The Punishment of Children

by Felix Adler

3. "Natural Penalties"

We pass next to the method for correcting the faults of children which has been proposed by Herbert Spencer in his collected essays on education. These essays have attracted great attention, as anything would be sure to do which comes from so distinguished a source. I have heard people who are ardent admirers of Spencer say, "We base the education of our children entirely on Mr. Spencer's book." All the more necessary is it to examine whether the recommendations of his book will wholly bear criticism.

I cannot help feeling that if Mr. Spencer had been more thoroughly at home in the best educational literature he would not have presented to us an old method as if it were new, and would not have described that which is at best but a second- or third-rate help in moral education as the central principle of it all, the keynote of the whole theory of the moral training of the young.

The method which he advises us to adopt is that of visiting upon the child the natural penalties of its transgression, of causing it to experience the inevitable consequences of evil acts in order that it may avoid evil, of building up the moral nature of the child, by leading it to observe the outward results of its acts. Mr. Spencer points out that when a child puts its finger into the flame, or when it incautiously touches a hot stove, it is burned; "a burnt child shuns the fire." When a child carelessly handles a sharp knife it is apt to cut its fingers. This is a salutary lesson; it will be more careful thereafter; this is the method of nature, namely, of teaching by experience. And this is a kind of cure-all which he offers for general application. He does, indeed, admit at the close of his essay, that, in certain cases, where the evil consequences are out of all proportion to the fault, some other method than that of experience must be adopted. But, in general, he recommends this method of nature, as he calls it.

For instance, a child in the nursery has littered the floor with its toys, and after finishing its play refuses to put them away. When next the child asks for its toy box the reply of its mother should be: "The last time you had your toys you left them lying on the floor and Jane had to pick them up. Jane is too busy to pick up every time the things you leave about, and I cannot do it myself, so that, as you will not put away your toys when you have done with them, I cannot let you have them." This is obviously a natural consequence and must be so recognized by the child.

Or a little girl, Constance by name, is scarcely ever ready in time for the daily walk. The governess and the other children are almost invariably compelled to wait. In the world the penalty of being behind time is the loss of some advantage that one would otherwise have gained. The train is gone, or the steamboat is just leaving its moorings, or the good seats in the concert room are filled; and every one may see that it is the prospective deprivation entailed by being late which prevents people from being unpunctual. Should not this prospective deprivation control the child's conduct also? If Constance is not ready at the appointed time the natural result should be that she is left behind and loses her walk.

Or, again, a boy is in the habit of recklessly soiling and tearing his clothes. He should be compelled to clean them and to mend the tear as well as he can. And if having no decent clothes to wear, the boy is ever prevented from joining the rest of the family on a holiday excursion and the like, it is manifest that he will keenly feel the punishment and perceive that his own carelessness is the cause of it.

But I think it can easily be made clear that this method of moral discipline should be an exceptional and not a general one, and that there are not a few but many occasions when it becomes simply impossible to visit upon children the natural penalties of their transgressions. In these cases the evil consequences are too great or too remote for us to allow the child to learn from experience.

A boy is leaning too far out of the window; shall we let him take the natural penalty of his folly? The natural penalty would be to fall and break his neck. Or a child is about to rush from a heated room into the cold street with insufficient covering; shall we let the child take the natural penalty of its heedlessness? The natural penalty might be an attack of pneumonia. Or, again, in certain parts of the country it is imprudent to be out on the water after nightfall owing to the danger of malaria. A boy who is fond of rowing insists upon going out in his boat after dark; shall we allow him to learn by experience the evil consequences of his act and gain wisdom by suffering the natural penalty? The natural penalty might be that he would come home in a violent fever.

To show how much mischief the application of the Spencerian method might work, let me mention a case which came under my observation. A certain teacher had been studying Herbert Spencer and was much impressed with his ideas. One wet, rainy day a number of children came to school without overshoes. The teacher had often told them that they must wear their overshoes when it rained; having neglected to do so, their feet were wet. Now came the application of the natural penalty theory. Instead of keeping the children near the fire while their shoes were being dried in the kitchen, they were allowed to run about in their stocking feet in the large school hall in order to fix in their minds the idea that, as they had made their shoes unfit to wear, they must now go without them. This was in truth moral discipline with a vengeance.

It is, in many instances, impossible to let the natural penalties of their transgressions fall upon children; it would be dangerous to health, to life and limb, and also to character, to do so.

Let me be perfectly understood just here: I do not deny that the method of natural penalties is capable of being applied to advantage in the moral training of children. It is a philosophic conclusion that it can be used as a means of building up the confidence of children in the authority of their parents and educators.

The father says to his child: "You must not touch the stove or you will be burned." The child disobeys his command and is burned. "Did I not warn you?" says the father. "Do you not see that I was right? Hereafter believe my words and do not wait to test them in your experience." The comparatively few cases in which the child may without injury be made to experience the consequences of his acts should be utilized to strengthen its belief in the wisdom and goodness of its parents, so that in an infinitely greater number of cases their authority will act upon the mind of the child almost as powerfully as the actual experience of the evil consequences would act.

Mr. Spencer himself admits, as I have said, that there are what he calls extreme cases to which the system he recommends does not apply. In these he falls back upon parental displeasure as the proper penalty. But parental displeasure, according to his view, is an indirect and not a direct penalty, and to use his own words, "the error which we have been combating is that of substituting parental displeasure for the penalties which nature has established." Yet he himself in regard to the graver offenses does substitute parental displeasure, and thus abandons his own position.

There is, moreover, a second ground on which I would rest my criticism. The art of the educator sometimes consists in deliberately warding off the natural penalties, though the child knows what they are and perhaps expects to pay them. So far is the method of Spencer from bearing the test of application that the very opposite of what he recommends is right in some of the most important instances.

Take the case of lying, for instance. The natural penalty for telling a falsehood is not to be believed the next time, but the real secret of moral redemption consists in not inflicting this penalty. We emphasize our belief in the offender despite the fact that he has told a falsehood, we show that we expect him never to tell a falsehood again, we seek to drive the spirit of untruthfulness out of him—by believing in him we strengthen him to overcome temptation. And so in many other instances we rescue, we redeem, by not inflicting the natural penalty.

The task of moral education is laid upon us. It is not a task that can be learned by reading a few scattered essays; it is often a heavy burden and involves a constant responsibility. I know it is not right always to make parents responsible for the faults which appear in their children. I am well aware that the worst fruit sometimes comes from the best stock, and that black sheep are sometimes to be found in the best families. But I cannot help thinking that if these black sheep were taken charge of in the right way in early childhood, the results might turn out differently from what they often do. The picture of Jesus on which the early church loved to dwell is the picture of the good shepherd who follows after the lamb that has strayed from the fold, and, carrying it tenderly in his arms, brings it back. I think if parents were more faithful shepherds, and cared for their wayward children with deeper solicitude and tenderness, they might often succeed in winning them back.

But even apart from these exceptional cases the task of training children morally is one of immense gravity and difficulty. And how are most parents prepared for the discharge of this task? Why, they are not at all prepared. They rely merely upon impulse, and upon traditions which often are altogether wrong and harmful. They do as they have seen other fathers and mothers do, and thus the same mistakes are perpetuated from generation to generation. Such parents, if they were asked to repair a clock, would say, "No, we must first learn about the mechanism of a clock before we undertake to repair it." But the delicate and complex mechanism of a child's soul they undertake to repair without any adequate knowledge of the springs by which it is moved, or of the system of adjustments by which it is enabled to perform its highest work. They thrust their crude hands into the mechanism and often damage or break it altogether.

I do not pretend for a moment that education is as yet a perfect science; I know it is not. I do not pretend that it can give us a great deal of light; but such light as it can give we ought to be all the more anxious to obtain on account of the prevailing darkness. The time will doubtless come when the science of education will be acknowledged to be, in some sense, the greatest of all the sciences; when, among the benefactors of the race, the great statesmen, the great inventors, and even the great reformers will not be ranked as high as the great educators.