It is needless to add that it is quite as necessary to instruct boys as girls in sexual questions. They do not run the risk, like girls, of falling through ignorance into the abject dependence of a forced marriage, and have no pregnancies to fear; but they are more exposed to temptation. When their sexual appetite has been once excited by masturbation or in some other way, it becomes very difficult to put them on the right path; to say nothing of the danger of venereal disease.
I therefore appeal to all fathers and masters in the same way that Madame Schmid appeals to mothers and mistresses Take measures in time and do not wait till the boys are instructed by evil persons of either sex, or till they have already been seduced, thanks to their erotic curiosity. It is generally evil companions who seduce them, but sometimes erotic women.
Exclusiveness in Education. Punishment. Automatism of Parents. Wants of Children.—In the human brain, intelligence and sentiment are intimately connected with one another, and from their combination arise volitions, which in their turn, react more or less strongly on cerebral activity, according to their solidity and duration. It is thus a great mistake to think that we can treat separately, by the aid of theoretical dogmas, the three great domains of the human mind—intelligence, sentiment and will. It is a fundamental error to imagine that the intelligence can be educated only at school, leaving sentiment and will to the parents. But it is still more absurd to attempt to act on sentiment, especially on ethical sentiment, and on the conscience, which is derived directly from sympathy, by moral preaching and punishment. What false conceptions of the human mind lie in these moral sermons, in this theoretical moral teaching, in these punishments and anger! Is it credible that, by the aid of abstract and arid dogmas supported by punishment, conscience and altruistic sentiments can be impressed on the brain of a child, which is only accessible to concrete ideas, to sympathy, affection and amusement? We may see daily, in nearly every family, parents finding fault with their children, in a vexatious, irritated or sorrowful tone of voice, to which the children reply by inattention, or tears, or more often by a repetition of the same tone of irritation. These scoldings pass through the child's mind without leaving any trace of an effect. Such stereotyped scenes produce in the intelligent observer the painful impression of two barrel-organs whose tunes are automatic. If this is the kind of moral teaching which is supposed to act on the child's mind, it is not astonishing that it has futile and even harmful effects. The parents do not appreciate the fact that when scolding their children they are only giving vent to their own bad temper. But the children are well aware of this fact, consciously or not, and react accordingly. The most deplorable thing is that they copy all these bad habits, like monkeys.
True moral teaching, the true way of influencing children for good, lies in the manner of speaking to them, treating them and living with them. Affection, truth, persuasion and perseverance should be manifest in the acts and manners of parents, for these qualities only can awaken sympathy and confidence in the breasts of children. It is not cold moral speech, but warm altruistic feeling, which alone can act as a moral educator of children.
A savant who delivers excellent and erudite lectures to his pupils in a dry and wearisome manner teaches them nothing, or at any rate very little. The students yawn, and are quite right in saying they could learn these things just as well out of a book. A teacher, however, who speaks with animation and knows how to hold the attention of his audience impresses his remarks on their brain. In the former case there is intelligence without feeling, while in the latter case the audience is held by the suggestive and contagious power of enthusiasm. Dry science, at the most, fills the memory, but it leaves "the heart" empty. What does not come from the heart has difficulty in entering the head.
It is precisely in this way that the will must be exercised by perseverance. The child must be made eager for social work; he must be urged to all noble and disinterested actions, without stimulating his emulation by promises of reward, or by punishment.
New Schools.—The object we desire may be attained by a system of education such as that of the new schools (Landerziehungsheime), which were first founded by Reddie in England, afterwards by Lietz in Germany, by Frey and Zuberuübler in Switzerland, and by Contou in France. These institutes have finally realized the ideas of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Owen and Froebel.
For the teacher who understands the psychology of children, it is a true pleasure to witness the teaching at these Landerziehungsheime. The children take a delight in their school and become the comrades of their master. Physical exercise, the development of the powers of reason and judgment, the education of the sentiments and will, are all harmoniously combined. The children are not given the dry text-books of our schools, but made familiar with the works of the great authors and men of genius. Instead of their existence becoming etiolated under the weight of domestic duties, and under the sword of Damocles of examinations, they thrive by living as far as possible among the things they ought to learn. They thus assimilate the object of instruction, which becomes a living and useful part of their personality, instead of becoming encysted in the brain in the form of dead erudition like a foreign body, and filling it with formulæ learnt by heart. Such formulæ are ill-understood by children, and later on it is difficult for them to clear their brains of this indigestible rubbish to make room for the realities of observation and induction. The only punishments at the Landerziehungsheime are those which naturally result from the fault committed.
The pupils and their masters bathe together in a state of nature. The sexual question is treated openly in these schools in a proper, natural and logical way. The open confidence which obtains between masters and pupils, combined with free intellectual and physical work and the absolute exclusion of alcoholic drinks, constitute the best preventive and curative remedy for masturbation, sexual precocity and all perversions which are not hereditary.
It is needless to say that such schools cannot cure a pathological sexual hereditary mneme, whether it consists in perversion, precocity or some other vice. Every boarding school has its drawbacks, on account of the possible influence of mischievous individuals. Nevertheless, no boarding school offers such excellent conditions as the Landerziehungsheime, for as soon as a boy gives evidence of any sexual perversion, this perversion soon becomes well known, thanks to the good sense which prevails in the whole school.[13]