The Education of the Child

by Ellen Key

Such was the training of Old Scandinavia; the direct share of the child in the work of the adult, in real labours and dangers, gave to the life of our Scandinavian forefathers (with whom the boy began to be a man at twelve years of age), unity, character, and strength. Things specially made for children, the anxious watching over all their undertakings, support given to all their steps, courses of work and pleasure specially prepared for children,—these are the fundamental defects of our present day education. An eighteen-yearold girl said to me a short time ago, that she and other girls of the same age were so tired of the system of vigilance, protection, amusement, and pampering at school and at home, that they were determined to bring up their own children in hunger, corporal discipline, and drudgery.

One can understand this unfortunate reaction against an artificial environment, the environment in which children and young people of the present grow up; an existence that evokes a passionate desire for the realities of life, for individual action at one's own risk and responsibility, instead of being, as is now the case, at home and in the school, the object of another's care.

What is required, above all, for the children of the present day, is to be assigned again real home occupations, tasks they must do conscientiously, habits of work arranged for week days and holidays without oversight, in every case where the child can help himself. Instead of the modern school child having a mother and servants about him to get him ready for school and to help him to remember things, he should have time every day before school to arrange his room and brush his clothes, and there should be no effort to make him remember what is connected with the school. The home and the school should combine together systematically to let the child suffer for the results of his own negligence.

Just the reverse of this system rules to-day. Mothers learn their children's lessons, invent plays for them, read their story books to them, arrange their rooms after them, pick up what they have let fall, put in order the things they have left in confusion, and in this and in other ways, by protective pampering and attention, their desire for work, their endurance, the gifts of invention and imagination, qualities proper to the child, become weak and passive. The home now is only a preparation for school. In it, young people growing up, are accustomed to receive services, without performing any on their part. They are trained to be always receptive instead of giving something in return. Then people are surprised at a youthful generation, selfish and unrestrained, pressing forward shamelessly on all occasions before their elders, crudely unresponsive in respect of those attentions, which in earlier generations were a beautiful custom among the young.

To restore this custom, all the means usually adopted now to protect the child from physical and psychical dangers and inconveniences, will have to be removed. Throw the thermometer out of the window and begin with a sensible course of toughening; teach the child to know and to bear natural pain. Corporal punishment must be done away with not because it is painful but because it is profoundly immoral and hopelessly unsuitable. Repress the egoistic demands of the child when he interferes with the work or rest of others; never let him either by caresses or by nagging usurp the rights of grown people; take care that the servants do not work against what the parents are trying to insist on in this and in other matters.

We must begin in doing for the child in certain ways a thousand times more and in others a hundred thousand times less. A beginning must be made in the tenderest age to establish the child's feeling for nature. Let him live year in and year out in the same country home; this is one of the most significant and profound factors in training. It can be held to even where it is now neglected. The same thing holds good of making a choice library, commencing with the first years of life; so that the child will have, at different periods of his life, suitable books for each age; not as is now often the case, get quite spoilt by the constant change of summer excursions, by worthless children's books, and costly toys. They should never have any but the simplest books; the so-called classical ones. They should be amply provided with means of preparing their own playthings. The worst feature of our system are the playthings which imitate the luxury of grown people. By such objects the covetous impulse of the child for acquisition is increased, his own capacity for discovery and imagination limited, or rather, it would be limited if children with the sound instinct of preservation, did not happily smash the perfect playthings, which give them no creative opportunity, and themselves make new playthings from fir cones, acorns, thorns, and fragments of pottery, and all other sorts of rubbish which can be transformed into objects of great price by the power of the imagination.

To play with children in the right way is also a great art. It should never be done if children do not themselves know what they are going to do; it should always be a special treat for them as well as their elders. But the adults must always on such occasions, leave behind every kind of educational idea and go completely into the child's world of thought and imagination. No attempt should be made to teach them at these times anything else but the old satisfactory games. The experiences derived from these games about the nature of the children, who are stimulated in one direction or another by the game, must be kept for later use.

Games in this way increase confidence between children and adults. They learn to know their elders better. But to allow children to turn all the rooms into places to play in, and to demand constantly that their elders shall interest themselves in them, is one of the most dangerous species of pampering common to the present day. The children become accustomed to selfishness and mental dependence. Besides this constant educational effort brings with it the dulling of the child's personality. If children were free in their own world, the nursery, but out of it had to submit to the strict limits imposed by the habits, wills, work, and repose of parents, their requirements and their wishes, they would develop into a stronger and more considerate race than the youth of the present day. It is not so much talking about being considerate, but the necessity of considering others, of really helping oneself and others, that has an educational value. In earlier days, children were quiet as mice in the presence of elder persons. Instead of, as they do now, breaking into a guest's conversation, they learned to listen. If the conversation of adults is varied, this can be called one of the best educational methods for children. The ordinary life of children, under the old system, was lived in the nursery where they received their most important training from an old faithful servant and from one another. From their parents they received corporal punishment, sometimes a caress. In comparison with this system, the present way of parents and children living together would be absolute progress, if parents could but abstain from explaining, advising, improving, influencing every thought and every expression. But all spiritual, mental, and bodily protective rules make the child now indirectly selfish, because everything centres about him and therefore he is kept in a constant state of irritation. The six-yearold can disturb the conversation of the adult, but the twelve-year-old is sent to bed about eight o'clock, even when he, with wide open eyes, longs for a conversation that might be to him an inspiring stimulus for life.

Certainly some simple habits so far as conduct and order, nourishment and sleep, air and water, clothing and bodily movement, are concerned, can be made the foundations for the child's conceptions of morality. He cannot be made to learn soon enough that bodily health and beauty must be regarded as high ethical characteristics, and that what is injurious to health and beauty must be regarded as a hateful act. In this sphere, children must be kept entirely independent of custom by allowing the exception to every rule to have its valid place. The present anxious solicitude that children should eat when the clock strikes, that they get certain food at fixed meals, that they be clothed according to the degree of temperature, that they go to bed when the clock strikes, that they be protected from every drop of unboiled water and every extra piece of candy, this makes them nervous, irritable slaves of habit. A reasonable toughening process against the inequalities, discomforts, and chances of life, constitutes one of the most important bases of joy of living and of strength of temper. In this case too, the behaviour of the person who gives the training, is the best means of teaching children to smile at small contretemps, things which would throw a cloud over the sun, if one got into the habit of treating them as if they were of great importance. If the child sees the parent doing readily an unpleasant duty, which he honestly recognises as unpleasant; if he sees a parent endure trouble or an unexpected difficulty easily, he will be in honour bound to do the like. Just as children without many words learn to practice good deeds when they see good deeds practiced about them; learn to enjoy the beauty of nature and art when they see that adults enjoy them, so by living more beautifully, more nobly, more moderately, we speak best to children. They are just as receptive to impressions of this kind as they are careless of those made by force.

Since this is my alpha and omega in the art of education, I repeat now what I said at the beginning of this book and half way through it. Try to leave the child in peace; interfere directly as seldom as possible; keep away all crude and impure impressions; but give all your care and energy to see that personality, life itself, reality in its simplicity and in its nakedness, shall all be means of training the child.