As suggesting a final reason for making education a process of self-instruction, and by consequence a process of pleasurable instruction, we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made so, there is a probability that it will not cease when schooldays end. As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it when free from the coercion of parents and masters. And when the acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then there will be as prevailing a tendency to continue, without superintendence, that self-culture previously carried on under superintendence.
III.—Moral Education
The greatest defect in our programmes of education is entirely overlooked. Though some care is taken to fit youths of both sexes for society and citizenship, no care whatever is taken to fit them for the position of parents. While it is seen that for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, an elaborate preparation is needed, it appears to be thought that for the bringing up of children no preparation whatever is needed. While many years are spent by a boy in gaining knowledge of which the chief value is that it constitutes the "education of a gentleman," and while many years are spent by a girl in those decorative acquirements which fit her for evening parties, not an hour is spent by either in preparation for a family. Is it that this responsibility is but a remote contingency? On the contrary, it is sure to devolve on nine out of ten. Is it that the discharge of it is easy? Certainly not: of all functions which the adult has to fulfil, this is the most difficult. Is it that each may be trusted by self-instruction to fit himself, or herself, for the office of parent? No: not only is the need for such self-instruction unrecognised, but the complexity of the subject renders it the one of all others in which self-instruction is least likely to succeed. No rational plea can be put forward for leaving the art of education out of our curriculum. Whether as bearing on the happiness of parents themselves, or whether as affecting the characters and lives of their children and remote descendants, we must admit that a knowledge of the right method of juvenile culture, physical, intellectual and moral, is a knowledge of extreme importance. This topic should be the final one in the course of instruction passed through by each man and woman. As physical maturity is marked by the ability to produce offspring, so mental maturity is marked by the ability to train those offspring. The subject which involves all other subjects, and therefore the subject in which education should culminate, is the THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION.
Our system of moral control must again be based upon nature, who illustrates to us in the simplest way the true theory and practice of moral discipline. The natural reactions which follow the child's wrong-doings are constant, direct, unhesitating, and not to be escaped. No threats; but a silent rigorous performance. If a child runs a pin into its finger, pain follows; if it does it again, there is again the same result; and so on perpetually. In all its dealings with inorganic nature it finds this unswerving persistence, which listens to no excuse, and from which there is no appeal; and very soon recognising this stern though beneficent discipline, it soon becomes extremely careful not to transgress. These general truths hold throughout adult life as well as throughout infantile life. If further proof be needed that the natural reaction is not only the most efficient penalty, but that no humanly devised penalty can replace it, we have such further proof in the notorious ill-success of our various penal systems. Out of the many methods of criminal discipline that have been proposed and legally enforced, none have answered the expectations of their advocates. Artificial punishments have failed to produce reformation; and have in many cases increased the criminality. The only successful reformatories are those privately established ones which approximate their régime to the method of nature—which do little more than administer the natural consequences of criminal conduct: diminishing the criminal's liberty of action as much as is needful for the safety of society, and requiring him to maintain himself while living under this restraint. Thus we see, both that the discipline by which the young child is taught to regulate its movements is the discipline by which the great mass of adults are kept in order, and more or less improved; and that the discipline humanly devised for the worst adults fails when it diverges from this divinely-ordained discipline, and begins to succeed on approximating to it. Not only is it unwise to set up a high standard of good conduct for children, but it is even unwise to use very urgent incitements to good conduct. Already most people recognise the detrimental results of intellectual precocity; but there remains to be recognised the fact that moral precocity also has detrimental results. Be sparing of commands, but whenever you do command, command with decision and constancy. Remember that the aid of your discipline should be to produce a self-governing being; not to produce a being to be governed by others.
Lastly, always remember that to educate rightly is not a simple and easy thing, but a complex and extremely difficult thing; the hardest task which devolves on adult life. You will have to carry on your own moral education at the same time that you are educating your children. The last stage in the mental development of each man and woman is to be reached only through a proper discharge of the parental duties; and when this truth is recognised it will be seen how admirable is the arrangement through which human beings are led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a discipline that they would else elude; and we shall see that while in its injurious effects on both parents and child a bad system is twice cursed, a good system is twice blessed—it blesses him that trains and him that is trained.
IV.—Physical Education
The system of restriction in regard to food which many parents think so necessary is based upon inadequate observation, and erroneous reasoning. There is an over-legislation in the nursery as well as over-legislation in the state; and one of the most injurious forms of it is this limitation in the quantity of food. We contend that, as appetite is a good guide to all the lower creation—as it is a good guide to the infant—as it is a good guide to the invalid—as it is a good guide to the differently-placed races of man—and as it is a good guide for every adult who leads a healthful life, it may safely be inferred that it is a good guide to childhood. It would be strange indeed were it here alone untrustworthy.
With clothing, as with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism creeps out. Yet it is not obedience to the sensations, but disobedience to them which is the habitual cause of bodily evils. It is not the eating when hungry, but the eating in the absence of hunger, which is bad; it is not drinking when thirsty, but continuing to drink when thirst has ceased, that is the vice.
Again, harm does not result from taking that active exercise which, as every child shows us, nature strongly prompts, but from a persistent disregard of nature's promptings; but the natural spontaneous exercise having been forbidden, and the bad consequences of no exercise having become conspicuous, there has been adopted a system of factitious exercise—gymnastics. That this is better than nothing we admit; but that it is an adequate substitute for play we deny. The truth is that happiness is the most powerful of tonics. By accelerating the circulation of the blood, it facilitates the performance of every function; and so tends alike to increase health where it exists, and to restore it when it has been lost. Hence the intrinsic superiority of play to gymnastics. The extreme interest felt by children in their games, and the riotous glee with which they carry on their rougher frolics, are of as much importance as the accompanying exertion; and as not supplying these mental stimuli gymnastics must be radically defective, and can never serve in place of the exercises prompted by nature. For girls as well as boys the sportive activities to which the instincts impel are essential to bodily welfare. Whoever forbids them, forbids the divinely-appointed means to physical development.
We suffer at present from a very potent detrimental influence, which is excess of mental application, forgetting that nature is a strict accountant, and if you demand of her in one direction more than she is prepared to lay out, she balances the account by making a reduction elsewhere. We forget that it is not knowledge which is stored up as intellectual fat that is of value, but that which is turned into intellectual muscle. Worse still, our system is fatal to that vigour of physique needful to make intellectual training available in the struggle of life. Yet a good digestion, a bounding pulse, and high spirits are elements of happiness which no external advantages can outbalance.