We do not propose to go into that broader question of public education which, once within the scope of the law, and face to face with established national systems, immediately sets both hemispheres in a ferment; but to discuss that preliminary and more vital training whose silent power shows itself every day in the homes of thousands, neutralizing on the one hand good examples and wholesome teaching, and on the other often redeeming from utter badness its half-corrupted subject. And first taking the literal meaning of the word education, i.e. to lead up, or out of (e-duco), we must remark that as education is coeval with the dawn of reason, so it is also continuous. It begins in the cradle, and goes on hand in hand with life to the grave. All experience, good or bad, is education, not only the lessons taught in school-hours, the lectures given in classes, halls, and colleges, not alone the books we read and the examinations we undergo, but, more emphatically, the places we frequent, the people we meet, the misfortunes we go through, the work we perform. Even prosperity is education, though seldom in the highest sense, but it is chiefly in the lower walks of fortune that the more important part of this daily and hourly education is imparted. For this reason specially, and in view of the future in which a chance word heard in the street or a stray visit to some place or person may become of such subtle and paramount gravity, should home education in the Christian sense of the word be encouraged to the utmost. More particularly should this be the case in non-Catholic countries. We have no outward atmosphere of religion to trust to; no wayside crosses to remind us of the sufferings which our sins caused our Blessed Saviour; no simple shrines to bid us remember to pray for our invisible brethren in purgatory; no street processions to bring vividly before our minds that our King is more than an earthly lord, and our Mother more than an earthly parent.
We do not breathe Catholicity in our daily life, and there is therefore the greater need of our drinking it in with our mother’s milk. This insensible and gradual instilling of religion into our infant minds is the essence of Christian “home education.” First among all the influences that go towards it is example. This extends over every detail of the household, and can be and should be kept in view in the poorest as well as the most comfortable home. In the latter, certainly, the duty is more stringent, the incentives to its performance lying so near at hand that it requires an absolutely guilty carelessness to neglect them. In the former, though a thousand excuses might be made for the neglect of this paramount duty, it should still be remembered that God’s grace is all-powerful, and never fails those who seek to do his will. Parents sorely tried during a day of toil and anxiety are often found more loving and forbearing towards their helpless children than others who, with no trouble on their minds, yet delegate the “tiresome” office of nurse to a hired attendant; and although it is certainly to be deplored that in so many cases the children of the poor should be nothing but little men and women already weighed down by cares that ought to belong only to a later age, still it may be questioned whether even this is not a lesser evil in the long run than that other sort of neglect which makes the children of the rich, for the most part, only the playthings of their parents.
The poor, on the contrary, though necessity may make their children drudges, yet have in them early friends, while too often among their more fortunate neighbors children count only as the ornaments of the house. So that even out of evil comes good, and God has planted consolations in the path of his poor which go far to soften the miseries of their inevitable lot. We say inevitable, not as denying the immense, unexplored possibilities of alleviating this lot which remain in the power of future philanthropists, but as believing in our Lord’s prophecy, “The poor you have always with you,” which blessed promise we count as a staff vouchsafed in mercy to help us on our way to heaven.
We have said that the duty of good example is incumbent upon every parent, rich or poor. But not only those broad examples which could hardly fail to strike even an idiot, such as abstaining from unseemly brawls, from excesses of language and of self-indulgence—in plain words, from swearing and drinking—or from manifest dishonesty; there are subtler things than these, and which produce indeed greater effect on the child spectator. Gross vice has often that redeeming phase of being its own antidote by disgusting those who come in daily contact with it. The principle on which the Spartans educated their children in temperance by exhibiting before them the drunken helots was (however cruel its application on the persons of their unhappy prisoners) a consummate proof of practical wisdom. That which does not carry such an antidote with it is more to be feared in the education of a child. A spirit of irritability between husband and wife; a carelessness on the part of either in entering cordially into the other’s little interests; an exhibition of temper over absurd trifles or of unamiability in small questions of self-denial—these tell gravely upon a child’s character. Observation and criticism are childhood’s natural characteristics, and very logical and very pitiless are childhood’s judgments. The old-fashioned code of a “well-behaved” child used to be never to ask questions; we are not so sure that this code was faultlessly wise. We suffer perhaps under a somewhat aggravated form of a very dissimilar one just now, and may be tempted—not unpardonably—to wish for the peace of the good old times back again. As usual, the middle course is the most rational as well as beneficial, and if it were in our power to stop the violent swayings of the social pendulum from one extreme to the other, we would gladly do our part in the work.
It is therefore in the more unheeded and less abnormal occurrences of every day that the greatest force of example lies, and that harm or good may be done beyond recall. Christian gentleness, that daily unobtrusive charity which in rough homes amply makes up for what outward refinement may be lacking, and in more prosperous households alone sets the seal of true worth upon such exterior polish as there is, is the golden secret of a perfect example. And this spirit should extend to every domestic relation, covering the whole field of contingencies which may assume such grave proportions in a child’s memory. Your deportment to the poor, if you are rich yourself, has an invaluable force of example; the patience with which you listen to a tale of distress, the delicate courtesy implied in an attentive attitude, the gracefulness of your alms, and the wise but gentle discrimination of your questioning, all have an untold effect upon the little trotter by your side, hardly old enough to reason however dimly, but old enough to bear away a nameless impression of the scene. On the other hand, think of the responsibility incurred by a rude or callous reception; a sneering or lofty air of caution against what you think may be an imposture; above all, perhaps, a careless alms given to be rid of a disagreeable importunity, and a half-expression of relief when the interruption is happily over! The child at your side bears away this impression quite as surely, and in after-years uses its imitative powers quite as skilfully, as if the impression had been one of mercy and kindness; and a very few scenes of this sort are enough to mould for a child a certain standard of behavior.
Among the domestic relations, none is more likely to strike a child’s eye than that between master and servant. Here also dangerous seeds of future heartlessness may be easily sown by the example of a careless or haughty parent. Considerate thought for the proper comforts of those whose toil ensures your leisure is one of the foremost Christian duties. A child is naturally tyrannical, and this disposition, if fostered by an injudicious mother, may lead to a shameless persecution of the very persons to whose care children are most often left. This, in turn, will encourage tyranny on the nurse’s part, and engender a system of mutual deceit; the child and the servant trying to circumvent each other in carrying tales, and then sheltering themselves by lies from the consequences of having carried them. Now, all this is to the last degree injurious to the future character of the child; it withers the principle of honor; it kills all manliness and straightforward dealing, and sows the seeds of those two inseparable vices, cruelty and cowardice. In after-life, when the despairing mother sees her darling sink below himself, and earn the unenviable names of bully and sneak, can she blame him for shattering the ideal she blindly worshipped in his person? Not so, for with justice can she look back on her own folly, and with bitterness cry out, “It was my fault.”
Very different is the other and the good example shown by so many holy and conscientious women in their relations with their households. Considerateness and forbearance in all things are not incompatible with firmness in some. A sense of your own dignity, were it nothing higher, will dictate a kind bearing towards those in humbler station; for to those who never obtrude their superiority a double homage will ever be accorded. A child can exercise on its attendants some of the noblest virtues of manhood; the household is a little world, a preparatory stage on which to rehearse in miniature the opportunities of after-life. Pleasure given to some, a little gift or a gracious speech vouchsafed to others; consolation afforded to one in grief, attention shown to one in sickness; and, above all, a mindfulness of not making the yoke of servitude too galling by restricting the natural and proper diversions of those whom God has destined to bear it—such are a few of the lessons a child should learn, not in words alone, but in the manner of its parents and the unconscious radiating of an habitual example.
Another class of influences under which a child will necessarily come is that of social relations. For the most part, children are made too much of a show. They are taught—or allowed—certain little mannerisms which, at their age, are called charming, but, if looked at by the light of common sense, are simply as absurd as they are forward. Later on, when they begin to use their reason, they are often listeners to frivolous or scandalous conversations, in which they pick up, if not a half-knowledge of vice, certainly a whole love of gossip. Now, all this is deplorable from a Christian point of view. In a really Christian home—a home such as we aspire to see at least in every Catholic family—the case would be very different. Entertainments and fêtes would be judiciously “few and far between,” and in its mother’s visitors the child would see only fresh objects of its mother’s charitable tact. If anything against charity were said, the hostess would gently check the conversation, either by palliating the fault alluded to, suggesting a better motive than the apparent one concerning any person implicated, or turning the conversation skilfully to some less dangerous topic. Those formal visits, made to kill time or otherwise uselessly, would have no part in her day’s programme, and with ever charitable but firm demeanor would she effectually check the frequent demands thus made upon her time by others. The child, quick of perception, as almost all children are, would be unconsciously moulded to habits of orderly and discriminating hospitality, and would soon learn to do something for God in every social pastime which it legitimately enjoyed.
This brings us to the subject of order, an important virtue in the Christian home. Education itself, if given in a desultory fashion, would be next to useless, and some of that strict apportioning of time which gives to our study hours their wholesome monotony is essential also for the home training of youth. This may seem at first sight a very arbitrary decision, but, when we come to look deeper into it, we find that it has the same relation to the future moral life as the study of the classics or of mathematics to the intellectual life. A knowledge of the Greek and Latin poets, orators, and historians has perhaps very little influence on the practical and ultimate result of a college education; but the effect of refinement it has on the mind, and the polished tone it imperceptibly gives to thought, manners, and conversation, are benefits simply incalculable. So with mathematics. A boy may not have any aptitude for that science, and may never hope to become proficient in it; still, the habit of application, the facility of concentrating and commanding his thoughts, which is the natural result of the close study demanded by the exact sciences, are things whose influence on his future career cannot be rated too high. They may not unlikely ensure temporal success, and, in these days of feverish competition, this argument should not be overlooked. Still, it is from a higher motive that we say the same of habits of order in the home. This regularity, which, no doubt, may be tedious, just as mathematics may be dry, is not lost on the general impressions of childhood, and, were it only for its own sake, should be looked upon as a seal of likeness to the works of God, which cannot fail to hallow the family circle. We have said that the family is the world in miniature, and as the principle of order was the presiding attribute in creation, so ought we in our daily lives to take it as a means of creating more and more time, more and more opportunities, for the service of God. “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
In the education given by the constant example of the parents, nothing is more important than family prayer, or, at least, prayer said at the mother’s knee. In the most solemn of duties, it is not fitting that parent and child should be separated. If Jesus has said that his Father can refuse nothing to “two or three gathered together in his name,” how much more invincible must be the joint prayer of those who are linked by such close and sacred ties, those who present to him a faint shadow of his own humble home at Nazareth! Think you that Jesus in his kingdom forgets the simple hearth where his Mother taught him, according to the development of his human nature, those formulæ of prayer and thanksgiving which he himself, in his divine nature, had taught to the Jewish lawgivers? Does he forget the rites of circumcision and presentation, the offerings and ransom paid for him according to the law, the visit to the temple at Jerusalem? He has shown us in his obedience to these religious observances his wish that we should imitate his outward devotion and submission to the church. Family worship is dear to him in remembrance of his own childhood, and as it is one of the most solemn, so it is also one of the sweetest duties of the Christian parent. It tends to give the child a proper spirit of faith and simple reliance, in that it sees its earthly parent, to whom it looks up for everything and considers as the final arbiter of its small world, prostrate before a higher Fatherhood, and taking towards the divine Omnipotence the very attitude of a submissive and expectant child.