Why should I not say it? It seems to me that the greater part of us labor for this loss. On all sides, in almost every social rank, I notice that a pretty bad spirit is fostered in children, a spirit of reciprocal contempt. Here, those who have calloused hands and working-clothes are disdained; there, it is all who do not wear blue jeans. Children educated in this spirit make sad fellow-citizens. There is in all this the want of that simplicity which makes it possible for men of good intentions, of however diverse social standing, to collaborate without any friction arising from the conventional distance that separates them.
If the spirit of caste causes the loss of respect, partisanship, of whatever sort, is quite as productive of it. In certain quarters children are brought up in such fashion that they respect but one country—their own; one system of government—that of their parents and masters; one religion—that which they have been taught. Does anyone suppose that in this way men can be shaped who shall respect country, religion and law? Is this a proper respect—this respect which does not extend beyond what touches and belongs to ourselves? Strange blindness of cliques and coteries, which arrogate to themselves with so much ingenuous complacence the title of schools of respect, and which, outside themselves, respect nothing. In reality they teach: "Country, religion, law—we are all these!" Such teaching fosters fanaticism, and if fanaticism is not the sole anti-social ferment, it is surely one of the worst and most energetic.
IF simplicity of heart is an essential condition of respect, simplicity of life is its best school. Whatever be the state of your fortune, avoid everything which could make your children think themselves more or better than others. Though your wealth would permit you to dress them richly, remember the evil you might do in exciting their vanity. Preserve them from the evil of believing that to be elegantly dressed suffices for distinction, and above all do not carelessly increase by their clothes and their habits of life, the distance which already separates them from other children: dress them simply. And if, on the contrary, it would be necessary for you to economize to give your children the pleasure of fine clothes, I would that I might dispose you to reserve your spirit of sacrifice for a better cause. You risk seeing it illy recompensed. You dissipate your money when it would much better avail to save it for serious needs, and you prepare for yourself, later on, a harvest of ingratitude. How dangerous it is to accustom your sons and daughters to a style of living beyond your means and theirs! In the first place, it is very bad for your purse; in the second place it develops a contemptuous spirit in the very bosom of the family. If you dress your children like little lords, and give them to understand that they are superior to you, is it astonishing if they end by disdaining you? You will have nourished at your table the declassed—a product which costs dear and is worthless.
Any fashion of instructing children whose most evident result is to lead them to despise their parents and the customs and activities among which they have grown up, is a calamity. It is effective for nothing but to produce a legion of malcontents, with hearts totally estranged from their origin, their race, their natural interests—everything, in short, that makes the fundamental fabric of a man. Once detached from the vigorous stock which produced them, the wind of their restless ambition drives them over the earth, like dead leaves that will in the end be heaped up to ferment and rot together.
Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds, but by an evolution slow and certain. In preparing a career for our children, let us imitate her. Let us not confound progress and advancement with those violent exercises called somersaults. Let us not so bring up our children that they will come to despise work and the aspirations and simple spirit of their fathers: let us not expose them to the temptation of being ashamed of our poverty if they themselves come to fortune. A society is indeed diseased when the sons of peasants begin to feel disgust for the fields, when the sons of sailors desert the sea, when the daughters of working-men, in the hope of being taken for heiresses, prefer to walk the streets alone rather than beside their honest parents. A society is healthy, on the contrary, when each of its members applies himself to doing very nearly what his parents have done before him, but doing it better, and, looking to future elevation, is content first to fulfill conscientiously more modest duties.[C]
[C] This would be the place to speak of work in general, and of its tonic effect upon education. But I have discussed the subject in my books Justice, Jeunesse, and Vaillanos. I must limit myself to referring the reader to them.
EDUCATION should make independent men. If you wish to train your children for liberty, bring them up simply, and do not for a moment fear that in so doing you are putting obstacles in the way of their happiness. It will be quite the contrary. The more costly toys a child has, the more feasts and curious entertainments, the less is he amused.
In this there is a sure sign. Let us be temperate in our methods of entertaining youth, and especially let us not thoughtlessly create for them artificial needs. Food, dress, nursery, amusements—let all these be as natural and simple as possible. With the idea of making life pleasant for their children, some parents bring them up in habits of gormandizing and idleness, accustom them to sensations not meant for their age, multiply their parties and entertainments. Sorry gifts these! In place of a free man, you are making a slave. Gorged with luxury, he tires of it in time; and yet when for one reason or another his pleasures fail him, he will be miserable, and you with him: and what is worse, perhaps in some capital encounter of life, you will be ready—you and he together—to sacrifice manly dignity, truth, and duty, from sheer sloth.