The Education of the Child
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The Education of the Child by Ellen Key
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Edward Bok, Editor of the "Ladies' Home Journal," writes:
"Nothing finer on the wise education of the child has ever been
brought into print. To me this chapter is a perfect classic; it
points the way straight for every parent and it should find a
place in every home in America where there is a child."
The Education of the Child
Goethe showed long ago in his Werther a clear understanding of
the significance of individualistic and psychological training,
an appreciation which will mark the century of the child. In
this work he shows how the future power of will lies hidden in
the characteristics of the child, and how along with every
fault of the child an uncorrupted germ capable of producing
good is enclosed. "Always," he says, "I repeat the golden words
of the teacher of mankind, 'if ye do not become as one of
these,' and now, good friend, those who are our equals, whom we
should look upon as our models, we treat as subjects; they
should have no will of their own; do we have none? Where is our
prerogative? Does it consist in the fact that we are older and
more experienced? Good God of Heaven! Thou seest old and young
children, nothing else. And in whom Thou hast more joy, Thy Son
announced ages ago. But people believe in Him and do not hear
Him--that, too, is an old trouble, and they model their
children after themselves." The same criticism might be applied
to our present educators, who constantly have on their tongues
such words as evolution, individuality, and natural tendencies,
but do not heed the new commandments in which they say they
believe. They continue to educate as if they believed still in
the natural depravity of man, in original sin, which may be
bridled, tamed, suppressed, but not changed. The new belief is
really equivalent to Goethe's thoughts given above, i.e., that
almost every fault is but a hard shell enclosing the germ of
virtue. Even men of modern times still follow in education the
old rule of medicine, that evil must be driven out by evil,
instead of the new method, the system of allowing nature
quietly and slowly to help itself, taking care only that the
surrounding conditions help the work of nature. This is
education.
Neither harsh nor tender parents suspect the truth expressed by
Carlyle when he said that the marks of a noble and original
temperament are wild, strong emotions, that must be controlled
by a discipline as hard as steel. People either strive to root
out passions altogether, or they abstain from teaching the
child to get them under control.
To suppress the real personality of the child, and to supplant
it with another personality continues to be a pedagogical crime
common to those who announce loudly that education should only
develop the real individual nature of the child.
They are still not convinced that egoism on the part of the
child is justified. Just as little are they convinced of the
possibility that evil can be changed into good.
Education must be based on the certainty that faults cannot be
atoned for, or blotted out, but must always have their
consequences. At the same time, there is the other certainty
that through progressive evolution, by slow adaptation to the
conditions of environment they may be transformed. Only when
this stage is reached will education begin to be a science and
art. We will then give up all belief in the miraculous effects
of sudden interference; we shall act in the psychological
sphere in accordance with the principle of the
indestructibility of matter. We shall never believe that a
characteristic of the soul can be destroyed. There are but two
possibilities. Either it can be brought into subjection or it
can be raised up to a higher plane.
Madame de Stael's words show much insight when she says that
only the people who can play with children are able to educate
them. For success in training children the first condition is
to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed
childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child
immediately sees through and deeply abhors. What it does mean
is to be as entirely and simply taken up with the child as the
child himself is absorbed by his life. It means to treat the
child as really one's equal, that is, to show him the same
consideration, the same kind confidence one shows to an adult.
It means not to influence the child to be what we ourselves
desire him to become but to be influenced by the impression of
what the child himself is; not to treat the child with
deception, or by the exercise of force, but with the
seriousness and sincerity proper to his own character.
Somewhere Rousseau says that all education has failed in that
nature does not fashion parents as educators nor children for
the sake of education. What would happen if we finally
succeeded in following the directions of nature, and recognised
that the great secret of education lies hidden in the maxim,
"do not educate"?
Not leaving the child in peace is the greatest evil of
present-day methods of training children. Education is
determined to create a beautiful world externally and
internally in which the child can grow. To let him move about
freely in this world until he comes into contact with the
permanent boundaries of another's right will be the end of the
education of the future. Only then will adults really obtain a
deep insight into the souls of children, now an almost
inaccessible kingdom. For it is a natural instinct of
self-preservation which causes the child to bar the educator
from his innermost nature. There is the person who asks rude
questions; for example, what is the child thinking about? a
question which almost invariably is answered with a black or a
white lie. The child must protect himself from an educator who
would master his thoughts and inclinations, or rudely handle
them, who without consideration betrays or makes ridiculous his
most sacred feelings, who exposes faults or praises
characteristics before strangers, or even uses an open-hearted,
confidential confession as an occasion for reproof at another
time.
The statement that no human being learns to understand another,
or at least to be patient with another, is true above all of
the intimate relation of child and parent in which,
understanding, the deepest characteristic of love, is almost
always absent.
Parents do not see that during the whole life the need of peace
is never greater than in the years of childhood, an inner peace
under all external unrest. The child has to enter into
relations with his own infinite world, to conquer it, to make
it the object of his dreams. But what does he experience?
Obstacles, interference, corrections, the whole livelong day.
The child is always required to leave something alone, or to do
something different, to find something different, or want
something different from what he does, or finds, or wants. He
is always shunted off in another direction from that towards
which his own character is leading him. All of this is caused
by our tenderness, vigilance, and zeal, in directing, advising,
and helping the small specimen of humanity to become a complete
example in a model series.
I have heard a three-year-old child characterised as "trying"
because he wanted to go into the woods, whereas the nursemaid
wished to drag him into the city. Another child of six years
was disciplined because she had been naughty to a playmate and
had called her a little pig,--a natural appellation for one who
was always dirty. These are typical examples of how the sound
instincts of the child are dulled. It was a spontaneous
utterance: of the childish heart when a small boy, after an
account of the heaven of good children, asked his mother
whether she did not believe that, after he had been good a
whole week in heaven, he might be allowed to go to hell on
Saturday evening to play with the bad little boys there.
The child felt in its innermost consciousness that he had a
right to be naughty, a fundamental right which is accorded to
adults; and not only to be naughty, but to be naughty in peace,
to be left to the dangers and joys of naughtiness.
To call forth from this "unvirtue" the complimentary virtue is
to overcome evil with good. Otherwise we overcome natural
strength by weak means and obtain artificial virtues which will
not stand the tests which life imposes.
It seems simple enough when we say that we must overcome evil
with good, but practically no process is more involved, or more
tedious, than to find actual means to accomplish this end. It
is much easier to say what one shall not do than what one must
do to change self-will into strength of character, slyness into
prudence, the desire to please into amiability, restlessness
into personal initiative. It can only be brought about by
recognising that evil, in so far as it is not atavistic or
perverse, is as natural and indispensable as the good, and that
it becomes a permanent evil only through its one-sided
supremacy.
The educator wants the child to be finished at once, and
perfect. He forces upon the child an unnatural degree of
self-mastery, a devotion to duty, a sense of honour, habits
that adults get out of with astonishing rapidity. Where the
faults of children are concerned, at home and in school, we
strain at gnats, while children daily are obliged to swallow
the camels of grown people.
The art of natural education consists in ignoring the faults of
children nine times out of ten, in avoiding immediate
interference, which is usually a mistake, and devoting one's
whole vigilance to the control of the environment in which the
child is growing up, to watching the education which is allowed
to go on by itself. But educators who, day in and day out, are
consciously transforming the environment and themselves are
still a rare product. Most people live on the capital and
interest of an education, which perhaps once made them model
children, but has deprived them of the desire for educating
themselves. Only by keeping oneself in constant process of
growth, under the constant influence of the best things in
one's own age, does one become a companion half-way good enough
for one's children.
To bring up a child means carrying one's soul in one's hand,
setting one's feet on a narrow path, it means never placing
ourselves in danger of meeting the cold look on the part of the
child that tells us without words that he finds us insufficient
and unreliable. It means the humble realisation of the truth
that the ways of injuring the child are infinite, while the
ways of being useful to him are few. How seldom does the
educator remember that the child, even at four or five years of
age, is making experiments with adults, seeing through them,
with marvellous shrewdness making his own valuations and
reacting sensitively to each impression. The slightest
mistrust, the smallest unkindness, the least act of injustice
or contemptuous ridicule, leave wounds that last for life in
the finely strung soul of the child. While on the other side
unexpected friendliness, kind advances, just indignation, make
quite as deep an impression on those senses which people term
as soft as wax but treat as if they were made of cowhide.
Relatively most excellent was the old education which consisted
solely in keeping oneself whole, pure, and honourable. For it
did not at least depreciate personality, although it did not
form it. It would be well if but a hundredth part of the pains
now taken by parents were given to interference with the life
of the child and the rest of the ninety and nine employed in
leading, without interference, in acting as an unforeseen, an
invisible providence through which the child obtains
experience, from which he may draw his own conclusions. The
present practice is to impress one's own discoveries, opinions,
and principles on the child by constantly directing his
actions. The last thing to be realised by the educator is that
he really has before him an entirely new soul, a real self
whose first and chief right is to think over the things with
which he comes in contact. By a new soul he understands only a
new generation of an old humanity to be treated with a fresh
dose of the old remedy. We teach the new souls not to steal,
not to lie, to save their clothes, to learn their lessons, to
economise their money, to obey commands, not to contradict
older people, say their prayers, to fight occasionally in order
to be strong. But who teaches the new souls to choose for
themselves the path they must tread? Who thinks that the desire
for this path of their own can be so profound that a hard or
even mild pressure towards uniformity can make the whole of
childhood a torment.
The child comes into life with the inheritance of the preceding
members of the race; and this inheritance is modified by
adaptation to the environment. But the child shows also
individual variations from the type of the species, and if his
own character is not to disappear during the process of
adaptation, all self-determined development of energy must be
aided in every way and only indirectly influenced by the
teacher, who should understand how to combine and emphasise the
results of this development.
Interference on the part of the educator, whether by force or
persuasion, weakens this development if it does not destroy it
altogether.
The habits of the household, and the child's habits in it must
be absolutely fixed if they are to be of any value. Amiel truly
says that habits are principles which have become instincts,
and have passed over into flesh and blood. To change habits, he
continues, means to attack life in its very essence, for life
is only a web of habits.
Why does everything remain essentially the same from generation
to generation? Why do highly civilised Christian people
continue to plunder one another and call it exchange, to murder
one another en masse, and call it nationalism, to oppress one
another and call it statesmanship?
Because in every new generation the impulses supposed to have
been rooted out by discipline in the child, break forth again,
when the struggle for existence--of the individual in society,
of the society in the life of the state--begins. These passions
are not transformed by the prevalent education of the day, but
only repressed. Practically this is the reason why not a single
savage passion has been overcome in humanity. Perhaps
man-eating may be mentioned as an exception. But what is told
of European ship companies or Siberian prisoners shows that
even this impulse, under conditions favourable to it, may be
revived, although in the majority of people a deep physical
antipathy to man-eating is innate. Conscious incest, despite
similar deviations, must also be physically contrary to the
majority, and in a number of women, modesty--the unity between
body and soul in relation to love--is an incontestable
provision of nature. So too a minority would find it physically
impossible to murder or steal. With this list I have exhausted
everything which mankind, since its conscious history began,
has really so intimately acquired that the achievement is
passed on in its flesh and blood. Only this kind of conquest
can really stand up against temptation in every form.
A deep physiological truth is hidden in the use of language
when one speaks of unchained passions; the passions, under the
prevailing system of education, are really only beasts of prey
imprisoned in cages.
While fine words are spoken about individual development,
children are treated as if their personality had no purpose of
its own, as if they were made only for the pleasure, pride, and
comfort of their parents; and as these aims are best advanced
when children become like every one else, people usually begin
by attempting to make them respectable and useful members of
society.
But the only correct starting point, so far as a child's
education in becoming a social human being is concerned, is to
treat him as such, while strengthening his natural disposition
to become an individual human being.
The new educator will, by regularly ordered experience, teach
the child by degrees his place in the great orderly system of
existence; teach him his responsibility towards his
environment. But in other respects, none of the individual
characteristics of the child expressive of his life will be
suppressed, so long as they do not injure the child himself, or
others. The right balance must be kept between Spencer's
definition of life as an adaptation to surrounding conditions,
and Nietzsche's definition of it as the will to secure power.
In adaptation, imitation certainly plays a great role, but
individual exercise of power is just as important. Through
adaptation life attains a fixed form; through exercise of
power, new factors.
Thoughtful people, as I have already stated, talk a good deal
about personality. But they are, nevertheless, filled with
doubts when their children are not just like all other
children; when they cannot show in their offspring all the
ready-made virtues required by society. And so they drill their
children, repressing in childhood the natural instincts which
will have freedom when they are grown. People still hardly
realise how new human beings are formed; therefore the old
types constantly repeat themselves in the same circle,--the
fine young men, the sweet girls, the respectable officials, and
so on. And new types with higher ideals,--travellers on unknown
paths, thinkers of yet unthought thoughts, people capable of
the crime of inaugurating new ways,--such types rarely come
into existence among those who are well brought up.
Nature herself, it is true, repeats the main types constantly.
But she also constantly makes small deviations. In this way
different species, even of the human race, have come into
existence. But man himself does not yet see the significance of
this natural law in his own higher development. He wants the
feelings, thoughts, and judgments already stamped with approval
to be reproduced by each new generation. So we get no new
individuals, but only more or less prudent, stupid, amiable, or
bad-tempered examples of the genus man. The still living
instincts of the ape, double, in the case of man, the effect of
heredity. Conservatism is for the present stronger in mankind
than the effort to produce new types. But this last
characteristic is the most valuable. The educator should do
anything but advise the child to do what everybody does. He
should rather rejoice when he sees in the child tendencies to
deviation. Using other people's opinion as a standard results
in subordinating one's self to their will. So we become a part
of the great mass, led by the Superman through the strength of
his will, a will which could not have mastered strong
personalities. It has been justly remarked that individual
peoples, like the English, have attained the greatest political
and social freedom, because the personal feeling of
independence is far in excess of freedom in a legal form.
Accordingly legal freedom has been constantly growing.
For the progress of the whole of the species, as well as of
society, it is essential that education shall awake the feeling
of independence; it should invigorate and favour the
disposition to deviate from the type in those cases where the
rights of others are not affected, or where deviation is not
simply the result of the desire to draw attention to oneself.
The child should be given the chance to declare conscientiously
his independence of a customary usage, of an ordinary feeling,
for this is the foundation of the education of an individual,
as well as the basis of a collective conscience, which is the
only kind of conscience men now have. What does having an
individual conscience mean? It means submitting voluntarily to
an external law, attested and found good by my own conscience.
It means unconditionally heeding the unwritten law, which I lay
upon myself, and following this inner law even when I must
stand alone against the whole world.
It is a frequent phenomenon, we can almost call it a regular
one, that it is original natures, particularly talented beings,
who are badly treated at home and in school. No one considers
the sources of conduct in a child who shows fear or makes a
noise, or who is absorbed in himself, or who has an impetuous
nature. Mothers and teachers show in this their pitiable
incapacity for the most elementary part in the art of
education, that is, to be able to see with their own eyes, not
with pedagogical doctrines in their head.
I naturally expect in the supporters of society, with their
conventional morality, no appreciation of the significance of
the child's putting into exercise his own powers. Just as
little is this to be expected of those Christian believers who
think that human nature must be brought to repentance and
humility, and that the sinful body, the unclean beast, must be
tamed with the rod,--a theory which the Bible is brought to
support.
I am only addressing people who can think new thoughts and
consequently should cease using old methods of education. This
class may reply that the new ideas in education cannot be
carried out. But the obstacle is simply that their new thoughts
have not made them into new men; the old man in them has
neither repose, nor time, nor patience, to form his own soul,
and that of the child, according to the new thoughts.
Those who have "tried Spencer and failed," because Spencer's
method demands intelligence and patience, contend that the
child must be taught to obey, that truth lies in the old rule,
"As the twig is bent the tree is inclined."
BENT is the appropriate word, bent according to the old ideal
which extinguishes personality, teaches humility and obedience.
But the new ideal is that man, to stand straight and upright,
must not be bent at all only supported, and so prevented from
being deformed by weakness.
One often finds, in the modern system of training, the crude
desire for mastery still alive and breaking out when the child
is obstinate. "You won't!" say father and mother; "I will teach
you whether you have a will. I will soon drive self-will out of
you." But nothing can be driven out of the child; on the other
hand, much can be scourged into it which should be kept far
away.
Only during the first few years of life is a kind of drill
necessary, as a pre-condition to a higher training. The child
is then in such a high degree controlled by sensation, that a
slight physical pain or pleasure is often the only language he
fully understands. Consequently for some children discipline is
an indispensable means of enforcing the practice of certain
habits. For other children, the stricter methods are entirely
unnecessary even at this early age, and as soon as the child
can remember a blow, he is too old to receive one.
The child must certainly learn obedience, and, besides, this
obedience must be absolute. If such obedience has become
habitual from the tenderest age, a look, a word, an intonation
is enough to keep the child straight. The dissatisfaction of
those who are bringing him up can only be made effective when
it falls as a shadow in the usual sunny atmosphere of home. And
if people refrain from laying the foundations of obedience
while the child is small, and his naughtiness is entertaining,
Spencer's method undoubtedly will be found unsuitable after the
child is older and his caprice disagreeable.
With a very small child, one should not argue, but act
consistently and immediately. The effort of training should be
directed at an early period to arrange the experiences in a
consistent whole of impressions according to Rousseau and
Spencer's recommendation. So certain habits will become
impressed in the flesh and blood of the child.
Constant crying on the part of small children must be corrected
when it has become clear that the crying is not caused by
illness or some other discomfort,--discomforts against which
crying is the child's only weapon. Crying is now ordinarily
corrected by blows. But this does not master the will of the
child, and only produces in his soul the idea that older people
strike small children, when small children cry. This is not an
ethical idea. But when the crying child is immediately
isolated, and it is explained to him at the same time that
whoever annoys others must not be with them; if this isolation
is the absolute result, and cannot be avoided, in the child's
mind a basis is laid for the experience that one must be alone
when one makes oneself unpleasant or disagreeable. In both
cases the child is silenced by interfering with his comfort;
but one type of discomfort is the exercise of force on his
will; the other produces slowly the self-mastery of the will,
and accomplishes this by a good motive. One method encourages a
base emotion, fear. The other corrects the will in a way that
combines it with one of the most important experiences of life.
The one punishment keeps the child on the level of the animal.
The other impresses upon him the great principle of human
social life, that when our pleasure causes displeasure to
others, other people hinder us from following our pleasures; or
withdraw themselves from the exercise of our self-will. It is
necessary that small children should accustom themselves to
good behaviour at table, etc. If every time an act of
naughtiness is repeated, the child is immediately taken away,
he will soon learn that whoever is disagreeable to others must
remain alone. Thus a right application is made of a right
principle. Small children, too, must learn not to touch what
belongs to other people. If every time anything is touched
without permission, children lose their freedom of action one
way or another, they soon learn that a condition of their free
action is not to injure others.