“Oh, he’s a little fellow yet; he will know better by-and-by.”
“My view is, let children have a delightful childhood. Time enough for restraint and contradiction when they go to school.”
“We do not hold with punishing children; love your children, and let them alone, is our principle.”
“They will meet with hardness enough in the world. Childhood shall have no harsh memories for them.”
“School will break them in. Let them grow like young colts till the time comes to break them. All young things should be free to kick about.”
“What’s bred in the bone must come out in the flesh. I do not care much for all this clipping and shaping of children. Destroys individuality.”
“When he’s older, he will know better. Time cures many faults.”
And so on; we might fill pages with the wise things people say, who, for one excellent reason or another, prefer to leave it to the schoolmaster to make a child “sit up.” And does the schoolmaster live up to his reputation? how far does he succeed with the child who comes to him with no self-management? His real and proud successes are with the children who have been trained to “sit up” at home. His pleasure in such children is unbounded; the pains he takes with them unlimited; the successful careers he is able to launch them upon exceed the ambition of those most wildly ambitious of human beings (dare we say it?)—parents, quiet, sensible, matter-of-fact parents. But the schoolmaster takes little credit to himself for these happy results. Schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are modest people, though they are not always credited with their virtues.
“You can do anything with So-and-so; his parents have turned him out so well.” Observe, the master takes little credit to himself (by no means so much as he deserves); and why? Experience makes fools wise; and what then of those who add experience to wisdom? “People send us their cubs to lick into shape, and what can we do?” Now the answer to this query concerns parents rather closely: what and how much can the schoolmaster do to make the boy “sit up” who has not been to the manner bred?
No suasion will make you “sit up” if you are an oyster; no, nor even if you are a cod. You must have a backbone, and your backbone must have learned its work before sitting up is possible to you. No doubt the human oyster may grow a backbone, and the human cod may get into the way of sitting up, and some day, perhaps, we shall know of the heroic endeavours made by schoolmaster and mistress to prop up, and haul up, and draw up, and anyhow keep alert and sitting up, creatures whose way it is to sprawl. Sometimes the result is surprising; they sit up in a row with the rest and look all right; even when the props are removed they keep to the trick of sitting up for awhile. The schoolmaster begins to rub his hands, and the parents say, “I told you so. Didn’t I always say Jack would come right in the end?” Wait a bit. The end is not yet. The habits of school, as of military life, are more or less mechanical. The early habits are vital; reversion to these takes place, and Jack sprawls as a man just as he sprawled as a child, only more so. Various social props keep him up; he has the wit to seem to “sit up”; he is lovable and his life is respectable; and no one suspects that this easy-going Mr. John Brown is a failure; a man who had the elements of greatness in him, and might have been of use in the world had he been put under discipline from his infancy.