We grown folks know how valuable school and training and discipline are. Do we not sometimes sigh that we had not more of these blessings in our own childhood? Or that we did not take advantage of the little we had? If the children only knew—perhaps they would not so eagerly seek to escape into what they vainly imagine to be "freedom." Perhaps.
Grown folks who have thought about the matter know, of course, that "freedom" is something different from merely being left alone. They know that freedom is a state to be attained only through effort. They know that freedom results from a discipline which makes a person the master of his impulses, instead of leaving him their slave. They know that the freedom worth striving for is freedom from our own caprices and moods, from our blindness and ignorance and passions. It is for this reason that we value discipline, quite apart from anything that it may contribute to our ability to live harmoniously with others, quite apart from anything it may do to increase our power in an economic sense.
But if discipline is the means for attaining freedom, how does it come about that in the past (and for most people to-day) discipline has appeared as a method of compelling children to do the right thing—"until they have the habit"? How does it come about that discipline, in the minds of most people, consists so largely of restraining children from doing undesirable acts—until they are well started into the safe age of discretion? The reason seems to be that the need for discipline or training makes itself most quickly felt where children—or older people—infringe upon the rights of others, or upon the proprieties. We miss discipline where a child fails of self-restraint, acts impulsively, or loses his temper. In short, failure of early training is indicated wherever there is lack of self-control, or a lack of proper application to the business in hand. It is therefore natural that discipline should early take the form of commanding and prohibiting.
It is but a short step from this view of discipline to the philosophy that what children do spontaneously, what they like to do, must be wrong. And the complement to this is the feeling that virtue and character can arise only from doing what is disagreeable or difficult.
But the newer studies in the psychology of childhood lead to a totally different theory of character formation. And many experiments made in schools and institutions confirm these new theories at every point. Moreover, if we look about, perhaps even in our own homes, I am sure we can all find abundant support for the modern view.
The new studies have to do with the relation that our emotions bear to our activities and especially to the formation of habits. To learn to do a thing, we have known for ages, we must practise continuously and uniformly. But we did not know that the state of feelings connected with the performance of the act had anything to do with the result. Richard must master the scales in his music study. These scales can be mastered in only one way—he must play them over and over and over again, until he just has them. But suppose Richard does not care to practise the scales over and over and over again? Suppose that he does not care whether he ever masters the scales or not. Well, he can be made to practise, at any rate; and perhaps some day he will thank his elders for having thus forced upon him the extremely valuable but unappreciated command of the scales.
But what happens in the course of this forced practise? There is resentment, and antagonism and a growing hatred of scales, of the man who first vented scales, of sloping rows of notes on the page of music. And this resentment is more likely to prevent a real mastery of the task than the enforced practise is to ensure it. The antagonism will, at any rate, counteract the value of the practise to a large degree. The third element in the fixation of habits that we have heretofore too generally disregarded is that of satisfaction; this is no less important than regularity and frequency of action.
The absence of satisfaction, to say nothing of the presence of opposite feelings, is of itself sufficient to prevent effective learning, whether of knowledge or of skill. And when the opposite feelings are present, the acquired act or idea tends to be pushed out of the system at the earliest opportunity. It is in some such way as this that many specialists in the workings of the human mind would explain so much of our "forgetting." They say that we forget either because we really wish to forget—the facts are unpleasant— or because we do not sufficiently care to remember—the facts are not sufficiently interesting, they do not sufficiently concern us.
Out of the psychological facts pertaining to the relation of the feeling state to the learning process and to the habit-forming process, is developed the doctrine of "interest" in education. The very name "interest" suggests to many that this must be some plan for sugar-coating education, or perhaps for giving children only what they like. And this is quite the opposite of the traditional view which is expressed by the humorist who said, "It does not matter much what you teach a boy, so long as he doesn't like it." But the idea of interest in modern psychology does not mean letting the child have his own way, any more than discipline means doing only what is unpleasant or difficult.
We can see the basic truth at the foundation of this view in the age-long usage of the race, which awards prizes and penalties for "good" actions and "evil" actions, respectively. If you should be asked "Why did you reward Maryann," "Why did you punish Henry;" you would no doubt say something like this: If we reward a child for doing what we approve, he is more likely to do that sort of thing again; if we punish, or impose unpleasant consequences, upon acts that we disapprove, such acts are less likely to be repeated. In other words, we have known right along that satisfaction somehow leads the child to repeat the conditions that brought about the satisfaction; and that suffering somehow leads the child to avoid the conditions that brought about the suffering.