CHAPTER IX
MANAGEMENT IN LATER CHILDHOOD
In the early days in the nursery the actions of the infant, for the most part, follow passively the traction exercised by nurses and mothers, sometimes consciously, but more often unconsciously. We have now to consider a period when the child becomes possessed of a driving force of his own, and moves in this direction or that of his own volition. In this new intellectual movement through life he will not avoid tumbles. He will feel the restraints of his environment pressing upon him on all sides, and he will often come violently in contact with rigid rules and conventions to which he must learn to yield. From time to time we read in the papers of some terrible accident in a picture-palace, or in a theatre. Although there has been no fire, there has been a cry of fire, and in the panic which ensues lives are lost from the crowding and crushing. Yet all the time the doors have stood wide open, and through them an orderly exit might have been conducted had reason not given place to unreason. It is the task of those responsible for the children's education to guide them without wild struggling along the paths of well-regulated conduct towards the desired goal, influenced not by the emotions of the moment, but only by reason and a sense of right; not ignorant of the difficulties to be met, but practised and equipped to overcome them.
It is easy thus to state in general terms the objects of education, and the need for discipline. To apply these principles to the individual is a task, the immeasurable difficulty of which we are only beginning to appreciate with the failure of thirty years of compulsory education before us. A recent writer [2] gives it as his opinion that the aim of education is to equip a child with ideals, and that this task should not be difficult, because the lower savages successfully subject all the members of their tribe to the most ruthless discipline. Their lives, he says, "are lived in fear, in restraint, in submission, in suffering, subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary. They endure painful mutilations, they submit to painful sacrifices.... How are these wild, unstable, wayward, impulsive, passionate natures brought to submit to such a rigorous and cruel discipline? By education; by the inculcation from infancy of these ideals. In these ideals they have been brought up, and to them they cling with the utmost tenacity." One might as well contend that it was easy to teach all men to live the self-denying life of earnest Christians because some savage tribe was successful in main taining among its members a universal and orthodox worship of idols. The ideals set before the child are too high and too complex to be inculcated by physical force, or even by force of public opinion. A rigid discipline, with many stripes and with terrible threats of a still worse punishment in the world to come, was the almost invariable lot of children until the last century was well advanced. Yet has this drastic treatment of young children fulfilled its purpose? Were the men of fifty years ago better conducted and more controlled than the men of to-day? In any one family did a greater proportion turn out well? Is it not true that at least among the educated classes the relaxation of nursery and schoolroom discipline which the last fifty years has seen has been justified by its results? Is it not true that the childhood of our grandmothers was often lived "in fear, in restraint, in submission, in suffering subject to galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, arbitrary prohibitions and taboos, and to customary duties equally galling, unreasoning, unnecessary, and arbitrary." And though perhaps the grandmothers of most of us may not have been much the worse for all this discipline, is it not true that of the little brothers who shared the nursery with them a surprising number broke straightway into dissipation when the parental restraints were removed? If we are to teach a child to be gentle to the weak it is not wise to beat him. The qualities which we wish him to possess are not more subtle than the means by which we must aid him to their possession.
[ [2] The Principles of Rational Education, by Dr. C.A. Mercier.
Education comprises physical, mental, and moral training. In earlier times physical strength and the power to fight well, alone were prized and were the chief objects to be gained in the education of youth. Later, under the stress of intellectual competition for success in life, mental acquirements have come to occupy the first place. We are only now learning to lay emphasis upon the supreme need for moral training. Not that it is possible to separate the sum of education into its constituent parts, and to regard each as distinct from the others. That many men of great intellectual activity, and many men pre-eminent for their moral qualities have harboured a great brain or a noble character in a weakly or deformed body, forms no argument to disprove the general rule that a healthy, vigorous physique is the only sure foundation upon which to build a highly developed intellect and a stable temperament. In childhood the intimate connection between vigour of mind and vigour of body is almost always clearly shown. A child with rickets, unable to exercise his body in free play, as a rule shows a flabbiness of mind in keeping with his useless muscles and yielding bones. Such children talk late, are infantile in their habits and ways of thought, and are more emotional and unstable than healthy children of the same age. The connection between bodily ailments and instability of nervous control is even more clearly seen in the frequent combination of rheumatism and chorea. A very high proportion of older children suffering from the graver neuroses, such as chorea, syncopal attacks, phobias, tics, and so forth, show defective physical development. Scoliosis, lordosis, knock-knee, flat foot, pigeon chest, albuminuria, cold and cyanosed extremities, are the rule rather than the exception. If the body of the child is developed to the greatest perfection of which it is capable we shall not often find a too sensitive nervous system. The boy of fine physique may have many faults. He may be bad-tempered or untruthful or selfish, but such faults as he has are as a rule more primitive in type, more readily traced to their causes, and more easy to eradicate than the faults which spring from that timidity, instability, and moral flabbiness which has so often developed in the lax delicate child reared softly in mind and body.
Physical Training
Children thrive best in the healthy open-air life of the country, and if there is any tendency to nervous disturbances the need for this becomes insistent. Physical training, further, includes the manual education of the child. The system of child-training advocated by Dr. Montessori is based upon the cultivation of tactile sensations and the development of manual dexterity. Exercises such as she has devised have an immediate effect in calming the nervous system and in changing the restless or irritable child into a self-restrained and eager worker. Lord Macaulay, whose phenomenal memory as a child has become proverbial, was so extraordinarily unhandy that throughout life he had considerable difficulty in putting on his gloves, while he had such trouble with shaving that on his return from India there were found in his luggage some fifty razors, none of which retained any edge, and nearly as many strops which had been cut to pieces in his irritated and ineffectual efforts. If we teach a child manual dexterity it is an advantage to him, because manual dexterity is seldom associated with restlessness and irritability of mind. To excel in some handicraft not only bespeaks the possession of self-control, it helps directly to cultivate it. The teaching of Froebel and Montessori holds good after nursery days are over.
Mental Training