a great mass of
blurred impressions. Don’t leap too far at a
single jump. Tell things slowly, and see to
it that the things are connected distinctly with
the time, place and circumstances of the geo-
graphical knowledge which you wish to teach.
Always remember that in the infant mind
there are many latent forces to be awakened,
and it is important, so to speak, that if you are
to start an electric current that you touch the
right button. In fact, that is the way to think
about the child mind. You are not shovelling
fuel into the mind, you are leading the child’s .
own native mental energy to exert itself in a
given direction. You are the efficiency engi-
neer to see to it that nothing is wasted and
that its power is not diverted to useless ends.
Don’t let the young mind get sidetracked
in mere minutiae, however interesting. Tim-
buctoo is interesting but not important.
Rome is both interesting and important! If
you happen to live in Carlinville, Illinois, it is
worth while to begin at Carlinville, but don’t
stay there, because the vast mass of humanity
never heard of it, and would not be interested
in it if they did. Stay with a child by the
things which are big enough and full enough
of content to make it worth while to dwell
GEOGRAPHY I29
upon often, and which yield something fresh
and new every time you talk about them.
This does not mean that you are to slight local
matters, quite the contrary. It is really to
give them their true significance and liberate
the mind from subjugation to locality and in-
tellectual provincialism. A child can be made
cosmopolitan in thought much more easily
than an adult. It has no prejudices already
formed, it has no interests to subserve, it has
no violent dislikes to overcome. Therefore
seek to make it cosmopolitan in thought by ac-
quainting it with the varieties of thought
which there are in the world, through the vari-
ous peoples who inhabit it.
III
Natural phenomena, plants, animals, and
striking configurations should occupy an im-
portant place in the teaching of geography. It
is not merely that there shall be information
about the plants and animals themselves, but
these become gradually the indices of the lati-
tudes from which they come. A lion, for ex-
ample, should suggest an African jungle to a
child, not an Arctic ice floe! Here you bring
in the principle of association which helps very
much for geography, especially as to fauna
and flora. There are tropical fruits and flow-
I 30 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ers, sub-tropical fruits and flowers, and fruit
common to temperate zones. If these are as-
sociated in the mind of the child with the kind
of climate and kind of temperature of the re-
spective countries where they are indigenous,
there is a good deal gained in the way of geo-
graphical association. Thus the reading of
Kipling will always associate elephants with
India, though they are not confined to India.
But that will open the way to the commercial
question of ivory and others of a similar na-
ture. Lion hunting will visualize the jungle
in Africa, as tiger hunting will visualize it in
the imagination with India. These and such
like associations are of very great interest for
themselves and for the study of geography.
Common objects in daily use can be made use-
ful for study, in this way, by tracing out the
country of origin, and where objects are
stamped with the country of origin as is now
Tequired by many countries, including our
own, there is a new field of interest opened.
Flowers lend themselves particularly to this
kind of study, and have the added use that
presently this same information will be used in
elementary studies in botany and science gen-
erally. Whenever plants are mentioned in
reading, or foliage, or vegetation of any kind,
it is well to raise the question of where such a
GEOGRAPHY 131
country naturally would be. Thus you intro-
duce naturally the question of climate, fer-
tility, soil, and other matters. Geography
thus becomes the agent of teaching, as it
should, and as every study should, something
beside itself. If an effort is made at differen-
tiating species, this is so much additional gain.
IBut it will readily be seen how things hang to-
gether if these things are associated together,
and every fresh association of this kind makes
a new peg for the memory to hang upon. If
the geography is not remembered by one thing,
it is remembered by another, and this is the
soundest way of memorizing anything, because
it comes through association with some kind
of permanent knowledge. Birds and their
plumage form another attractive field for this
kind of geographical study. Just think what
an instructive thing a visit to even a very ordi-
nary zoological garden will do in this connec-
tion, and what added pleasure the visit will
give if there is brought to it some, even slight,
knowledge of what it is expected will be seen.
The whole range of the animal world is thus
placed at the teacher's disposal for furthering
a knowledge of the earth and its structure.
The same is true if particular mountain peaks
or volcanoes are selected and made the subject
of study and exposition. No child that has
I 32 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ever had the story of the eruptions of Vesuvius
or Mt. Pelée brought to its attention, espe-
cially with photographs, will ever forget the
place and the conditions and the effects of such
eruptions.
But here again warning must be given that
you are not to plunge into these things without
preparation for them. Before you talk about
volcanoes, tell something about the earth and
its crust and its interior. Explain how much
knowledge we have about such things, and
then show how volcanoes, from causes not
known, though they have been extinct for
years, suddenly become active. If you tell the
story of Herculaneum and Pompeii in this con-
nection, and read an appropriate passage
from, let us say, Bulwer's Last Days of
Pompeii, you will not only make an impres-
sion which will create permanent interest, but
you will arouse a desire to investigate the
whole subject, which will lead you around the
whole globe. You may find that you have to
look up and learn more about volcanoes than
you ever knew in your own life before!
Which is just as it ought to be! But come to
it gradually and by easy steps, first things
known, and then things new.
The first question concerning any new plant
or flower or animal should be “Where is the
GEOGRAPHY 133
home of this thing,” and sometimes to work
backward to it, from the nature of the animal
itself, is very interesting. Heavy fur usually
means one thing, light fur another. Some
kinds of teeth mean one thing, others another.
The habitat of animals generally shows what
they must subsist on, and this in turn is shown
in the tools they have to work with. This
process can be worked out very well with do-
mestic animals by noticing their differences,
and thus tracing out their original homes.
The distribution of man throughout the earth
is similarly useful for its geographical content.
Why are races that inhabit certain portions of
the earth, as they are, as distinguished from
those which we know and see daily? This im-
mediately again, raises the question of the ef-
fect of climate, food and nature upon man, and
whether he makes his conditions or they make
him! This question is readily seen to be one
of very large implications. Consideration of
it cannot begin too soon.
Along with this, there may be raised simple
questions in astronomy. We speak of the
“North” star and the “Southern” Cross, and
the like. Why? The study of the heavens
helps especially, as it affords the easiest ap-
proach to the story of the movement of the
earth and the stellar bodies. So the question
I34 TEACHING IN THE HOME
of the relation of the earth to the sun and the
planets, and the general development of the
Copernican hypothesis is opened up. Inci-
dentally, the moon is introduced, and the
changes of the moon and its use as a measure
of time, and the relation of all this to the sea-
Sons, and its significance to religious festivals,
as Easter, and others, can be shown, and this,
in turn, joined to the celebration of these fes-
tivals in various countries, in their various dif-
ferent ways. All this, it will be seen, has a
bearing more or less direct upon the earth and
its surface and conditions and inhabitants and
configurations, all of which we call the science
of geography, broadly speaking. There is lit-
erally no limit to the amount one can do, if the
way is open and the inclination leads on. But
the child so taught will never find geography
tame or unpleasing.
IV
But no study of geography with children
will be complete that does not make large use
of books of travel. It makes little difference
where you begin, after you have a little knowl-
edge of the map. But such books as Nan-
sen’s Farthest North, or Livingstone's Af-
rica, or Stanley's Im Darkest Africa, or
Wright's Greenland's Ice Fields, or any one
GEOGRAPHY 135
of a thousand that could be mentioned, will
be found invaluable. Any library under
“Travel” will give you all the material you can
possibly use. You need not use all of any one
book, but simply select such as have the ele-
ment of picturesqueness and vivacity of de-
scription. Often biographies will give the
same result, especially if they be biographies
of explorers which add the element of striking
personality. Travellers usually try to make
their stories interesting, and while they may
often lack historical accuracy, they answer for
your purpose, namely, geography. The
books of Parkman like the Oregon Trail,
Conspiracy of Pontiac, Pioneers of France
in the New World, Count Frontenac, and
others that might be named, are full of geo-
graphical as well as historical interest. The
works of Prescott and Motley are in the same
class. The advantage of using books like
these, rather than more modern ones, is that
they are classics of their kind, and are wonder-
ful models of style, as well as of deep and irre-
sistible attraction. There are innumerable
books on England and France and New Eng-
land, and the West, and Far West, which may
be used. Almost any library will have all you
can possibly use. For Japan, the works of
William Elliott Griffis will be found unique
136 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and full of charm. The same author has writ-
ten interestingly, too, of Holland. Indeed,
anything from this pen has value for literary
form, for historical and geographical interest.
But I need not enumerate, because your
library is at hand and has them all.
Here again, do not let the subject get away
from you. You have been talking, let us say,
about Holland, its location, and natural fea-
tures, the dikes that keep out the sea, and its
reclamations from the ocean, and all this should
be recalled when you take up, say, Brave Lit-
tle Holland, by Dr. Griffis. If you read
from the Conquest of Mearico, recall the
early discoverers and their story before enter-
ing upon some passage of interest. Don’t do
things disconnectedly. Have a context for
your story before you begin it and let it come
in its proper place, first the blade, then the ear,
then the full corn in the earl Original pic-
tures by travellers are often of the highest
value, because they are out of the conventional
lines of illustration. But do not lose your
subject in too many details. See that the big
Outlines are always kept in mind, and don’t
get lost in detail. In dealing with such a book
as Amelia Edwards's Thousand Miles Up
the Nile, you will have many things to linger
over. Pass rapidly over those which require
GEOGRAPHY 137
maturity and reflective capabilities, and deal
with those which have visual quality, which
suggest pictures, and which can readily be
comprehended and retained.
Where it is possible to consult relief maps,
do this, because this will make things much
more real. It will also help for some elemen-
tary studies in geology later on. But let the
travellers tell their stories, and let the interest
excited be the measure of how long you hold
on to a particular line. Never quite eachaust
anything, so far as interest is concerned, be-
cause this makes it possible to return to it.
But in general, the narrative of a real man,
having real experiences, especially if they be
of an exciting and thrilling nature, cannot fail
to help you in your work for the child. I
think it wise also, in this same connection, to
point out that you will often be in danger of
having your own interest so aroused in a given
subject that you will think because it interests
you it must therefore also interest the child.
This is not always true. I have myself had
the experience of reading to children, getting
violently interested myself and reading breath-
lessly on, only to discover presently, that
though the children were watching me cu-
riously, I had gotten far beyond their depth.
Read not to them but with them. Keep the
I 38 TEACHING IN THE HOME
idea uppermost that you are getting this
knowledge with them and that their interest
and understanding is the paramount matter.
In general, it will be found wise to keep to
groups in these matters. That is, when deal-
ing with Europe, concentrate on the various
European matters. If you are dealing with
Asia, drop everything that is not Asiatic.
So while you are dealing with matters Ameri-
can, let everything bear upon America. This
is simply to avoid confusion, but even more,
to drink deeply enough of one thing at a time
to prevent the matters from becoming simply
interesting diversions. In general, keep along
with the history you are studying, so that these
things will reenforce each other. Then the
transition from one to the other will be easy
and natural, and not abrupt. You can often
give the whole study a local and contemporary
touch, by pointing out the various classes of
foreign, that is, non-English-speaking people,
in the community, and awakening the liveliest
interest in them by discussing the country they
came from, what they probably did there, why
they left, and what they are doing here, and
what changes they must find here as contrasted
with their native lands. That will give a kind
of respect for this class of our fellow citizens,
which has long been wanting in American life.
GEOGRAPHY, 139
Under this view, an Italian won’t be a “Dago,”
and similar epithets will not easily be adopted
by the little becoming citizen of the republic!
Books of travel enlarge the mind and ea:-
pand the intellectual horizon. Next to trav-
elling itself they are the best substitute.
Many people who have never been able to
leave their own firesides in the body, have, in
the mind and imagination, roamed all over
this broad earth, have tasted the delights of
foreign scenes, and had touch with foreign
peoples, and have learned how various and
how wonderful is this thing we call humanity.
Such persons cease with this experience to
be narrow-minded, because they have been
abroad. They cease to be provincial, because
they become citizens of the world. They get
that comparative view of things, which makes
for tolerance and inclusiveness of spirit, which
is the best result of travel. This is what your
work in geography mainly should do. It is
of very little worth to know the physical
boundaries of nations, and know nothing of
the nations thus bounded. Humanize the
study in this way at every turn. Try to cre-
ate sympathies with the peoples thus studied,
with their conditions, their hardships, and their
joys. This also has high educational as well
as spiritual value, and helps to create the hu-
140 TEACHING IN THE HOME
manized being you want your child to be.
This is the essence of true culture as well.
Perhaps this can be indicated by a quotation
from Goldsmith’s “Traveller” as well as any-
thing. He is speaking of Switzerland and
the Swiss:
My soul turn from them, turn we to survey
Where rougher climes a nobler race display —
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread.
No product here, the barren fields afford
Eut man and steel, the soldier and his sword;"
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But Winter lingering, chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,
He sees his little lot, the lot of all;
Sees no contiguous palace rear its head,
To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
No costly lord, the sumptuous banquet deal,
To make him loathe his vegetable meal;
But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose
Breasts the keen air and carols as he goes;
With patient angle trolls the finny deep,
Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep;
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,
And drags the struggling savage unto day.
GEOGRAPHY 141
At night, returning, every labor sped
He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard
Displays her cleanly platter on the board,
And haply too, some pilgrim thither led,
With many a tale, repays the nightly bed.
Not often does descriptive verse display the
sweet qualities of heart and mind which are
found in these lines, and the child to whom
such verses are read or to whom travel through
books and imagination bequeathes a similar
spirit, is a favored being, because sympathetic
with the whole wide brotherhood of mankind!
CHAPTER VI
HISTORY
“THE world,” says Emerson in his great es-
say on History, “exists for the education of
each man. There is no age or state of society
or mode of action in history to which there is
not somewhat corresponding in his life.
Everything tends in a wonderful manner to
abbreviate itself, and yield its own virtue to
him. He should see that he can live all his-
tory in his own person. He must sit stolidly
at home, and not suffer himself to be bullied
by kings or empires, but know that he is
greater than all the geography and all the gov-
ernment of the world; he must transfer the
point of view from which history is commonly
read, from Rome and Athens and London, to
himself, and not deny his conviction that he is
the court, and if England or Egypt have any-
thing to say to him he will try the case; if not,
let them forever be silent. He must attain
and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield
their secret sense, and poetry and annals are
alike. The instinct of the mind, the purpose
142
HISTORY 143
of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of
the signal narrations of history. . . . This
life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece,
Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church,
Court, and Commerce, as with so many flowers
and wild Ornaments, grave and gay. I will
not make account of them. I believe in Eter-
nity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain,
and the Islands—the genius and creative prin-
ciples of each and all eras in my own mind.”
Thus one of the most creative and inspiring
souls that ever held a pen approached the
study of the world and announced the leading
principle of worthy historical study, that it
must not be viewed objectively, but subjec-
tively—made our own and verified not merely
by literature, but verified by the experience
and thought of each individual man. This is
what should be kept constantly before the
mind in introducing the young child to the
study, which records the uses to which the uni-
versal mind has been put, whether it be in the
dress of Greek or Roman, Italian or German,
whether embodied in a great book, a great
cathedral or a great picture. Very beautiful,
but very vague, you say. True enough, but
if there is anything more vague than history,
it would be hard to know what it is, unless it
is that mythical thing called the Subconscious,
144; TEACHING IN THE HOME
which is playing the thinking of mankind such
hilarious pranks at the present time. If you
will take any personality, Caesar, Cromwell,
or Goethe, and collect the opinions and inter-
pretations which have been made of him, you
will find yourself bewildered at the variety of
uses which may be made of the same facts.
The fighting generals never get through their
arguments as to what actually occurred on any
battlefield. The English teach that Waterloo
was won by Wellington; the Germans teach
that Blücher was responsible for the downfall
of Napoleon; and as for Napoleon himself,
well, only recently one writer compiled a book
composed entirely of Napoleon’s own words,
supposing probably that this settled things,
not recognizing that even this involved the
writer’s choice of material, and that this selec-
tion was only another “interpretation!”
You will never get the soul out of history by
merely taking a table of contents of mankind’s
actions, or a chronological table of the order
in which they occurred. Some people think
that is history. But history only really begins
when we identify ourselves with what hap-
pened and try to live through the experiences
of the past and get them revivified in the
dialect of our own experience. This is what
Emerson means when he says that “we are
HISTORY 145.
always coming up with the emphatic facts of
history in our private experience and verifying
them here.” This is not only true, but they
are never really verified until they are verified
in the private experience. Viewed in this way,
history is something fascinating, thrilling and
absorbing. It links you with all the world,
because it is all the world in your own terms.
It makes you fight with the fighters, love with
the lovers, suffer with the sufferers, and tri-
umph with the victorious. It lifts you out of
the limitations of your immediate surroundings
into the area of world life and world events.
It makes your own mind and emotions the
center of creation. The majestic figures that
have made the world’s life or marred it, are not
strangers they are fellow citizens of the world.
The natural outcome of all this is a sort of
comradeship with men and events. There
comes a sort of identification with the actors of
the world drama which is like that which you
experience at a well-acted play. When you sit
in your darkened auditorium and cry softly
over some story that is being enacted on the
stage yonder, you know perfectly well that it
is only play-acting—but you cry, not because
of the sorrow which is sham, but the sorrow
which is real and which in your own heart you
know to exist somewhere, and which may be
146 TEACHING IN THE HOME
possible to you. In other words you identify
yourself with the actor to the extent of feeling
really what very likely to him is not only
merely acting but even hard and disagreeable
work. Are you duped then? Far from it.
You are having something which is vital and
genuine to you, whatever his performance may
be to him. The very greatest of all poets has
told us that all the world is a stage; well, then,
since these actors are here and are giving you
their parts, observe them, feel with them, un-
derstand them, if you can, and let them live in
you. That is the way to study history.
But you will say to me that this is a mature
use of the mind and not at all possible to chil-
dren. In fact, just the reverse is true. When
you go to the playhouse how often the best
efforts of the actor fail to touch you, not be-
cause the efforts are not worthy and well-
directed, but because you are full of your ware-
house, your clothing and tinwares, your leather
and wool, your law cases and bankruptcies,
your pots and kettles, your dressmaking and
your housekeeping, and the thousand things
which have gripped your life, and made it hard
for you to get out of yourself. Habit has
already made you the slave to many things, and
the task-masters won’t let go! But the child
has no such despots. His mind is ready to play
HISTORY 147
with anybody, Cleopatra or Nero, Demosthe-
nes or Hannibal, and only wants a suitable
introduction to make these personages perma-
ment members of his entourage. And curi-
ously enough if you don’t introduce them they
will invent others to take their places. Your
child is a real world citizen.
Then again your emotions may be dulled
and you unable to experience the great big
human emotion as contrasted with your own
little Humboldt Avenue delusions. You
think in terms of what Brattle Street, or Chest-
nut Hill, think about the matters, and feel with
the mob instinct of your class and associates.
But the child, with uncorrupted emotions, is
more democratic and more cosmopolitan. He
doesn’t have to have a tag attached to things
before he knows how he feels about them.
They are interesting to him because they are
human. He will, very likely, share your
thoughts and come to new things with some of
the cerements of your narrowness and preju-
dice hanging to him, but, generally speaking,
he will accept any kind of company and try to
adjust himself to it, and it is your business to
introduce him to all kinds and varieties. That
is one of the uses of history which many stu-
dents have not yet discovered. They still
think they must add a “moral” at the end of
148 TEACHING IN THE HOME
each tale, just as the preacher must tell you
exactly what every text means. Well, the
preacher does not know what every text means,
and you do not know what the real character of
the famous personages of the world’s life was,
except by fragmentary and often misleading
accounts. Therefore let them tell their own
story, and let the child try out his mind and
feelings together, as each one unfolds himself
before him, through the medium of your read-
ing or teaching. You will then see how
uncorrupted emotion works, in the pres-
ence of things which seem to you stale and
unprofitable. You will possibly find your
own emotions renewed in seeing them blos-
Som again in the soul of your child. And
with your wisdom and supervising maturity
you will know when to stop and change the
course of these feelings, because you will know
when they are becoming dangerous and un-
wholesome. And you will turn from one to
another, and so gently, but surely, train all the
emotions because you will select your subjects
with care, having that in mind. You will
make many a dark day bright, and many a
dreary day delightful, because you will show
how to get at the springs of the universal life,
which makes people superior to their immedi-
ate environment.
HISTORY 149
I
The best way to begin the teaching of his-
tory with little children is through the study of
personalities, that is, biography. You have
been teaching, let us say, the geography of
France. Well, Napoleon comes first to mind,
and that offers at once a starting point for get-
ting a great deal of interesting historical
material through the study of the biography of
that amazing individual. In English history
you have your work cut out for you, from King
Alfred onwards. You can vary it any time
by taking now rulers and conquerors, now
literary men, now scientific men, now ex-
plorers, now churchmen. There is no land
that has not its interesting figures and as
you deal with the geography, teaching the
story of the land, teach also the story of
some leading personality, so that by the princi-
ple of association you link the land and the
individual. Just as the history of England
is the history of London, or that of France
is the history of Paris, so almost every epoch
of history has some leading figure. In fact,
it will be well to do this by the great epochs
of history, which are often named for individ-
uals, as the Age of Napoleon, or the Age of
Frederick the Great, or the Age of Pericles,
150 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and so on. Who these people were, and what
they did, is an endless tale, to be sure, but the
main outlines can be very readily grasped and
made the basis for historical exposition.
There is no better way of teaching history than
through the biographical medium. You will
find, for one thing, that such characters are
very speedily embodied into the play of chil-
dren, and you are thus forming also the play-
stuff of the child’s mind and this of a quality
which yields knowledge. Be somewhat careful
to select the great outstanding figures first,
though it makes little difference where you
start. It is an advantage of course to be con-
secutive. The Greek, Roman and Semitic
mythologies form the best point of departure,
because mythology represents, itself, the child-
hood of the race and accords naturally with
the psychological instincts and habits of child
thought. Reep it as a principle that the
nearer you get to the beginnings of race his-
tory and development the surer you are that
you are dealing with the materials of child
thought.
For this purpose fairy tales of all lands are
useful and interesting because they are really
the outcome of racial myths of one kind or
another. Look into a book like Fraser's
Golden Bough, for example, and see what the
HISTORY 15 1
childhood of the race was like, and you will find
many things to interest you as well as the child.
It is interesting, sometimes, to take the pagan
deities and see them under their various forms,
Greek, Roman, Semitic, Norse and Germanic,
and see the same idea change its form as it
changes its climate and surroundings. But
see to it that it is not left hanging in the air,
unconnected with anything. Link German
fairies and myths with Germany. Link Eng-
lish stories with England. If you deal with
the Arabian Nights get first of all a picture of
Haroun and the Bagdad of his time fixed in
the mind as a suitable prelude to the tales them-
selves. Japanese and other Asiatic folklore
will be found interesting as a variant from
IEuropean matter. All this has historical
value and is the beginning of history. You
can easily tell the story of the Ten Thousand
Greeks, as Xenophon tells it, to a child, and
with a map can follow the route they travelled
and have all kinds of interesting moments. In
every such case see that a personality stands
out which makes the story radiate around him
and his work, because this is the easiest way to
fix the details in the mind. It brings a sort of
consecutiveness to the narrative and helps to
drop things into an orderly form.
Most children are interested in the childhood
152 TEACHING IN THE HOME
of great men, and this by way of introduction,
forms a very effective method of creating inter-
est. Think of what may be done in this way,
for example, with the story of Moses, begin-
ning with the baby in the bulrushes! And this
again leads me to say that Egypt with its
magic and mystery, is a wonderful field for this
sort of thing. If you once make an outline of
Moses’ biography and reduce it to modern
terms, and then read the classic passages from
the Bible which tell that history, you have in
fact started the child on what is known as the
historic method by which all modern history
writing is governed.
Often the history of special groups makes an
interesting historical excursion, as when, for
example, you take up the Crusades and open
up the wealth of material which they afford.
Or, if you are interested in orders, take the
Rnights Templars, or the Knights Hospital-
lers, or the Teutonic Knights, and work out
their story, as any encyclopædia or special
works give it. It will be found very fruitful
and be somewhat out of the common pathway.
Don’t be afraid to dip into unusual things, al-
ways remembering that you tell about real
people and real things, and fix in the mind
somebody who had something to do with the
events recorded. For American children, the
HISTORY 153
great discoverers, especially those of your own
region, and the leading figures of American
history, will be found useful. Such figures as
De Soto, Pere Marquette, lend themselves to
wonderful effect in opening and developing the
historic sense. Similarly, the biography of
Franklin or of Washington and others show
what can be done in the way of integrating
American history before the full importance of
it is realized. The heroes of special sections
like Daniel Boome or Sam Houstom add the
touch of local color and inspiration. Every por-
tion of our land has such local figures and they
should be studied first for themselves and then
for their larger relations to the national life.
But let this be at first objectively done.
Just let the story tell itself and don’t try to
make it didactic in the sense of formally com-
mitting and holding up the child to its mastery
in formal way. If you do your work carefully
the interest you excite will do that better than
you can do it by formal insistence. Let the
child repeat the story as often as possible by
telling it over to others, or if told by one parent
let it be repeated to the other. Such names
readily become household words and when met
with later on are old friends with whom the
new relation of scholarly approach is readily
cultivated. You will see how easily all this
154 TEACHING IN THE HOME
can be done in connection with the geography,
because so many of the world great names are
linked with the physical configurations of the
earth, as Hudson's Bay, or Magellan's Straits,
and the like. In fact, these two usually go on
parallel lines. When you meet the one, teach
also the other.
In the study of biography as history, pic-
tures and photographs help a great deal, and
whenever accessible should be freely employed.
That visualizes what is taught and makes one
more agency by which the memory will retain
what is told. Often some curious phase of
costume will cause most important historical
matter to be fixed in the thought. As a
preacher I have often found, and even more so
as a teacher, that when I could link important
historical events with something essentially out
of the common, some odd legend, or striking
piece of information, some linguistic twist, and
then visualize it as with a blackboard, as I often
did, the teaching survived, when without these
devices it was often lost and forgotten. Make
the freest use of these things. If you are in
the neighborhood of museums use these, for
that makes vivid and real what may otherwise
be vague and dimly comprehended. I found
it useful and suggestive often in the study of
HISTORY 155
some character in the history of the past to in-
quire who of our contemporary figures it sug-
gested, with some interesting and amusing
results. My own children got special amuse-
ment out of the habit of playfully dubbing the
people who came to our house by names Sug-
gested by their resemblance to historical char-
acters they had read about, or had brought to
their attention. There is a field for much
household fun here. Of course it must not be
maliciously done. It can be kept in the area
of pure mirth and is really great sport. The
varieties of attitude of our friends toward
them used to give the children occasion for
much acting, and if people who are pompous,
condescending, or contemptuous to children
could only see these things as they live again in
the nursery of carefully nurtured children, they
would have some uncomfortable moments,
which might not be entirely without desirable
results! But in a similar way those who dis-
play qualities of generosity, courtesy, patience,
and especially evidence of real interest in child-
hood, also have their reward. My own chil-
dren will never forget the distinguished Greek
scholar who told them the story of Charon by
exhibiting a coin found in a Greek tomb to pay
his fee.
156 TEACHING IN THE HOME
II
The use of aocuments again makes history
study interesting and effective. Go to your
library and look into Winsor’s Narrative and
Critical History of America, by way of illus-
tration, and you will see what a mine there is of
interesting original documents, which by re-
production form the basis of useful and illumi-
nating history. Now many of our national
documents, like the Compact in the Mayflower,
the Declaration of Independence, Penn's
Treaty with the Indians and others, have been
reproduced in inexpensive forms, which may
easily be procured. That document is what is
called a first source of history. Every time
you use such a document you are using a
source, and by them you can show how history
is made and the study of history is developed.
Your own court records are such sources.
Soldiers’ discharges, naturalization papers, cit-
izenship papers, ballots, state constitutions,
Thanksgiving proclamations, and official docu-
ments, generally all fall in this class. It makes
the thing talked about concrete to show the
document around which the history revolves.
The White Papers, the Yellow Papers, the
Gray Papers, issued by the European govern-
ments in the present war, are such first sources
HISTORY - 157
of history. This matter is much more impor-
tant than it seems, for, though you are using it
only to make concrete and vivid what you are
talking about, really you are inculcating the
principle of research and of speaking, not at
random but on the authority of somebody who
has a right to speak. Nothing afflicts the
American intellectual life so much, or so pain-
fully, at the present moment as irresponsible
utterance. If you can by the use of docu-
ments teach a child in its approach to any-
thing, to ask for something that is authorita-
tive, you will by one stroke make it immune
from newspaper exaggeration and falsification,
and loose talk generally, whatever the source.
That is great gain for intellectual stability.
There is nothing difficult or mysterious about
it. Utilize the same instinct that makes a child
take the stuffing out of a doll to find out what
it is made of. It helps in reading, too. It
enlarges the vocabulary. If you have a little
dramatic sense you can make much of it.
The Emancipation Proclamation in this way
becomes a living document. So does the
Magma Charta. So will Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address, and so will many other important and
interesting documents. Here again if you will
look into the back of your Oxford Bible, or if
you will get the Illustrated Bible Treasury,
158 TEACHING IN THE HOME
you will have a mass of material to your hand.
I merely mention these because they will most
readily show the process of seeing things at first
hand, and recognizing that you are dealing not
with second hand, but first hand material. It
is a great revelation to children, and hardly
less to adults, to contrast things in the form
with which they are commonly known, with
their original forms. When this can be done
by pictures or documents so much the better.
But you can easily lead from this practise with
documents to something quite as fruitful and
important. You can open the use of books of
reference. Your use of the dictionary will
already have started things in this direction
and of this more later. But in finding these
documents you can show how there are books
which are simply collections of such documents.
Professor A. B. Hart’s American History
Told by Contemporaries occurs to me in this
connection. Here you have the actual actors,
in the periods of which he deals, speaking in
their own tongue, and giving the views and
attitudes of eye-witnesses and actors in the
drama of the making of the American republic.
An ounce of this sort of study of American
history is worth a ton of stupid, lifeless recital
of events without a living personality behind
HISTORY 159
it, speaking in his native and contemporary
tongue. There are many manuals of this sort
published and they are easily accessible.
Then again our government publishes many
things of this sort which may be had for the
asking. If for example you want to know
about the state of education in South America,
write to the Bureau of Education in Washing-
ton and get its publication on that subject,
which gives not only a wonderful series of
facts, especially interesting to North Ameri-
cans at this present time, but pictures of the
South American universities and schools, some
of them the oldest in the Western World, long
preceding ours, by the way. The average
American will have a very different idea of the
South American republics after reading this
valuable little treatise. But our government
publishes many such things about children,
about industries, about national reserves, maps,
documents, almost innumerable. Get the
habit of writing for these documents. They
are valuable often as information, but even
more valuable as instruction in seeking and
using sources of authority in the shape of doc-
uments. All this simply anticipates what now
freshmen have to be taught de novo. A child
with this habit established will soon learn to
160 TEACHING IN THE HOME
look up matters on its own account and in the
search of one thing will often find others
equally or more valuable.
This study of documents reveals many things
which the writers of course did not intend. To
read Francis Pretty’s account of Sir Francis
Drake's Voyage about the Whole Globe tells
many more things than merely the account of
the voyage itself, quite naturally. In a simi-
lar way to read Rev. John Robinson’s Ad-
dress to the Departing Pilgrims at Leyden is
a far more moving thing than the account of
the voyage itself, full of moving details that
is, as found in Bradford's History. The
Tale of Pocahontas, by Raphe Hamor, secre-
tary of the colony, is a pen picture of Virginia
in Capt. John Smith's time not easily forgot-
ten. It is thus that we get into the soul of his-
tory and live it and make it our own. If you
want to see the most impressive story of an
Indian war get Edward Randolph's Causes
and Results of King Philip's War, and you
will understand it, as it is not possible to under-
stand it from any mere history. This is a por-
trayal of a group of events by a master hand
that almost makes you see the contemporary
figures. Thus the imagination is constantly
reenforced by real materials, and the develop-
ment of habits of verification, with the freest
HISTORY 161
emotional play of sympathy and understand-
ing upon the events, makes the finest soil imag-
inable for the building up of a finely furnished,
tolerant and appreciative mind. That is what
the study of history should do, and the greater
use of original documents the more effective
the result.
“As a record,” says Professor Hart, “sources
are the basis of history, but not mere raw ma-
terial like the herbaria of the botanist, or the
chemicals of a laboratory, stuffs to be destroyed
in discovering their nature; as utterances of
men living when they were made, they have in
them the breath of human life; history is the
biology of human conduct. Nobody can settle
any historical question without an appeal to
the sources, or without taking into account the
character of the actors in history.” "
It is just this element of the characters tell-
ing their own story which gives the sources
their importance, as they reveal motives and
interests which could not be so securely estab-
lished in any other way. A fellow voyager of
La Salle will tell the story of the discoverer's
ideas, expectations and experiences, as no his-
torian, however gifted, could tell it. Dipping
into town records in this way, following up
genealogical histories and family documents,
1 American History Told by Contemporaries, Vol. I, p. 3.
I62 TEACHING IN THE HOME
makes a most interesting habit for the child,
beside teaching the importance of records, as
such, the significance of which has already been
discussed. These are not dead materials, they
are the very life of the people involved, and so
the contact is with the actual life of the past.
In no other way can the assimilation of history
be accomplished. But there are other living
documents in the form of town charters, town
monuments, which are always to be had. In
the newer portions of our country very impor-
tant interests can be created in this manner and
often the development of a given section, influ-
enced by what such studies bring forth. By
the time high school age is attained, a well
established habit of this kind may well have
been created which may have lasting results in
the keeping of important records. Few clerks
of churches imagine that they are writing what
will be in time to come, if they survive, as
measures ought to be taken to see that they do
survive, be important records of names, events,
issues in the community life, perhaps personal
interests of great historical value, through the
fixing of dates of birth, baptism and the like.
The church records of New England in this
way are priceless in value, because so often
carefully and painstakingly made. What
would we not give if we had at this moment
HISTORY 163
more records of the personal history of Shaks-
pere? How we would prize more of the early
personal history of Lincoln or of many another
personality that bulks so large in the history of
our yet young country!
If all this seems rather mature to begin with
three-year-olds or four-year-olds, let me sim-
ply remind you that you would not hesitate an
instant to read portions of letters from an
absent mother to the children or those of
an absent father, or any other member of
the family. The comings and goings, the
people seen, and the new and strange things
encountered, would be of very great in-
terest to such children about those whom they
know and love. Why, then, may not a sim-
ilar interest be possible in some of the great-
est characters in history, especially when you
can show their handwriting, some facsimile
of their work, or some important event in which
they have taken a part? Of course, much will
depend upon your preparation for these things,
and your manner of introducing it, and your
own enthusiasm in handling it. But that it
may be done admits of no reasonable doubt. I
have seen children listen breathlessly to docu-
ments which might at first seem to be beyond
them. But by the time you explain that this
woman was about to die for her opinions, you
I64. TEACHING IN THE HOME
will find that the reading of The Justification
of a Condemned Quakeress, by Mary Dyer, a
matter which will carry itself along and at the
same time lay the foundation for tolerance,
which is one of the greatest needs of our own
time. You do not have to take up the silly
fictions, which so many persons think it needful
to offer children, to get matter that will inter-
est and instruct. Historical documents with-
out number are now within the reach of any
parent who will take the trouble to ask for
them. The leaflets of the Old South Histor-
ical Society in Boston will be found most use-
ful for this purpose. They are made up al-
most exclusively of original documents dealing
chiefly with New England. The local histor-
ical societies in other localities doubtless have
such material also. They furnish entertain-
ment, instruction, and culture simultaneously.
As this chapter is being concluded there
comes an article in the New York Nation from
its Paris correspondent which throws an inter-
esting light upon this documentary study as it
is being carried on throughout all grades in the
schools of France at the present moment.
The school system of France, as is well known,
is a unit from the very bottom to the very top,
presided over by a Minister of Public Instruc-
tion. Says this correspondent: “It is the
HISTORY I65
Government’s wish that all the students of
France shall receive from the war raging at
their frontier and in their midst the utmost civic
instruction for the future.” All classes open
with lectures and discussion of the war, its
causes, etc., and the correspondent adds: “In
all the classes, also, according to their ca-
pacities, documentary lessons are given. Each
day in one of the most frequented Paris colleges
the news given by one of the principal papers,
comprising the official communications of the
Allies and of the Germans and Austrians as
well, are followed out on detailed maps, an-
alyzed, compared and criticised. Beside the
local knowledge of the war thus obtained, there
is a certain reasonable opinion conveyed by the
students to their families. It is easy to under-
stand what influence this may exert against
over-confidence or depression excited by exag-
gerating what are, after all, little more than
“tactical” incidents of little importance in the
essential “strategy” and still less warranting
any surmises as to decisive action. This is
true civic education in calm, and deliberate
judgment during trying times.” "
The italics are my own. This description of
how the students of France are getting the
solidest kind of education for their future serv-
1 The Nation, Jan. 28, 1915, p. 103.
I66 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ice as wise and useful citizens of the Republic
was not written with any educational intent.
But it describes exactly what I have in mind
as to “documentary study” planned to the
grade of comprehension by the parent teacher.
There is hardly a single exercise which is more
calculated to train the reasoning power, to de-
velop judgment and investigation, than this
sort of thing, about the current events of the
world, the materials of daily conversation and
interest.
III
Complete historical pictures should be made
a further element in the teaching of history.
By this expression I mean that far-reaching
and important historical events should be pic-
torialized in their completeness, rather than
merely assigned their place in the chronology
of the national or world history. By way of
illustration, it is now comparatively easy when
you talk of the Battle of Waterloo to get to-
gether the pictures of the great actors on all
sides of the warring nations. It is possible to
get all kinds of material which bears on the
battle itself, to collect poems relating to it, or
growing out of it, passages in histories, or let-
ters relating to it, and making that battle a
complete historical picture, not as an English
HISTORY 167
victory or a French defeat, or even as an im-
portant date in European history, but as a
complete historical event viewed simultane-
ously from all sides. Of course, how complete
you make it depends upon the capacity of your
child and the capacity of the teacher. But in
any case you can mass all kinds of material,
literary, pictorial, historical, geographical, all
at the same time. If to this you add discussion
of the changes in military warfare, arms and
equipment, and similar matters, you have an
immense area to draw from to make the thing
a sort of complete conspectus of the times
viewed with reference to a single great event.
If one will take Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Bat-
tles of History, in this fashion there will be
opened a field for instruction, entertainment,
and inspiration which will be of vast effect in
the child's outlook upon all events and that is
the real purpose of this kind of study. We
have reached a stage in the world’s life, where
nobody cares any longer for the English view,
the German view, the French view, or the
American view of anything except as these
help us to know the truth, for the truth alone
can make us free. What the world needs, and
what is especially to be desired, in the training
of future citizens is the ability to recognize that
great events are not settled off hand, and that
168 TEACHING IN THE HOME
it requires investigation, deliberation, and
weighing of evidence, to form any useful or
sound judgment. -
Thus you create the habit of investigation.
The child will unconsciously learn that the
world was not made of things that do appear.
It will learn to look behind any given mani-
festation to its cause. It will learn in a rudi-
mentary way to go about finding those causes,
and will very likely ask a great many questions
which you cannot answer, and which perhaps
nobody can answer. But this of itself is not a
thing to be regretted. Many things have to be
left unanswered in this short life of ours, and
the sooner that is understood the better for him
who understands it. Still, it is wise to begin
early the investigating habit. It helps to train
the reasoning power. It helps concentration
because it fixes the attention on one thing, but
from so many different angles that it creates a
sort of sporting interest as to how the thing
will eventually come out. It teaches how to
suspend judgment. Hitherto we have taught
children history very much as we have taught
them the multiplication table and with about
the same result, which is nothing worth having.
The Discovery of America, taken in this way,
will lead all round the world and take in not
only Columbus but the preparatory events in
HISTORY 169
the world, and will make that event a much
profounder thing than any single man’s daring
and desire to find the New World. If you
take the Invention of Printing in this way you
will be led into a veritable wonder world and
One that will more than repay all efforts put
into it. Take for example such a man as
Roger Bacon and run down all the wonderful
stories and legends about him and you will find
the telephone, the submarine, and the aero-
plane, ten times as interesting as they are, and
that is itself something wonderful. Get all
around particular things in the history of your
own land, in the history of other lands, whether
it is the history of individuals, of events, or dis-
coveries, or what not. The investigating habit
is perfectly natural with children, and only
needs intelligent directing. Whether it is util-
ized for real educational purposes or left to
drift into mere curiosity about useless common-
places depends upon you. For this purpose,
a little note-book carried around for jotting
down curious and interesting things, is very
useful.
This habit is particularly useful for recrea-
tional purposes. Painters and paintings,
sculptors and sculptures, art objects generally,
lend themselves to many miscellaneous kinds of
mental fertilization through this habit. But
170 TEACHING IN THE HOME
properly it begins with something of world in-
terest and importance around which many other
kinds of knowledge are grouped, which shows
how truly all knowledge is coordinated and how
the developed mind looks at things which call
for observation and judgment. This idea will
reappear again when we come to talk about sci-
ence in general and particular sciences. But
the fact that things having historical impor-
tance can be pictorialized and lend themselves
to narrative and dramatic form in teaching,
makes history the field where it can be done
with least resistance and greatest results.
Nor should it be overlooked that this method
has another very important bearing upon all
kinds of study. Almost the first thing now re-
quired for the effective knowledge of any sub-
ject is to find out the history of the study of
the subject. That tends to reveal what has
been done and where advances may properly
be begun. Of course this has little to do with
teaching young children. But it has every-
thing to do with saving or wasting time.
There is no use, for example, except as a mat-
ter of self-indulgence, for anybody who is not
historically occupied with the story of trans-
portation to go into the details of the earliest
means of locomotion. It may be pleasant to
know that cars were once drawn by horses, but
HISTORY 171
it is a sheer waste of time to go and dig up
horse cars and expound them. We live in an
age of electric transportation, and the child
should begin there and use the past merely as
furnishing the means of contrast, and as
enriching the present. It is much more im-
portant to know that a gun is now made that
can fire a thousand-pound projectile ten or
fifteen miles than to know what the calibre of
the cannons in the Napoleonic wars was. It is
interesting, of course, if you happen to run
across the information, but not worth while
taking time to find out. It still remains true
that one must know in a general way the his-
tory of the past before one can appreciate the
present or forecast the future. To know how
to go about this is the important thing, and
recognize its necessity under some conditions
is the decisive element in the premises.
Thus, why a general took one route rather
than another, why a nation chose one alliance
rather than another, why one invention suc-
ceeded where another failed, why one man of
great ability failed where another of conspic-
uously lesser ability succeeded, why national
development followed one path rather than
another, all these and similar things, require
going back over the ground and showing
what helped and what hindered any given re-
172 TEACHING IN THE HOME
sult. Often the reason will be climate, some-
times geography, sometimes the season of the
year, sometimes an agricultural interest, some-
times a manufacturing interest, sometimes a
hasty or foolish speech, sometimes a silent
tongue; all these are historical causes and sub-
jects for reflection and discussion. There are
no accidents in history. Everything has a
cause, and sometimes is itself both cause and
effect. To master that truth is itself to grasp
in childhood a tool of knowledge which is of
supremest importance. Applied to personal
concerns, like money, occupation, industry, sac-
rifice, and the like, it is the story of the life
of mankind.
CHAPTER VII
SCIENCE IN GENERAL
THE most recent report of the United States
Commissioner of Education points out that
there is lamentable lack of coordination in our
high Schools in the study of science. As a
matter of fact it cannot be said that there is
such study at all, because the courses are not
related to each other, and the student simply
takes what happens to come along, almost
without reference to what preceded it or ought
to follow it. Perhaps as our high schools are
now constituted and held firmly in the grip of
the college requirements for admission, with
which they have nothing to do, about which
they are not consulted, and for which they have
nothing to do but prepare their students, this
is only what is to be expected.
But there is behind all this a much graver de-
fect about which I wish to say a few words be-
fore taking up study with little children of
specific sciences, and that is the lack of the
understanding of science in general. Science
and the scientific spirit have been made the
173
174: . TEACHING IN THE HOME
subject of so much discussion that a recent
writer has even ventured to say that many
teachers of science are not scientific persons at
all. It may well be that this is true. Just as
the requirements for admission in English
almost of necessity preclude teaching of liter-
ature, so that the young people come to college
without any knowledge of literature, or any
appreciation of literature, so they come without
any knowledge of science per se and no
scientific sense properly socalled. But if the
present program is to go on, and there is no
reason to expect that it will be readily changed,
because the educational machine is so vast, that
changes when they do come come very slowly
and are dependent upon the vast army of
teachers who have to be changed also, for the
present it may as well be taken for granted that
there will be no radical changes very soon.
Yet to have something of the scientific spirit
from the start is almost the Sime qua non of
effective education. What has already been
said with reference to the other subjects will
have prepared the reader for what is now to be
suggested. Science is a habit of mind rather
than anything else. It is a specific form of ap-
proach to knowledge, which clearly differ-
entiates itself from other forms of approach.
To get this habit of coming to any subject is
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 175
itself a kind of science, and that is the reason
why there is so much discussion now as to the
psychological relations of all kinds of human
activity. It is now recognized very clearly
that merely to get facts is not science. Indeed
whether these so-called “facts” are facts, de-
pends upon the mind of the investigator.
Many a man thinks he is doing a scientific
piece of work, merely to gather, laboriously
enough, great masses of “facts” which have
some relation, more or less, to the subject in
hand. To watch a chemical reaction is no
more scientific study than to watch the wheels
of an automobile go round. It may be such,
but merely watching the process does not make
it science. e
The same may be true of a great many other
things that are called science. The so-called
science courses in high schools have little or
nothing to do with science in its real essence
and meaning. That is the reason why you can
do most of them with little children, as I am
about to advise you to do. By the time your
child reaches high school age and work he
should be capable of doing something far more
complex and important than the simple things
which are done there and which, except on their
mathematical side, may be done readily enough
by very young children. Most of it is merely
176 TEACHING IN THE HOME
memoriter work, dealing with things they have
done, and the experiments do not usually, ac-
cording to my observation, yield anything of
the scientific habit of mind. This is true even
of college students to a great degree. It is of
great importance that children should be
guided, so that the scientific habit will by and
by be taken for granted, and the intellectual
expectations and efforts molded and directed
accordingly. It is mainly to indicate what
this scientific habit involves that this chapter is
written. It is to avoid the error, which is made
in many other things, which assumes merely
that information is knowledge. It is not. It
becomes knowledge only when it is classified.
So the things called science are science only
when they spring from a scientific habit.
I
The scientific spirit begins with the habit of
inquiry. It is essentially the spirit of skepti-
cism. But do not let this frighten you. Most
of the troubles in this world come because peo-
ple will not take the trouble to inquire. Half
the frauds of the world would disappear if the
people who become victims of them would care-
fully inform themselves and analyze the prob-
ability of what is promised has of being per-
formed. Now the child naturally likes to in-
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 177
quire. Its sense of wonder is natural, and in
this it epitomizes the history of the race. I
am not urging that you destroy this sense of
wonder, because it is, in the first place, one of
the best permanent possessions of humanity,
and in the second place is the source of imagi-
native power which must be cultivated and not
suppressed. But nobody ought to “wonder”
about things that can be found out by effort.
You wonder whether or that thing you see in
the papers is true. Well, most of them can
be verified, if they are true. You wonder if
such a statement is true. Well, you can look
up the authorities and find out. There is no
reason why one should stay in wonderland
about things which are within the reach of dis-
covery. You have a right to “wonder” about
things which are beyond you, but not about
those about you, which, if you make the natu-
ral and reasonable efforts at inquiry, you can
find out for yourself. For instance, why
should anybody wonder about his income and
expenditures? Apparently most people do
wonder about them, to their great detriment.
It is just so about many other things.
Now the scientific spirit of inquiry raises
first of all the question on any subject whether
it is a subject on which inquiry will help. Is
it knowable or not? Whether we shall wear
I78 TEACHING IN THE HOME
robes of white in Heaven may be safely set
down as not a subject for scientific inquiry.
It never can be known. But whether we shall
to-day wear a heavy dress or a light one, and
the reasons therefor, are easily ascertainable.
The inquiring spirit takes nothing for granted
and asks first of all, is it true. And even be-
fore that, it asks can it be known. That is
how the scientific spirit begins, and this is of
much greater importance than any mere fact
or set of facts.
This spirit is the real working power behind
many things which seem to be alien to it. You
look at a beautiful picture, and admire its col-
oring, its perspective, and its finished and de-
lightful presentation of its theme. But you
do not see the laborious studies behind it,
which were necessary before that picture could
be painted. Behind all art, there is the science
of drawing, and a vast deal of observation and
experiment, and a great deal of inquiry and
verification of all sorts of things, which in
themselves have no beauty whatever. You.
hear a beautiful symphony Or Sonata, and you
are thinking only of the charming emotions
which are created in you, by the sounds you
hear and their performance upon an instru-
ment. But you do not see the laborious ef-
forts which had to precede that composition
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 179
before it reached its finished state. You look
at a beautiful cathedral, but you do not think
of the mathematical calculations and the
drudgery which had to be gone through with
before that beautiful building came into being.
All these are the scientific background of ar-
tistic creation. There is a general delusion
that these things spring, so to speak, like Mi-
nerva, full-armed, out of the head of Jupiter.
Nothing is farther from the truth. There
used to be a story that Mr. Lincoln wrote the
Gettysburg address on his cuff on the way
down from Washington to the famous battle
field. It is now known, I believe, that there
are several recensions of that sublime bit of
English composition. You sit down and eat
a slice of delicious bread. But you rarely
think of the skill, the precision, and the care
which went into the baking, of which, if one
single element were left out, as I left the
salt out of some loaves I once baked, makes the
most beautiful appearing loaf of bread a fail-
ure. It had all the appearance of success, till
you tasted it!
“Paraphrasing,” says Herbert Spencer, “an
Bastern fable, we may say that in the house-
hold of knowledges science is the household
drudge, who in obscurity hides unrecognized
perfections. To her has been committed all
I 80 TEACHING IN THE HOME
the work; by her skill, intelligence and devo-
tion, have all conveniences and gratifications
been obtained; and while ceaselessly minister-
ing to the rest, she has been kept in the back-
ground, that her haughty sisters might flaunt
their fripperies in the eyes of the world. The
parallel holds yet further. For we are fast
coming to the denouement when the positions
will be changed; and while these haughty sis-
ters sink into merited neglect, Science, pro-
claimed as highest in worth and beauty,
will reign supreme.” This certainly goes far
enough, and probably too far. But there is
a substantial truth here, which must be recog-
nized very early in life, and the sooner it is rec-
ognized the happier and more effective life
will be.
The real beginning point for the scientific
spirit is a sort of wholesome unbelief in mere
appearances. You can readily mystify a
child, as I often did, with a reflecting mirror
throwing a flashing gleam all around the room,
and talking about the flying sunbeams. But
you do better to show the child how the thing
is done, and how light plays such curious
pranks, and how reflections come to make such
weird appearances as they often do. Such a
spirit carefully nurtured will make any child
go into the darkest room, which it has known
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 181
in daylight, with no more fear than it would in
the daytime. A child so trained will stand
perfectly still, watching some unusual phe-
nomenon, until it can bring all its previous ex-
periences to bear upon it, for its real under-
standing. This habit of unbelief leads to ea-
pulsion of fear. This is what you do when
you lead a very little child up to a very big dog,
and prove to it that it has nothing to fear, that
the big animal only wants to be petted, not to
do any harm. It is only by such trying out
that we ever get over the vast mass of our nat-
ural fears of the strange and unusual.
“Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek
and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened
to you,” represents the real beginning of the
scientific spirit, and doubtless this was in the
Master’s mind in urging his hearers to en-
deavor to get acquainted with the higher spir-
itual processes not by way of conjecture but
by way of eaſperiment. The spirit of inquiry
which finds out or seeks to find out all there is
to be found out about anything and everything
is the primary impulse that develops in a sci-
entific frame of mind. It is not mere critical
refusal to believe. It is a desire to know.
Personally I believe that this desire to know
is the secret of concentration, because the in-
terest has been aroused, and is held to the sub-
182 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ject in hand, by the desire to know the truth
about it, and this makes for sustained atten-
tion and effort. This habit of mind is the
easiest and Surest way known to me, of getting
the habit of concentrated attention.
II
The desire to know the truth about any-
thing, and a critical frame of mind toward it,
brings irresistibly in its train a study of causes
and hence familiarity with the relation of cause
and effect. Now the study of causes, itself,
has a very bracing effect on the mental life, be-
cause it leads naturally to the question as to
whether this or that cause, could or would have
produced, this or that result. This leads not
only to the examination of the cause, as pro-
ducing the special thing to be explained, but
its general adequacy to produce anything.
Suppose you perform some slight-of-hand
trick with a handkerchief with your little three-
year-old child. You try to give the impres-
sion that it drops down from the ceiling.
Your little one looks up and around, and if
you watch the process, you can see him coming
to the conclusion that this is impossible, be-
cause he sees perfectly clearly that the implied
process could not have taken place, and hence
it begins to look around your pockets, or seeks
SCIENCE IN GENERAL I 83
your other hand, or tries to find out some other
real and possible cause for what he has seen.
Now of course you can let the child find out
such things unaided. But I think it better
policy to take such occasions to show how opti-
cal illusions are produced, and lead the child to
try such tricks himself. That I call the begin-
ning of the scientific spirit, because it is not
merely attracted to an unusual thing to know
about it, as a matter of curiosity, but also to
seek for a real cause of the thing he sees. In
scientific circles they call that a vera causa.
Again, when children are playing hide and
seek, and they stop and listen for the voice of
the hidden playmate, what are they doing but
trying to determine whence the sound comes,
and so to the discovery of the hiding
place? What children thus do naturally at
play should become a habit of mind, and may
readily become so with very little attention.
You can teach any number of elementary
truths and scientific principles to very young
children by remembering this fact. I have
often asked my own children, and other chil-
dren, who have lost a plaything, to stand still
and try to recall, step by step, where they had
been since they last saw the article in question.
I have seen them gradually lessen the area
within which it had to be, by balancing partly,
184 TEACHING IN THE HOME
by remembering partly, the reasons for or
against a given place, and finally go straight
to the article, because, by what was strictly
scientific reasoning, they had eliminated all
places but the right place.
When a child digs up the roots of a plant to
see whether they are growing or not, when it
digs out a seed that has been planted to find
out whether it has begun to germinate or not,
you have natural manifestations of this spirit.
When you can show that a reasonable time
must elapse before results may be expected,
and when you can bring the various factors in
growth to the understanding, and have fixed
observation upon them, you have begun to cre-
ate a real scientific spirit. There is no rea-
son why this process should not be applied to
all kinds of things. Made habitual, when the
child strikes a laboratory, it will make a
use of the laboratory which not one child in a
thousand makes at the present time. But the
simple truth is that what students at high
school age now do under direction is so simple,
and so elementary, that an intelligent parent,
even one who has had no scientific training,
can do it with little children, if only they can
read. I have taught almost all that high
schools generally teach about physiology, to
little children, with the aid of a manikin and
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 185
pictures of the human body, and little experi-
ments with themselves, which they could make
and did make, with great pleasure and amuse-
ment to themselves.
Children should be taught to search for
causes of things. Here I am reminded again,
that many persons will say that this is not the
thing for little children, and that it tends to de-
stroy the illusions and innocent delights of
children in “wondering.” All I have to say
to this is, that most of the healthy children I
have known have always loved their own crea-
tions very much more than they have loved
ready-made things thrust upon, or supplied to
them. And I believe there is no subject un-
der the wide heaven in which a child will not
be more interested to work out the result itself
than to have somebody work it out for him.
And the search for causes is the most interest-
ing eavercise of the human mind known. That
is why boys like to “track” an imaginary en-
emy through the woods and over the fields to
his “lair.” That is why some of the most pop-
ular games are games like hare and hounds,
which involve pursuit with the matching of
skill in the matter of elusion of the pursuers
by the pursued. All these things are merely
reminiscences of the childhood of the race,
when the laws of the mind were not known and
186 TEACHING IN THE HOME
understood. But why should not our children
begin in this matter where we left off? Why
should they not be shown how water becomes
contaminated, how milk becomes bad, how all
kinds of food decay, and how many other
things take place, the result of which they can
plainly see, but the processes of which seem oc-
cult and which need only a little intelligent
direction and possibly the occasional use of a
microscope or a magnifying glass, to reveal?
For a child to learn and incorporate into its
habitual mental life the principle that nothing
happens without a cause is a very great gain.
The earlier it is mastered the greater the gain.
III
What has just been said will show the child
that what can be done once can probably be
done again. That comes naturally to children
who see anything unusual performed. That
was the reason the child to whom I showed
what you could do with a common mirror,
in making sun flashes dance all around the
room, instantly seized the mirror from my
hand, and tried to do it herself. What
that means is, simply, trying the earper-
iment herself. Hence eaſperimentation is
connected inseparably with the genuine sci-
entific attitude. What the child, before the
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 187
experiment by itself, regards wonderingly as
the product of your genius, or your skill, hav-
ing performed it itself, it takes out of the re-
gion of wonder and places in the category of
proved knowledge. Of course, the child does
not always know this, nor, of course, does it
consciously aim at this end. But that is what
it really does, and you know it, though the child
does not. But every time this is done, it
breeds the belief in the child that what you have
done, it can do, and this is an important ad-
vance. It leads not only to the habit of finding
causes, but to the habit of eaſperimenting with
things to see what they will do under certain
conditions. I remember very vividly one such
“experiment” which made an impression on
my mind, which has never been eradicated.
Some building operations had been going on
in our vicinity, while I was a very small boy,
and I learned for the first time that unslacked
lime, if you put it in water, “boils.” That in-
terested me very much, and presently I got
some of this lime and put it into a bottle, added
some water, and corked it up very tightly. I
watched with a good deal of pleasure and in-
terest the boiling inside, till the bottle became
so hot that I could not hold it, and began to
be afraid as to what would happen. I hur-
riedly sat the bottle down by the side of the
188 TEACHING IN THE HOME
new building, one, by the way, faced with very
fine bricks of special mold and quality, and
ran to the opposite side of the street. In a
very few moments the bottle burst, that is, the
cork flew out and the boiling lime with it, and
painted a most interesting picture upon the
new and costly brick wall before which I stood!
It took several men several days to get the
stuff off from those new bricks, so that the
marks did not remain, and what I got from my
parents, who had to pay the bill for the dam-
age done, may as well be left untold! That
was, of course, an undirected eaſperiment.
Dut many others, and of much more worth and
value (none could be more interesting), may
be made under direction, which may have thus
great educational worth, and even greater psy-
chological results. ge
It is my conviction based upon a great deal
of careful observation that many of the so-
called mischievous pranks of young children
is nothing more than the desire to “try out,”
otherwise eaſperiment, with things they have
seen other people do, and is a thoroughly
sound and worthy activity on the part of chil-
drem. So far from being naughtiness, it is
just the instinct, upon which to graft a sound
principle of scientific habit.
It is sometimes said that this sort of thing
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 1.89
will destroy the sense of mystery in children,
and affect the imagination unfavorably. On
the contrary, I believe it rather stimulates the
imagination healthfully, because it takes it out
of the region where it is merely dreamy specu-
lation, which weakens will-power, and lifts it
into regions where it causes the exercise of the
will in the direction of real knowledge. Noth-
ing in modern education is so pitiful as just
the result which has been produced in so many
cases, namely, dreamy persons, with a good
deal of miscellaneous knowledge of one kind
and another, but with clear knowledge about
nothing in particular. Earperiment tends to
destroy this kind of thing because, as already
stated, it takes nothing for granted, and asks,
continually, the why and the wherefore of
everything. An incidental, but wholly worth
while, result of the experimenting habit is that
it provides wholesome occupation for children.
When tired of one kind of exercise, the teach-
ing parent can readily provide some other kind
which will both interest and relieve, but the
process of mind training goes on all the time.
And this experimenting habit can go on all
the year round, with plants, with animal pets,
with simple machinery in physics and chem-
istry, with physiology, and all kinds of things
which are the raw materials, so to speak, of
190 TEACHING IN THE HOME
scientific knowledge. Of course, you under-
stand that you choose simple things and deal
with them simply, but you do not deal with
them without dealing with them accurately
and in scientific terms. That is the special
feature of this form of intensive treatment.
You are preparing the soil in which real learn-
ing may be planted at a much earlier period
than is usual, because the principles are under-
stood and so many things do not have to be
wnlearned because wrong ideas have been
planted in the subsoil.
IV
One other, and perhaps the most important,
thing in dealing with science in general is the
inoculation of the habit of measurement.
Substantially the whole of science rests upon
this principle, measurement. In former days,
the housewife made her bread, and could make
it herself, and after long practice her daugh-
ter could get the “knack” of making it as her
mother did. But it remained a “knack.”
Nowadays we measure the materials, and any-
body who can measure accurately can get to-
gether the materials as well as anybody else.
The same is true of many other things. What
makes a cook-book so valuable is that the
young wife can take it, and if she knows how
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 191
to measure, she can get the same result as any-
body else, because she has her formula before
her. All the sciences have practically grown
out of this fact. The measurement of the
movement of the heavenly bodies has taught
us about the seasons, and so have affected our
crops and many other things. Measurement
has given us all the applied sciences, and if you
teach a child not to guess at things, but meas-
wre them, you have taught it the greatest prin-
ciple in all education.
Teach the child to measure, dry measure,
liquid measure, length, breadth, thickness,
bulk, all kinds of things, to note resemblances
and differences, and equivalents, and the like.
That is real scientific training. No end of
pleasure can be gotten out of time measure-
ments and weight measurements, and the rela-
tion of bulk to weight and the like. I had
great pleasure myself in weighing all kinds of
things to make one pound, with my own chil-
dren, and the difference in bulk of the various
things weighed was a great delight to the chil-
dren. You can do all these things without ex-
pensive machinery, and with common house-
hold objects and substances. You may add
somewhat to your own knowledge by doing
these things. By this means, you can teach
the metric system to a small child, and you can
192 TEACHING IN THE HOME
teach all the ordinary forms of measure, with-
out the child ever knowing when or where it
learned them. You can teach the whole deci-
mal system, and, as I think, you can teach per-
centage and some other things supposed to be
beyond the understanding of little children.
IBut aside from that, measure everything.
Weigh everything. Compare everything with
everything else by means of accurate measure-
ment. k
You can do yourself and the child a serv-
ice by weighing everything you buy, or meas-
uring it, if you get it by measure, and finding
out a great many things that have a moral
bearing, and possibly have some relation to the
question of income and expenditure. Re-
cently, in Boston, some hundreds of false
scales were seized by the city authorities, which
shows that a great many people are not get-
ting what they pay for. You may do your
child an important economic service entirely
apart from the educational service by incul-
cating this habit. The American people are
notoriously wasteful. A great deal of it will
be stopped by the general adoption of this
method. I have heard of some very funny
stories of discoveries which children made in
this manner, which had entirely escaped their
parents, because their curiosity to know what
SCIENCE IN GENERAL I93
certain things weighed made it clear that there
was need for important revision of the weigh-
ing apparatus in the neighboring stores! In
this, as in some other things, a little child shall
lead them!
All the sciences require ea'actitude. That
is what makes them science. The elimination
of personality, making the knowledge to rest
not upon “knack” or peculiar skill or aptitude,
but upon verifiable measurements, that is what
makes science. You can teach that to very
young children, and most important teaching
it is. It is really solving the practical prob-
lems in this way, which makes for the only ef-
fective science teaching even after the child
has reached high school age. And I believe
that much of the repugnance to mathematics,
though, as I have stated before, I do not be-
lieve the pure mathematics have much educa-
tional value, would disappear with the general
adoption of this habit for children. It human-
izes figures and measurements, and because it
deals with real things it is never out of the re-
gion of active interest and pleasure. Taken
in connection with geographical study, it can
be made most fascinating and full of historical
interest as well. You see all these things are
linked together in such a way that it makes
little difference where you begin if you keep
194 TEACHING IN THE HOME
in mind that you must deal with real knowl-
edge in a real way.
It does not require much discernment either,
to see that this kind of thing prepares the way
for economics as well as for other things.
Supply and demand can be brought easily into
the field of vision here, always, of course, deal-
ing with things that are related to the child’s
environment. We found out, for example,
that grinding the coffee for each meal, instead
of having it ground in bulk at the store, re-
duced the consumption of coffee in our house-
hold exactly one-half, under ordinary condi-
tions. Incidentally we had better coffee!
But that discovery was not only interesting,
but economically worth while. The children,
under their mother’s instruction, followed the
progress of foodstuffs through all their rami-
fications, till they finally became what they
called quite accurately the “ghost” in the shape
of the flavor of the bones of a roast, for exam-
ple, in the final soup! Talk about home eco-
nomics! We had the ordinary home econom-
ics school beaten a mile! But the enchanting
thing about all this was, that we had innumer-
able household jokes and endless mirth over
what would seem ordinarily to be the most
mirthless transaction imaginable. Do not im-
agine that you must learn all the jargon of
SCIENCE IN GENERAL 195
Science, so called, before you can do these
things. Just utilize the knowledge which you
have, and make it straightforward and clear
as you go along, and the rest will ordinarily
take care of itself. When you don’t know
about the thing you are dealing with, go to
the library and get some book on the subject,
or consult a good encyclopaedia, and you will
not only learn what you are seeking, but very
likely a good many other things beside!
Let me caution you again against being de-
terred from doing these things because they
seem alien to childhood. A few days ago a
friend of ours brought in a nine-months-old
baby. By turning on and off various electric
lights with that child, I proved to myself how
a little care in such matter, every day, will se-
cure highly concentrated attention. I did
some such experiments with my own children,
but not very extensively. I did not, of course,
know then what I know now. I know now
that you can teach a child of ten all the chem-
istry and more, than most students know at
college entrance.
CHAPTER VIII
PHYSIOLOGY
UNDER this caption I suggest the inclusion
of many other subjects, and have chosen this
as the most convenient way of getting at them
all. There are so many things which come
into the study of physiology that it may
well be made the medium through which you
may teach other sciences which will have larger
uses later on. It is presumed before you get
to the matters which I am discussing in this
chapter that you will have informed yourself
On details by reading some good text-book
which you will not think of discussing with the
children, and which will only affect the form
and method with which you bring them to the
children. One of these is the matter of sex.
I believe thoroughly in sea, instruction, and I
believe in giving it and getting through with it
long before the adolescent period. With very
little children you can discuss all these things
carefully and, I may add, prayerfully, so that
there will be no disturbance when the new life
196
PHYSIOLOGY 197
comes, and there will be other things to think
about, because you have provided the materials
of thought. I have noted in the bibliography
a volume or two which I think parents may
read with profit on this subject, and then trans-
mit the knowledge to their little children, and
them, having taught it, leave it. It is not a
subject for high degree of concentration of
thought by either children or adults.
But there are other things which may be in-
cluded and taught here. The elements of
chemistry, for example, come in here very nat-
urally, because the body is composed of many
elements, and the vocabulary of chemistry is
an interesting one which lends itself to much
and varied teaching in many ways on various
subjects. It recurs in the study of botany,
and Zoology. Then again here you get in your
qmathematics of one kind and another. This
is where I should get in my elementary arith-
metic as measurements have to be recorded.
Very well, learn linear measure and square
measure and the metric system in connection
with the measurements as they are made, and
thus take away the bareness and the stupidity
with which so much mathematical study is sur-
rounded. Here, too, I would learn the multi-
plication tables, though these I would master
by singing them; of course, the figures having
I98 TEACHING IN THE HOME
been mastered and simple numbers having
been explained.
Here, too, I would teach my physics, that is,
so much of it as is needful, and this again will
have significance later on just as the measure-
ments and the tables will. All these things go
hand in hand, because you are fertilizing and
are not trying to make experts, but just nat-
uralizing your child in the materials and termi-
nology of knowledge, so that it will presently
have the all-powerful tool of grappling with
any subject to which its mind is set, and to-
ward which it is directed to work.
By way of illustration, take the chemical
terms oarygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon,
chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, for one group;
then take air, about which you can manufac-
ture about as many stories as you please, with
every sort of illustration; or, take the metallic
elements which are found in the human body,
like sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium,
and iron; then again take water, as related to
the body, or the gases, like ammonia and car-
bomic acid gas, or the various salts, or the or-
ganic substances like proteids, carbo-hydrates
and fats; all these things form a natural and
thoroughly interesting beginning of the study
of physiology, though many of them are not
less needful in other sciences.
PHYSIOLOGY 199
Some one will say, of course, How can you
deal with these things with small children?
Well, the most natural question of a child is,
“What am I made off" and then your opening
is secured, and far back of the physiological
Question itself, you can introduce all these
other interesting subjects. It is not my pur-
pose to go into them here, because that is a mat-
ter for your assimilation through some good
teaſt-book. But when you yourself have got
this information and made it your own,
you will have a wonderland to introduce your
child to in introducing it to the study of itself.
In this way the interest in its own body and
its own processes is detached from the intro-
spective emotionalism, which often results in
trouble, and reveals the human frame as a
wonderful composition of things which are
found elsewhere than there, and the correlation
of mam, with the rest of mature becomes easy
and fascinating. You can readily use the
chemistry of common things to illustrate the
power and use of these various substances, and
make your bread making, your house lighting,
your vacuum cleaner, and your ventilation,
subjects for much instruction and interesting
experimentation. You can teach exact meas-
urements by the shoes the children wear, the
garments with which they are clothed, the cir-
200 TEACHING IN THE HOME
cumference and diameter and shape and all
sorts of things, of the hats on the heads, and
even the materials of which all these are made.
It all helps and it is all scientific knowledge.
It has a very practical use, too, because it
opens up the economic worth of these
things and teaches discrimination. That saves
money!
How practical and how immediate this sort
of thing really is, was recently illustrated by
an exciting discussion in the Massachusetts
Legislature on the subject of calcium in bread,
and for days, the papers were full of discussion
as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the
use by a certain large bread-making firm of
this element in its bread. There was all sorts
of expert testimony, all very interesting, but
most people had not the slightest appreciation
of the real merits of the discussion, because so
few of them knew even a very little about the
human body, or the chemistry of bread-mak-
ing. And only a very little knowledge would
have been very enlightening and saved a great
deal of nonsense being talked on the subject.
Then again, you will find it useful to get a
small manikin, and while it is not at first sight
an easy task to take the human frame apart
and get much fun out of it, yet with healthy
children this is exactly what they will enjoy,
PHYSIOLOGY 201
because they do it with every other animal that
comes into their hands, and taking the stuffing
Out of dolls has become one of the regular hab-
its of children. A manikin or suitable pic-
tures of the human body will afford vast inter-
est to children. Of course you will choose
your materials, and you will choose your times
and seasons.
You can thus make scientific, what parents
have to do and always do in any case. Habits
of cleanliness about the teeth, the nose, the
hands, the face, and the feet, the care of the
nails, and such like matters, may be discussed
and made the subjects of direct and thor-
oughly accurate instruction. If, as some al-
lege, the care of the teeth has so much to do
with the future health and happiness of the
race, and I do not doubt that it has, why not
go into the business of showing how the teeth
grow, what they are made of, what elements
in food go to make them, how they decay, what
makes them give trouble, and how they look
not only on the outside but also on the inside?
Think what an interesting study can be made
of the ears, and how they transmit sounds, and
how they furnish the model for many other in-
struments that transmit sound! Just look
into the subject a little, and find how your
telephone, your piano, your phonograph, are
202 TEACHING IN THE HOME
all related to the ear, and you will have all the
material you want for teaching all that needs
to be known to insure care of the ears forever
after!
While the children are playing with clay or
in the sand let them make impressions or 'mod-
els of their own fingers or hands, and notice the
details, and perhaps draw them and keep the
drawings for further use. By and by you can
take other organs. I cannot myself under-
stand why a child which sees a chicken dis-
embowelled cannot have every organ ex-
plained, and the similar organ in the human
body, if there is one, also explained. Look
into the history of special organs about which
the child will hear very soon, like the tonsils,
and get a page out of the evolution of the race!
You can easily get a model, or at least
pictures of the eye and its operations, and this
will be of the very greatest interest, and should
not only give them, but you, a good deal of
material for reflection and discussion. But
here again you will keep to the ea'act termi-
mology and not let yourself talk down. The
fact that you are handling concrete things will
carry along some very hard words. And they
will stick. I once blew up a pair of lungs for
some young people. Again and again after
that they clamored for the “lung story.” And
PHYSIOLOGY 203
I think I taught them most of the habits of cor-
rect breathing by that means.
Through your talks and lessons about the
eye, the ear, and the nose, you can open the
way to the discussion of the nervous system,
and this again, as almost any figure of the
nervous system will show you, affords ready-
made materials not only for teaching about the
nervous system itself, but many miscellaneous
and interesting things about the nerves. This
is the place where you can show how the
strength is conserved, and lay the foundations
for the kind of self-understanding which pre-
vents mervous breakdowns. We talk more
about them and have more nervous troubles in
America, so far as my observation goes, than
anywhere else in the world. There is a very
great deal of absurd talk about the “nervous”
wear and tear among children, and much there
is, but it is not due to work and even less due to
matural defects of ordinary children. But it
does not take much to break down the nervous
organization, if it is stupidly dealt with, and
what is often lacking, is intelligent coopera-
tion between the subject of it and those who
have the care and oversight of children. When
any such smash-up comes in it is at Once at-
tributed to overwork, which is usually not the
case at all. The amount of hard labor even
204 TEACHING IN THE HOME
little children can endure is surprising. This
does not, of course, apply to defective children
or children with some organic difficulty. But
in any case, by this instruction you can make
gyour child almost immune from nervous
troubles by giving it intelligent instruction as
to how the nervous system works, and teaching
it to recognize symptoms when they occur.
Here again you will be told that a child
should not be made to think about these things.
|But my reply is, that it will meet them at every
turn, in nervous people, or people who think
they are nervous, and should be made to look
critically on these things, and note its own re-
sources and expenditures in an elementary
way. This is the method by which you can
train a child to school itself for emergencies.
A good portion of life is made up of meeting
emergencies. I mean physical emergencies.
The child should be trained to meet them. If
it knows the digestive arrangements even in a
simple way, if it knows how fatigue comes
about, if it knows how recuperation is secured,
if it knows how to wait and watch instead of
worrying and weeping, some of the most im-
portant lessons in life have been learned. This
is the time to do it. You can teach all these les-
sons as you discuss the organs of the body, their
functions and habits, and what influences
PHYSIOLOGY 205
them, and what their dangers are. It is aston-
ishing how much an intelligent child thus in-
structed can help its own convalescence in
times when sickness comes. Amy hospital su-
perintendent will tell you that the training of
the child in this way makes all the difference be-
tween a speedy and satisfactory recovery of a
sick child, and the slow, unsatisfactory advance
of one not so trained. It may mean life or
death!
Simple, but not unscientific on that ac-
count, aids for injury can be taught at such
times. The use of antiseptics and their effects
can be made second nature, a thing which a
good many doctors have not yet learned. In
fact, you can through this study train your
child so that its entire attitude toward medi-
cal science and medical practice will be directed
by it, and what is of the greatest impor-
tance of all, you can make it absolutely im-
mune to the quack appeals of one kind and
another with which the whole land is filled. If
you accomplish nothing more than this, it is
worth while. But you will do more, because
you will lead it to self-understanding and
by and by to a correct interpretation of its
own symptoms, so that any difficulty which
does come, in spite of care and preventive ef-
fort, is diagnosed, and thus the restoration may
206 TEACHING IN THE HOME
be very much more speedy and satisfactory.
Do not let yourself think this is beyond a young
child. The only thing that makes you think
so is, that we have all hitherto neglected it.
There are whole chapters of medical knowl-
edge which can be thus taught and should be
taught. Quackery thrives on ignorance. If
you make the soil, the disease will surely grow.
What you have thus done about nerves you
may do about bones and muscles. The order
does not matter much. Take the thing which
comes first in a natural way, but if you can
get a small skeleton of any animal you have
your work cut out for you. Sometimes there
is a museum at hand, which may be visited,
and the specimens studied. Learn the names
of some of the more important bones, and
names of all the classes of bones. They will
be useful in your study of English and Latin.
Take every term you use, first of all as a word,
and get all the information you can out of it
that way, before you go into its special and
limited use in this science or any science.
Your lesson always begins with word study,
no matter what your subject is. Hence, your
dictionary is always at hand. You can take
the turkey or the chicken you have had for din-
ner, and have the bones carefully cleansed, and
then put them together, which is a very in-
PHYSIOLOGY 207
teresting exercise. You can do the same with
a rabbit or any other small animal.
A skull is a most interesting object, and one
the handling of which will have some sugges-
tive results. Its use in symbolism and litera-
ture may make it one of the most interesting
objects imaginable, strange as that seems at
first sight. In fact, this is true of the skele-
ton generally. You only need to let a child
see how the ribs are fastened to the spinal col-
umn, and get a good notion of how the human
frame is put together, to find yourself flooded
with all kinds of questions which it will tax all
your skill and ingenuity to answer. And you
must link all this with concrete things. When
you hear food values talked about in domestic
science lectures, and the like, immediately ap-
ply that knowledge through this study, and
thus make the common foods tell their story
in scientific terms. Too academic and remote,
I hear somebody say? Well, take up your
newspaper or magazine of only recent date,
and see it discussed with reference to Ger-
many’s food supply, and you will see what I
mean. No knowledge is alien to you. Be-
cause it is yours, it is also the natural posses-
sion of your child!
While you are on the subject you may take
along other very practical matters which have
208. TEACHING IN THE HOME
scientific import. Let us say you are discuss-
ing the heart. Here again the literary impli-
cations of your subject will furnish the ma-
terial for preparation for teaching. Glance
through your Bible and your “Familiar Quo-
tations” for passages about the heart. Now,
of course, you know that when the Bible uses
the word heart it does not mean the physiologi-
cal organ, because it was not known as we
know it, and there was nothing known about
the circulation of the blood, and the only les-
sons to be derived are moral lessons. But
nevertheless, the central importance of the ac-
tion of the heart gives you your material.
But you can teach such things as the action
of the pulse, and the circulation of the blood
and blood pressure, and a host of other things
which will explain descriptions which will oc-
cur in classical literature, when the modern sci-
entific knowledge was not in existence. A
clinical thermometer will teach a good many
things, and a clinical chart will help. This
also will aid in bringing to the front all sorts
of questions which it will be your privilege, if
you do not already know, to find out and im-
part. Do not fear, the questions will come,
and the only issue is whether you will have the
material. The same is true about the lungs,
PHYSIOLOGY 209
and if you can get a pair, either a human lung
or that of some animal, and blow it up and
show how it works, so much the better.
By these lessons you are showing how the
organs of the vertebrates and mammals gener-
ally work analogously, and you will more and
more ally the thought of the human body with
the physical structure of animals generally,
and when it comes to biological matters, espe-
cially sex and reproduction, you have come by
a road which makes the approach not personal,
but scientific, impersonal and natural. A
writer on this subject says that “the questions
of the child should be answered frankly, meet-
ing the intellectual needs of the child just so
far as they are felt; the information about re-
production should not be abstract generaliza-
tions, but should be related to the child—as his
chickens, his kittens, babies of his own ac-
quaintance. Broad generalizations are not
usually necessary. If this period is properly
dealt with, much of the vicious information
may be anticipated and rendered less harmful.
A sense of partnership with his parents in this
knowledge is valuable. The average child
learns more during these years (from four to
seven) than at any other period of equal length
in his life. Much will be gained if the sex
210 TEACHING IN THE HOME
facts can take their place normally and with-
out shock in this growing knowledge.” "
Here the mother should be the teacher mani-
festly. And because this period is so full of
power, because so much is acquired in it, you
can readily imagine why it is necessary to get
this important kind of knowledge so mia!ed
with other kinds of knowledge that its imper-
sonal and scientific character will operate to
take this special matter out of the field of self-
consciousness, through which much of the
trouble usually comes. Do not let it get spe-
cialized in a way which separates it from other
knowledge. Keep it in the region where you
can readily match any personal allusions by
illustrations from some other field, and for this
purpose your botany and Zoology will prove
very helpful. This same author repeatedly
urges, what I have said so frequently through-
out this volume, that you must be sure not to
wse nicknames or vulgar terms, but scientific
ones, which keep the matter in the region of
intellectual acquisition. The literary treat-
ment of the subject will supply all the neces-
sities for adorning and embroidering the
theme.
The habits of other mammalia, like calves or
kittens, feeding, will supply many suggestions
1 Biology of Sea, Galloway, p. 72.
PHYSIOLOGY 21 I
for the relation of the child to the mother, and
from these the more intimate relation can
easily be suggested. Plants also, and more es-
pecially, will suggest the reproductive relation
and the transition in thought from one to the
other, it has been observed, is not difficult.
All such teaching should habitually be linked
with moral instruction of some sort, and this
followed speedily with some sort of moral ear-
action, a specific duty of some kind, as filial
duty and obedience and obligation resting on
nurture and care.
IExperiments with very little children, ba-
bies, in fact, in this field, will be a very inter-
esting and helpful preparation for your later
work, because you will see some relations made
clear which are not so apparent later on. In
these you will discover the relation of the hu-
man animal to his remote ancestors. Every-
body knows the power of a baby’s clutch.
That surely is a reminiscence of an earlier
stage of development. The same thing is true
of its wriggling toes. You can watch the
change in the difference between the size of
the baby’s nose when born, and its jaw, and
how differently they look a little later on. I
found it a most amusing experiment to let my
little children play with colored yarn balls, and
note their predilections for one color or an-
212 TEACHING IN THE HOME
other. Over the crib of one of my children
when a baby, I placed a mirror in which it
could view itself at full length, and thus I ob-
served the child’s discovery of its various parts
from the waving of hands and the wriggling
of toes and legs. Sometimes I placed a light
by the side of the crib, and directed the gaze of
the baby at the shadows of itself and its hands,
and once I produced an electric effect, when
the baby, crying naughtily, desiring to be
taken up when it ought to have been going to
sleep, as I surprised it into seeing itself as it
looked in the mirror, while thus crying!
Never was amazement and chagrin more abso-
lutely pictured, and we had a great deal of fun
out of it. These and many such experiments
which will only occur to you, while the baby
is in its bath, in which, it will often show that
it has come out of a fluid medium and has a
history, which involves swimming, a long dis-
tance back in the story of the evolution of the
race. Indeed a well known athletic instructor
says that if a new born baby is put into a
proper liquid medium it will swim. I never
tried this, but I have often been struck with
the resemblance between a Swimming Small
boy and a tadpole!
All these things, as you come later to deal
with the human body, will give you the sense
PHYSIOLOGY 213
of the relation of man to the rest of animal
creation, and will point out the natural way of
doing things which we in our artificial way of
living have obscured, much to our hurt. By
this means, too, you will discover early tend-
encies, which, observed and provided for, will
explain many things which mystify us about
our children. In your careful observance of
these antics in the baby you will make for your-
self the materials for teaching him later on,
using illustrations out of his own life. You
will often, too, be led to make practical choices
of great moment. Thus the best penmanship
among my children is that of the one who is
left-handed. She writes most beautifully, and
her college note-books have a sort of copper-
plate beauty by their regularity, neatness and
the beautiful formation of the letters. We
tried of course to cause her to write with her
right hand. I myself was taught to write with
both and used to write equally well with both.
The mother showed the same left-handed tend-
ency as a child, and was compelled to write
with her right and thus utterly spoiled her pen-
manship. The little girl, as a small child, was
compelled at first to write with the right, but
it was observed that the moment attention was
withdrawn she switched quickly to the left.
We finally decided to let her use the left, with
2I4 TEACHING IN THE HOME
the result above noted. Now, as I view it, it
would have been nothing short of abuse to pre-
vent that natural development which has re-
sulted so happily. And I cannot see that it
has caused much inconvenience. There are
many such things which you will note which,
when you come to teach the subject itself, your
observation and experience will turn to great
practical account.
The same thing is true when you come to
deal with the voice and the largyma, and the vocal
chords by which speech is produced. Your
butcher will get you the larynx of a sheep eas-
ily enough, and with that working model you
can show how the various parts cooperate and
how sound is produced. This leads me to
say something about the voice. Most peo-
ple never learn how to use their voices, and the
result is that we have the harsh American voice,
which is noted the world over for this quality.
Now this is not necessary. There are differ-
ences in quality of voices, of course, but a
pleasant speaking voice is within the reach of
all who are not deformed. Your own example
and practice in this matter will go a long way
toward making the practice of the child. But
you can also make the child conscious, very
early, of the differences between the various
voices it has to hear for their qualities of harsh-
PHYSIOLOGY 215
ness, dissonance or pleasantness, and the ob-
ject lesson will have very great weight. This
matter cannot be emphasized too strongly.
The tone used ordinarily indicates the emo-
tion which causes it and is behind it. You can
get very thorough control over the mental op-
erations of the child by the voice, and help
it to this same kind of control by directing its
own attention to them. You have doubtless
noticed that even small babies notice the differ-
ences of tone employed long before they know
speech. That same influence acquires accel-
erating power. If you lose the distinctions of
tone by failing to use your voice properly, es-
pecially by using it too much, you lose a most
valuable instrument for intellectual growth.
You will remember this when you are read-
ing aloud, or when your child is uttering words
of different languages; you will note it at play,
and you will especially note it in the ordinary
routine of the home. There is nothing so sat-
isfactory in the home as a pleasant-voiced per-
son. There are moral implications here, too,
which should not be overlooked. Have you
ever noticed the difference between a command
bawled out in a rage, and one quietly delivered
in even steady tones? Have you ever noticed
how you can lower the tone in a roomful of
people often by simply lowering the voice?
216 TEACHING IN THE HOME
Have you ever noticed how decisive a change
came over the tone of a roomful of people
when certain persons stopped talking? Have
you ever noticed how surely the tones of cer-
tain other voices made themselves heard, no
matter how many other persons happened to be
talking? Just go into this subject a little on
your own account. And while you are study-
ing about the throat, the larnyx, and the vocal
chords deal with the things they result in, and
what it signifies.
There is a spiritual phase of this study,
which I cannot leave the subject without at
least mentioning, though I have fully discussed
the subject in another work." The Christian
religion met the licentiousness and the physical
as well as moral degradation of heathenism
with the assertion that the body was “the tem-
ple of the Holy Ghost.” In our day we are
urging that the body shall be studied and cared
for in the interest of social salvation and health.
Whether the economic or prudential motive
will be strong enough to get these things for us,
through education, seems to be open to grave
doubt. My own judgment is that we shall
have to come back to the Hebrew idea of mak-
ing it a matter of religion. By them almost
every bodily function was regulated by reli-
1 Christianity and the Social Rage, p. 269.
PHYSIOLOGY 217
gious law. That made the Hebrew race a
marked group in the social history of mankind,
and the study of the human body, whatever its
physical origin may have been, which is to be
effective in the regeneration of the race, must
consider it from the spiritual standpoint, and
from this standpoint I bid you to begin with
your children. As I have remarked, “One
thing is very certain, and that is, that if a
modern city block were subjected to the severe
regimen of the Hebrew codes, seven-tenths of
the troubles in them would disappear. Not
only did the Hebrews legislate for the relation
of the sexes, the relations of parents and chil-
dren, of special groups to each other, but in a
thousand ways, too minute for detailed descrip-
tion here, made their religion govern almost
their very breath that its adherents took into
their lungs. Ablutions, dress, food, sexual re-
lations, childbirth, dietary, and almost every
other form of what we should now regard as
the special field of medical supervision, were
not only controlled, but highly organized—so
highly that it remains a wonderful thing to this
day, and many of its precepts, as already
stated, have the sanction of expert medical au-
thorities. Religion and medicine were one,
not so much through the practise of medicine,
as through sanitary regulation which made the
218 TEACHING IN THE HOME
religion of the devotee his physical salva-
tion.” -
Take up, therefore, this particular branch
of knowledge, in a specially humble and devo-
tional frame of mind. You are dealing with
the most wonderful piece of mechanism in the
world, the crown of nature, and the most su-
perb exhibition of creative skill which the uni-
verse contains. Not a fragment of it but is
worthy of your most minute and careful inves-
tigation, not merely because it is an intellec-
tual problem of the first magnitude, but, even
more, because you are indoctrinating your
child into the residence of his temple of the
Holy Ghost. In this house he is to live and
move and have his being. Here he may make
for himself a mere warehouse, a sty or a shrine.
Given himself under the holiest association
known to mankind, and given for nurture, cul-
ture and immortality, let him early feel
through your instruction that his every part
is sacred to some high and holy use. That for
him the great composers have made the most
entrancing appeals to his ears, the noblest art-
ists to his eyes, the most gifted minds to his
thought, and that he may make the highest use
of all these gifts, he must master the best use
of every one of them. This will lift this whole
subject out of the region of the commonplace,
PHYSIOLOGY 219
supposing that it could ever fall so low, and
make it the study of what it really is—life it-
self—pure, holy, and endless.
CHAPTER IX
BOTANY
PERHAPs the best way in which I can intro-
duce the manner of bringing the subject of
botany to the attention of children, in a scien-
tific way, is to quote from a master of the sub-
ject, Mr. Grant Allen: “Plants are living
things; they eat with their leaves, and drink
with their rootlets. They take up carbon
from the air, and water from the soil, and
build the materials so derived into their own
bodies. Plants also marry and are given in
marriage. They have often two seaſes, male
and female. Each seed is thus the product of
a separate father and mother. Plants are of
many kinds, and we must inquire by and by
how they came to be so. Plants live on sea
and land, and have varieties specially fitted for
almost every situation. Plants have very
varied ways of securing the fertilization of
their flowers and look after the future of their
gyoung like good parents that they are, in many
different manners. Plants are higher and
lower, exactly like animals.” "
1 Story of the Plants, p. 13.
220
BOTANY 221
There you have already a comprehensive
program outlined in terms which almost any
child can understand. You have, in this de-
scription, a “humanized” outline of the various
processes which you will inquire into, and into
each you can go almost as far as you please.
For your purposes, however, you will not go
much farther than the merest outlines and let
the interest you develop, point out how much
farther you are able to go. Some children
when they become interested in some special
branch of any subject want to pursue it much
farther than others. You will be guided in
this matter entirely by the interest you create.
But as an initial step you will take up these
various points, and deal with them as best you
may, and let the work itself point out whether
you have struck a special lead or not.
First you would be wise to get some ele-
mentary text book in botany and soak your-
self on the subject. There are many such
books and they all, in the elements, go over
substantially the same ground though some are
clearer than others, and you must be guided
in this matter by your own surroundings. But
let this be clear from the beginning, namely,
that you need not go far from your own home
to have all the material which you need, and
what you are doing here, again, let me remind
222 TEACHING IN THE HOME
you, is not to merely teach the child to recog-
nize the common plants and flowers of the
vicinity but to inculcate an intellectual method
of inquiry and scrutiny which is the essence of
scientific study. First make it clear to your-
self that all the natural processes with which
you are acquainted in human beings as Mr.
Allen indicates, exist in plant life also. This
will link it with your study of the human body
and make your biological parallels very effec-
tive. Plants are living things. All life is
derived from them, and they were before ani-
mal life, which, without them, never could have
existed upon the earth. They have nutritive
processes and habits just like human beings,
and have to earn their food like them and make
arrangements that their food supply is not
stopped. Sometimes they seem to change
their very mature, because the conditions under
which they find themselves require it in order
to live. In this they are again like human
beings and almost all animals. Then they
have their offspring, their children, whom they
have to beget and nurture and provide for.
All this you will assimilate yourself and as you
take up this study, step by step, you will have
already begotten a kind of affinity between
yourself and your child’s mind for the wonder-
ful plant creation. - -
BOTANY - 223
Much of the study of plants fails to get any-
where because the study is linked merely to
ideas of the beautiful, and the emphasis is laid
on the pleasure of seeing the beauty and the
blossoms. That is not your object, though
you will appreciate the beauty as much as any-
one. Your business is to get into the life of
the plants from their own standpoint. You
are to open a volume of nature at work and
you will simply follow it as it works and be
guided by it rather than guiding it yourself.
For this purpose you will not always make up
your mind what you are going to find. Very
likely you will find something you are not
looking for yourself. Every such “original dis-
covery by the child, itself, is of great impor-
tance because it brings the child face to face
with a law of mature which goes on silently,
inevitably, all the time and for which man
has made no provision, and which man did not
have anything to do with, in the making.
You will often be struck with the additions to
your own teaching which the child will make.
I recall a small child, which was being taught
along this line and had been given a bean to
plant in wet sawdust and when it had swelled
and was about to throw off the outer skin, the
teacher remarked, “You see, the bean has now
outgrown its little coat and is going to throw
224 TEACHING IN THE HOME
it away just as your mother does when you
outgrow your coat!” Quick as a flash, the
maiden replied, “Oh no, she does not throw it
away, she makes it over for my little sister!”
which was not only a beautiful illustration of
economy, but was, in fact, scientifically exact.
Nature throws nothing away. She never
wastes. And what she discards in one form
she utilizes in another. You will have many
such pleasant episodes.
Having prepared yourself, so that you
know where you are to begin, you will provide
yourself with pictures of plants, if possible,
those which you are going to study more
minutely, and let them be very thoroughly
known and recognized. In your walks you
will gather many of the commonest and iden-
tify them in the most general way. This is
merely to get the habit of looking about, seeing
unusual things and finding the habitat of cer-
tain flowers and plants. You will readily find
that some are always found in certain places,
Some on high ground, some in marshy places,
Some by the roadside and some by the river-
side. That is all practical information. You
will also notice their size and teature. Some
are strong and sturdy, others are slender and
light. You will notice color and the lack of it.
You will notice resemblances and dissimilari-
BOTANY 225
ties. You will notice form, height from the
ground, and manner of behavior under various
conditions. All this is perfectly simple and
but preliminary.
Then you will get a microscope, or a good
magnifying glass, so that things not visible to
the naked eye can plainly be seen. This will
be your constant companion, because it will
instantly reveal many things which, without it,
you would hardly suspect, much less know.
If you can keep a little place in the Summer
time or a little box in the Winter, though you
would be wiser to match your study to the sea-
sons, where you can plant things and watch
them grow, so much the better. This same
microscope will serve you when you study zo-
ology and the little insects which you will want
to know about. In any case, remember you
are to proceed with the little student as though
for the first time you were finding out how
these plants came into the world and why they
stay here and what plans they make for keep-
ing themselves here.
What makes this study so important is that
here you are at the sources of life—for plants
alone know how to make the materials of life.
Animals could not exist without them, and
could not have come into the world, if plant
life had not prepared the way for them. So
226 TEACHING IN THE HOME
that as you watch the elements of plant life de-
velop, you are close to the sources of all life.
Everything living of which we know anything,
came from this source which itself makes living
matter out of material found in the air under
the influence of the heat of the sun. When
the Psalmist therefore says that our life is but
a “vapor,” he is stating something which has
almost scientific exactitude. You will find
that a few such generalizations made clear to
your own mind, will help you very much in in-
teresting the children, especially if you keep
the human resemblances clear step by step.
Eating and drinking, growing and changing,
amating and reproducing, settling down and
moving from place to place, all these can be
reduced to definite reasons which can easily be
made clear. And when you find a plant in an
unexpected place, you will immediately ask
what happened to it, that it had to move from
its original home, and you will thus be led into
another field of knowledge, geology.
The science of biology is the study of living
matter and living matter alone has the capac-
ity for change and reproduction. This differ-
entiates it from dead matter. There are two
kinds of living matter, plants and animals.
The plants are the producers, the animals are
the consumers. You will sometimes find that
BOTANY 227
the plants make reprisals on the animals, as
when they cannot find their materials in the air
they catch some form of animal matter and
feed on that. That is the explanation of the
plants that catch flies and insects, for their own
nourishment. The habits of plants are very
interesting, and form a very useful way of cre-
ating interest in the subject. Sometimes they
change a stem into a leaf, for necessary reasons,
and sometimes they assume forms for their
protection, as in the case of the spines of the
cactus. Some again are strong enough to
maintain themselves without help, while others
have to have help and cling to something.
You will always find that the plant adapts it-
self to its conditions, and when it cannot find
conditions natural to it and cannot alter the
conditions, it alters itself. Thus you have the
two laws of adaptation and variation illus-
trated. - *
These are some of the fundamental things
which you will have in mind, and which you
will be constantly referring to, because they
are a part of the great natural system under
which nature works, and has her purposes car-
ried out. They reappear in almost every
form of the study of living things, and when
once the child gets the idea of the same law
working in different forms, in the various
228 TEACHING IN THE HOME
fields of nature study, whether plants or ani-
mals, including the human animal, you have
taught some of the fundamental lessons of sci-
ence. The earlier these are mastered, the
earlier will the reasoning habits be strength-
ened, and sound habits of thinking developed.
In the study of botany, the intrinsic interest of
the materials themselves, added to their place
in the common ordinary life of children, makes
progress very rapid and also develops the abil-
ity to rationalize about things which are not so
COOTINT OIl.
One very important point not to be over-
looked, is that you must let the child do as
much of the work itself as it is capable of
doing. Let it point out and count the various
parts. Let it note the differences as they ap-
pear. Let it make the comparisons and let it
work out the why and wherefore, you supply-
ing the leading questions, and making the Sug-
gestions when necessary. Here also is a good
place to begin drawing. Of course, the draw-
ings will be crude, but do not let that bother
you. If you could see some of the drawings
in freshman laboratory books you would never
feel discouraged about anything that little
children do in this direction. But as you will
be doing this not only in your study of botany,
but also in Zoology and geology, you will be
BOTANY 229
getting habits of observation and practice,
which will do in a very much more useful form,
what is usually done aimlessly and without any
end in view. Sometimes too, children will de-
velop unusual skill in this way, which, of
course, when it is the case, indicates another
talent which should carefully be conserved.
Therefore keep blocks of blank paper around,
and pencils that make a distinctly black mark
and, when possible, let the completed plants
and parts of plants be colored. This form of
activity can easily be made “busy work” for
the employment of odd times. Dull and
stormy days can through this means often be
made most profitable and happy days.
When possible, get complete plants, that is
dig them up carefully and press them or exam-
ine them entire, first try to classify them, your
text book will be of use here, and then take up
the various parts of its structure. Don't at-
tempt too much and do the same thing over
Tmany times, the practice is quite as important
as the results. By this means you get manual
dexterity in handling delicate things and care
in separating them and preserving them.
When you go walking, a little tin box, large
enough to put an entire plant into without in-
juring its parts, slung over the shoulder, is
very useful. If you can get one with three
230 TEACHING IN THE HOME
compartments you can put insects into one,
plants into another, and minerals into another,
and so all your scientific studies will go hand
in hand.
Learn to cut up a plant carefully in various
ways so that you can get a view of its interior
structure and can note how it is put together.
The mounting of these parts in plants that are
large enough, and you will select such at first,
because most easily handled, will also afford
pleasant and profitable work. Keep the child
at work and though you can do it much better
yourself let the child do it. It is well to keep
all such efforts from the very earliest. They
will make the material for comparison with
later productions, and also indicate the meas-
ure of progress. Whenever you use a com-
mon flower or plant, always refer to it by its
scientific name. You will remember I said
that this will help you in language study, and
these names all have a history. The reason
most of them are in Latin is, that it was and is
the language of the learned world and is read
all over the world which would not be the case
with any other.
Common garden vegetables offer a reward-
ing field for experimentation, radishes, carrots
and the like. You can study them at every
stage of their growth and note the various
BOTANY 231
parts. The drawing of their interior struc-
ture too, is simple and attractive work. Use
your garden for everything you have learned.
Make frequent reviews of the things which you
have worked out and see that they are recog-
nized whenever there is an occasion for their
recognition. Show the functions of the struc-
ture clearly and simply; what leaves do, what
stems do, what roots do, and how they do their
work. Get all these easily discernible things
well understood before you take up fertiliza-
tion, though no definite place can be made
where you shall begin or end. Your purpose
being to fertilize, yourself, you will cause many
things to be planted in the child mind, only
you will guard as best you may, against giving
'mere confused masses of information. It is
not how much you teach but how much you
make absolutely clear that is your object.
When the mind is clear, acquisition comes rap-
idly enough.
You can make the subject one of pleasur-
able interest by means of seedlings, using for
this purpose the ordinary bean, pea, sunflower
and the like which you can sow in sand or moist
sawdust, and as they develop, you can watch
them and compare them. Notice everything
about them, and see that you do by making
drawings of them, that is, letting the child
232 TEACHING IN THE HOME
make the drawings. Your text book will give
you most of the practical directions, but what
I am calling attention to, is, that the processes
are carefully noted and compared. Ap-
paratus of a simple sort can easily be devised
and most of the simple practical experiments
for your purpose can be made without much
difficulty. You can take the various grains
and examine them after they are sprouted in
this same way. Seeds of melons, squash or
cucumbers, will add to the interest because
these are common every day things about
which any child will know the final end.
Write to the Department of Agriculture at
Washington and have them send you a list of
their publications, and look them over and out
of them you will get all sorts of material for
experimentation. Seed catalogues and flower
catalogues will also give you useful material
not specially for botanical study, as such, but
as showing pictures which stimulate the imagi-
nation and give you the common equivalents
for the scientific names which you will habit-
ually use. Just remember that everything is
grist for your mill and that you are to get in-
formation from every source and work it
through your own mind for the purpose of giv-
ing it scientific form and shape for the child.
Try out every sort of thing that has any prom-
BOTANY 233
ise in it. But always bring whatever you be-
gin to a full complete ending, that is, do not let
things hang at loose ends. Finish what you
set out to accomplish. Thus if you begin with
a geranium just get everything out of it that it
is possible for you to get, and while all that you
get won’t be all of it, nevertheless you will have
for that particular plant a more or less com-
plete set of ideas. Do this with a plant of
each group, getting this way variety.
The most fascinating portion of the study
of plants is that of fertilization, that is, the
marriage of plants. Make it clear that the
flowers are the mates of plant marriage, some-
times husbands, sometimes wives, sometimes
both. Sometimes, in the lower forms these
processes are not very clear, and in some
plants, a single part, if it is placed in wet soil
begins at once to grow into a new individual
plant. There are many forms of this process
and your business will be only to deal with the
simplest at first. Make it clear however that
the flower of any plant exists only for the pur-
pose of reproduction and that all its parts, and
its form, and its color, all have some part in Se-
curing this necessary work. You will show
what the stamens are and what the pistils are
and what pollen is and how all these work to-
gether and you will watch some flowers go
234 TEACHING IN THE HOME
through their regular work, or see them in pic-
tures in their different stages, to see just what
occurs. The stamens and the pistils are the
true flowers, because upon these depends the
work of reproducing and the petals are merely
the envelope in which these are placed. These
petals by their color attract insects which help
in the fertilization and their coloring is usually
for this purpose. They are simply an an-
nouncement to the insect world, that this is a
good place to get honey, which is the sweet
sticky substance in the flower, and by coming
to them the insects carry the fertilizing pollen
from one plant to another and thus aid the
work of keeping the species alive.
But there is a different purpose here, too,
which is one of very great interest. By this
means different plants are crossed and thus
you get healthy specimens, which is exactly
what happens when different members of the
human family mate with other family stems
than their own, and so preserve a healthy
strong stock. What human beings do by pur-
pose and plan, the plants do naturally to keep
themselves alive and see to it that they have
strong healthy children. The higher the
plants are in their order, the more necessary
this process is. Just as with human beings.
This usage of the insects is a very interest-
BOTANY 235
ing thing to watch, because it shows how the
plants marry. You will often see a bee com-
ing out of a flower into which he has poked
himself, quite covered with pollen. Well, he
will go into another flower and he will rub that
pollen off at the right spot and fertilize the
plant to which he goes by putting the pollen
on the sticky stigma of the flower to which he
goes. That keeps it there and prevents him
from carrying it further. And so the mar-
riage takes place. The plants did not do all
this at first, but began in a much more humble
way. But gradually, they found that they
could get the insects to come if they put the
honey in an attractive place, and made the
petals bright with color, so that they could eas-
ily be seen afar off, and very soon they estab-
lished a plan of cooperation with them. The
plant world is full of such plans, and when
they result in the marriage of the plants the
plant is encouraged to do the same thing again.
By and by, it becomes a family habit. Gen-
erations of insects trained in this way, know
exactly where to go and what they will find
when they get there.
Sometimes you get curious results which
neither the plants nor the insects planned for,
and when this is the case, you find a new kind
or variation of the plant. All these things
236 TEACHING IN THE HOME
you can see very clearly, in common flowers,
like buttercups or columbines or others quite
as common. Then again, you will often no-
tice that the plants have found out that they
are visited by other than friendly insects, raid-
ers who simply want to get what they can with-
out doing anything in return for the honey
they get. If you will look carefully, you will
find that they have made provision for these
raiders into their preserves, and have made
protective places where they hide their honey
and only give it up when the proper visitor ar-
rives.
Watch the butterflies at work, and see how
they help in all these plans, getting a good view
of them before they crawl into the flower, and
how they look when they come out. Even
these insects which fertilize make mistakes
sometimes. They, like the rest of us, meddle
with things that look promising, but which are
dangerous and they often pay for their experi-
ments with their lives. I have seen butterflies
make such mistakes.
Then again there is another agent, which has
to do with the perpetuation of plant life and
that is the wind. Grasses are generally fer-
tilized in this manner and the catkins which
you are so glad to welcome in the Spring are of
this character—that is wind-fertilized. The
BOTANY 237
wind does a great many wonderful things and
it is most interesting to see how the grasses
hang out their stamens to the wind. It is for
this reason that they are so numerous and
cover such vast areas.
Then again, you will deal with the fruit
which is simply the effort of the plants to pro-
vide for their young. It is the seed which is
the stored food of the plant upon which the
young child has to live, when first it begins to
germinate, and that is also the reason why
these same seeds or fruit are good for us to
eat, many of them, because they are full of
nutrition. By these the young plant can live
for a long time, till it gets to the point where it
can send out into the soil its own little rootlets
and agencies for getting its own food.
By such simple stories, and in this simple
manner, you will induct the little children into
the study of what becomes the science of bot-
any. Use your text book freely yourself but
do most of your work with the plants them-
selves, and let the children do all that they
can in their own way under your guidance.
When once a careful dissection of a plant
has been made, let the child make another
On its own account, and so get the habit
of noticing peculiarities and things which it
has not seen before. Often vary your story
238 TEACHING IN THE HOME
by going into other phases of the subject,
by dealing with the very materials out of
which the plant is formed. For example,
take the subject of chlorophyll and explain
what the significance, the perfectly tremend-
ous significance, of the green coloring of
the plant world is. That will afford you ma-
terials for many hours and many reflections
and discussions about things of never-ending
interest.
In the midst of the study of the plants them-
selves, you can bring home to the child the
wider implications of the plant world, its rela-
tions to the animal world, including man, for
food, and the fact that without it we should all
die, because we should have nothing to eat and
that applies not only to us, but to the animals
which we also eat. Point out that there was
a time when there were no plants or only the
very lowest forms which appeared first because
of the geological condition of the earth. I
have taken the botany first, because it seemed
to be the science in which interest is most read-
ily excited and where the variety of material
is greatest. But out of all this you can de-
velop relations of thought with the most mod-
ern and vital of economic subjects like food
supply, fertility of the soil, the forestation of
areas from which the trees have been cut off,
BOTANY 239
and the mass of topics which will be found in
almost any morning newspaper or magazine.
When the child finds that what it has been
studying in this simple way is related to the
big practical questions with which the master
minds of the world are struggling, its interests
will automatically expand, and you will often
discover that it raises questions which did not
occur even to you.
Always keep to the habit of asking for rea-
soms, the why and the wherefore of everything.
If you don’t know yourself find out. But en-
courage that habit because it lies at the base of
the organization of the mind for dealing with
problems concerning which there are few data
to begin with. To look about with a new ques-
tion, and work out some kind of a hypothesis
concerning it, and then finding out whether it
is right or wrong, is the best mental training
that exists. Some things to be sure are fixed
and you may say that they are to be learned
outright. But not many, and we are con-
stantly finding out that many things we sup-
posed to be fixed are not fixed at all. Study
physical laws along with all this material.
The pressure of air, and the velocity of the
wind, and the fall of rain, and the creation of
gases, and their effect or modification of living
life. That will lead you directly into many
240 TEACHING IN THE HOME
practical things which concern the daily life of
the child itself. You can show best by the
study of plants how much conditions affect re-
sults and by this method make the child itself
conscious much of effective life depends upon
conditions, and show which of these it has in its
own keeping. Plant life responds so readily
to all sorts of changed conditions, that it illus-
trates many ethical as well as natural laws.
Hardly a tree but shows the effect of some
outer influence which has been brought to bear
upon it while growing, and the habits of plants
in adapting themselves to their conditions may
well furnish the illustration for the profound-
est moral lessons with which the human mind
can deal.
CHAPTER X.
ZOOLOGY
THE general methods which have been laid
down in dealing with plants apply also to the
study of animals with this difference: the
plants stay put, while the animals move about
and hence you have to catch your animal in or-
der to study him. What this means is, that
animals have organs of locomotion and a gen-
erally much more highly developed set of or-
gans including those of motion. There are
some scientists who believe that the lowest
forms of animal and plant life either are alike
or come together and whether this is true or
not, it is true that at the bottom they are very
much alike. By the time you get to comparing,
let us say, a tree with a horse or a cow, you have
travelled a long distance because the highly
developed horse has a distinct and special
Set of organs for walking, for digesting, for
breathing, for circulation, much more highly
differentiated though the plants have organs
which perform the same functions. But with
the animals generally speaking the particular
241
242 TEACHING IN THE HOME
organ does the work of that organ, while, in
plants, the whole plant works at everything
almost. Then again animals have a nervous
system and in this they differ entirely from the
plants.
These organs, however, are simply an
evolved form, that is, a higher form of what
exists in lower animal forms and in plants.
The animals simply represent a higher stage
of development. The word zoology means
the science of animals or discourse about ani-
mals. You cannot, of course, take up the ear-
liest forms which require a very careful use of
the microscope but you can readily begin
with some of the more general and common
things which lie all about you. You can, for
example, study the aphidae on the rose bushes
or on the fruit trees and see what the ants de
with them. You can study an ant hill and the
work of the ants themselves and the form and
structure of the houses they build and watch
them at work, a most absorbing and interest-
ing occupation. You can watch bees at work
or you can study the work of wasps, or spiders,
all of which present most thrilling phases of
this kind of study.
A very good beginning may be made by tak-
ing any common insect, a spider or a beetle, for
choice, and study its parts through a magnify-
ZOOLOGY 243
ing glass and taking it apart piece by piece and
seeing how it is put together and working out
what all are designed to accomplish. You
can find a great deal of entertainment, as
well as information, in noticing carefully
the structure and form of every organ and
then asking what it has to do with the
habits of the animal. You will notice how
thoroughly every organ is adapted for the
work which it is designed to do. All this, of
course, did not come about by accident. It
took a very long period, just how long nobody
can say, till each one of these tiny instruments
became so exactly fitted to do the work for
which the insect uses it. A common grass-
hopper lends itself for dissection very nicely
and the parts are readily separated and ana-
lyzed.
You will not have done this many times, be-
fore you will become aware that the same great
law which we discovered in plants, is also at
work here and that the animals have become
adapted to their surroundings just as the
plants have been. Sometimes you will see the
Temains of the organs for which the animal
once had use, but for which it has now none and
consequently it is disappearing or changing.
Nature does not waste anything, least of all
power and strength, and when organs cease to
244 TEACHING IN THE HOME
perform any special office, or have any work
to do, she lets them die and they pass away.
But often the place where they were shows
traces of them, and there are said to be many
such remains in the human body, of the organs
for which man once had use, but for which h
has none now. -
You will notice that the differences in these
respects are those which affect the struggle for
life most keenly, fingers and toes, tentacles
and antennae, because when the use of these
becomes changed, the change has to be made
quickly. It is just as if you began to go bare-
foot and very soon your foot would show the
changed order of things, because you are walk-
ing all the time and changed habits here would
be very serious. You can notice this also in
the hands and fingers of workmen in various
callings, and see how their work affects their
hands. All this in animals is very common,
and has to do with the saving of the animal’s
life. It found that it had to change its habits,
if it wished to survive, and only those who
could do this, did actually survive, hence the
expression the survival of the fittest. Only
the strongest and the readiest could make the
changes. It is just so with men. Those who
can readily meet new conditions, and adapt
themselves to them, get along when changes
ZOOLOGY 245
are necessary. Those who cannot alter their
habits, or are not strong enough to do pio-
neering into new conditions, die off. The
law is the same in both cases. Most of
our domestic animals had wild ancestors,
just as man had wild ancestors. We have
been tamed and they have been tamed. But
by this taming process, we have also lost
something, namely, the ability to endure hard-
ship and fight for life under severe or adverse
conditions. The foot of a horse, for example,
has gone through many changes before it came
to be what it is now.
Conditions make most animals what they are
and that is the reason why animals in the cold
climates have heavy fur and those in milder
zones have nothing like as heavy coats. The
climate has much to do with the habits and dis-
position as, of course, it affects the food and
much more about animals. The mature of the
soil and the character of the food supply, all
have great influence in this direction. You
will often have noticed how, in hunger, ani-
mals eat things which they do not usually en-
joy. If that process were continued long
enough, the unusual food might easily become
the habitual food, and the digestive organs
would gradually become accustomed to it and
take on a form and method which would pro-
246 TEACHING IN THE HOME
vide for it. When you consider the peculiar
digestive apparatus of a cow, for example, you
have only to consider the food and habits and
purposes of the cow organism, to account for
most of it. In dissecting insects or small ani-
mals always look at the various Organs, for
strange and curious things.
The general principles of Zoology can be
best understood perhaps by taking some single
specimen and studying it in detail, though for
little children this is sometimes wearisome,
yet the study and dissection of a frog, gives
endless delight and furnishes all sorts of in-
formation which has great uses. Frogs be-
sides are interesting creatures in themselves
and are easy to get at. You will, of course,
have by you some good text-book in which
what you are studying may be looked up, and
you may be guided yourself, so that you can
study with the children. Some general in-
struction as to classification may be given at
first, though generally it will be found best to
give it by implication, though the four-fold
classification of Cuvier is still as useful as any.
But you can easily indicate the difference be-
tween vertebrata, the arthropoda, the mollusca,
and the vermes and if it is found necessary
some others. But as you will recall that you
are not making a zoologist, but merely teach-
ZOOLOGY 247
ing the child that there is a vast field of knowl-
edge called Zoology, and what it is about, you
need not at this stage concern yourself about
the many things which will come when more
formal study is entered upon. You will, of
course, strike such a term as protozoa and you
will be wise to find out what it means and per-
haps at some stage, tell the child about it. It
is not difficult to define and enough is said
in the papers and magazines to-day about
cells and cell-life to make it readily intelli-
gible.
It is well, however, to take up the embryol-
ogy of the various classes of animals and find
out how they come into the world, and how
they mate, and what changes they undergo
from infancy to maturity. In the frog, of
which I have already spoken, this is a very in-
teresting process and one easily made intelli-
gible even to little children. The birds will
help to make this part of the study interesting
too, because they can so easily be observed in
the Spring. But though you will study many
things about many animals, try, if possible, to
keep one on the table constantly for further
study, all the time getting more and more in-
formation about it, till it has been thoroughly
worked over. You will not have exhausted it
even then. But you will have established
248 TEACHING IN THE HOME
Some of the principles, which is what you are
after.
If you happen to be by the sea shore you
have your work made for you in the study of
the sea-urchins and shells and crabs and even
lower forms which you will hunt out and put
under your miscroscope. Some have consid-
ered this one of the most fascinating portions
of the study. I have seen some eminent men
spend a whole afternoon over a clam and every
moment of it was wonderful to me. The same
is true of fishes which can easily be dissected
and studied by the waterside, either of the sea,
or lakes, or rivers. If you will make a water
glass, that is, a box with a glass bottom, and
push it down into the water of a pool, your
face above it shutting out the light from above,
you will see many wonderful and curious
things. At some of the Southern sea resorts
they have boats fitted with glass bottoms by
which many interesting things under the boat
can be seen. A little experimenting here will
be very rewarding. This also leads me to say
that the keeping of an aquarium helps in the
study of fishes and water animals, making ob-
servation easy and the recording of such obser-
vations regular.
Try out all sorts of experiments before set-
tling down to any theory about anything. If
ZOOLOGY 249
you get a live frog, for example, put him in a
tub and watch how he swims, how he eats, how
he rests, and how he jumps, and notice the dif-
ference between a frog which is an hour in the
light and one which is an hour in the dark. If
you happen to be training a spider, notice what
attracts him, what frightens him, how far he
can hear and the like. Put a dead fly where
he can get at it, or better, a living one so that
it cannot get away, and watch him strike it
and kill it. Or, if you happen to be studying
a worm, put it on a sheet of paper, and watch it
move, how it moves, what it will do when you
touch it; examine its various parts and see
what they do if you touch them. If you hap-
pen to be studying birds, which you can often
do very well with an ordinary opera glass, take
the various organs in detail. I have watched
a humming bird thus for a long time and got-
ten a very thorough view of his methods and
beauty while at work.
It will add very much if you make collec-
tions of insects, because by this means you can
make comparisons more readily and this is
really a very important part of the work. To
see, side by side, two animals which are in
many respects alike and in others quite dis-
similar is to emphasize their differences and
this will make it both natural and easy to in-
250 TEACHING IN THE HOME
quire what makes the difference and thus make
a straight road to the habits, food, digestive or-
gans, and the like, and make your lesson for
you whenever you wish to take it up. It will
also form interesting material for drawing ani-
mals in whole, or in part, and comparing the
parts after they are thus drawn. It will also
make it easy to compare colorings and some of
the butterflies and dragon-flies are very beauti-
ful and when examined under a glass disclose
rare things. Great care should be exercised in
this part of your task, because delicate parts are
easily broken and this very delicacy of han-
dling is itself a kind of training in dexterity
and skill, which helps in many ways both in
the writing and in the drawing. But it will
help in other things too. A child that has
learned how to handle delicate insects’ wings,
will handle every other thing with much more
care and tenderness. Clumsiness will disap-
pear and every task performed with the hands
will be enhanced thereby. It will also add
grace and beauty to the hands themselves.
This is especially true in handling the
feathers of birds which suffer from careless
handling and lose much of their beauty and al-
most all of their texture. Always handle a
bird by the bill, and then you won’t break or
mar anything. Never drag it over any sur-
ZOOLOGY 251
face. Some persons have a constitutional
aversion for snakes. But if you happen to
find them, especially the small and harmless
kind, put them in a glass box, find out about
their food and study their habits. It will give
some important information, besides being of
great interest. In fact everything is a part of
your task because you are making the ac-
quaintance of the great world of animal crea-
tion, and by seeing as many portions of it as
possible, you are laying the foundation for the
understanding of the laws of the great animal
world by which they and we are alike gov-
erned.
In this same connection you will discover
that almost every animal has some kind of de-
fensive weapon, because every animal has its
own particular enemies against which it has to
be constantly prepared to fight, if it wishes to
live. The study of the methods of defense by
animals is very interesting because some of
them are aggressive and visible and some of
them are not visible. Animals that cannot de-
fend themselves by strength do it by cunning.
Many animals have what is known as defensive
coloring for this purpose, by which they so
identify themselves with their surroundings
that it is often very hard to see them. Others
have other ways. You will often be surprised
252 TEACHING IN THE HOME
how still an animal, with quick motive power
can stand till it is sure that it is in danger and
then dart almost with the quickness of light-
ning to some place of security. But the study
of these things furnishes the material for much
reflection, not only on the life of lower animals,
but hardly less upon the life and development
of man.
The defensive equipment of animals also
suggests another matter, namely, the parasitic,
animals which live upon their prey, actually
making their habitat upon the animals they
live upon. These are found not only among
land animals but also among water animals,
and the study of parasites again leads to some
interesting conclusions. Parasitism has come
to have a meaning, not only in the field of nat-
ural history, but also a deeper and more sig-
nificant meaning in the affairs of men. Noth-
ing can convey the hideousness of living with-
out working or productiveness of some kind to
young children, than to see the little lice which
infest the larger animals and realize that their
entire life is lived upon the bodies of other be-
ings than themselves. The notion that there
are parasitic men who live upon others, doing
nothing for themselves, was a distinct ethical
shock to some young children I was teaching
and I think hardly anything I ever did made
ZOOLOGY 253
them so anxious to work lest they should in
their own minds become identified with para-
sites.
By contrast, the study of bees makes a fine
method of inculcating the higher virtues of in-
dustry, frugality, forethought, and patience.
Bees can be watched so easily and the litera-
ture of the subject is so full and so many de-
scriptions are accessible, that it is a very simple
matter to follow them through all their work
and teach the various principles which they
are illustrating. Wasps, which though not so
highly esteemed popularly, are hardly less
wonderful in the way they go about their work,
and a most interesting comparison might be
made between the resemblances and differ-
ences of the queen wasp and the queen bee.
Doth are very remarkable personages and sin-
gularly efficient and important to their kind.
Perhaps not with the very smallest little
children, but surely with children of seven or
eight, you can try the dissection of an animal
of higher calibre than any of those yet sug-
gested—let us say a rabbit. What you have
tried with a frog or a bird, will have in a meas-
ure given you the courage and experience to
try something larger and the rabbit is easily
cut up and the organs taken apart and exam-
ined. You can do as much or as little as seems
254 TEACHING IN THE HOME
wise to you in this matter, and must be gov-
erned by the interest and disposition of the
child. Some children love this sort of thing,
and are never happier than when cutting up
Something and trying to find out what is on
the inside. There are others that shrink at
first, and some who never enjoy it, even after
they have become used to the idea of dissec-
tion and know its necessity and importance.
But wherever you find the disposition, push it
to the utmost and get all the information you
can. This is your golden time when there are
no interests competing with you, which you
cannot readily overthrow or circumvent.
This is also the time when you will fre-
quently stimulate your young student’s inter-
est by taking him to the nearby museums and
showing him all sorts of animals, especially
those which he has handled and which he will
observe with a tenfold greater interest because
he knows something about them through per-
Sonal contact.
Many cities have also now 200logical gar-
dens with all kinds of animals and frequent
visits to these, with the equipment of knowl-
edge which you will give before you go, so that
the young people will know what they see
when they look, and what to look for, will help
in the study of animal life. Of course, all this
ZOOLOGY 255
time you will be having a harvest time with
other things, namely geography, teaching all
about the lands of the nativity of these ani-
mals, and all you know about them or can
gather about them. You will have a perfectly
joyous time (I did) working out the wonder-
ful scientific names of the various species and
classes and families of animals, and enriching
the vocabulary by great additions of all sorts.
Remembering what I have already said about
word-study, just think of what materials
you have in such words as mammalia, car-
nivora, palaeontology, Zoogeography, morphol-
ogy, and the like. My own children used to
jump at these and their kind, with a snort of
pleasure which was wonderful to witness, and
when they had once gotten a firm grip on
them, they used to hang them about their con-
versation like garlands, or as a warrior might
display his spoils of the chase. As, in fact,
such they were.
Animal pets can be made to play a large
part in this study if the pets are made to be
something besides pets, and are studied as well
as played with. I remember very well some
children who knew all about white mice and
did perfectly wonderful things with them, and
never understood how intimate and exact their
knowledge was till I saw students in the medi-
256 TEACHING IN THE HOME
cal school, doing the same things with mice
they were experimenting with in their research
work. So, also, I have known children who
displayed positive genius with rabbits, and I
knew a little girl who had above a hundred ca-
naries in the attic of her home which she had
reared herself, and which she almost seemed to
know by name. In another home, I saw a
humming bird that had almost been frozen and
which was found outside of a window, so
trained that it would come at call and sit on
the finger of its keeper and which feeding on
its food of diluted honey was one of the most
interesting sights I ever witnessed.
What can be done with birds is well
known to many people. Children can easily
be taught comradeship with their pets, in fact,
take to it naturally, and often these pets will
endure a good deal from children whom they
have learned to trust. I think I have already
mentioned the story of the incubator chicken
Tom (the original duet being Tom and
Jerry, remains of a dozen, all the rest of whom
perished) and how abominably domesticated
he became, and what a nuisance it was continu-
ally to be mistaken into thinking that a baby
was crying, when it was only Tom cheeping
and wailing for company'ſ I wouldn’t advise
cultivating house mice but for a number of
ZOOLOGY 257
months I had, in the evening, after the children
had gone to bed, a good deal of amusement
calling a mouse with musical instincts out of
his hole while I played the piano to him. His
exhibition of positive joy, and his efforts to
dance, were a source of great delight to me. I
taught him to modulate his steps pretty well
for an ordinary mouse, with whom I had only
a long distance acquaintance, and more than
once he rolled over in the determination to
keep up with the fast time I gave him. He
never loved me enough, however, to let me see
him at close range and rushed to his hole im-
mediately after the orgy. He disappeared
quite suddenly. -
Of course, all these things have no particular
scientific value, but they open the mind to the
possibilities and show how wonderful the ani-
mal world is and what we may yet learn. In
this connection animal stories may be used
with good effect and purpose. Stories of the
great exploits of dogs or horses are always wel-
come to children and with the scientific mate-
rial the human elements may be mingled so
that the whole subject gets a sort of glow
which is both stimulating and informing.
You can never know when these little experi-
ments will give you pleasure. While I am
writing this, a big spider from outdoors has
258 TEACHING IN THE HOME
crawled up on the window sill and hearing the
click of the typewriter is wondering whether to
go on or not. By and by, I shall write his his-
tory!
The geographical distribution of animals
can be made a very pleasurable occupation for
young children, by taking large sheets sep-
arately, and placing upon them pictures of ani-
mals and then locating them on the map.
Sometimes the evolution of a particular species
can be shown in successive pictures which
makes an interesting exhibit. Then too, the
distribution of marine animals can be made
equally interesting by placing them on the map
in the various parts of the ocean where they
may be found. This sort of work is good for
indoor days and will be found to be valuable
for many other things than this particular sub-
ject. It will be found a useful thing too,
to associate geographically the animals and
plants of a particular region, and thus get a
line on groupings of animals and plants and
see how this is related to climate, soil, food
and other conditions. There are many such
devices which can be worked out and you will,
of course, do this first of all for the region
where you happen to be. In fact, cultivate
your own region first in everything, not only
because it is easier and simpler to do this, but
ZOOLOGY 259
because the interest in the things near at hand
will prove that you do not need to go far from
home for enjoyment and pleasure. Distance
will always lend enchantment, so place the em-
phasis on the things near at hand.
But this should not prevent your getting
from the libraries, books of scientific interest
and exploration. You should go often to the
library and visit this department and see what
new books there are and look them over and
frequently have them by for reference and al-
ways be selecting materials from them which
are suited to your purpose. You will be care-
ful to observe the difference between the books
which deal with the subject in a more or less
scientific manner, and those which merely re-
cord pleasant tales. Be careful not to confuse
mewspaper stories about animals with scientific
knowledge. The more faithfully you do the
work of observation and comparison, especially
with a microscope, noting how everything oper-
ates under law, the less you will be deceived.
You will see so much evidence of design and
purpose in the habits of animals, that it will be
next to impossible for you to avoid raising the
question of instinct and reason in animals.
On these points there is much difference of
opinion and naturally many scientists, espe-
cially those who have given their lives to close
260 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and patient study of the habits of animals, be-
lieve that they reason like man, only differing
in degree. It is certain that animals do things
that look like reasoning, namely, exercise the
power of choice, show preferences as to color
and odor, and have their likes and dislikes, just
like human beings. Then again they show
contentment and anger, they have feelings and
seem to have memory. We know that they
Select special foods and flowers, and seem to
show discrimination often in a high degree.
Then again, animals show the social spirit
often in a degree which might well be emulated
by some men. Those that live in colonies show
that they know how to get along together, dis-
tribute their tasks, mind their own business,
and bear their own burdens. They seem to
know how to punish promptly and effectively,
those that disobey the rules and have a high
sense both of order and discipline. They seem
to have the sense of direction as in the migra-
tion of birds, and often exhibit wonderful pow-
ers in getting back to the nest when they are
lost. Whether the “instinct is unconscious
reason,” or not, it is a powerful thing. What
is very certain is, that naturalists who have
close contact with animals and who observe
them for years incline more and more to the
idea that animals have powers like those of
ZOOLOGY 261
man though in a lower degree. To be sure
inherited habits may account for a great deal
but not for all. The operation of the great
powerful laws like those of struggle for life,
reproduction, food, and the like compel very
astounding things and show how strong these
laws are. These are the main things to learn
because their mastery has a no less powerful
influence upon our own conception of human
life and work. At any rate, if instinct is the
sum of inherited habits in animals, we may
learn a good deal about its influence for our-
selves of our own habits and look out for them.
It is hardly possible in study like this, to
avoid the question of the relation of man to
the rest of animal creation. Nor is it neces-
sary that it should be avoided. The animal
nature of man is so pronounced, so ever pres-
ent, and periodically manifesting itself in So
many ways, that his relation to the animal
world may well be taken up and general ideas
about it inculcated. Of course, this is not the
place, nor is childhood the time, to go into the
graver questions. But the general resem-
blances between man and the higher anthro-
poids may not be overlooked. The differing
characteristics of the various races of men may
well be pointed out, and the relation of man to
his own environment may well be taught while
262 TEACHING IN THE HOME
you are showing what happens to animals if
you change their geographical relations and
with these, their food, the soil on which they
live, the climate which affects them, and the
companionships in which they have to live and
move and have their being. All this in ani-
mals in a detached kind of way, is interesting
enough. It becomes of acute and burning in-
terest when applied to ourselves.
Nor is it without special interest at this pres-
ent time. Man is being made over by the in-
ventions which are changing his nature and
habits. For example, the ease with which we
are transported by motor cars and other ve-
hicles from one place to another is making
walking less and less a habit. How will that
effect the legs of the future generations? The
same is true about our food. What kind of
teeth will the future generations have with all
their food prepared for them? What kind of
stomachs will they have, with the things they
put into them? What kind of eyes will they
have, considering the new influences which are
affecting them? All these things may very
reasonably be discussed as showing the effect
of habits, surroundings and natural forces
upon the life of man.
But along with this come the questions of
race amalgamation. The so-called inferior
ZOOLOGY 263
races are not disappearing. They are increas-
ing. They will be in closer contact in the fu-
ture with the white races than ever before.
They will learn, are, in fact, learning now, not
only the strength but also the weaknesses of
the white races: The troops from India, for
example, and Africa, must be getting a great
deal of education about their white brothers in
the trenches in France at the present moment.
How will this affect them when they get back
home and spread abroad the knowledge of
what they have learned? What will the gen-
eral attitude of European races be in the fu-
ture toward the Asiatic races? Will they
mingle? And if they mingle in commerce and
war, will they not mingle in other things too?
Is not the possibility of these races being
crossed in sight? How will that affect civiliza-
tion? All these are very real things and chil-
dren now living will have to make some very
important decisions relative to these questions.
Moreover the general laws which we have
looked into, of the struggle for existence, the
preparations for aggression and defense, the
measures for the security, and growth of off-
spring, what is the significance of these things
in the larger area of man’s future? All this
shows how important it is that there should be
in the background, a wider knowledge of these
264 TEACHING IN THE HOME
processes as they exist in the animal world, and
as a part of the general laws of life, higher and
lower alike. We have seen how in the war
now raging all the higher interests of life have
become submerged in the brute struggle for
physical conquest. But into this struggle
have been brought, for the first time, the high-
est brain developments, the best resources of
the intellect, and they have all been laid at the
feet of the war machines of the fighting na-
tions. Notice too, while you are about it, how
the war operating as a new environment is
changing governments, altering the course of
political development, breeding new and dif-
ferent ideals of national life, and the relation
of the individual to his government and his
fellow men. Thus we are seeing in the realm
of man what we have been talking about in the
changes that take place among the lower ani-
mals.
In a similar way, notice how this same war
is giving the world new ideas of food and the
amount needful for life. Notice how it is af-
fecting ideas of economy and the public control
of every necessity of the nations. All these,
when they have done their work, will leave the
people subjected to them very unlike what
they have been before these changes were in-
troduced. From this visible example, you can
ZOOLOGY 265
easily work backward to the time when there
were none of the things which we count SO com-
mon to-day, and man had to get along without
them and so steadily you get back to the primi-
tive man, who was so nearly like an animal that
he was subject almost exactly to the kind of
laws that we have seen operating upon animal
life. He lived very like them, for he had no
houses; he ate the things they did, because he
knew nothing about cooking; he had the in-
stincts and the abilities which they had, of
quick observation, higher sense development,
to make up for his lack of mental development.
Hence he could run and jump and Swim and
hear and smell as we cannot, having no need
for these highly developed powers as he had.
The story of man’s own development on the
animal side should be taught because it will
explain many things which if understood and
recognized will help to greater self-control and
through this to a higher efficiency and useful-
IleSS.
Not far from the spot where I am writing
this, there is a house which is more than one
hundred and fifty years old. It has been in-
habited by successive generations and as you
go about it and study the structure as it stands
to-day, you can see the marks of each genera-
tion. The architecture has undergone a va-
266 TEACHING IN THE HOME
riety of changes, parts have been added here
and there with little regard to plan, because
there was no plan. Each generation made it-
self comfortable and added what it needed,
with little reference to looks or indeed any-
thing but its own satisfaction. But this is not
all. If you go inside, you will see that the very
timbers have changed. The great timbers
which were once easily obtainable are not in
the newer parts. In the older portions, the
great broad boards in the floors were hewn
with an adze because there were no saw-mills
to make them. The newer parts give the evi-
dence of the existence of machinery, which the
earlier generations did not even dream about,
much less use. So, on every side, you see how
time and circumstances have changed not only
the internal and external appearance of this
house but the very stuff of which it is made.
Thus it has been with man. Thus it has
been with the world of nature and in animals
we can see this process taking place in the
cross-breeding and the development of special
types. Only a year ago, we were greatly af-
flicted in this region with brown-tail moths.
This year there are few, almost none. Why?
Because the brown-tails mated with another
kind and produced a degenerate type, which is
not nearly so harmful and the new worm is
ZOOLOGY - 267
distinctly less strong and capable and able to
cause trouble. It therefore fell an easy vic-
tim to a parasite which took them off by thou-
sands. The caterpillar nests full of these dead
hybrids tell the story and such stories are con-
stantly being enacted, not only among the ani-
mals, but also among men. Children who are
made to see these things in operation, will have
a much more rational conception of life, be
subject to fewer illusions in life and better
able to cope with the problems with which
they must grapple when mature life is upon
them.
CHAPTER XI
GEOLOGY
THE study of geology like that of every
other science, should be begun by a sort of
orientation in the use of the various terms em-
ployed. It will be interesting to compare the
words geology, geography, geometry, and
other similar words, with a discourse on the
distinctions involved and the resemblances
in the kind of knowledge which they connote.
This can readily be done on some occasion
when synonyms are studied, or other word
studies are made, and will themselves form an
introduction to the subject. ge
This study also assumes a few other things
which very likely you have worked out in the
study of geography, like the elements of the
solar system, the relation of the earth to the
Sun, and the action of the sun upon the earth.
You have already noticed this and made use
of it in relation to plants and animals. You
have talked about the seasons and the changes
of climate and by this means you will have al-
ready prepared for the more detailed talks
about this science.
268
GEOLOGY 269
Geology is eminently an outdoor study,
though this may be said of all the sciences in
one way and another. Still because it deals
mainly with the forces which have made the
earth what it is, and aims to follow these
forces to their beginnings, and then follow
them in their work and variations, under dif-
fering conditions, you can begin almost any-
where. We began in the garden, with the
action of the spray, which after some time be-
gan to make little streams and wear away cer-
tain little beds and then carry away the soil
from one spot and deposit it in another.
From this we pointed out that what was here
taking place, on a minute scale was really what
happened in the earth on a large scale, and
made the vast modifications which could be
seen anywhere. In fact, we often set the
water working in various ways in order to
produce some of these results so that the ac-
tion could be plainly seen.
You will probably find it easiest therefore
to begin the study with observation of the ac-
tion of water. Rivers, streams, any running
water, will illustrate some of the more funda-
mentals, and you will have great pleasures in
seeing these principles recognized from time
to time, while you are apparently not doing any
studying at all. Whenever we went fishing
270 TEACHING IN THE HOME
we made the occasion one of studying the ac-
tion of water. Whenever there was a rain-
storm we went out into the rain, and especially,
when there was a heavy rainfall noticed the
changes which the water had made. We no-
ticed from Summer to Summer, what changes
had taken place in the course of familiar
streams and places where the action of the
water could be noticed. We took occasion to
point out in times when the water in the river
was low, how the changes were being wrought
out and when there was an overflow from
freshets above, we noticed the results of that
also.
Since so large a part of the earth's surface
has been made what it is by the action of water,
and since this action is always the same
whether it operates on a large or a small scale,
you have excellent opportunities for observa-
tion. Also it affords a splendid opportunity
for making rough drawings and thus leading
forward into a general study of topography.
It leads to noticing elevations and depressions,
and this again leads to measurements of one
kind and another, by means of which, many
forms of the most fundamental thing in all
science can be taught and mastered, namely,
eaact measurement. You can teach the
tables of measurement in this collateral way,
GEOLOGY 271
and the child learn them without ever having
had to face them formally and indeed often
without ever remembering when they were
learned. Thus when you measure the circum-
ference of a tree, and then figure on its diam-
eter, on the rate of growth and the like, or as
you measure the rate at which the water wears
away the bank of a stream, and many such
things, inculcate the habit of exact measure-
ment and teach the method of its performance
at the same time.
Then you will deal with the things which
show the action of water. Pebbles, small
stones, which have become rounded by the ac-
tion of water and by rubbing against each
other, are very interesting in this connection.
We taught them in connection with the story
of David and Goliath when it says, that David
“took five smooth stones from the brook” for
his sling, and we reconstructed the geological
action of the water in framing those stones for
their use in the sling, and the reasons why
David chose them, and made it an interesting
conjunction of the alliance between matural and
moral forces for the achievement of the pur-
poses of God. You will find many such oc-
casions.
Then, again, you will notice and show how
water is a great carrying agent and what stu-
272 TEACHING IN THE HOME
pendous results have come about by this force.
You can easily show in a glass of water, how
sedimentation takes place and you can from
the action of flowing water show what the ac-
tion of ice is and so lead up to the great gla-
cial epoch and what that did for the earth.
you can show how ice can carry great masses
of stone, and very likely you will not have to
go very far, to find some boulder that has been
carried many hundreds of miles from its na-
tive place, to be where it is. You will show
how these stones and the smaller ones are grad-
ually broken up not only by bumping against
each other, but by the action of the water in
freezing in the crevices, which finally breaks
them up and them grinds them into fine parti-
cles which are thereby more readily trans-
ported. &
You will also notice the location of the
stones, especially the larger ones and ask why
they are where they are, rather than in some
other place. In fact, you will do just what
you do with plants. Why is it here rather
than in some other place? And having asked
that question, you will set about finding the
reasons. Then again you will find large
masses of earth very much mixed in rows or
mounds and you will ask yourself how that
came about, and perhaps in a given region
GEOLOGY 273
you will be able to follow out the line of such
deposits. Thus you will find out where cer-
tain kinds of geological action have ended.
And you will see what they have left and when
this process has been repeated several times
you will have shown how we determine certain
geological results from these investigations.
Sometimes you will be going by a road
where there has been some rather deep ex-
cavating necessary, for the levelling of the
road. You will notice the stratification and
often you will be able to show very distinctly
the layers in which the deposits have been
placed where they are. Often you will find
a special kind of a boulder sticking out, whose
ancestry you will trace out and tell where it
came from. This you can very readily do.
Often you will find the same kind of a boulder
in different places and have an interesting
time comparing the differing situations and
the causes which produced them.
Then, again, you will notice how sand is
formed and the different kinds of soil and
learn what that involves. How soil is
changed by the infusion of new elements
brought by the water, and especially by the
carrying in of new kinds of rock. You can
readily gather the various kinds of rocks
found in your vicinity and learn to name them,
274 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and get some of their leading characteristics.
All these things may be carried on coinci-
dentally with your study of plants and often
you will find a plant in some cranny which the
water has caused either by flow or by frost,
and then deposited soil enough for some tiny
plant to grow. All this is very elementary,
perfectly simple, but very fundamental. It
is surprising how possible it is for people to
go through the world, and see all these things
and never exhibit the slightest curiosity about
them.
From these simpler forms of the action of
water you can go on to those of wider scope.
Mountains and valleys, the hills and the rivers,
the lakes and their sides or banks or shores, are
all material for much investigation from the
pebbles on the beach to the great cliffs that
overhang and awe on the mountain sides.
Thus you will come to some of the more tre-
mendous geological forces. You can here
deal with the theories of the earth’s interior,
the action of fire and heat and you can often
See how the masses of stone lie on the moun-
tain side. You can open up the whole subject
of the earth’s crust, and how it was formed
and what is happening to it all the time.
You can, at this point, vary the subject by
taking up some of the great upheavals of his-
GEOLOGY 275
tory, the great earthquakes and will find it
interesting, not merely on the geological side,
but likewise on the side of history and human
interests. There have been enough of these,
even lately, and there are some going on all
the time apparently, to make it easily possible
to link this subject with very present day
affairs. Earthquakes may very easily make
your point of departure for teaching not only
a great deal about the earth, and its surface,
and its interior, and its changes, but hardly
less of its effects upon mankind and civiliza-
tion and the like. Make everything tell
and pictorialize everything. Pictures of such
scenes are easily accessible, and show, not only
the powerful forces at work, but also the fear-
ful effects which they leave upon the land-
scape and upon the people who come under
their terrible influence. Often you can get
some literary picture, like that of the earth-
quake and the eruption of Vesuvius described
in the Last Days of Pompeii. Never fail to
link all these things with some literary form, if
it is possible, some book, some picture, some
fine description. If you will yourself read a
book like Professor Wright's Ice Age in
North America, or his Greenland's Ice Fields
and Life in the North Atlantic, you will have
all the material you need, made to your hand.
276 TEACHING IN THE HOME
Then when there is a flood you can make
a beautiful play hour in the garden by making
a small flood of the child’s own. The build-
ing of little dams is a favorite play of children
in any case. You can show these things in
connection with the recreation time and give
important names and knowledge without the
semblance of formal teaching. Indeed all
natural phenomena as they are reported are
materials for your purpose. Write to the
Geological Survey at Washington, or write to
your congressman and get him to send you a
list of the interesting things the Government
prints for free distribution. You will get
much information about the soils and the geo-
logical formations of your own vicinity and
will find it very interesting and often enter-
taining. .
Often you will find the dried up beds of
streams a good opportunity for teaching, also
the paths which the Spring freshets or the
melting ice have made in the woods, evidence
of the work of water as it affects plant life.
Sometimes you can see how certain foliage in-
dicates that the plants have followed the water
courses. This is especially interesting when
you are rambling in the woods for Spring
flowers. Show, too, how heat from the sun
affects these things as you can readily do by
GEOLOGY 277
contrasting those spots where the sun shines
through, and those where the density of the
foliage prevents that heat from reaching the
soil. These things are so obvious, that even a
small child can readily be made to perceive the
difference. -
If you live by the sea shore or indeed if you
do not, the action of the tides forms an inter-
esting introduction to the subject of the ocean
and the action of water on a vast scale. You
will often see the curious formations of the
rocks on the shore, and sometimes you will see
after a storm, evidence of the amazing power
of the waves. If you live by a lake, greater
or smaller, that too, will illustrate much.
Find out the geological history of it, and often
simply by sitting by it, and looking around
you can show what geological forces have been
at work. Sometimes there will be a great in-
tervale or large area and then you can show
how the subsidence of water has formed ter-
races and the low levels and was gradually left
in the bed of the living stream. Sharp turns
in the river or stream will often show how the
courses change and you can readily see by the
action of the currents what curious results are
formed by the striking by the water of some
obstruction, and what happens till it wears
it away or breaks through it.
278 TEACHING IN THE HOME
When you are dealing with the ocean you
may well introduce the subject of ocean cur-
rents and the wonderful story which that un-
folds. You can take the Gulf Stream, for
example, because it is so well known and show
what tremendous results come from that
warm stream across the Atlantic, affecting not
merely ocean travel, but hardly less climate
and through it civilization and the course of
history, the relation of nations and the devel-
opment of particular types of civilization.
You can often link the history of a nation with
its geology. You can discuss the effect on
the character of people by the fact that they
live in highlands or lowlands, in the interior,
or by the sea, and by this means once more
link the action of great natural laws with the
story of the life of man upon the earth. .
Sometimes you will find fossils or going to
some nearby museum you will see all kinds of
animal remains which have been found in the
rocks. Sometimes you will see the footprints
of reptiles and birds, and all this will open the
subject of the relation of geological conditions
to the state of animal life. In a similar way
you can trace through the corals, the rise and
growth of islands or the eatension of the land
and the results which have been achieved by
reclaiming parts of the land submerged for-
GEOILOGY 279
merly by the sea. You will find it interesting
often to compare the coastline of some of the
nations of antiquity with their present coast-
line, showing that it has changed.
Any unusual natural phenomenon should
arrest your attention and make you ask how
it came about. Sharp declivities or marrow
gorges or water-falls great or small, all pre-
sent problems which are in your line not to
solve, of course, but to talk about and impress
as a part of the story of the earth. The
course of streams, the direction of their flow,
and the curious turns and twists which they
often make, are all a part of this sort of work.
If you are in the region where there are mines
of any description, or quarries, that again is
an opportunity for you. It will be pleasant
exercise and employment to take your little
hammer with you and your chisel, and knock
out or chip off portions of the rocks for exami-
nation under a magnifying glass at home.
A particularly interesting and fertilizing
branch of this study is that of glaciers and the
action of glaciers. That is too large a sub-
ject for consideration in a little sketch like
this, but you will find plenty of material in
your library which will not only be interesting
as regards the glaciers, but will do much in a
literary way besides. Pictures of the great
280 TEACHING IN THE HOME
mountain ranges, of the Rockies, of the Alps,
of the Canadian Rockies, are all easily acces-
sible, and a comparison of them will be found
of great interest and the books about them full
of fascinating material which has literary as
well as scientific interest. Often, in books of
travel which you will read or cause to be read,
you will come upon some strange information
as to geological formations which, of course,
you will seize upon for your purposes here.
But especially the study of the great glacial
epoch in North America will open a vast store-
house of knowledge and with it many other
things which will be useful in other fields also.
Often particular localities make the subject
of intense interest like the study of the Grand
Cañom or the Yosemite Valley, about which
all sorts of information can easily be obtained.
But keep steadily to the scientific aspect of the
subject though you will use the pictorial and
human interest of the subject to make the sci-
entific side entertaining. Always keep in
mind that though you are entertaining, your
purpose is to instruct. Use the scientific
terms. And if you mean erosion say so. If
you mean sedimentation say that. And show
what it is. Utilize all the knowledge that you
get from other fields here, notably that from
the history and life of plants, with the gases
GEOLOGY 281
which enter into their life, and the forces which
modify them. The air, the wind, the sun, the
soil, and all that in them is, are a part of this
study. This does not mean that you will al-
ways, or even generally, deal with these things
as you would with mature people, but when
Ayou do, do it in scientific terms.
A very good and simple plan for the wider
general geological Outlook is to get a geologi-
cal map of the state where you happen to live,
or of the country, and get a general view of
the whole region, its mountains, its valleys, its
lakes and rivers, and the various kinds of soil.
Link this with the location of the centres of
population and the industries and the natural
products, showing why certain industries are
where they are, and how the organization of
industry must to a certain degree follow
the great matural distribution of raw mate-
rial. Compare the agricultural regions in
this respect with the manufacturing regions.
Compare the great mining regions and their
products, with those of other regions. Often-
times it will make an interesting experiment
to go into the composition of certain articles
and ask where the material came from and
then work out where it probably was made.
For this purpose you may take, let us say,
coal. You can very readily get all the mate-
282 TEACHING IN THE HOME
rial you can possibly use. The composition
and formation of the coal beds, the rise of in-
dustries because of the abundance of fuel, and
the correlation of many kinds of activity on
this account, makes a most interesting story.
Or you can take limestone and the settlement
of certain populations by reason of the lime-
stone in the soil, will disclose some very curi-
ous facts as to the settlements in our own land,
by populations who sought soil like that to
which they were accustomed in Europe. Or,
again, the use of certain kinds of building
materials because they happened to be plenti-
ful, causing decisive influence in the habits of
the people by reason of the houses in which
they lived, all deal with this subject. Every-
thing leads back to the soil, the earth which is
the mother of us all. If you want to give a
chemical turn to the subject, write to the De-
partment of Agriculture and get some of its
publications about the soils and what may be
dome to change them or enrich them and make
them more productive. One thing always
leads to another, but you are always adding
to the knowledge of the child and telling it the
things which will presently have very much
more meaning than they seem to have at the
outset, and will lead it naturally and habit-
GEOILOGY - 283
ually to correlate things which often seem to
be very widely apart.
Volcanoes form another interesting branch
of the subject and though you will deal with
it only superficially you will nevertheless be
laying important foundations. The stories
of eruptions make very vivid reading and are
listened to with breathless interest. The spec-
tacle of a fiery mountain, pouring out smoke
and flame and streams of lava, give you plenty
of scope, not only for all your descriptive
powers, but with it all you may tell the story
of the untamed forces of nature about which
we have not yet heard the last word. There
are many interesting volumes in almost every
library on this subject.
You will also find that as you get better ac-
quainted with the stages of periods of the
earth's development, there is a regular ascend-
ing movement in the animal world and you
can thus easily and naturally correlate the
stages of animal development with the periods
of the earth’s life also. Making tables of this
sort is interesting work and when there has
been enough of a foundation laid, and it does
not require as much as one might suppose, it
makes a very interesting exercise to locate, in
time, the varieties of animal life, beginning at
284 TEACHING IN THE HOME
the lowest. This will also give you an en-
tirely new field for linguistic study, because
your study will bring you into contact with
any number of strange names and their his-
tory will supply your material for linguistic
work. Your experience with the geological
wocabulary will be one of the interesting
things in connection with it, both for your own
enjoyment and that of the children. Your
main purpose being fertilization you will
dwell on the words and their use, and when
you have occasion in reading other material to
notice one or more of these geological terms,
make use at once of your opportunity to fix
the knowledge which you had given when you
had this subject specifically in mind.
Geology is in general the most comprehen-
sive of all the sciences because it is, according
to Le Conte, “the history of the earth and its
inhabitants as revealed in its structure and as
interpreted by causes still in operation.”
This takes in pretty much everything as you
see, because it assumes a knowledge of astron-
omy, of physics, and chemistry, of mineralogy,
and 200logy, and botany, because the plant
and animal life are so closely related with the
earth's development. For this reason there
is hardly any branch of knowledge which does
not link itself somewhere with geology, and
GEOLOGY 285
this gives it living vital interest, because the
causes which made the earth in the past, what
it is now, are, many of them, in active opera-
tion now, so that presently we shall watch the
earth change about us and see ourselves adapt-
ing ourselves to the changes which take place.
Sometimes we accelerate these changes by our
own habits or works, as when we take off, ruth-
lessly, the great forests and release great
floods which formerly were absorbed by the
roots of the trees and the vegetation which
lived with them. Or, when we take up vast
beds of minerals and change the place of vast
bodies of the earth. Or, when we dig sub-
ways or underground railways and alter the
course of subterranean streams or make other
changes which vitally affect the life of man-
kind. And when you come to see the signifi-
cance of all these things, and make the child
see them, the earth and the changes in it be-
come matters of the very keenest interest.
The sciences, strictly as such, when they come
to be studied later will be doubly interesting
because there is a reasonable substratum of
general and accurate information about some
of the more elementary matters.
The composition and chemical elements of
focks will afford many pleasant experiments
for recreation hours. And when to this is
286 TEACHING IN THE HOME
added the study of the characteristics of min-
erals such as color, form, hardness, lustre, and
the like, there are supplied all the materials
necessary to give the child suitable occupation
for hands as well as mind.
The extreme value and importance of all
this will be borne in upon your own mind, if
you will reflect just at this time on the great
importance to the warring nations of Europe
of raw materials to the nations, and how im-
portant these things are to national life. See
how important it is, for example, to the na-
tions to have a large supply of petroleum, of
copper, or iron or coal, and what a tremen-
dous importance suddenly these natural Sup-
plies assume to the nations who want to build
ships and guns, and transport armies, and
supply them with food and otherwise carry on
their wars. See what importance scientific
knowledge has played thus far, and see how
for the first time, science is recognized as hav-
ing utterly supplanted the qualities of per-
sonal heroism and valor in the fight of great
forces by land or by sea. For the first time in
history, nations have organized science boards
to assist their army and navy boards in the
preparation for successful war. See how
great the changes have been and how gas
bombs and liquid fire and a vast variety of
GEOILOGY 287
other chemical discoveries have come to have
a fearful significance in such struggles. Our
own country, for the first time in its history,
has a board of invention for its navy and has
called such men as Edison and others to bring
the resources of science to the aid of war prep-
aration.
In the midst of all such things nothing can
be healthier than to turn to the great natural
forces which the Creator has placed in the
earth and which we are only on the merest
edge of knowing, in all their fulness and
power. Where so much is done in the labora-
tory, and where all that is done there has to be
wrought out of the raw materials, it will be
seen what an immense advantage it is to know
a few of these things early in life, to gain, an
adequate understanding of their significance
later on in the more formal period of educa-
tion. When one means is exhausted or de-
stroyed, men have had to find another way
and necessity here as elsewhere has been the
mother of invention. See what has been
wrought in the conquest of the air and the
submerging of war craft under the sea! But
the air, and the sea, have always been here and
their possibilities are even now only partially
understood. But better than these processes
is first hand contact and observation with all
288 TEACHING IN THE HOME
these forces themselves and a knowledge of
how they work. Thus is the mind trained to
know something of the world in which the hu-
man race has lived, and must continue to live,
and thus is the race prepared for its life in
the future.
There is no reason known to me why young
children should not be made to know, long be-
fore what we call their education begins, most
of these great elemental powers and learn to
guide their thought in consonance and har-
mony with these laws. Water wears the rock.
And these little streams of scientific knowl-
edge wear away the mechanical notions of life
by which so many millions of people live
and die, without ever knowing the earth in
which they are born and live and pass away.
But they should know. And such knowledge
makes for a higher type of life. It makes for
a more reasoning and reasonable existence.
It teaches the value of life and the long road
through which life has come to have the mean-
ing that it now has for man. It leads to re-
flection and in the best sense taking life seri-
ously, which is just what the vast mass of men
do not do. But it does, besides all this, the
higher work of naturalizing a man in his world
and making it for him a place of satisfaction
and rational labor and effort.
GEOLOGY 289
It does even more. Personally I believe
here is the field for the true culture of the emo-
tions. Science may spiritualize the world yet,
in spite of the fact that until now it has been
employed only in a pagan way. The spirit-
ualizing process begun early, creates rever-
ence for the work of God and as with the bibli-
cal writers, rocks, floods, and fields, mountains,
and trees, the birds of the air and the fishes of
the sea all speak of the glory of God and the
wonder of His handiwork, so a little child may
be led into the noblest of spiritual conceptions
through contact with the world of God’s crea-
tive skill and power.
Every little geological excursion after this
manner will change the prevailing conception
of a finished world, into a fresh one of a world
in the making. It will lead to a fresh under-
standing of the value of all things. It will
create abhorrence of waste. It will see both
the power and the economy of nature. It
will cause deep feelings and dreams about the
nature and purpose of life itself. It has al-
ways been to me, an interesting fact, that most
of the geologists I have known have been men
in the deepest and highest sense religious men.
They went abroad in God’s world and saw
His operations in a big and divine way. In
contrast with the laboratory worker, who felt
290 TEACHING IN THE HOME
the glory of his own little achievement, these
saw the mighty strokes of great monumental
laws and saw things wrought out on a huge
scale. Huge mountains thrown up where
none existed before, vast areas bodily trans-
ported from one spot in the earth and set down
in another, mighty monoliths lifted as a child
lifts a pebble and carried vast distances, and
then left in striking and weird postures to
arrest the attention and challenge the brain of
man! All these are the things you start in the
brain of the child to think about. You set it
to work on something which challenges all its
own possibilities, and start it on the long road
which has no ending, the wonder work of the
Almighty.
Few people can gaze on the wonderflow of
Niagara without deep emotion. I once saw
with terror the Mississippi overflow in my boy-
hood, so that in places it was twenty-five miles
wide. I have gazed on the Bernese Oberland
and quivered under the scintillating beauty of
the Alps, beauty beyond the descriptive powers
of man. I have shuddered under the cliffs of
the Canadian Rockies and felt an awe, which
no religious thinking can possibly produce.
If you give your little child an insight into
these things you are building the mind of a
human being, who must perforce become great
GEOILOGY 291
in thought and learn to live greatly in the pres-
ence of the greatness of creation. How dif-
ferent all this from the narrow-minded being
who simply rises, feeds, takes a trolley to his
office or store, and then back again at night,
and never knows what the world really is!
Think of the vast masses borne along stead-
ily by the flowing waters of the rivers of the
earth! Think of the silent disintegration
of granite cliffs, which the wind is causing
through the years, see the valleys exalted and
the mountains and hills made low! Think of
the fertilizing flood of the Nile, and the indus-
trial flow of the Merrimac, and the devastat-
ing flow at times of the Mississippi! Think
of the commerce borne by the great oceans,
think of the harbors and ports of the world!
Think of the trade winds and the ocean cur-
rents! Think of the mined substances which
we dig out of the darkness of the bosom of the
earth, and make into a million wonderful, and
useful and beautiful things. Hardly a child
but has personal ornaments the history of
which scientifically scrutinized and analyzed
will not be made to gaze with wonder upon the
transformation of nature’s raw materials into
the beautiful finished product. This is be-
cause the mind of man has sought them out,
thought about them, learned to separate them,
292 TEACHING IN THE HOME
learned how they came about, and then prac-
ticed in their shaping and fashioning for the
higher uses of man. When you think of geol-
ogy as embodying this kind of reflection and
study, you have something other than merely
memorizing the names of geological epochs,
and the classification of strata and the analyz-
ing of rocks and minerals. You have here
the romance of the earth. And this is what
you must teach, together with the crude, bare
facts. It is a romance, wonderful, inspiring
and full of thrilling situations and volcanic
moments, literally and emotionally.
A great man once showed my children a bit
of radium, one of the earliest and finest speci-
mens in the country. No one will ever be able
to describe what was in their countenances and
what was wrought into their hearts and souls
by this great man, as he talked about radium
and what it might do and the significance of
its discovery! But what Professor Morse did
out of his own wonderful knowledge, you may
out of much less knowledge do for your own
children, having first made your own heart
and mind responsive to the meaning of these
great natural facts and forces.
It may be well to make collections of rocks
and minerals or perhaps, where they are ob-
tainable, of the various kinds of semi-precious
GEOILOGY 293
stone. All these things help, of course, if
to every one of them there is added some-
thing of scientific import. Altogether, geo-
logical studies lend themselves most readily to
the larger ways of thinking and supply the
subjects for reflection upon the wider aspects
of life more naturally than almost any other
kind of scientific studies. It is more possible
to generalize about them for one thing. They
call for inferential reasoning for another.
They are not so clamorous for immediate de-
cision as some others, and all this tends to
make them the medium for larger thinking
and a wider view of things than many others.
Their comprehensiveness and inclusiveness, of
course, adds to this also. But certainly noth-
ing is so calculated to open the minds of chil-
dren and parents to each other and reveal
them to each other as to take little excursions
for geological study together. The human
discoveries will be the greatest of all!
CHAPTER XII
GEOMETRY
IN urging the study of geometry by young
children, I wish to be understood as taking up
not merely that specific branch of mathemat-
ics, but the general subject, from geometry as
its easiest and most pleasant point of ap-
proach. I have on many occasions testified to
my belief that most of the time spent in math-
ematics in elementary education is worse than
wasted, an opinion which I acquired from
President Eliot more than twenty years ago.
The study of arithmetic as it is carried on by
most schools, public and private, is a waste of
time, and, as I believe, a distinct deterrent to
rapid and effective progress, to say nothing of
being a stupid barrier to advancement in
those benighted regions, where it is made the
sime qua non to promotion. Most of the
mathematics, as thus studied, contribute noth-
ing particular to the child’s knowledge, give
no intellectual stimulus, are utterly barren of
interest and a source of trial to teachers and
students alike. It is, of course, necessary that
294
GEOMETRY 295
young children should be taught numbers,
a matter easily acquired. They should be
taught to count, as they are taught to spell.
They should learn simple addition, simple
subtraction, simple multiplication and simple
division. But even these may be taught col-
laterally. The multiplication tables may be
mastered easily and musically, if possible, but
no educational value should be attached to
this. It is memoriter work, pure and simple,
and should be inculcated as such.
But the whole subject should be approached
from an entirely different end, as I view it,
and I have styled this geometry because the
materials are derived from that branch of
mathematics most readily. For example, you
can teach a child that a point has position only.
You can show it that a geometrical straight
line is the shortest distance between two
points. You can show it what a right angle
is, an acute angle and an obtuse angle, and
with this instruction you can teach the use of
these words and their general place in English
usage. You can proceed to teach about tri-
angles and squares and rectangular figures
and then go on to polygons of all sizes and
kinds and in every case you are dealing with
something tangible, concrete and capable of
immediate and direct application. §
296 TEACHING IN THE HOME
In this manner of proceeding you can teach
all the things that so much time is wasted
upon. You can show a little child that al-
ready handles a tape measure in making doll
clothes how to measure the sides of any figure;
you can thus teach it linear measurement.
'You can take a checker board and teach it
square measure and do it in fifteen minutes
and never have it forgotten. You can give
habits of ea'act measurement, the basis of all
scientific knowledge, and you can teach neces-
sary reasoning by this means most clearly and
satisfactorily.
From plane surfaces you can proceed with
ease to solids. You can deal with cubes
and cylinders and you can teach drawing
while you are doing. You can give manual
dexterity and skill in handling tools and in-
struments while you are doing this. You can
have tables measured, and floors measured,
and all kinds of figures identified, and all
kinds of forms geometrically identified all the
time. You can have circles drawn and all
sorts of diameters drawn and you can give the
principles and facts of relation as you go along
as a part to practical exercise. As a matter
of fact many children do these things without
any instruction, only the parents do not get
GEOMETRY 297
the full value out of what the child does natu-
rally and without any urging whatever.
In doing all this as with the other subjects
we have talked about you will always give
them their proper names. You will talk
about the diameter as diameter. You will
talk about plane surfaces and solids just as
they do in any high school geometry class.
There is not the slightest reason why you
should not and there are all the reasons possi-
ble why you should. While you are doing
this you can take along many principles of
physics like weight and volume and power of
Tesistance but all this is incidental to the busi-
ness of teaching measurements.
There are so many ways of utilizing these
things that it is hard to state where you shall
begin. We used to measure the circumfer-
ence of trees or of plates or of wheels and the
like. We used to draw all kinds of figures
and then see how many things, geometrical
facts, about them we could tell, like identifying
the kinds of angles, the names of the figures,
and the like. In doing all this we taught the
simple elements of arithmetic and sometimes
some of the more involved processes.
In this sort of study we also taught many
of the simpler propositions both of geometry
298 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and algebra. My own opinion is that mathe-
matical study may very properly begin with
algebra because the use of letters is so much
more simple and so much more interesting.
The use of such expressions as “the sum of two
numbers,” “the difference of two numbers,”
the “difference of their squares,” their “cubes”
and many such terms are easily comprehended
while the use of terms as factors and factoring
generally is much more easily comprehended
with letters than with figures. In a word,
you are dealing with the terminology of math-
ematical study which is only saying that you
are extending the child's knowledge of Eng-
lish, a highly specialized branch, to be sure, but
nevertheless a branch of English which needs
to be mastered along with the rest of the dia-
lect of knowledge. gº -
It has not been my experience that children
thus early inducted into this terminology have
any difficulty with such terms as tangent, arc,
perpendicular and the like. Centre and ra-
dius, area and volume, all in their proper sig-
nificance never presented any special diffi-
culty and on the contrary presented many in-
teresting psychological evidences that there is
a natural affiliation of the human mind with
these things if we ever find out how to express
it. I believe that much, if not most, of the
GEOMETRY 299
trouble with the entire subject of mathe-
matics is due to the fact that most of the
mathematicians know nothing about the Eng-
lish language. I judge this, of course, by
the language which I find in the books on
mathematics but more especially, by the use
of the tongue they make when they propound
what they call “original” problems. They are
original in many more senses than intended,
and mostly so in the monstrous misuse of the
mother tongue. If there is anything calcu-
lated to disgust or harass a young student
more than these things, I cannot imagine what
it would be.
Take most of the definitions which you
will find at the beginning of any text book
in geometry like, straight line, curved line,
broken line, plane surface, curved surface,
rectilinear figure, curvilinear figure, and the
like. I have never experienced the slightest
difficulty in teaching these to little children
with blocks and having them draw on com-
mand the kind of figure required. Indeed, it
was in connection with circles that I took a
globe and taught all I know about latitude
and longitude and many other things inciden-
tally. Of course, the main interest is not
mathematical, except in that it teaches eaſact-
mess and measurements and calls for reason-
300 TEACHING IN THE HOME
ing and demands proof. These are much
more important than all the rest combined.
But even here it must be remembered that the
reasoning is always necessary reasoning. In
this it differs so thoroughly from the method
employed in most of the other sciences that
almost any child will feel the difference, unless
the method of approach is some such an one as
I am now describing.
The approach to this subject is probably
made easier and more pleasant by the fact that
the children are using their hands as well as
their heads. Handling a sphere is a very dif-
ferent thing from talking about one. So, too,
handling pyramids, cubes, and cylinders, tells
more about them in three minutes than three
hours of talking about them, because of the
difficulties of exact definition, suited to the
mind of a child. Of course, it can be done.
But to take a pyramid and measure all its
sides, and find out all that can be told about it
in a simple way, is great training in ea'actness,
both of practice and thinking. Often if you
will let several children do this at the same
time and then let them compare their results,
you will develop a first class debating society.
When we struck a term like equilateral, or
quadrilateral, I always used to rest the chil-
dren by making the subject one of linguistic
GEOMETRY 301
interest because those words lend themselves
to a good deal of interesting discourse. It
used to be a source of great amusement to me
to hear the children repeat these discourses
with my own intonations and gestures to other
and younger children. But I see no reason
why this is not as good a process of training
or how it differs in effectiveness, as indeed it
did not, in my household, from letting the
children experiment with a piece of dough in
baking, or a piece of cloth in making the dress
of a doll! In both cases we were playing with
different kinds of knowledge. The only dif-
ference was, the kind I played with, is neces-
sary to get into college and has sanction as
knowledge worth an academic degree, while
the other has as yet no such sanction. They
still think stones are better than bread at the
universities!
As I write these lines I can look about me
and hardly see an object which was not used
in this sort of study. The floors, the walls,
the pictures, the windows, the desks and this
very typewriter, were all utilized in this par-
ticular branch of study. We drew all sorts
of figures and we noticed all the various
shapes, which were to be found in the room
and we accustomed ourselves to noting differ-
emces of shape and size and area, and, in fact,
302 TEACHING IN THE HOME
all the things which made use of our geometri-
cal knowledge and where the processes were
not too complicated, we worked them out. I
often had measurements of window screens
made, or of pipe, or of the width and length of
stairs, or of rugs, and all sorts of objects which
gave, so far as I have been able to observe,
quite as accurate results as one gets from most
children in the earlier years of the high school.
It took longer of course, and there was the
natural clumsiness and lack of manual dexter-
ity and skill, but the final results were not
more inaccurate than those which I have seen
given by high school children. In fact exact
measurement is not a common thing. Ask
any builder or ask yourself when you have
had occasion to make measurements!
This form of mathematical study with little
children lends itself most effectively for intel-
ligent play. Building with card board or
with stiff paper or with blocks or even with
boards, and the drawing of plans and working
in accord with the plans, is valuable manual
training and experience and this is the best
way to get it. What I have seen of man-
ual training has not, except in its more ad-
vanced stages, been higher in educational
quality, though naturally more exact in
achievement, than what I have seen done by
GEOMETRY 303
little children in this respect, and it is my opin-
ion, that with such training a ten-year-old
child can do in a single year all the arithmetic
of the first eight grades and where there is any
special aptitude in this direction even more.
It is to me proof positive of the utter worth-
lessness of most of the mathematics of the
grades, beyond mere memoriter work and dis-
cipline and speed in writing or reciting.
Hours and hours of happy pleasant occupa-
tion may be secured in this way and all sorts
of material may be utilized. As I recall
it now, in our own household, we utilized
cups and saucers, measured and drew broken
pieces, tin cans, the discarded boxes in the
kitchen of wood and of tin or card board, and
caused the children to make all sorts of articles
some of which remain to this day. The habit
of working after a plan or model we found a
most useful and fruitful method of working.
And in connection with these things, let me
say, there is no possible use in getting valu-
able and costly materials for this sort of thing.
Your own home has all that you need and it
only calls for a little reflection on your part to
provide all the materials you need. Here,
too, you can use all the kindergarten materials
if you care to do it that way. My own experi-
ence has been that children who have been
304 TEACHING IN THE HOME
taught how serious tasks are performed, do
not wish to think they are “playing” at their
work, but wish to see something accomplished
which represents real achievement and gets
real praise and approval. In our own home
it led to the cultivation of the habit of inven-
tion. My own children will never forget the
wagons and other vehicles they themselves
built and with which they spent hours while
the most costly and handsome things which
had been purchased, lay about unused.
In mathematical study of this kind and its
instruction, one fact should be borne in mind.
It is here that the superior maturity of the
parent or teacher counts for most and where
the form of devising the problem or arrang-
ing the work has its best illustration. But
everything should be concrete. Abstractions
are not of a great deal of use even to mature
people, and even less to children. You can
prove this any time by telling a child about
Some geometrical figure and noticing its blank
inability to comprehend what you want, and
then setting the same child to work out the
same problem with tools of some kind or mate-
rials with which it can be given the opportu-
nity of measuring and comparing its own work
with the model which it is set to follow.
Another feature of it which impressed me
GEOMETRY 305
was that it developed the habit of pausing at
stated intervals and checking up results from
time to time. Most mathematical study being
based on necessary reasoning admits of just
this, hence you can trace errors or you can set
the child to go over its own work either for-
ward or backward and find out its own errors.
This is a very educative process because it
stimulates scrutiny and comparison and meas-
wrements and leads to care and precision as
few other things can or do. In many forms
of study this is not possible. But because
mathematics for the most part is based on
necessary reasoning, the various stages can be
marked off with exactness and the error abso-
lutely located. This can be worked out in all
sorts of ways. And most children will have
genuine and justifiable satisfaction in com-
paring the substantial accuracy of some later
work with the clumsiness and inaccuracy of
some earlier performance. But, in any case,
there is always activity with the hands as well
as the mind and this helps in the dual develop-
ment in connection with matters of real educa-
tive utility.
A necessary part of mathematical study is
that of recording accurately what has been
worked out. Experience seems to show that
about so much practice is needful for each in-
306 TEACHING IN THE HOME
dividual child, before it can write ea'actly what
it means to write and what it knows absolutely.
Most children can do very much better in an
oral examination than in a written one, and
the reason for this is perfectly plain. When
it comes to writing accurately, this in itself is
a kind of art. It is so much an art that it is
not infrequently true, that inferior students
can write better papers than students who have
greater actual knowledge of a given subject.
It is in the mathematical work that this must
be mastered though it comes not less in the
work of languages, but while there it fre-
quently explains itself, an error in mathemat-
ics is fatal to the whole subsequent process.
For this reason great accuracy should be in-
sisted upon in writing, copying and drawing
and frequent repetition should be insisted upon
though it may be done in a manner which will
not be too taxing to the little minds. But
nothing short of absolute correctness should
be insisted upon since this is all there is to the
study of mathematics. A line is exactly six
inches long or it is not. It is ascertainable
whether it is or it is not. Never leave such a
matter in doubt. In fact, leave nothing in
doubt, about which final knowledge can be
obtained, though this rule has more force in
GEOMETRY 307
mathematics than anywhere else because as
stated that is all there is to it.
It is here, too, that the general value
of mathematical studies can be determined.
Two and two are four, and they are no more
to a sage who has lived seventy years, than
they are to a child of four years. The sage
knows no more about it than the four-year-old,
because that is all there is to know and can be
verified by the one as well as by the other.
Nothing that the sage has experienced in life,
no wider contact with men and events, no in-
sight into the human mind or the human heart,
can add one jot or tittle to that fact. It is
just so with the multiplication tables. They
are not matters of reasoning or experience or
depth of feeling or point of view. They are
just mechanical facts and hence their only
value is that they are right.
It is one of the unanswerable proofs of my
position about most of the mathematics, I
mean, of course, the pure mathematics, that
they are steadily being reduced to machine ac-
tion. No bank any longer relies upon the
clerks to add up accurately, long columns of
figures, or even performing certain kinds of
other figuring transactions, because they have
machinery which can do it more rapidly and
308 TEACHING IN THE HOME
do it more accurately. A machine never gets
tired doing the same thing. A human being
does. The human mind craves new applica-
tions of principles, and fresh insight and
fresh knowledge concerning all that comes to
it. A machine has no such necessities and be-
cause mathematics has no such capabilities or
natural possibilities, most arithmetical trans-
actions can be done by machines which are
more and more coming into general use be-
cause they are more trustworthy than the hu-
man mind, susceptible as the latter is to moods,
weariness and error. Take good note of this,
when you are urged to make your child a good
arithmetician and find his progress impeded
because he refuses the stupidities which are
supposed to make for discipline!
But, by these same tokens, when you do
have anything to do with them they must be
accurate or they are nothing. Hence insist
on precision. See that results are ea'actly
right, not “about right” or “nearly right” and
don’t allow yourself to use such terms in con-
nection with mathematical work. They are
fight or they are wrong and that is all there is
to say about them. That is the sum of their
intellectual content. Hence you must get
that or you get nothing. In fact, you get
worse than nothing. You get habits of inac-
GEOMETRY 309
curacy which are damaging beyond calcula-
tion. I believe the study of arithmetic in the
schools, as often carried on, is responsible for
a vast amount of the carelessness and heed-
lessness of many people. They could not get
the work absolutely right. So they took
“something just as good,” meaning thereby
“nearly right” or “about right.”
In many communities this is being recog-
nized and changes are taking place, which
show a recognition of the valuelessness of what
I have been describing, but there are many
communities where these things are insisted
upon, as the condition of higher and advanced
study. You will find it far better to do all
this work at home, than to trust it to the
school, where almost perforce it has to be
badly done, and done under conditions which
can hardly fail to secure irritation and tribu-
lation, both for the teacher and the pupil.
While you are dealing with the matter of
measurements you may take the occasion also
to teach the metric system which is more and
more coming into general use, and which the
child will have to have later on in any case.
It is simplicity itself and can just as well be
taught here as anywhere. Here again you
can use your word studies in connection with
it, which will make it interesting as you go
310 TEACHING IN THE HOME
along, but in any case, try it out and see what
comes of it. It will be one thing more learned
in this direction and will aid in your general
plan of fertilization. At the same time you
can teach the elements of percentage, and the
decimal system, because all these run on all
fours together. In fact as you take up the
words of any given science and analyze them
you will be preparing for the teaching of the
science itself because you will be giving defini-
tions and furnishing illustrations which will
themselves take you a considerable way on the
road to what you wish to achieve.
If all this seems very advanced to you and
almost impossible, just try it out. Of course,
you will clarify your Own ideas so that you
Know exactly what you are talking about and
then the matter will be easy enough. Just
keep before you constantly that a clear idea
can be comprehended by a child, no matter
what the subject matter happens to be and do
not underestimate this capacity. You will in
general find that the real limitations are not
those of the child, but your inability to tell
clearly what you know perfectly.
As you glance through your arithmetic se-
lect the applied forms of it, and try them from
time to time, always relating them to some-
thing specific and that has some immediate in-
GEOMETRY 31 I
terest to the child itself. The ways will sug-
gest themselves to you as you go on and you
will set forth on many a tour of exploration
and come home laden with many things which
you did not expect to find out when you set
out. Whenever the child raises some ques-
tion about which you are not clear yourself
work it out with the child and let him see the
process by which you arrive at your own con-
clusions. The decimal system, to which I
have just referred in its applied forms, has
many such examples of practical application.
The use of money and interest and the like,
can easily be shown in intelligible form and the
principles very readily inculcated. And there
are many others.
If all this seems rather like a large contract,
just remember how before the era of text
books and in a comparatively recent period,
such operations had to be performed by rela-
tively illiterate people as indeed they still are.
Your child with the modern resources of
knowledge, can do to-day what these people
did years ago, being acquainted only with the
crudest possible ways of proceeding. Just
study the work of a cash register and let that
teach you. Notice sometime some of the
more highly developed balances of your
butcher in which not only the weight is given
312 TEACHING IN THE HOME
but the price is worked out on the tables, call-
ing for almost no calculation. In fact notice
all such machines wherever you come across
them, in fact, every device for measurement or
computation. A little attention to the ma-
chine will show how simple it is, concretely
studied. But never try to do these things in
the abstract. I have elsewhere spoken of the
habit of weighing things purchased at the
grocer's or the butcher's. Plan to do the
same thing with dry goods which can be meas-
wred also, all of which will teach many other
things besides the mathematics involved. It is
by these constant demands, here a little, there
a little, line upon line, and precept upon pre-
cept, that principles are established.
CHAPTER, XIII
ETHICS
IT is when we come to the field of ethics
that we appreciate the immense value of the
course which we have been pursuing. Noth-
ing seems so easy as the regulation of conduct.
Nothing actually proves so difficult. Broadly
speaking there are two kinds of people in the
world: those who obey some outward authority
and those who are governed by their inward
light and convictions. To a certain degree
we are all governed by what is outside of us,
because manners, customs, place of residence,
occupation and the like, all begin to exercise
an iron sway over us from the moment we are
born. The very food we eat has its part in
making us what we are. And to many of
these things we must conform, because no man
liveth to himself in this world any longer.
There used to be a time when, if a group of
people did not like the place where they were
they could go off to some uninhabited place,
and start a new civilization of their own. But
that period is now over. You may change
- 3.13
814 TEACHING IN THE HOME
jurisdictions if you please, but wherever you
go, somebody has already set up a particular
code to which in part, at least, you must con-
form.
But even when we have a highly developed
state of civilization the question does not be-
come easier. In fact, it tends to become more
difficult because great masses of people,
swayed by all sorts of influences, call for
decisions which involve the most careful bal-
ancing of facts, motives, conditions and ante-
cedents and the like, which make it often a
very difficult matter to know just what to do,
even when there is an unflinching disposition
to do right. We have before us at the pres-
ent moment a striking illustration of this con-
dition. Just see what different interpreta-
tions equally upright people put upon the
various facts of the war! Read the docu-
ments which the authorized spokesmen have
offered to us for the justification of their
course, and if you have any reason left, you
will at once become aware how hard the pres-
sure is, in the modern world, to regulate con-
duct and opinions.
You will also see, if you examine this mat-
ter, that the meaning of words plays a huge
part in these opinions. You will see states-
men, who ought to know better, using the same
ETHICS - 315
word in different senses—a very common fal-
lacy of logic. You will see them twisting per-
fectly clear matters into all sorts of shapes,
in order to make a point where none exists.
You will see them confusing matters, some-
times very obviously, but just as often without
intention, because they are juggling with the
meaning of words and are either enlarging
or contracting the content of a particular word
or phrase. It is in matters of this kind, that
exact and careful English proves its value and
where the uses of word-study and analysis ap-
pear to best advantage. But you will see
more. You will see how the desire to make a
particular point is very obviously distorting
the facts.
Now all this, which is specially clear in war
time, is at such times only an exaggerated
presentation of what most people do habitu-
ally. Careful use of language and knowl-
edge of language tends to prevent the worst
forms of this in ordinary times. Exact scien-
tific knowledge gives an effective weapon for
the checking of those who would use such
methods upon matters which affect us.
Hence the great value of these. But back of
this there is always the moral question itself
and the conception of morals, and back even
of that a certain ingrained ethical sense which
316 TEACHING IN THE HOME
is, I suppose, a union of habits and the culture
of ethical thinking. In any event nothing
seems so necessary to the world at this mo-
ment as enlightened moral instruction.
This instruction should begin very early in
youth and I am urging that it be done in the
formal terms, for the reason that I have pre-
viously urged, namely, that by this means the
child will have earlier access to the literature
and discussions of moral questions, and issues
will be less subject to prejudices and passions
and will have a better chance to lead an Or-
derly, happy and useful life and one that is
governed by the highest motives. Many peo-
ple do the best they know how to do and this
is nothing but the simple truth. But their
“best” is so crude and damaged an affair, that
we not infrequently wish some persons were
more positively bad, that their reformation
might seem to them the more necessary.
There is nothing in this world so difficult to
deal with as a human being who thinks he is
right and has neither the knowledge nor the
training to be susceptible to the agencies by
which he can be shown to be wrong. Such
people are the worst enemies of moral growth
and progress in the world. Positive wrongs
show their character at once and can be
branded as such. But the actions which have
ETHICS 317
the dubious shading, which make it hard to
condemn, and harder to approve, and which
make a perfectly fair person unable to decide
just which is predominant, present the great
difficulties. It is just so with studies. A
positive and palpable error usually leads to
its own correction. It is the doubtful things
that complicate studies. They also present the
main complications of life.
Under this intensive regimen which I have
been advocating I have many times advised
exactness as to detail and urged that you take
any amount of time and patience to get ea'act-
mess. Nothing is lost by this. On the con-
trary, when the habit has been formed, prog-
ress is very rapid. Now ethical instruction
which is to be effective has to be preceded by:
something which is more or less exact at a
time when there is no judgment, no independ-
ent reasoning power, and no ability to discrim-
inate. That exact thing is a thing much de-
spised in our day but one to which I believe
the whole world will have to come back sooner
or later. It is the principle of authority.
By this I mean that there must be a period
of absolute and unquestioning obedience.
Why this should excite opposition as it so often
does, is very strange to me. We exact abso-
lute obedience in many things. We do not
3.18 TEACHING IN THE HOME
let children jump into rivers, or eat poisons,
or meddle with dangerous machinery. We
demand and get as absolute obedience as it is
possible for us to get. Nobody thinks he is
being bullied when he sees a red lamp in the
road at night! Why? Because he knows
that is the recognized method of indicating
danger. Nobody but a fool would drive on
over that lamp without inquiring why it was
there! In a similar way we have certain ex-
periences and certain knowledge about which
there is no doubt whatever. There are certain
practices, the results of which we know as
absolutely as we know that the sun shines.
We do not hesitate to make absolutely final
rules about them.
Now I believe in this absolute obedience. I
believe in getting it by the best means pos-
sible, but I believe an irretrievable damage has
been done to any child that has not learned it.
Of course, the chief use of your maturity and
skill is to avoid needless conflicts, and this is
the main use of your superior intelligence and
knowledge, namely, to prevent conflicts from
arising. But if the conflict does arise there is
only one thing that must happen: you must win
and get your way absolutely till a more ex-
cellent way has been shown. This may re-
ETHICS 319
quire physical force, in fact, often does. But
whether it does or not, there are two kinds of
persons who never amount to anything in this
world: the people who cannot do ea'actly as
they are told and the people who cannot do
anything else. Obedience, it has been said,
is the organ of spiritual knowledge. It is the
organ of every kind of knowledge.
Now this is what I mean by the principle of
authority. It lies at the basis of rational ac-
tion. It takes for granted that experience,
age, wider knowledge, and special training,
are worthy of regard and until they are
matched by something superior are to be re-
garded absolutely. It is not necessary for a
father to be right to insist that his will shall be
obeyed. All the presumptions are in his favor .
in any case, assuming that he is a good man.
The child is right in supposing that he is right
and in standing on his word absolutely with-
out any qualifications whatever. We fathers
know that we are not always right, perhaps
not usually right. But we also know that in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the child is
safer in following our error than his own.
There is a choice even in mistakes. You
should train the child to know and understand
this principle as thoroughly as it is possible to
320 TEACHING IN THE HOME
teach it. Because upon the recognition of its
force, will depend much of its happiness and
effectiveness.
Having made this clear you should begin
your study with the child by showing its per-
sonal relations. You do this right along
though not usually formally. You may well
begin by asking what things pertain to the
child alone. What things are personal and
individual, how it is separated or different from
every other creature in the world. What does
this involve as to itself? What does it involve
as to others? What does it mean as to be-
havior? How does this affect ideals, aims and
purposes? Take that word self and work in
through its various ramifications and see what
you get out of it. Contrast selfhood and self-
ishness, make the various compounds of the
word like self-consciousness, self-dependence,
Self-nurture, self-culture, self-sacrifice and
turn over these various contrasts of meaning
and see what they will lead to. You will have
little difficulty in finding material here for all
the time you wish to put into it.
Take up the words which have to do with the
personal moral life. Take such a word as good
and turn it over and over, and see what comes
of that. What is the difference between a
good man and a good knife? What is the dif-
ETHICS 321
ference in meaning, when we say a good horse
and a good book? You will readily see that
here you are dealing with functions and uses
and ideals and it is your business to separate
them and accustom the child to think along
these lines. In a similar way you may take the
word bad. A bad man and a bad error may
be compared and various other bad things. Go
into these distinctions because they lie at the
base of ethical thought. You can readily make
applications of these words which will lead to
the very heart of ethical questions. Ask
whether a good ball-player can also be a bad
man? Or whether a bad citizen can be a good
father?
In a similar way you will early begin to
make clear the distinction between natural evil
and moral evil. What for example is the dif-
ference between pain suffered as a consequence
of putting the finger in the fire and that suf-
fered when the hand is slapped for disobedi-
ence? How does the result differ when a fall
from a roof breaks a man’s neck and kills him
or an electric wire kills him, and the law which
takes his life by electrocution? The kinds of
evil in the world should be made the subject
of a good deal of discussion and instruction.
The same thing applies to all moral words, like
wrong, for example. How does a wrong an-
322 TEACHING IN THE HOME
swer to a question differ from a wrong act?
You will be surprised how soon these distinc-
tions may be made and how important they are
in regulating behavior and simplifying the
questions of moral training.
No question ever staggered me so much as
when my own children first asked me what sin
was I pondered long before answering that
Question because I did not want them to con-
fuse sin and sins. Nor did I wish them to
think of character merely as a series of acts.
Nor did I wish them to think of goodness as
a group of prohibitions. After a good deal of
reflection I evolved this and I give it to you
because it practically settled the question of
moral training in our household forever.
“Sin is the choice of something lower when
something higher is possible.” That lifted the
subject entirely out of the region of specific
acts. It made no difference whether the par-
ticular thing was worthy or unworthy. If
something higher and better was possible, there
was sin. I think that simple definition, crude
as it seems, simplified every moral problem
which the children ever faced. It made pro-
hibitions practically needless, and caused much
reflection at a time when reflection is usually
wanting. I think it induced the habit of re-
flection as such a very desirable result apart
FTHICS 323
from its moral significance. Personally I
think this kind of discussion has educational
uses beyond all other mental exercises, because
it almost always deals with personal applica-
tions and involves the will.
Personal rights and personal duties came
to figure largely, because of these questions
and answers. It led to some very amusing sit-
uations of which the following is an example.
I had been teaching something about the right
of immunity on the part of others from pain,
because of matters which were strictly of our
own choosing and interest. And I had been
saying, that if one of the children tumbled
Over and bumped its nose and suffered pain
on that account, it was hardly just that the
whole household should be made to hear the
bawling and so be made miserable by what was
the result of personal carelessness. Shortly
afterward, I was coming home and one of the
younger children ran to meet me. She stum-
bled on the brick walk and fell and got a rather
severe bump on her nose and was generally
shaken up. She started in for a good cry,
but seeing me she suddenly recalled what I had
said and through her sobs uttered this: “I am
not making everybody miserable.” It is need-
less to say she got all the consolations, but it
has been a source of great comfort and im-
3.24. TEACHING IN THE HOME
pressive gratitude to me, that this particular
child afterward, threatened with an illness
which might well have ruined her life, and
where recovery was contingent upon excep-
tional obedience and self-control, came through
gloriously and is to me a miracle. Nothing
can possibly persuade me that this child, now a
college student, does not owe her life, in part,
to the early assimilation of that principle of
self-restraint, which became the means of her
physical salvation.
These things will occur many times when
there seems to be a conflict of duties. When
children’s interests seem to clash, they must be
given a chance to work out manfully their own
decisions, even at an early age. I believe my-
Self in strong government. I am a strong
believer in authority. But strongly as I am
personally bent in this way, there is probably
no household where greater freedom has pre-
vailed and where less coercion has been em-
ployed. I believe this to be due to the early
instruction in ethical matters in the scientific
way. -
From personal duties to social or communal
duties is a short step and the step is taken eas-
ily and naturally where there are any ideas to
work upon. These same children evolved
many community rules of their own which were
ETHICS 32.5
interesting to me, as having a decisive bearing
upon childhood teaching in ethics as opposed
to mere formulas. For instance, I have just
been in the kitchen where I saw a huge plate
of cookies which one of these children has just
been baking, a child no longer, of course.
Over the place there is a sign marked F. H. B.
which means “Family Hold Back.” The
story of this injunction is that years ago when
the mother made cookies or new bread, no limi-
tations were placed upon their consumption,
unless there happened to be occasion for it,
company being expected or something of the
sort. Well, the children themselves evolved
the “family hold back” sign for their own guid-
ance and soon applied it to other things, ber-
ries if they had been berrying, or other things
which had been gathered. I well recall how
impressively they came to inform me that I
was exempt from the F. H. B. rule!
Now what was this? Simply the recogni-
tion of a community, as separate from a per-
sonal interest. That sign was never dis-
obeyed. In a similar manner, I often caused
personal caprices in taste to disappear, by
pointing out that a happy household was im-
possible where everybody was insisting that
his or her tastes had to be consulted at every
moment. Social ethics in this manner came
326 TEACHING IN THE HOME
to be a natural subject of discussion. The peo-
ple at church, the habits of the people in the
town and village, the behavior of men in public
life, public and political questions, all came to
be naturally discussed under the general prin-
ciples which were being exemplified every day
in the household. I often raised these ques-
tions as we read the newspapers to them, and
asked them to judge what they would do
under such circumstances, after the manner of
early Greek education. It was always inter-
esting to me to see with what accuracy they
judged public men (as I view it, of course)
for their acts.
The contrast between public and private
aspects of moral questions should receive early
attention, and social interests, in their larger
sense, should early be brought to the notice of
the child. If there are several children in a
household, these matters come up naturally
and are rationally settled generally, but their
guidance for instructional use is a very im-
portant part of intensive education. Nothing
admits of so many qualifications, nothing al-
lows so many questions which are real and just
in their relation to the question under discus-
sion, as the matter of moral action. It may
fairly be said that the right kind of thinking
here will help to right every other kind of
ETHICS 327.
thinking. It is important too to bring into
this realm the questions of knowledge, like the
possibility of complete knowledge, how far
right judgments are possible, and the func-
tion of passing judgment on men and events
and actions. Most mothers, in fact, do try to
do this, because they have to do it often to find
out just what it is they are to deal with, in
training the character of their children. If it
is done in set terms and with a view to causing
the child to think in terms which make the pos-
sibility of scientific thought, so much the bet-
ter.
The question of veracity should be discussed
in many forms in relation to many matters and
under many guises. Truthfulness and verac-
ity should be compared. The right to reti-
cence, the obligation to speak, and the moral
effect of each, form interesting questions.
How interesting may be seen in the current
news when men, apparently of the highest
standing, differ as to their duty in such mat-
ters. There is hardly a community that does
not from time to time present questions with
which the life of the whole community is in-
volved. Great strikes, or problems of city
politics and administration, the care of roads
and highways, the laying of taxes, all these
have an important place here. Incidentally
328 TEACHING IN THE HOME
elementary government may and should be
taught here and the relation of moral action
to government clearly indicated, the lack of
which is the most lamentable fact in the pub-
lic life of America to-day.
Here you may also begin to give some ele-
mentary instruction in the meaning and uses
of law. There is probably nothing about
which the public mind is so perverted at the
present moment, as the meaning of law, the
administration of the law, and the status of
courts, judges and the like. It is wise to
teach the little people how courts came about
and what law has dome for civilization, what it
means to weigh evidence and what it signi-
fies to render a decision on the weight of evi-
dence. This looks very mature and “oldish”
as one says it, but in practice it is not difficult
and the results are very important. Law and
lawlessness begin in my judgment in the
home, and in the habits, instruction and gen-
eral attitudes of parents. But the obedience
which is worth anything to the community is
one which is based upon rationality and not
merely upon blind acceptance of what is or-
dered by somebody who appears to have the
authority to give commands.
Law naturally suggests liberty as a con-
trast. What liberty is as contrasted with
ETHICS 329
license can be shown in a thousand ways and
should be. Liberty under law is the greatest
lesson one has to learn in this world, not
merely with relation to action, but hardly less
with relation to opinions and the formation
and ea'pression of judgments. This last is
very important. The uses of speech, the right
to speak and the limits of speech are very im-
portant things to master. You may find your
cases made for you in any newspaper, by
simply studying the utterances of public men.
Proprieties of utterance in times of war, and
utterance of opinions in times when diplomatic
negotiations are in progress, are matters fresh
in the public mind at this moment. Example
goes a long way, of course, but it is not neces-
sary merely to show the way but also to show
the “why.”
The commoner social relations will natu-
rally come in for friendly comment because
they cannot be avoided. The ordinary social
life of most families carries with it comment
on the happenings of the community, and the
ordinary social occurrences of one kind and
another may either be made an instrument for
the mental enlargement of the children or may
be made a means for their social degradation.
Who has not been aghast to hear the free and
anarchic discussion of neighbors and fellow
330 TEACHING IN THE HOME
citizens by parents in the presence of their
children, in a manner which could not possibly
eventuate in anything but the destruction of
just judgment and kindly and honorable
opinions of mankind! These things are very
much more important than they seem, be-
cause they will indicate to the child that what
is taking place in its own home is very likely
what is taking place in other homes and that
this is the normal and natural way of passing
judgments and forming opinions. Of course,
it can result in nothing but what one finds
everywhere, petty and contemptible jealousies,
miserable subterfuges, social lying and in-
trigues, the abomination of much of the social
life of to-day. The manner of it and the prac-
tice of it begins with the listening children.
On the contrary, when these things are
made the occasion for an effort to test the ac-
curacy of statements and inferences, whether
they do or do not conform to a fair and hom-
prable moral standard and what the moral at-
titude to these things should be, there is a
distinct gain to everybody concerned. There
are many matters about which we are reticent
where we should speak. And many more
about which we talk too freely, when we should
be reticent. The critical attitude is a good
one here, when it works all ways at once, both
ETHICS 331
outwardly and inwardly. Above all the cul-
tivation of a desire first for the facts and then
the weighing of the meaning of social facts is
of great importance in the training of the
child. The same thing applies to the great
occurrences of the community. It is a good
thing to show children at a comparatively early
period the different types of life in the com-
munity, to point out the useful people and the
tlseless people. It is good to go to the indus-
trial establishments so that the child can get
an adequate idea of how the things it takes for
granted are produced, and what the human
factor in them signifies.
It will be a great illumination to many chil-
dren to see what other children do with their
lives. To go into a great industrial establish-
ment and see hundreds of men and women at
work, to note the regularity of their occupa-
tion, to see the discipline and self-subjection
involved, and to see that it is understood that
this goes on year in and year out, is to make
an impression which will never be lost. Ut-
terly apart from the interest of the work itself,
special attention should be given to the human
beings who are doing this work, and questions
raised as to their point of view as to life, work,
recreation, pleasure, the worth of eaſistence,
and the limits of initiative and development,
332 TEACHING IN THE HOME
which comes to persons under such conditions.
Nothing so impressed me in this matter as the
ignorance of a wealthy classmate of mine at
Harvard, a man who has since devoted him-
self to helping his fellow men with conspicu-
ous success, when I went with him to see one of
the factories of Massachusetts in operation.
The contrast between his own beautiful, lux-
urious and abundant life, and the narrow, re-
stricted and maimed existence of many of
these people, was never forgotten by him. I
shall tell that story some day too. He often
said to me that children should never be per-
mitted to grow up without some kind of rea-
sonably full knowledge of how other children
grow up and how human beings spend their
lives. -
This naturally leads one to talk about privi-
leges and immunities. Why are some people
rich and others poor? Why are some edu-
cated and some ignorant? Why are some
efficient and others inefficient? These are
problems that may not be attacked too soon,
especially on the moral side. How much does
equipment have to do with success? And
what is success anyway? Who is judge of
when a man’s work is well done? Who is to
control his opportunity for making the most
of himself? Have men generally the oppor-
ETHICS 333
tunity to make all there is in them come to the
surface? If not, why not? What is the rela-
tion of success and effectiveness to conditions
of life? Which predominates in the ultimate
result, the man or the surroundings? What
is the meaning of tools? Where do tools come
from? What part do industry, skill and per-
severance and education have in the making of
life? Are privileges the result of these, or of
something else? You can easily get to some
of the most searching things in life in this easy
way. And perhaps it won't hurt any of us to
do this for our own sakes as well as the chil-
dren!
You will find that as you deal with nature
studies of one kind and another, that the moral
questions come up, and this is the time to show
the difference between matural law and moral
law and indeed the relations of one to the
other. Natural relationships bring certain
kinds of rights and duties. Often questions
which stagger us, when put independent of
some concrete matter, become easy to handle
when we deal with them impersonally, and this
is especially true when we deal with the ques-
tion of sex, though people will always differ
as to what they ought to do about such matters,
and very properly, since it is by no means easy
to dogmatize about it. But the public discus-
334 TEACHING IN THE HOME
sions are so frequent now, and the newspapers
and magazines talk so freely, that since you
are to produce a reading child and a thinking
child you might as well deal with it yourself.
Of course the basis has already been laid in
habits which you are insisting upon quite inde-
pendent of any instruction, duties which you
lay down, and requirements which you make,
merely because you are set to do it and about
which you will permit no particular question
to be raised till they have become necessary to
the child’s comfort. Cleanliness, when it has
become a habit becomes a protection. Sound
hygienic living at first, inculcated by mere au-
thority, soon becomes its own sponsor, because
departure from it means discomfort and un-
happiness. But this having been done, cul-
tivate the discussion of the inner things. And
encourage the expression of ideas without re-
gard to whether they are satisfactory or not
and never show contempt for the opinion.
So much has been said about respect for the
child’s personality that seems to me mere
fudge, that I hesitate to say my own word.
By all means have respect for the child’s per-
sonality and especially by never showing con-
tempt for anything that has real and genuine
interest for the child. But never lose sight
of the fact that the main interest for you is
ETHICS © 335
keeping the attitude of respect for superior
judgment and superior eaſperience and Only
raise the question whether it is superior judg-
ment and eaſperience. Reverence for author-
ity, age, and the ability to endure the eccen-
tricities and peculiarities of disposition on the
part of mature persons, should be learned by
children, and when this process which I have
been talking about is carried through, you will
find the child making qualifications in its own
way, which are very illuminating. Take a
case of my own. I believe and have always
believed strongly in authority. I came to it
by experience, by philosophical study, and by
religious conviction. But, of course, you can
become overbeamed on any subject. Ordi-
narily, life itself makes the necessary qualifica-
tions. But one of the things which has
always been a special source of irritation to
me has been carelessness.
In our home I dreaded exhibitions of care-
lessness even more than infractions of rules,
and I do still, because I dread the influence
and power of irresponsible action more than
I do positive action, even when it is bad.
Well, my stern rebukes of things sometimes
led me to be unjust, as, for example, articles
might be broken without the child who caused
the break being aware of it, as in play or
336 TEACHING IN THE HOME
without noticing it. On one such occasion a
stern rebuke, which landed on nobody in par-
ticular, but which silenced excuses because I
rather tartly exclaimed, “Then nobody did
it!” when each child disclaimed the act, led to
the organization by the children of “The Scape-
goat Club” in which it was agreed that some-
body should take the blame, though uncon-
scious of it. I may have already referred to
it. The important thing was that this was a
clear recognition of my defect, and a pro-
vision for it. I cannot see that it ever inter-
fered with my children’s affection or obedi-
ence. They knew my horror of carelessness
and sought to pacify me and they did.
The saving clause of this transaction was
that it disturbed no moral relations. They
knew that my anxiety was for them, and not
for the mere cost or value of any article. That
made them attempt to provide a modus vi-
vendi just as they did with the cookies. But it
showed moral discrimination and appreciation
and this is the important thing. Happy is
the house where parents and children are thus
morally related, because it makes for unity of
action and purpose and ideals. It makes for
freedom of thought and liberty in action. It
releases powers which otherwise would be
bound up either in fear or lashed into resist-
ETHICS 337
ance. I have known it to happen in both these
forms, because there was no moral common
denominator in the home.
All ethical instruction ultimately raises
questions of religion and concerning these I
will not say much, having discussed them else-
where. But I think I may add, that religion
is the surest handmaid of every other interest
in life, because it harmonizes with every other
interest, which is rational and which has any
ideal element in it. But let not your religious
teaching become mere moral harassing. Link
it with history, with art, with public life and
service, with the enjoyment of life, and with
the glory of the world. Cause it to be an all
pervasive thing rather than a specific set of
acts and duties. Your use of the Bible for
English will help to take away the mechanical
idea of religion, and there is this to be said: the
more mechanical your religious life for the
child is permitted to become the surer will be
the reaction from it. If you want your child’s
religion to be real, it must be free in the sense
in which I have indicated. It must be linked
with all kinds of human interests, and it must
show that it is related to all the things which
call for energy, power of decision, character,
skill and ability. The reason why religion
has so often seemed to fail, is that it has not
338 TEACHING IN THE HOME
been linked with any great paramount interest
by which human life is governed. Your min-
ister should be an important personage to you,
if he is worth it. That he may be worth it,
help to get one who is worth something. The
church, whatever your sect, should be of tre-
mendous interest to you, therefore see to it
that you help to make it worth while. Your
moral alliances of every description cannot
help but exercise a powerful influence upon
your children, whether you wish it or not. We
have to be in the world with other human be-
ings, and we have to be like them enough to
live with them. But it is for us to determine
whether our children shall be submerged by
them or hold the rudder of their own careers
and steer by their own light, reason and con-
science, and this you must help to secure by
helping to make those influences which you
cannot escape, what they ought to be. I was
always anxious about the ministers my chil-
dren were to hear, when they were not listen-
ing to me. I was always anxious who com-
manded their attention and always sought to
know why. I always noted what kinds of
personality gained influence and affection
with them, because these were indexes of what
I should do myself. You would feel grieved,
I know, if you should find out, what is un-
ETHICS 339
happily too often true, that your child is tak-
ing its social ideals from people not in your
home and its moral attitudes from persons
who are more careful to define them, than
you yourself. Therefore observe these things
carefully. Let nobody rob you of your great-
est jewel in life. Never permit anyone to ac-
quire a superior influence or power over your
own. That you may do this, may I say you
must be superior to any other. Nothing in
heaven or earth can prevent a nobler spirit, a
better mind and a purer heart, from getting a
superior influence with your child, if these are
matched, against your own. Nothing can
prevent greater skill and greater devotion
from winning their hearts. I know this, be-
cause I have often matched myself against
wnworthy, foolish and careless parents for the
children’s sakes, and have never had any diffi-
culty in winning.
But this ought normally never to be pos-
sible, because natural affection, constant inter-
course, intimacy of relation and undiluted con-
fidence between parents and children are a
mighty barrier. These childlike loyalties are
very beautiful to witness, even when they are
foolish. For example, a friend of ours was
a beautiful cook who made dainties which we
never could equal in our own home. We all
340 TEACHING IN THE HOME
knew it and we all gloried in the artist cook,
as our friend really was. But again and
again, when she tried to get our children to
admit that her products were better than
“mamma’s” the determination to stand by
“mamma” asserted itself, in spite of the ob-
vious recognition of the better product of the
artist. Up to a certain point this is most ad-
mirable. In morals, it should always be the
case. Children should feel called upon to
stand on the parental platform against all cre-
ation. That they may stand upon it worth-
ily, it is your privilege and mine to make it
worth standing upon through thick and thin.
The moral solidarity of the home is its strength
and its glory. Cast not away wantonly this
pearl of greatest price.
CHAPTER XIV
IBIBLIOGRAPHY
THE purpose of this chapter is to indicate
some use of the tools which you are to em-
ploy for teaching in the manner in which
I have shown it to be done in the previous
chapters. You will have gathered from what
has been written, that you yourself are the chief
source of instruction for your children, and
that the main value of this work is, that it
comes to the children with your own interest
and through your maturity. That is where
the home teaching differs from teaching in the
school, where the relation is formal and pro-
fessional. With you the relation is one of
identity of interest, and linked with absolute
authority and finality of judgment and pro-
gram. Hence you are not merely to show
what is to be done but join in the doing. I
have shown in the new edition of the School
in the Home, in the chapter on the “Mon-
tessori System and the Home,” that the great
feature of that plan is its emphasis upon the
influence of the parent and the parental rela-
34]
342 TEACHING IN THE HOME
tion. Just keep it constantly before your
mind that you are the important feature in the
entire scheme of work.
Your work lies in the first instance largely
with books. That means that if there is a
library in your vicinity your first business is
to get thoroughly acquainted with it. Let no
week go by that you do not go to the library,
and make yourself thoroughly familiar with
what there is in it. The librarian will be only
too glad to give you any assistance you may
want, and you should learn how to use a card
catalogue and how to get at things quickly.
You should also study the lists of new addi-
tions, and get quickly anything that seems to
promise help in your work. Use the libraries
a great deal even if you have many books at
home because there are always things there
which you cannot possibly have. If you can
take the child and introduce him also and let
him early associate his childhood with the li-
brary and its contents, do that also.
You should have first of all for your work
a good dictionary, preferably one that gives the
etymology of words and their history. If you
cannot have such a dictionary yourself, when
you go to the library, make lists of words
which you are to look up there and get your
knowledge from the large dictionaries there.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 343
Then you should have some first class en-
cyclopaedia. These two tools are absolutely
necessary. I should add to these a good large
atlas and a large wall map of the world hung
where it can readily be consulted. In fact,
group all these things where you can get at
them readily. What you cannot have by you,
have frequent access to at your library. In
many states the state university will gladly
coöperate both as to help in studies and help in
books. The library of the University of Ore-
gon, for example, sends out books to people all
over the state on application. Other state
universities do this also and you can thus get
help on particular matters by writing to some
responsible person. This is especially true, if
you care to get information on some special
science. The head of the department will usu-
ally welcome your inquiry and set you in the
way of getting what you want to know.
You should have likewise some good book of
synonyms. I shall later mention some specific
works, but you can easily locate one, because
there are many which are not costly and it is
absolutely needful for your purpose. Write
to the leading publishers for their catalogues
and study these. By the study of these you
will find out what is being published, by whom,
and you will find this of itself will introduce
344 TEACHING IN THE HOME
you to a large area of information which will
be very useful to you. Such firms as Ginn
and Co., D. C. Heath and Co., Houghton
Mifflin and Co., of Boston; and Henry Holt
and Co., The Macmillan Co., Appletons, and
Crowell, of New York, as well as others, will
give you a great deal of information, through
their catalogues. I have never failed for years
to get a full set of these catalogues and many
others, just to keep before me what was being
done and have by this means often found most
useful aids to my work.
Have a plan, and a program, and a time
table, for your work. And stick to it. Have
a different subject for every day and thus let
the days be associated with some special task.
You will find this dignifies the work in the
mind of the child and your own mind. It will
also Subconsciously lead to your organizing
your knowledge for that particular time. In
addition to all this, it will mean that the work
will be simplified and seem less like a task.
There is enough variety to prevent monotony.
I found the use of a blackboard most helpful.
Other parents get as good results just by writ-
ing materials, but I always liked to see the
thing large myself and my children did too.
I think it made for clearness.
As to English, you must make the choice
BIBLIOGRAPHY 345
yourself, but if you will follow the line of the
requirements for admission to college, you will
be doing well because most of the stories can
be read to little children with profit. Read a
great deal of Shakespeare and the Bible, of
course. Read out of the standard authors,
choosing things you like best yourself, but also
doing a little exploring on your own account.
Read the books and familiarize the child with
the literature which most children approach at
about the high school age. In fact, you will
find it useful to get such lists from the school
Superintendent and follow them. Have noth-
ing to do with the ordinary “readers” so-called.
Most of them are worse than useless. Study
literature all the time. Study the biographies
of the leading authors, English and American,
not exhaustively, but enough to make the child
familiar with the names. When you read
Rip Van Winkle, for example, tell all you
can find out about Washington Irving. Sim-
ilarly of others. This is just to make the child
acquainted with the names. Some of the facts
will stick, too.
Teach grammar from a Latin grammar and
in connection with your study of English, re-
membering that whatever you teach, you are
still teaching English and with it grammar.
But use the forms and the terms employed in
346 TEACHING IN THE HOME
Latin grammar. Any standard Latin gram-
mar will answer your purpose, Allen and
Greenough's, Harkness, or Bennett. In this
connection also you will find The Latin Word
List, by G. H. Browne, most useful. Paul
R. Jenks' Manual of Latin Word Formation
will also be found of great service, and one of
the most useful books I have seen for the use
I have in mind is Dr. B. L. D’Ooge's Latin for
Beginners. These, of course, are tools for
yourself and for the fertilization of your own
mind. If you have no previous knowledge of
Latin yourself these will supply it for your
purposes. If you care to give yourself some
special preparation, study in connection with
these Prof. E. C. Woolley's Handbook of
Composition.
As to the other languages, I must refer you
to the catalogues and you will choose accord-
ing to your predilection German, French or
Italian. I know the French and German best
and Bierwirth’s Elementary German and
Fraser and Squair's Shorter French Course
will supply your need. Both taken in connec-
tion with small German and French dictiona-
ries will give you all the materials you need.
For your study of geography, you will use
simply your map and your globe and the ma-
terial you will find in your other studies. But
BIBLIOGRAPHY 347
I would take this up in connection with your
daily “current events” study, in which your
map and the things which the locality suggests
will give you all the geography you need.
Just keep in mind, I must caution you again,
that you are merely giving the little child the
grand outline of things and preparing the soil.
You are not acquainting it with unusual and
strange things but with the great general
mass of ordinary knowledge, without which it
cannot work at anything.
For your study of history you must have
Ploetz' Epitome, without which you should
never be, and which is packed with all kinds
of things and, except the dictionary and the
encyclopædia, the most useful book you will
have. You will find in it not merely history,
but geography, biography, diplomacy, and
many other things. You should get some
standard American history like Channing's
and get a look at the large Narrative and
Critical History of America in your library.
If the library hasn’t got it, make them get it
because it is packed with all kinds of interest-
ing things which you need to know. In the
chapter on history I have referred to some
other works, just as I have in the chapter on
English.
For science teaching there is no better book
348 TEACHING IN THE HOME
to have at hand than Caldwell and Eiken-
berry's General Science and if you do not
care to have a special text book on the other
sciences, this one will give you a great deal of
help. I have made numerous references to it
already and for practical use and usable infor-
mation, it is one of the most available volumes
I know. It has many practical experiments
in connection with its text which make it very
interesting as well. Bergen’s Elements of
Botany and Professor Spalding's Introduc-
tion to Botany are both very useful, the latter
being specially adapted to your purpose be-
cause of its specific directions for teaching and
helpful suggestions. Mr. Bergen’s book gives
more advanced and scientific information
which you will find valuable. In this same
connection Mr. Grant Allen's Story of the
Plants, and his Flashlights on Nature are both
valuable, both as scientific materials and as in-
teresting reading. Professor Colton's Zool-
ogy, especially the second part, which deals
with the practical side, you will find almost in-
dispensable because of its suggestiveness and
helpful directions. Lindsay’s Story of Ani-
mal Life will be found full of interest also.
For the studies in geology and indeed other
sciences, the little manuals of the Boston So-
ciety of Natural History will be found very
BIBLIOGRAPHY 349
useful. Professor Shaler’s First Book in
Geology is from a master hand. In connec-
tion with all these, as well as literary studies,
as such, I want to urge you to have at hand
another indispensable little book called High
School Word Book by Sandwick and Bacon,
which will give you many things of which I
have spoken again and again. You will find
this little book of much service to you in many
directions. If I had had this book when I
began with my own children my work would
have been cut in half.
There are two books which you should read
for your own sake as well as the children’s,
which will, as I think, help on the most impor-
tant subject of sex instruction, namely Tracy
and Stimpff's Psychology of Childhood and
Galloway’s Biology of Sea. Taken in con-
nection with such a book as Foster and Shore's
Elementary Physiology, you will have every-
thing in that direction that you need and much
more than you can possibly use. You will
find here much that is of interest to you per-
sonally entirely apart from the question of
what you wish to do for your children. Dr.
Florence Richards' Hygiene for Girls is espe-
cially good in its chosen field. For ethical in-
struction such a book as Professor Drake's
Problems of Conduct will be found fertilizing
350 TEACHING IN THE HOME
and assimilated by yourself will give the ma-
terials for approach to the subject with the
children.
These, of course, are but a few of many
books equally good, and I may add to them in
some later edition of this book. I mention
these merely because I happen to know them
and know that you will find them fitted to
what I have in mind.
I think, too, I ought to say a word about
newspapers. The weekly edition of the
Springfield (Mass.) Republican is the most
valuable newspaper adjunct to household
training and education I know in the news-
paper field, because it combines so many things
of first-rate quality for your purpose. Its
editorials are in good English and its columns
carefully edited. Its reviews of books are
good and authoritative generally. Its han-
dling of literary and musical matters is en-
lightening, and altogether any household that
once gets in the habit of reading it, will never
be easy without it. For keeping abreast with
the leading ideas of the time and having put
before you what an enlightened citizen ought
to think and talk about, this newspaper has, I
believe, no equal in the United States.
Similarly we have found the same to be true,
though on somewhat different lines, of the
BIBLIOGRAPHY 351
semi-weekly New York Evening Post. It is
not so comprehensive as the Springfield Re-
publican, but in its field authoritative, and its
editorial discussions are the equivalent of a lib-
eral education, read through a series of years.
This is true also of its book reviews. Both
these newspapers aim to give the news truth-
fully and in a form which will not insult the in-
telligence and taste of readers. It will be of
much value to your children to be reared in a
home where newspapers like these are read and
their opinions talked about. I think I need
not say that in suggesting any of the books or
papers I have mentioned in this book, I am
doing so in a purely disinterested fashion. I
mean that I have no interest directly or indi-
rectly in any of them, nor do any of them know
I am writing these lines. Many of the
authors, in fact, most of them, I know only
through their books.
Reep in touch with the Bureau of Educa-
tion at Washington for their publications.
Also with the state university of your State,
and the school officials, as to text books and
authorities about matters concerning which
you are in doubt. Get the habit of looking at
all the books in your vicinity wherever you
happen to find yourself and constantly add to
your knowledge of books in this way. You
352 TEACHING IN THE HOME
will soon learn to distinguish between books of
permanent worth and those of ephemeral in-
terest. Look into a book before buying it. In
this way you will find yourself acquiring an
ability to test many books by casual glance
through them. But always keep before you
this one fact, that you are getting all this ma-
terial in the book form because that is the form
in which it is educationally negotiable.
The matter of newspapers is much more im-
portant than is generally suspected. The
daily newspaper which the children see and
handle, and whose views and news they hear
discussed, has a decided influence in forming
their point of view on many things. Children
should be taught to read not from books but
from the newspaper and in connection with
current, vital things. They should be taught
how to seek facts in daily reports, and by this
means get the habit of knowing what is tak-
ing place around them. The newspaper that
enters your house is therefore a capital mat-
ter.
FINALLY
Throughout the pages which have gone be-
fore, I have tried to give you a fairly reason-
able transcript of how I believe it possible for
ordinary people, who have the welfare of their
BIBLIOGRAPHY 353
children on the intellectual side seriously at
heart, to build up the mental life in such a way
as to not only make the whole subsequent
school life vastly more productive than in most
cases it now appears to be, but also rear per-
sons who are actually superior persons in
themselves, capable of thinking carefully, ca-
pable of controlling themselves in times of
crises, capable of using their energies to the
best possible profit for themselves and their
families, and the communities in which they
live, and calculated to help in making a finer
and nobler civilization. Always remember
that the advances of the world are not made
by the thousand and one people who can do
things fairly well, but by the few persons who
are able to do them earceptionally well. It
must be reasonably clear to almost all onlook-
ers that most people, as we see them, do not
appear to get much out of life besides eating,
drinking and sleeping. Most of them do not
seem to be distinguished by anything in par-
ticular. Most of them leave no particular im-
press upon the communities in which they live
and move and have their being. And this is
true, not because they have not the natural ca-
pabilities for doing many of these things. It
is chiefly due to the fact that in the earlier
stages of their development, when they were
354 TEACHING IN THE HOME
making their pathway, nobody thought it
worth while to point them wisely and train
them effectively. Hence most of them are the
prey to the superior persons who use them for
their own purposes. I am firm in my belief,
often expressed, that given good health and
freedom from organic defects, the difference
in the possibilities of most children is very
slight. I do not believe most geniuses are
such except by contrast with the general indo-
lence and stupidity around them. Given in-
tensive culture, a high degree of self-control
and self-expenditure, rational ideals and spe-
cific aims early in life, almost any child will
surpass expectations. The question is simply,
in the first instance, whether the parents will
wake up to this fact, and recognizing it, will
supply the first aids to superior personality.
That is what this book seeks to do, and I close
with the assurance that even approximately
following out the line of procedure I have in-
dicated, you will have joy and satisfaction be-
yond expression. You will not only have the
joy of what your child will achieve, but have
the added joy of knowing that in part, at least,
it was your own character and devotion that
produced the result.
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