The Elements of Child-protection

by Sigmund Engel

Punishment should always be of such a nature as to strengthen as much as possible those inner forces and impulses through whose weakness the liability to the punishment has been incurred. On no account whatever should the punishment be such as will encourage in the child’s mind the belief that the act for which it is punished was, after all, one it had a right to do. If, for example, a child has injured a servant, it should be punished by making it relieve the servant of some portion of the latter’s work. If the child has injured any one, it is not a suitable punishment for the teacher to inflict direct injury on the child, for this would merely encourage the latter to believe that the strong are justified in inflicting injury on the weak.

Education by the Parents.—Throughout nature, wherever the young of any animal have to live through a prolonged period of imperfectly protected immaturity, it is the duty of the parent-animals to bring up their offspring. Above a certain level in the animal scale, this duty is universal. The lower in the scale any species of animal, the more rapidly do the young of that species attain maturity; conversely, the higher the stage of development of any species, the longer is the period of immaturity, and the longer are the children dependent upon their parents. This rule applies to human beings also, and the relationships above described obtain among the different varieties and races of mankind. Of all new-born animals, none is so helpless as man; and of all animals, his period of immaturity is the longest. The period of upbringing lasts longer in man than in other animals, the human young are longer dependent on their parents, and the parents themselves in the human species are more long-lived than the parents of most other species of animals.

The younger the individual human being, the more dependent is it upon others. An infant cannot continue to exist at all without external help. Its only needs at first, indeed, are for food, drink, sleep, and cleansing; but the older it is, the more complex is the care it demands. As the age of the human individual increases, the more do its needs continue to enlarge. The younger the human being, the more dependent is it upon parental care, and more particularly upon maternal care; and the more helpless the offspring, the more does the educational influence of the mother exceed in importance that of the father.

The view that the natural province of work of the father is to provide the means of subsistence for himself and his family, while the mother’s work, on the other hand, is to care for the children, is erroneous. It is not merely unnecessary for the mother to spend all her time with her child, but such a course of action imposes an excessive strain upon her, and has a dulling effect. It is also a false view that only those women properly fulfil their duties as wives and mothers who devote their whole time to the upbringing of their children and to the cares of their household.

The influence of the parents upon the child is a very powerful one, because child and parents are, as it were, syntonised through hereditary dispositions and tendencies. Oscillations of character in the parents spontaneously initiate oscillations of character in the child, but in this syntonic influence there may subsist a very great danger. The healthier the parents, and the better suited they are to one another, the better are the dispositions the children inherit from them, and thereby the children are fitted to receive a better education. Among the lower animals, parents educate their offspring solely in accordance with the dictates of instinct. For the upbringing of the human young, the guidance of human instinct is inadequate; educational aptitudes and special educational knowledge are also indispensable. Normal human parents may desire to give their children the best possible education; but in many instances they do not know themselves what the best education is; and even if they do know this, they will be unable to provide such an education by their own unaided efforts, and will be dependent upon others for the upbringing of their own children. It is quite impossible for anyone to follow a trade or profession, to supervise the management of a household, and at the same time to be the instructor of his or her own child. For this, parents lack the requisite time and energy. As time goes on, the principle of the division of labour comes more and more into application; it is in accordance with this principle that the education of children should be entrusted to professional educationalists.

Education in Different Social Classes.—The education received by an individual is determined mainly by the class to which that individual belongs. In every industrial state, the degradation of the working-class families becomes apparent. The wages of the manual workers are very small; and owing to illness, strikes, lock-outs, and commercial crises, even this small income diminishes from time to time, or may entirely cease. Insecurity is the keynote of the working man’s economic existence. The consequences of this insecurity are ill-humour and embitterment, which find expression for the most part in domestic life. The place of work is often far removed from the dwelling-place. Husband, wife, and the elder children go to work; they have to get up very early in the morning, when the children are still asleep. Since the spells of rest for meals are very short, they have no time to go home; or if they do hurry home, they have to gulp down their food with lightning speed. Not until late in the evening, when the children have gone to sleep again, do the parents return home. Thousands of working men, owing to the distance of their homes from their work-places, remain a whole week away, and return home to their families only on Saturday. Even if the parents get home from work in the evenings before their children are asleep, the former are so worn out by long hours of exhausting toil that they can do nothing for their children.

The housing conditions of the working classes are rarely satisfactory. In consequence of this, the children are often driven to live in the streets; and this, in turn, leads to immorality and to crime. Often the children of working-class families do not remain at home at all, but find their way to crèches, foundling hospitals, poorhouses, and other institutions. Proletarian parents have less knowledge and less capacity for the education of their children than parents belonging to other classes of the population. These latter, also, can more readily afford to entrust the education of their children to other persons.

Nevertheless, the education of the children of the well-to-do cannot be unconditionally regarded as better than the education of the children of the poor. The chief defects as regards the children of the well-to-do are, that they are apt to receive too much attention; they are often spoiled, and their initiative is continually suppressed. Rich parents keep servants, and entrust to these in large part the upbringing of their children. In our day it has come to be regarded as necessary and natural that children should be cared for by servants; thus the influence exercised by servants upon the children of the well-to-do is a very extensive and by no means a happy one. For these servants commonly lack refinement and intelligence, and the abilities of the trained educationalist are altogether lacking to them. The domestic servant may bring up suitably his or her own children, but not the children of another; and the failure will be especially marked when the child’s social position is much higher than the servant’s.

Parents, School, Environment.—The three primary factors in education are: parents, school, and environment. Strictly speaking, indeed, parents and school are only parts of the environment. In a sense, however, the whole of education is nothing more than the influencing of the capacities and dispositions of the child by external factors—that is, by the environment. The influence exercised by the environment is very great. As social life develops in complexity, the child is exposed ever more and more to the influences of environment, and the educative influence exercised by this latter becomes ever more extensive. But in our time the child is less exposed than the adult to the influences of the environment.

In the first years of life the work of education is in the hands of the parents, and above all in those of the mother. Subsequently the schoolmaster and schoolmistress share with the parents in the work of education, and the part played by the parents becomes ever less important. In addition, however, to the influence exerted at first by the parents, and subsequently by the teachers, the general environment does its work from the very earliest days of life. It is a natural postulate of a sound education, that all these three factors, parents, school, and environment, should co-operate, and that each should exercise its appropriate influence. If they counteract instead of assisting one another, the general result will be unsatisfactory and inadequate. In vain does the school attempt to exercise a favourable influence if the work of the school is undone by the influence of the parents. Again, the joint influence of parents and of school is fruitless if the child, when away from home and out of school hours, is under the influence of bad associates. Unfortunately, with the development of capitalism such cases have become ever more common.