[Footnote 7: Physical Hindrances to Teaching Girls, by Charlotte W.
Porter. Forum, September, 1891, vol. 12, pp. 41-49.]
[Footnote 8: Abbotsholme, 1889-1899: or Ten Years' Work in an
Educational Laboratory, by Cecil Reddie, G. Allen London, 1900.]
[Footnote 9: See L'Ecole des Roches, a school of the Twentieth Century, by T.R. Croswell. Pedagogical Seminary, December, 1900, vol. 7, pp. 479-491.]
[Footnote 10: See Chapter VI.]
* * * * *
CHAPTER XII
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING
Dangers of muscular degeneration and overstimulus of brain—Difficulties in teaching morals—Methods in Europe—Obedience to commands—Good habits should be mechanized—Value of scolding—How to flog aright—Its dangers—Moral precepts and proverbs—Habituation—Training will through intellect—Examinations—Concentration—Originality—Froebel and the naive—First ideas of God—Conscience—Importance of Old and New Testaments—Sex dangers—Love and religion—Conversion.
From its nature as well as from its central importance it might be easily shown that the will is no less dependent on the culture it receives than is the mind. It is fast becoming as absurd to suppose that men can survive in the great practical strain to which American life subjects all who would succeed, if the will is left to take its doubtful chances of training and discipline, as to suppose that the mind develops in neglect. Our changed conditions make this chance of will-culture more doubtful than formerly. A generation or two ago[1] most school-boys had either farm work, chores, errands, jobs self-imposed, or required by less tender parents; they made things, either toys or tools, out of school. Most school-girls did house-work, more or less of which is, like farm-work, perhaps the most varied and most salutary as well as most venerable of all schools for the youthful body and mind. They undertook extensive works of embroidery, bed-quilting, knitting, sewing, mending, if not cleaning, and even spinning and weaving their own or others' clothing, and cared for the younger children. The wealthier devised or imposed tasks for will-culture, as the German Kaiser has his children taught a trade as part of their education. Ten days at the hoe-handle, axe, or pitchfork, said an eminent educator lately in substance, with no new impression from without, and one constant and only duty, is a schooling in perseverance and sustained effort such as few boys now get in any shape; while city instead of country life brings so many new, heterogeneous and distracting impressions of motion rather than rest, and so many privileges with so few corresponding duties, that with artificial life and bad air the will is weakened, and eupeptic minds and stomachs, on which its vigor so depends, are rare. Machines supersede muscles, and perhaps our athleticism gives skill too great preponderance over strength, or favors intense rather than constant, long-sustained, unintermittent energy. Perhaps too many of our courses of study are better fitted to turn out many-sided but superficial paragraphists, than men who can lay deep plans, and subordinate many complex means to one remote end. Meanwhile, if there is any one thing of which our industries and practical arts are in more crying need than another, it is the old-fashioned virtue of thoroughness, of a kind and degree which does not address merely the eye, is not limited by the letter of a contract, but which has some regard for its products for their own sake, and some sense for the future. Whether in science, philosophy, morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy than in the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly to concentrate themselves to one vocation, life-work, or mission, or when cathedrals or other yet vaster public works were transmitted, unfinished but ever advancing, from one generation of men to another.
It is because the brain is developed, while the muscles are allowed to grow flabby and atrophied, that the deplored chasm between knowing and doing is so often fatal to the practical effectiveness of mental and moral culture. The great increase of city and sedentary life has been far too sudden for the human body—which was developed by hunting, war, agriculture, and manifold industries now given over to steam and machinery—to adapt itself healthfully or naturally to its new environment. Let any of us take down an anatomical chart of the human muscles, and reflect what movements we habitually make each day, and realize how disproportionately our activities are distributed compared with the size or importance of the muscles, and how greatly modern specialization of work has deformed our bodies. The muscles that move the scribbling pen are insignificant fraction of those in the whole body, and those that wag the tongue and adjust the larynx are also comparatively few and small. Their importance is, of course, not underrated, but it is disastrous to concentrate education upon them too exclusively or too early in life. The trouble is that few realize what physical vigor is in man or woman, or how dangerously near weakness often is to wickedness, how impossible healthful energy of will is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how endurance and self-control, no less than great achievement, depend on muscle-habits. Both in Germany and Greece, a golden age of letters was preceded, by about a generation, by a golden age of national gymnastic enthusiasm which constitutes, especially in the former country, one of the most unique and suggestive chapters in the history of pedagogy. Symmetry and grace, hardihood and courage, the power to do everything that the human body can do with and without all conceivable apparatus, instruments, and even tools, are culture ideals that in Greece, Rome, and Germany respectively have influenced, as they might again influence, young men, as intellectual ideals never can do save in a select few. We do not want "will-virtuosos," who perform feats hard to learn, but then easy to do and good for show; nor spurtiness of any sort which develops an erethic habit of work, temper, and circulation, and is favored by some of our popular sports but too soon reacts into fatigue. Even will-training does not reach its end till it leads the young up to taking a intelligent, serious and life-long interest in their own physical culture and development. This is higher than interest in success in school or college sport; and, though naturally later than these, is one of the earliest forms of will-culture in which it is safe and wise to attempt to interest the young for its own sake alone. In our exciting life and trying climate, in which the experiment of civilization has never been tried before, these thoughts are merely exercises.