While permitting a certain number of cherished possessions, it is well to encourage the habit of using toys, such as bricks, to which the child only has the exclusive right while he is using them. The Montessori apparatus is common to all the children, but so long as a child is using one piece of apparatus no other child must interfere. This develops a sense of limited tenant-right, dependent upon work; such a sense does not run counter to anything that is desirable in later years. For very young children, this method is hardly applicable, because they are not yet sufficiently constructive. But as they acquire skill it becomes more and more possible to interest them in the process of building. So long as they know they can have the material for construction whenever they like, they will not much mind others having it too, and the reluctance to sharing which they may feel at first is soon dispelled by custom. Nevertheless, when a child is old enough, he should, I think, be allowed to own books, because that will increase his love of books and therefore stimulate reading. The books that are his own property should, as far as possible, be good books, such as Lewis Carroll and Tanglewood Tales, not mere trash. If the children want trash, it should be common property.
The broad principles involved are: First, do not produce in the child a sense of thwarting from not having enough property; this is the way to produce a miser. Secondly, allow the child private property when it stimulates a desirable activity, and, in particular, where it teaches careful handling. But subject to these limitations turn the child’s attention, as far as you can, to pleasures not involving private ownership. And even where there is private ownership, do not allow the child to be mean or miserly when other children wish to be allowed to play with his things. As to this, however, the object is to induce the child to lend of his own free will; so long as authority is required, the end aimed at has not been achieved. In a happy child, it should not be difficult to stimulate a generous disposition; but if the child is starved of pleasures, he will of course cling tenaciously to those that are attainable. It is not through suffering that children learn virtue, but through happiness and health.
CHAPTER VIII
TRUTHFULNESS
To produce the habit of truthfulness should be one of the major aims of moral education. I do not mean truthfulness in speech only, but also in thought; indeed, of the two, the latter seems to me the more important. I prefer a person who lies with full consciousness of what he is doing to a person who first subconsciously deceives himself and then imagines that he is being virtuous and truthful. Indeed, no man who thinks truthfully can believe that it is always wrong to speak untruthfully. Those who hold that a lie is always wrong have to supplement this view by a great deal of casuistry and considerable practice in misleading ambiguities, by means of which they deceive without admitting to themselves that they are lying. Nevertheless, I hold that the occasions when lying is justifiable are few—much fewer than would be inferred from the practice of high-minded men. And almost all the occasions which justify lying are occasions where power is being used tyrannically, or where people are engaged in some harmful activity such as war; therefore in a good social system they would be even rarer than they are now.
Untruthfulness, as a practice, is almost always a product of fear. The child brought up without fear will be truthful, not in virtue of a moral effort, but because it will never occur to him to be otherwise. The child who has been treated wisely and kindly has a frank look in the eyes, and a fearless demeanour even with strangers; whereas the child that has been subject to nagging or severity is in perpetual terror of incurring reproof, and terrified of having transgressed some rule whenever he has behaved in a natural manner. It does not at first occur to a young child that it is possible to lie. The possibility of lying is a discovery, due to observation of grown-ups quickened by terror. The child discovers that grown-ups lie to him, and that it is dangerous to tell them the truth; under these circumstances he takes to lying. Avoid these incentives, and he will not think of lying.
But in judging whether children are truthful, a certain caution is necessary. Children’s memories are very faulty, and they often do not know the answer to a question when grown-up people think they do. Their sense of time is very vague; a child under four will hardly distinguish between yesterday and a week ago, or between yesterday and six hours ago. When they do not know the answer to a question, they tend to say yes or no according to the suggestion in your tone of voice. Again, they are often talking in the dramatic character of some make-believe. When they tell you solemnly that there is a lion in the back garden, this is obvious; but in many cases it is quite easy to mistake play for earnest. For all these reasons, a young child’s statements are often objectively untrue, but without the slightest intention to deceive. Indeed, children tend, at first, to regard grown-ups as omniscient, and therefore incapable of being deceived. My boy (three and three quarters) will ask me to tell him (for the pleasure of the story) what occurred to him on some interesting occasion when I was not present; I find it almost impossible to persuade him that I don’t know what happened. Grown-up people get to know so many things in ways the child does not understand, that he cannot set limits to their powers. Last Easter, my boy was given a number of chocolate Easter eggs. We told him that if he ate too much chocolate he would be sick, but, having told him, we left him alone. He ate too much, and was sick. He came to me as soon as the crisis was over, with a beaming face, saying, in a voice almost of triumph, “I was sick, Daddy—Daddy told me I should be sick.” His pleasure in the verification of a scientific law was astonishing. Since then, it has been possible to trust him with chocolate, in spite of the fact that he seldom has it; moreover he implicitly believes everything we tell him about what food is good for him. There has been no need of moral exhortation or punishment or fear in bringing about this result. There has been need, at earlier stages, of patience and firmness. He is nearing the age where it is usual for boys to steal sweet things and lie about it. I dare say he will steal sometimes, but I shall be surprised if he lies. When a child does lie, parents should take themselves to task rather than him; they should deal with it by removing its causes, and by explaining gently and reasonably why it is better not to lie. They should not deal with it by punishment, which only increases fear and therefore the motive for lying.
Rigid truthfulness in adults towards children is, of course, absolutely indispensable if children are not to learn lying. Parents who teach that lying is a sin, and who nevertheless are known to lie by their children, naturally lose all moral authority. The idea of speaking the truth to children is entirely novel; hardly anybody did it before the present generation. I greatly doubt whether Eve told Cain and Abel the truth about apples; I am convinced that she told them she had never eaten anything that wasn’t good for her. It used to be the thing for parents to represent themselves as Olympians, immune from human passions and always actuated by pure reason. When they reproached the children, they did it more in sorrow than in anger; however they might scold, they were not “cross”, but talking to the children for their good. Parents did not realize that children are astonishingly clear-sighted: they do not understand all the solemn political reasons for humbug, but despise it straightforwardly and simply. Jealousies and envies of which you are unconscious will be evident to your child, who will discount all your fine moral talk about the wickedness of the objects of these passions. Never pretend to be faultless and inhuman; the child will not believe you, and would not like you any the better if he did. I remember vividly how, at a very early age, I saw through the Victorian humbug and hypocrisy with which I was surrounded, and vowed that, if I ever had children, I would not repeat the mistakes that were being made with me. To the best of my ability, I am keeping this vow.
Another form of lying, which is extremely bad for the young, is to threaten punishments you do not mean to inflict. Dr. Ballard, in his most interesting book on “The Changing School”,[13] has stated this principle rather emphatically: “Don’t threaten. If you do, let nothing stop you from carrying out your threat. If you say to a boy, ‘Do that again and I’ll murder you’, and he does it again, then you must murder him. If you don’t he will lose all respect for you” (p. 112). The punishments threatened by nurses and ignorant parents in dealing with infants are somewhat less extreme, but the same rule applies. Do not insist, except for good reason; but when you have once begun insisting, continue, however you may regret having embarked upon the battle. If you threaten a punishment, let it be one that you are prepared to inflict; never trust to luck that your bluff will not be called. It is odd how difficult it is to get this principle understood by uneducated people. It is particularly objectionable when they threaten something terrifying, such as being locked up by the policeman or carried off by the bogey-man. This produces first a state of dangerous nervous terror and then a complete scepticism as to all statements and threats by grown-up people. If you never insist without carrying the matter through, the child soon learns that on such occasions resistance is useless, and he obeys a mere word without giving further trouble. But it is essential to the success of this method that you should not insist unless there is some really strong reason for doing so.
Another undesirable form of humbug is to treat inanimate objects as if they were alive. Nurses sometimes teach children, when they have hurt themselves by bumping into a chair or table, to smack the offending object and say, “naughty chair” or “naughty table”. This removes a most useful source of natural discipline. Left to himself, the child soon realizes that inanimate objects can only be manipulated by skill, not by anger or cajolery. This is a stimulus to the acquisition of skill, and a help in realizing the limits of personal power.
Lies about sex are sanctioned by time-honoured usage. I believe them to be wholly and utterly bad, but I shall say no more on this subject now, as I propose to devote a chapter to sex education.