“An old soldier whom I asked what his greatest fears had been, answered me thus: ‘I have only had one, but it pursues me still. I am nearly seventy years old, I have looked death in the face I do not know how many times; I have never lost heart in any danger, but when I pass a little old church in the shades of the forest, or a deserted chapel in the mountains, I always remember a neglected oratory in my native village, and I shiver and look around, as though seeking the corpse of a murdered man which I once saw carried into it when a child, and with which an old servant wanted to shut me up to make me good.’” Here, too, experiences of early childhood have persisted subconsciously throughout lifetime.
XVIII
I appeal to you, fathers and mothers, and to you, liberal-minded readers, asking you to turn your attention to the education of your children, to the training of the young generation of future citizens. I do not appeal to our official educators, to our scientific, psychological pseudagogues, to the clerks of our teaching shops,—for they are beyond all hope. From that quarter I expect nothing but attacks and abuse. We cannot possibly expect of the philistine-educator and mandarin-pseudagogue the adoption of different views of education. We should not keep new wine in old goat-skins. The present school-system squanders the resources of the country and wastes the energies, the lives of our children. Like Cato our cry should be Carthago delenda est,—the school-system should be abolished and with it should go the present psychologizing educator, the schoolmaster and the schoolma’am.
Fathers and mothers, you keep in your hands the fate of the young generation. You are conscious of the great responsibility, of the vast, important task laid upon you by the education of your children. For, according to the character of the training and education given to the young, they may be made a sickly host of nervous wrecks and miserable wretches; or they may be formed into a narrow-minded, bigoted, mediocre crowd of self-contented “cultured” philistines, bat-blind to evil; or they may be made a great race of genius with powers of rational control of their latent, potential, reserve energy. The choice remains with you.
APPENDIX
PRECOCITY IN CHILDREN[[1]]
By precocity I mean the manifestation of the child’s mental functions at a period earlier than the one observed in the past and present generations of children.
In the course of his growth and development the individual unfolds his inner powers through acquisition of the stored-up experiences of previous generations. The well known biogenetic law may, with some modifications, be applied to mental life. The development of the individual is an abbreviated reproduction of the evolution of the species. Briefly put: Ontogenesis is an epitome of Phylogenesis. This biogenetic law holds true in the domain of education. The stored-up experiences of the race are condensed, foreshortened, and recapitulated in the child’s life history. This process of progressive “precocity,” or of foreshortening of education, has been going on unconsciously in the course of human evolution. We have reached a stage when man can be made conscious of this fundamental process, thus getting control over his own growth and development.
Although the process of foreshortening of education has been taking place throughout the history of mankind, and especially of civilized humanity, still the process has remained imperceptible on account of its extremely slow rate of progress. Hence the fact of “precocity,” or of early development of children, has been hitherto regarded as rare, as phenomenal. Like all rare phenomena, precocity, or early child development, is considered as unique, as abnormal, and even as pathological. In fact, many still regard precocity as some form of malady akin to mental alienation.
It is well to bear in mind that phenomena, at first scarce and rare, may under favorable conditions become sufficiently numerous to be quite common. In fact, we may lay it down as a law that all discoveries, inventions, and changes in general, economical, political, social, mental, moral, and religious, first appear on a small scale in limited areas from which they spread in various directions. Organisms start, as variations or mutations, from minute nuclei of growth; species have their origin in small centres and restricted areas. A new species may begin with some apparently insignificant variation which may grow and develop, and which, from a certain standpoint, may be regarded as an abnormality.
What at present is considered as “precocity,” and hence as an abnormality, may really be the foreshadowing of the future. The apparently precocious variation may and will turn out a normal phenomenon. The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. Early education, precocity, is to become the corner stone of human life. At present the preliminary period of child education is unduly retarded to the detriment of the individual and society.