Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy.

by Mary Tyler Peabody Mann; Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

To return to your present plans. I think I must have learnt this rambling habit which so often leads my pen off the track, when roving the woods and fields in my extreme youth, now resting by the side of the arrowy river of my favorite valley, where the "sweet waters meet," or floating with you down the placid Charles at the winds' and the tides' sweet will.

I anticipate what you will tell me of the advantages under which you enter upon the career of a governess. I expect a glowing description of your new life, because I know how you love and admire those friends; but that will make no difference in my views. I too have a friend with whom I agree upon the subject of education; a mother whose experience and wisdom have aided me much, and whose spirit has presided over my school-room as a sort of tutelary genius, into whose family I should be willing to go and give all the aid I could furnish for the furtherance of her plans, (her own book-knowledge not being equal to mine,) if she constituted the whole influence in her own family. There would be a perfect coöperation between us two, the intercourse of years having prepared the way for it. But her husband is not as wise as she is, and I would not therefore venture. Yours may be a peculiar case of sympathy with both parents, but let us look upon it in a general way.

We will suppose a good family, and that the parents are conscientious, and have a general confidence in the judgment and acquirements of the governess. But if the mother is a person of decided views, and fixed in her own opinions, and the father also, you might immediately find insuperable difficulties. You would not like to exert any influence opposed to the parental, however injudicious you might deem that to be. You would not like to take sides with either parent. They might, by amicable discussion, modify each other's views, so as to do just right by their children; while the influence of another, thrown into either scale, would produce dissatisfaction. In your school-room, on the contrary, you can be perfectly independent of either, and without standing in the attitude of opposition, or running the risk of encroaching upon the rights of a parent, you can know just as much and just as little as you please of the difference of views; and having your scholar in a new scene, and subjected to different influences, you may be able fully to carry out your own views, without exciting the jealousy of parents. This is the only way to avoid such collisions as I dread, and which seem to me almost inevitable in such a union as that of parent and teacher in the same family. As an independent teacher, your opinions may be expressed with the utmost freedom; for I would have no tampering with truth. But few mothers are humble or wise enough to be willing to be criticised at home when it comes to the point. Then in my opinion such an inmate spoils a family, which should be a sacred circle where none intrude. I myself have had the whole care of children in a family, moral and intellectual, but no one but the parents ought to have had it. It set up an authority that was more respected than that of the parent. I have also, in another instance, had the sympathy and confidence of one parent, and the jealous watchfulness of the other, who would not listen to the suggestions of a third person. I have also seen children who knew more of truth than their parents, and who knew that I knew it; and I would never again put myself in that position. I have seen the wounded vanity of otherwise good mothers baffle the best intentions and wisest action on the part of a governess; and even sadder cases, where conscience itself must have been sacrificed to keep the peace. No individual should ever step between parents and children, and point out the errors of the former. Principles alone should do this; nothing less sacred should intervene. In my school-room, I can dwell upon principles forever, and apply them to the cases in hand as closely and as skilfully as I please, and keep clear of personalities, if I find them baneful. If one is in the family, this seems to me scarcely possible. Often when I speak of a wrong action, be it the wanton killing of a bird, or the indulgence of an evil passion, children say to me, "My father does that sometimes," and even add, "I wish he would not." This moral judgment is inevitable; it must come sooner or later, and the sooner the child defines the line by his own observations and reflections the better, but it must often pass without comment. I should be sorry to be obliged to be silent upon any point of right and wrong, because there are sinners at my elbow. In a school-room, which is a separate world within the great world,—connected with it, yet severed from it,—principles may reign triumphant. In a family, persons prevail more or less, and this is one of my chief reasons for objecting to an exclusively private education. Special modes of thought and standards of action are imposed by example and habit; and where there is no variety of views presented for comparison, minds cannot easily expand, still less choose the best of several good ways. I have seen the victims of private education perpetuate family faults, and in later life left standing alone in the world, knowing little of its interests, and having no sympathy from without. I have seen morbid sensibility thus nourished into insanity itself.

But you must tell me the result of your experiment. It dashes my hopes of any brilliant discoveries. I much question whether, under the most favorable circumstances, you will find yourself able to satisfy yourself and others too. Those friends who love you so much will perhaps be unwilling to make demands upon you; and this will make you anxious to do all you can imagine them to desire. This is the worst of all slaveries—to be in a situation where one is not sure of all that is demanded, and where delicacy forbids the free expression of wishes. In most cases, too great requisitions are made upon the time and thoughts of a governess. There should be a rigid arrangement in regard to hours and services, leaving the time which is not employed in instruction wholly free, independent, and solitary, if desired. For a time you will be willing to give all your waking hours to your employment, and feel that you cannot do enough to serve a friend; but real teaching is an immense tax upon the mind and the health; and you have duties to yourself, the neglect of which will at last unfit you for the proper fulfilment of the very engagement you have entered into. Your own qualities of character may clash with those of the family, and you cannot be supposed to have the touchstone to their peculiarities, that members of the same family have,—an innate and fibrous knowledge, as it were, of the springs of each other's action, and the associations that govern these springs. I have never seen a more painful tyranny exercised than that over a governess in one instance; not a palpable tyranny that could be rebelled against and openly thrown off, but a total ignorance of another's wants and rights, that made the whole life a bondage. The lady who presides believes sincerely that she offers a happy home and easy duties to one whose whole time and thoughts are taxed in such a manner that she cannot feel at liberty to dispose of an hour, although many are actually left unoccupied by accident. This is an extraordinary instance of selfishness, I acknowledge, but it generally taints the relation, more or less. I have but one counsel to give to such sufferers. Sacrifice everything but independence, but preserve that inviolate; for without it one can neither be truthful nor capable of improvement. We never should allow ourselves to be in a responsible situation where we cannot express our opinions for fear of giving offence. There is enough of that servile fear in our common intercourse with our fellow-beings. Let us keep ourselves out of temptation while our daily prayer is that God may not lead us into it.

I am prepared for a theoretic refutation of all my positions, but shall probably be very self-opinionated till you have lived through this experience, as I have done.

Yours, affectionately, M.

LETTER VII.

My dear Anna,—I am somewhat reconciled to your being in a less independent situation than I wished for you, by learning that you are, after all, in a school-room of your own, surrounded by children educated thus far under various influences. The range of ages in your little company appears to me rather too unequal; but I have such confidence in your resources, that I will not forebode failure. I only hope you will not be distracted by too various calls. In my own experience, I was obliged to relinquish older and more advanced pupils in favor of younger ones, because I found the proper attention to the two classes incompatible, and in my own case my heart was with the little ones. You are better fitted to cope with older children, because your force of will is superior to mine.

I rejoice in your lovely surroundings. I once kept school near a gurgling brook, whose banks were ornamented with wild flowers, and the room was always redolent of perfumes, and garlanded with clematis and other flowers in their season. Not only children's heads, but mine, were wreathed with them; and many a lesson was given and learned under the trees, and on the grassy turf, golden with buttercups and dandelions. But now a few feet of sky, and a glimpse of verdant back-yards from one window, is all I can boast of when housed. I am blessed with the proximity of Boston Common, through which I daily wander with my little flock, and many of my children have country summers to remember,—vacations at least. Cities are unnatural places for the young. All childhood should be passed in the country, and in afterlife its memories can be pitted against the evils the grownup must bear in pursuit of certain social privileges.