Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

“That comes of fumbling over our F. M. C., instead of holding us up with both hands. But, honour bright, Dr. Oldcastle, do you see in these days any change in the manner of boy that comes to your hands fresh from his home?”

“Yes, yes! a thousand times, yes!”

“If Mr. Hilyard’s courtesy had permitted me to answer for myself, I, also, should have said ‘yes.’ I see a most remarkable change, upon which society is to be congratulated. But what would you have? Civilisation and education must of necessity produce results, appreciable even within a single lifetime.”

“Don’t you think, Doctor, you might have made a trilogy of it, and promoted Christianity?” interposed the ever suave and gentle tones of the Dean. “I myself feel with Dr. Brenton, ‘every man for his master,’ and would fain lay every advance at the feet of mine.”

“I must beg the Dean to look over a little assumed pugnacity. That we all agree with him, he may rest assured. And for this reason. Every other avenue towards perfection leads you, after weeks or months or years of delightful going, to a blank wall. You see nothing beyond; all that remains is to retrace your steps, and retrogression is always bitter. You try through Christ, and find yourself in the way of endless progress cheered by perennial hope. But the talk is growing serious. We of the ‘New Education’ party take to ourselves the credit of the advances Dr. Oldcastle perceives, and as testimony from an alien is very valuable, perhaps he would not mind telling us in detail what differences he perceives between the young boys of to-day and their kind of forty years ago?”

“Let me consider a moment; your question is not easy to answer in a breath.... Well, in the first place, they are more apt to learn: I conceive that there has been an extraordinary advance in intelligence during the last half-century. The work we would grind over for hours in my day, these youngsters have at their finger-ends in half-an-hour, and are on the alert for more. I do believe they have a real appetite for knowledge—a weakness of which not more than one or two in a hundred was guilty when I was a boy.”

“Will you let me, as a parent, give you our explanation of these facts? For, with deference to Dr. Brenton, who justly claims so much for his craft, I think we parents deserve a pat, too. You may bring a horse to the well, but you can’t make him drink. The advance, I think, is not in intelligence, but in power of attention. This, the Fathers’ and Mothers’ Club and its agencies recognise as the practical power of man; that which makes all the difference between the able and successful man and the poor lag-last. And yet it is not a faculty, but is the power and habit of concentrating every faculty on the thing in hand. Now this habit of attention parents, mothers especially, are taught to encourage and cultivate in their children from early infancy. What you regard with full attention, if only for a minute, you know, and remember always. Think of the few scenes and conversations we all have so vividly fixed that we cannot possibly forget them. Why? Because at the moment our attention was powerfully excited. You reap some benefit from this early training directly the boy goes to school. The psychologists—not your craft, this time, Doctor—tell us that enormous curiosity, a ravenous appetite for knowledge, is as natural to children as bread-and-milk hunger. Put the two together; the boy has an eager desire to know—has the power of fixing his whole mind on the new thoughts set before him, and it’s as easy as A B C; of course he learns with magical quickness. The field has been ploughed by the parents, and you have only to sow your seed.”

“H’m! it sounds rational; I must think it over. Anyway, the results are pleasant enough. Four hours a day instead of six or seven—and much more work done, mind you—is good for both masters and boys. Then, most of them have resources and are on nobody’s hands. You’d be astonished to hear how much these fellows know, and each has his speciality. One little chap has butterflies, for instance. Ah, that reminds me! Don’t tell, or I might be invited to resign; but I don’t to this day know the difference between a moth and a butterfly. It’s the sort of thing one ought to know, so I set up a classification of my own, no doubt correct, because it was mine! Well, this befell me. ‘What have you there?’ I asked a little chap, who had evidently netted a prize. ‘A moth, sir, the ——,’ scientific name, pat. ‘A moth, boy! That beautiful creature is no moth. Moths live in houses.’ You should have seen the fellow suppress his grin! I couldn’t ask, so don’t know now; but make a point of not meeting that little chap’s eye. A friend of mine, a Fellow of his College, was worse. ‘I say, Oldcastle, the poets make a mighty pother about the song of the lark. Now, do tell me—do you know it when you hear it?’ But as for the boys that enter now, there’s not the natural object that they don’t both recognise and know all about. Their collections are of scientific worth—at least, so that fellow Hilyard thinks, so we are going in for a museum of local natural history!”

“Why, Dr. Oldcastle, you’re like the man in the play, who talked prose all his life, and at last found it out! You’re our warmest friend, though you decline the connection. This, again, is the work of mothers following the lines of the ‘New Education.’ We make a great point of developing intelligent curiosity in the children about all that lives and grows within their ken. For instance, I should think most of ‘our’ mothers would feel disgraced if her child of six were not able to recognise any ordinary British tree from a twig with leaf-buds only. It’s Nature’s lore, and the children take to it like ducks to the water. The first seven or eight years of their lives are spent out of doors—in possible weather—learning this sort of thing, instead of pottering over picture-books and A B C. But do fill the witness-box a minute longer. All this is delicious. An outsider who speaks with authority is worth a score of partisans.”

“I bow my thanks, Clough, for the handsome things you are good enough to say. Of course my impartial witness would be quite as valuable if it told on the other side. Why, Hilyard, you’re nowhere! ’Tis I am the man of the day. But no; he’s the go-ahead fellow, and I’m the drag; yet a drag has its uses.”