Part 12 (1/2)
To disarm your opposition about sending such little tots to school, I a.s.sure you that many of my mothers tell me that the transition from nursery life to my little community has cured children of fretting and other faults, and that they repeat the occupations of the school-room in their home plays.--Read ”Christian Nurture,” by Dr. Bushnell.
LETTER IV.
DEAR A.,--When I have a collection of children around me to whom I am to teach things and morals, I always begin by making a simple statement of the footing on which I wish we shall live together. Prevention is better than cure, and much is gained with children, as with grown men, by expecting from them the best and n.o.blest action.
In a school or in a family, I do not like any government but self-government, yet I wish my scholars to know that I often help the growth of the latter by interposing my authority when that of the inner law fails. When I commenced my present school, I had such a conversation with the children on the first day they were a.s.sembled, before there had been time for any overt acts upon a lower principle than the one I wished to inculcate.
My school consists of children belonging to one cla.s.s in a certain sense of the word, that is, to families of the highest general cultivation amongst us, and what is still more important, to families in which there is a general if not well digested belief in the divinity of human nature. Yet there is a great diversity in the influences upon them. Even among people of the most liberal views there still lurks a sediment of the feeling that there is a principle of evil as well as of good in the human soul, and so people expect their children to be naughty on that ground. Now I do not believe in this. I think all evil is imperfection.
It is sometimes very bad imperfection, I allow, and I am sometimes tempted to say poetically, though never literally, that it looks like innate depravity. But I do really believe in individual perfectibility, and that ”circ.u.mstance, that unspiritual G.o.d and miscreator,” is our great enemy. Circ.u.mstance is a very important personage in my calendar, and a perfect Proteus in the shapes he takes, for he covers not only the common surroundings we call circ.u.mstances, but organization itself.
Perfection _must_ be in the reach of every one by G.o.d's original design, and it is only man's marring that hinders its progress, and that temporarily. I hope you have the same instinct about this that I have. I can remember, even when I was not ten years old, hearing some one very severely criticised, who I happened to know had had the worst of moral educations, and I resented the criticism, not because the subject of it was any friend of mine, for it was a person in whom I had no particular interest, but I remember the feeling was a sort of vindication of G.o.d's goodness, an _a.s.surance_ that he would not judge that unfortunate person harshly or unforgivingly, but that the misfortunes she had brought upon herself, would teach her what her life at home had failed to teach her.
How often I have thought of that poor woman in my life!
To go back to my school. I knew many of the families, some intimately enough to know the very peculiarities of the children, others only enough to be able to antic.i.p.ate the little characters; others were perfect strangers, whom I was yet to study. Many of them had never been to school before, and I knew enough of the usual method of governing schools to be aware that the a.s.sociations of those who had been in such scenes, were likely to be those of contention for power, the memory of penalties, and a division of interests between teachers and taught. Even at home some of these children had been governed by fixed rules, instead of the instincts of love, and had never been addressed as if they had any sense of right and wrong; others had been weakly indulged, others mostly if not wholly neglected, and left to the care of servants. One little boy and girl, children of wealthy parents, scarcely saw their father from one month's end to another, for he never rose till they went to school; they dined at two and he at five, and before his dinner was done, to which he never returned till the last moment, these little ones were put to bed. Even the elder children who also went to school, saw him only at dinner, for his evenings were usually spent in company, or at some club. I hope this is an extreme case. I should say that the mother in this family was an amiable woman, but not sufficiently like the ”near Providence” to counteract the effects of such fatherly neglect.
There was one child, of truly religious and conscientious parents, whose moral influence was null, except indirectly, because they really believed that the human heart was originally depraved, and waited to be saved by special grace from G.o.d, irrespective of the conscience; and this girl, who was the oldest of my scholars, had less principle to work upon than any one, and when I first spoke of the cultivation of the mind as a religious duty, she told me very ingenuously that it was the first time she had ever heard such a thought, although she was considered quite remarkable at home for her religious sensibility, and really prayed aloud sometimes like a little seraph, in imitation of her truly devout parents; but she was very untruthful.
A few of the children had been made to feel that every human being has a conscience, which, when enlightened, will guide him right. In these latter the work of growth had already begun, and to them I looked for my allies in the work I was about to undertake. I knew that the best I could do would only come up to the standard that had ever been held up before them.
I seated them all around me and began by telling them how much I loved to keep school for little children, when they were good. But children were not always good, and I was glad to help them cure their little faults before they grew to be great ones, which was the thing most to be feared in the world. I hoped the good children here would help me make the others better, if there were any naughty ones. We must all be patient with naughty people, just as G.o.d was. It took naughty people a long time to grow better again. If each child would think about himself a moment, he would remember that he did not always do perfectly right; but G.o.d had given everybody a conscience which was sometimes called ”the voice of G.o.d within us,” so every one could improve who would listen to that voice.
There was a right thing to be done in every place. In school it would be necessary for all to keep good order, else it would be impossible to study, where there were so many persons; it was just as necessary too that all should be polite and kind to each other, else there could be no happiness. One unkind person could make all the rest uncomfortable.
After dwelling upon these points till all seemed to recognize their importance, I told them that some people kept order in schools by rigid rules and penalties; for instance, there would be a rule that every scholar who spoke aloud should have a mark for bad conduct, every one that kept order, a mark for good conduct; another rule would be, that every lesson learned well should have a mark of approbation, every lesson learned ill, a mark of disapprobation. The penalties for transgressing rules were floggings, bad reports written for parents to see, keeping lag after school, &c. &c.; the recompense for good marks, either a good report, or a present,--the handsomest prize being given to the one who learned lessons best.
But I did not wish to keep school thus. I had no respect for people who did right only because they feared punishment or hoped for a reward.
Such motives made people selfish. I had known of children who would deny having done something they had really done, and try to make a teacher suppose some one else did it; and also of other children who were sorry when some one else got the present. All these things made people selfish, and tempted them to be false. We should do right because it was right, whether it were to bring us pleasure or pain. It was the duty of all to improve their faculties, because G.o.d had given them to us for that purpose, and had put us into a beautiful world, and given us parents and teachers to help us prepare for a long existence of which this life is but a small part,--a kind of school in which we are educated for another world.
I wished to have but one rule in my school, and that was the Golden Rule: ”do unto others as you wish others to do unto you.”
The duty in school was to study well and to keep order, that others might have a chance to study. It would be necessary for them all to respect my arrangements, and obey my wishes for the sake of this order, but they need not think of prizes or marks, for I should give none.
I wished them to govern themselves. This would make it unnecessary for me to watch them all the time. I should soon learn who was worthy of being trusted.
Did they not like to be trusted?
They responded warmly to this.
Did they not like to do as they pleased?
There was, of course, but one answer to this question.
I told them none could be allowed to do that in school except those who pleased to do right, because it was my duty to prevent them from disturbing each other, or from wasting their own time. But I hoped never to be obliged to punish any one for doing wrong. I should make no rules at present, and if I found all were polite, obliging, and industrious, I should never need to make any; but if there were any in school who did not obey conscience, and think about other people's convenience, I should be obliged to make rules for such. I should put the names of such scholars on a paper, and those children must live by my rules, because they had none of their own.
I considered proper manners in school to be quietness, no unnecessary speaking or moving about in study time, politeness to every one, ready obedience to my wishes and arrangements, and industrious habits of study.
I should now leave each one to make rules for himself in his own mind; they might write them down if they pleased. I should like to see what each one would think it right to do in school. They might imagine themselves keeping school, and tell how they should govern it, and what they thought the duties of scholars.