THE TRAINING OF THE WILL
After all, what is there about a person that really counts? All experience and all philosophy agree that it is the character; and the central fact in character is the will. Yet the will is not something in the soul that exists by itself, as a "faculty" of the mind. The will is a product of all the other processes that go on in the mind, and can not be trained by itself. Neither can the will of the child be expected to come to its own through neglect. Indeed, although the will can not be trained by itself, its training is even more important than the training of the intellect. The great defect in our moral training has been that we have generally attempted to train our children too exclusively through precepts and mottoes and rules, and too little through activities that lead to the formation of habits. The will depends upon the intellect, but it cannot be trained through learning alone, though learning can be made to help. There are, as we all know, only too many learned men and women with weak wills, and there are many men and women of strong character who have had but little book learning. The will expresses itself through action, and must be trained through action. But action is impelled by feelings, so the will must be trained also through the feelings. All right education is education of the will. The will is formed while the child is learning to think, to feel, and to do.
We judge of character by the behavior. But our behavior is not made up entirely of acts of the will. Hundreds of situations occur that do not require individual decision, but are adequately met by acts arising from habit, or even from instinct. The experience of the race has given us many customs and manners which are for the most part satisfactory, and which the child should learn as a matter of course. It is thus important that the child should acquire certain habits as early in life as possible. These habits will not only result in saving of energy, but will also give assurance that in certain situations the child will act in the right way. If it is worth while to have a person knock on a door before entering an occupied room, or if it is worth while to have people look to the left and to the right before crossing a thoroughfare, the child can acquire the habit of doing these things always and everywhere without stopping to make a decision on each occasion.
But we must remember that in guiding the child to the formation of these habits, example and practice are far more important than precepts and rules. Example is more important because the child is very imitative; one rude act on the part of some older member of the household will counteract the benefit of many verbal lessons in politeness. Practice is important because it is through constant repetition of an act that it at last becomes automatic, and is performed without thought or attention. In fact, this is the only way in which a habit can be formed. Having acquired habits about the common relations of life that do not call for new adjustment every time they are met, the mind is left free to apply itself to problems that really need special consideration. Imagine how wasteful it would be if we had to attend to every movement in dressing ourselves! You can easily see that there are a great many acts that bring us in relation to others and that should be as mechanical and automatic as dressing and undressing.
It is when we pass from the routine acts which are repeated every day that we come to the field in which the will holds sway. There is nothing more helpful in the training of the will than the frequent performance of tasks requiring application, self control, and the making of decisions. The routine of fixed duties in a large and complex household furnished to our grandparents, during their youth, just the opportunity for the formation of habits in attending to what needed to be done, without regard to the momentary impulse or mood. Many of our modern homes are so devoid of such opportunities that there is great danger that our children will have altogether too much practice in following their whims and caprices—or in doing nothing.
It is just because the modern home is so devoid of the opportunities for carrying on these character-building activities that provision must be made in that other great educational institution, the school. All the newer activities of the school, the shop work and the school garden, the domestic science and the sewing, the recreation centres, the art and the music—all these so-called "fads and frills" against which the taxpayer raises his voice in protest— these prove to be even more important in the making of men and women out of children than the respectable and acceptable subjects of the old-fashioned school; for these activities are but organized and planned substitutes for the incidental doings of the childhood of other days. They are the formal substitutes for the activities by means of which a past generation of men and women acquired that will-training and that insight into relations which distinguished their characters.
[Illustration: Habits of careful work furnish a good foundation for the will.]
All systematic and sustained effort, whether in organizing a game or carrying a garden through from the sowing to the harvest, whether in making a dress or a chest of drawers, has its moral value as training in application, self-control, and decision, quite distinct from its contribution to knowledge or skill.
Two or three generations ago no thought whatever was given to the child's point of view; the authority of parents was absolute, and there were many unhappy childhoods. To-day we wish to avoid these errors, and by studying the child we hope to adjust our treatment to his nature and his needs.
But we must be on our guard against the danger of going to the extreme of attributing to the child ideas and instincts which he does not possess. In former times it was considered one of the mother's chief duties to "break the child's will"; to-day, realizing the importance of a strong will, we are in danger of assuming that a child's stubbornness or wilfulness is a manifestation of a strong will, and we hesitate to interfere with it.