Birds possess some characteristics or qualities which are also possessed by human beings, and by other animals. These qualities are not merely "human" then, but are common to many species of creatures. Since birds already have these qualities, there is no need of endowing them with them. To "humanize" the birds by ascribing to them human qualities which they do not and cannot possess, is only to misrepresent them, and stories which so humanize them are of no more value, as nature-study or bird-study, than so many fairy-tales. More than this—they are positively harmful because they give, as facts, statements about existing creatures which are not true. This is not bird-study; it is only telling stories which interest the children, and which have no value except in keeping them quiet. The children are not interested in the real birds, for they are not told about them. They are interested in the stories, invented for this end, about creatures which the story-teller calls birds but which are only human characteristics draped on bird forms. Very slight changes would be needed to make the same stories fit any humanized animal. The real nature of the bird is left out of these humanized bird stories and the loss is very great, as always when truth is left out.
To tell of "Mr. and Mrs. Robin" is well enough, for the titles merely mean the male and female. To represent them as talking is well enough, for they certainly communicate with each other and their young, and putting their communications into human speech is merely translating them. But to represent them as uttering highly moral speeches is all wrong, for these are beyond the power of the birds. The moment that the story humanizes them in any such way it becomes of no value, because it is false to nature.
The humanizing process is lavishly applied to all sorts of creatures, even to plants.
For instance, in a very popular book occurs the following:—"And so the witch-hazel, knowing that neither boy nor girl, nor bird nor beast nor wind, will come to the rescue of its little ones, is obliged to take matters into its own hands, and this is what it does." This is an extreme case of humanizing. The writer states that this brainless plant knows that its seeds will not be scattered by children, animals or wind. This implies that the plant is conscious of its seeds; that it realizes the importance of their distribution; that it knows what boys, girls, birds, animals and wind are: that it knows how the seeds of other plants are distributed; and that it plans a method of scattering its own seed! This is certainly more mental power than we are warranted in ascribing to a plant. But children are much interested in the story, and think the witch-hazel very clever to plan so ingenious a way of distributing its seeds. That it is not true does not trouble them, because they do not know it, and I can learn of very few teachers using this book, who have thought enough about the subjects treated to realize that they are so humanized as to be untrue to their own natures. I quote this as an instance of the lengths to which humanizing may be carried without discovery by the average reader.
Humanizing the creatures takes them out of their own place in Nature, by endowing them with powers higher than they can really possess. It sets aside all the laws of evolution, and is not only untrue to the nature of the individual, but to the principles which underlie all Nature. Young children are not ready for these general laws and principles, but it cannot be good pedagogics to give them ideas in direct contradiction to all those laws which must be taught them a little later, and which will at once prove the falseness of this earlier teaching.
"Interest" is not everything in teaching children. Truth counts for more in the long run, and, especially in Nature study, may be made quite as interesting as "humanization."
['On the Ethics of Caging Birds']
To the Editor of 'Bird-Lore:'
I thank you for offering me an opportunity to be heard in my own defense. But controversy is—if possible—more distasteful to me than injustice. Therefore, while it is painful to be misrepresented, I will answer my critics only by saying that they have entirely—I do not say wilfully—misunderstood me, and that no one who knows me could for an instant believe me guilty of "favoring" or "encouraging," the caging, the wearing, or the eating of our little brothers, the birds.
Olive Thorne Miller.