The child and his religion

Front matter

m mttn

K'

V-J.

Preface

The material of this book is largely drawn from magazine articles and addresses already given to the public. Chap, iii, on "Children's Interest in the Bible," is substantially the same as originally published in the Pedagogical Seminary for July, 1900, Vol. VII. The other chapters present in modified form the material contained in various articles and addresses. Friends of the writer have expressed the wish that this material might be put in more accessible form, and there has been a certain public demand for the article on "Children's Interest in the Bible." Herein lies the reason for publishing the book.

In bringing this material together for publication in book form, no hope has been cherished of making it a finished product. The book lacks unity, but it is believed that the various chapters discuss topics that have a certain relationship, through the central aim of the writer to bring the so-called natural processes of life and education into harmony with the religious processes. If the book appears somewhat controversial in places, it is a fault of style rather than of spirit. The writer's acquaintance with the unsettled conditions of religious and educational thought of the present is too intimate to allow of his being a dogmatist. The book is given out in the hope that it may help to strengthen the religious and educational views of those who agree with viii Preface it, that it may provoke a friendly comparison of judgments from those who do not agree with it, and that it may stimulate all its readers to think out for themselves the problem of religious education.

The writer is grateful for permission, generously given by President G. Stanley Hall, editor of the Pedagogical Seminary, to reproduce the article on "Children's Interest in the Bible."

George E. Dawson

Springfield, Mass.

October i, 1908

CONTENTS CHAPTER I

PAGE

Interest as a Measure of Values .... i

Interest and the educational reformers; Herbart's doctrine of interest; The biological conception of interest; The sequence of interests; Atrophy of interests; Opposition to the doctrine of interest; Study of children's interests in secular education; Interest and religious education.

Chapter I Interest As A Measure Of Values

The economy of interest in education has for centuries attracted the attention of educators. Long before it was definitely formulated by Herbart as a pedagogical doctrine, it had a prominent place in the thought both of educational theorists and of practical teachers. In fact, its history is a part of the general movement of educational reform, begun by Rabelais in the sixteenth century, and still working itself out in current civilization. It is in the light of this general movement in educational history that we may best understand the origin and significance of interest as an educational doctrine.

Interest and the educational reformers. — The early educational reformers revolted against the dogmatic and artificial education of their time — with its enslavement to books and routine instruction, its stress upon formal discipline, and its repression of children's individuality. Varying from generation to generation, the issues raised by these men have been the centers of controversy down to the present time. Many of them are still unsettled. V^hat is called the "New Education" is still making its demands for more modern branches of study, more practical preparation for life, and a more liberal regime of scholarship and discipline. What is called the "Old Education" is still contending for the classical languages and mathematics, formal discipline, and academic standards of learning and instruction generally. But throughout these centuries of controversy and change, the motive force of educational reform has not been primarily pedagogical. It has been rather the impulse springing from a changed attitude toward human life. The fundamental characteristic of the first educational reformers was their respect and reverence for the natural, spontaneous tendencies of the soul. They challenged the age-long assumption that human nature was evil in its constitution, and that the beginning and end of education was to destroy the natural qualities, and create, in their stead, a character radically different. They brought to light not merely, or chiefly, a larger understanding of the human soul, but more especially a larger faith in its intrinsic worth. Here is the origin of the view that the natural interests of children are worthy of respect, and that they should be taken into account in all educational programmes. Moreover, it is probably true, in the main, that from Rabelais to the present time men's attitude toward the problem of interest has been primarily determined by what they have thought of human nature. It has been a measure of their faith in the innate goodness and sanity of man's life.

The period of civilization during which the old, formal system of education was established is identical with what has been called "The Age of Faith." But this faith was narrowly limited in its outlook. It did not include human nature in its survey, nor the objects and forces of the material world. The men who shaped the early systems of Christian education and philosophy had little reverence for what is natural and spontaneous in man's life. They believed that the natural inclinations were wrong, and that they must be changed into harmony with the arbitrary ideals of human life that had become standardized in the theological and philosophical thought of the time. It was therefore not only absurd but dangerous to base the control of life, in any degree, upon natural desires and capacities.

The type of education resulting from such an estimate of human nature is well described in these words of Professor Monroe :

The old conception of education aimed to remake the nature of the child by forcing upon him the traditional or customary way of thinking, of doing, and even of emotional reaction; to substitute for the instinctive or natural reaction of the child those artificial reactions developed through many generations of religious, intellectual, and social formalism. Human affections were evil, and hence the heart was to be separated from the objects of natural desire. Human senses were untrustworthy, and hence could not be made the basis of knowledge or of instruction. Human inclinations and instincts, springing from a nature depraved in its essence, were toward the evil and were to be eradicated. Natural interests, as expressions of the nature which both education and religion sought to repress and make over, were to be shunned in all educational processes. To the extent that an activity or task was difficult to perform intellectually and was distasteful emotionally, to this extent it possessed educational value. The first step in the moral education was to "break the will of the child," which in its perverseness but represented the evil of hiunan nature. This was to be followed in his social and moral education by the constant effort to mold the child into the artificial forms of conduct wherein a real and natural motive was hidden in formal behavior satisfactory to the judgment of the adult, even though it might conceal a motive contradictory to the external expression.^

This is the type of education satirized by Rabelais in his Garganttca, where he makes his bookish hero spend five years and three months in learning his letters so well that he could repeat them in every possible order; thirteen years, six months, and two weeks more in learning to read a variety of Latin authors, as unintelligible as they were uninteresting to him; eighteen years and eleven months in mastering the conamentaries of certain learned scholastics so that he could say them over either forward or backward and understand them as well one way as the other; and, finally, sixteen years and two months in learning various formulae for computing the age of the moon and the recurrence of religious festivals. It is against this type of education, too, that Rabelais' larger and more genial faith in human nature protests when he takes Gargantua away from the books and pedantry of scholastic instruction and sends him into the fields to study the creatures and

I Textbook in the History of Education, p. 566.

forces of nature; into the workshops to learn the structure of wood, stone, and metals, and the process of their manufacture; and out upon the playground to secure vigor of body and mind through free and spontaneous exercise in the open air.

Of the same spirit of protest was Montaigne, another French educational reformer of the sixteenth century. Says this writer:

The thing a boy should learn is not what the old authors say, but what he himself ought to do when he becomes a man. Wisdom, not knowledge! We may become learned from the learning of others; wise we can never be except by our own wisdom. We are truly learned from knowing the present, not from knowing the past. And yet we toil only to stuff the memory and leave the conscience and the imderstanding void. Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain and bring it home in their beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young, so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there out of various authors, and hold it at their tongue's end, only to spit it out and distribute it amongst their pupils.^

So, too, Comenius, the great Moravian bishop and educator, whose system of instruction was based upon the broadest possible appeal to the natural impulses of the soul. He was the first to see, in a large comprehensive way, that the content and method of education ought to be made significant and attractive to children. He would consider the fundamental desires of the mind, and shape these into an eagerness for learning in every possible way.

I Du pedantisme, Book J, chap. xxiv.

The parents should praise learning and learned men, show children beautiful books, and treat teachers with respect. The teacher should be kind and fatherly, should distribute praise and reward judiciously, and should always, where possible, keep beautiful and attractive objects before the child. The school buildings should be light, airy, and cheerful, and well furnished with apparatus, as pictures, maps, models, and collections of specimens. The subjects taught should not be too hard for the learner's comprehension, and the more entertaining parts of them should be especially dwelt upon. The method should be natural, and everything that is not essential to the subject or is beyond the pupil should be omitted. The whole philosophy of interest as affecting the spirit and method of education is summed up in these words of Comenius:

Education should be conducted without blows, rigour, or compulsion, as gently and pleasantly as possible, and in the most natural manner (just as a living body increases in size without any straining or forcible extension of the limbs; since if food, care, and exercise are properly supplied, the body grows and becomes strong, gradually, imperceptibly, and of its own accord. In the same way I maintain that nutriment, care, and exercise, prudently supplied to the mind, lead it naturally to wisdom, virtue and piety). The education given should not be false but real, not superficial but thorough; that is to say, the rational animal, man, should be guided not by the intellects of other men, but by his own; should not merely read the opinions of others and grasp their meaning or commit them to memory and repeat them, but should himself penetrate to the root of things and acquire the habit of genuinely understanding and making use of what he leams.^

This spirit of reverence for what is elemental and natural in human life, and disposition to be guided by it in directing the education of children, is shared by all the great educational reformers. It separates them by centuries from the contemporary philosophers and theologians, and makes them prophets not only of a new education but also of a new philosophy of life. As a general attitude, or type of faith, it culminates, perhaps, in Rousseau. This writer, however erratic and unbalanced he may have been, nevertheless said the things that needed to be said to his generation. To a man of Rousseau's sensibilities, contemplating the French civilization of the eighteenth century, with its formalism in education and religion, and its veneer of cant and hypocrisy covering every possible corruption in civic and social life, the opening words of his Entile may well have seemed literally true: "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature, but everything degenerates in the hands of man." This sentence epitomizes Rousseau's philosophy of education. Man perverts and spoils everything he lays his hands upon. He goes forth with his ignorant conceit, and his false theories of what ought to be done, and he mars the fair face of Nature wherever he touches it. There is nothing to do but stop this sort of thing; revere nature; watch her ways; help

I The Great Didaciic, chap. xii.

her betimes, but, for the most part, let her alone; at any rate, keep out of her way. All that other educational reformers had felt, and expressed in terms more or less general, about the natural worth of the human soul, and the educational economy of making use of its interests, Rousseau literally burned into the minds and hearts of his own and succeeding generations, by his impassioned eloquence.

Herbarfs doctrine of interest. — But it remained for Herbart, the German psychologist, to think out the mental values of interest, and to formulate them into an educational doctrine. It is here as elsewhere in human experience. Men grope their way through feeling and conviction to a rational explanation and justification of what they have felt and believed. Rabelais and Montaigne felt instinctively the worth of what is original and spontaneous in human nature. In Comenius and Rousseau this feeling became crystallized into a definite conviction. Now, at the hands of Herbart, interest was given a rational explanation, and assigned its place in educational economy. Herbart regarded education as essentially a process of assimilating new experience in such a way as to unify the mental content and make it meaningful and effective. This process he called apperception; and the feeling-accompaniment of apperception, the thing that makes experience significant and so capable of being assimilated, he called interest. Interest for Herbart thus becomes the center of educational effort. It is the mainspring of

Interest as a Measure of Values g

attention, memory, and all other mental activities involved in education. If the subject-matter and methods of instruction fall within the limits of a child's interests, he will give his attention to the instruction and assimilate its content. Efficient mental activity is not otherwise possible in education. The biological conception of interest. — From the point of view of psychological analysis, little has been added to Herbart's conception of interest. Various disciples have worked out his views in greater detail, and some have enlarged upon them in the direction of a more comprehensive view of interest. The tendency of Herbart's disciples, however, has been to emphasize the more conscious and intellectual phases of interest, as was the case with Herbart himself. Their reasoning upon this subject has been guided essentially by psychological standards. With the development of the biological sciences, however, and their application to the study of mental growth in the lower animals, primitive races, and children, new light has been shed upon the problem of interest. It is beginning to be seen that interest is not fundamentally a psychological function at all, but a biological function. It is not primarily a mental activity having for its object the assimilation of knowledge. It is rather a reaction of the whole life, consciously or unconsciously, in the direction of those adjustments that insure survival. From this point of view, interest may be defined as biological responsiveness. This responsiveness may include every degree of conlo The Child and His Religion

sciousness, from the most elementary to the most complex. Just as human activities range from the reflex to the fully conscious, and just as every spontaneous activity is directed by that responsiveness to stimuli that are economical, so does interest enter into every possible adaptation. It is just as narrow a conception of interest to limit it to conscious feeling of values, as some writers have done, as it is to limit mental activity as a whole to conscious processes. It may be said that there is no practical advantage for education in thus making interest extend beyond the limits of intellectual perception. But there is a very great advantage. The entire question of indirect, or unconscious, education — of the influence of environment, automatically and instinctively reacted to; of suggestion and imitation — hinges upon unconscious interest.

The mechanism of interest conceived as biological responsiveness is the organic life, and, more especially, the nervous system. Herein are stored up the experiences of the race that are most significant for human survival, and these racial experiences come to light now in the primary reflexes, now in instincts, and now in the gropings of the intellect. Thus it is that the new-born child makes just the reactions to its environment that are necessary, and through such reflex, or automatic, activities its interests are satisfied. Thus it is that the older child, half-consciously, through such instincts as fear, sympathy, and play, reacts to its environment according to the demands

Interest as a Measure 0} Values 1 1

of its nature, and so satisfies its interests. And thus, too, the adult man or woman, cSLvrying forward the reflex and instinctive activities and interests of the earher years, adds the conscious, rationally directed activities, and so satisfies his or her interests as intellectually perceived.

The sequence of interests. — We have here a suggestion that the interests of life appear in a certain order, or sequence, just as the needs and activities appear with which they are correlated. Thus the child lives first in a world of reflex and instinctive experience. Its interests are confined to physical comfort, to eating and sleeping, to its fears, its repugnances, its sympathies. Then is added the world of sense and motor experience, and its interests widen with its tactual, visual, and auditory sensations. Finally, there is opened up to it the world of ideal relations — of imagination, reason, and conscience — and its interests become intellectual, artistic, and moral. An iflustration of the paraflelism between interest and organic development is seen in the child's learning to walk. As the motor centers controlling the movements necessary to walking mature, the child becomes keenly interested in every activity that increases his ability to walk. So it is with talking. The speech centers in the brain, and the nervous and muscular mechanism of the vocal organs, reach a certain stage of development, and the child becomes interested in making sounds, imitating the language of others, and so of acquiring the power of speech. Still more striking is the illustration seen in the ripening of sexual interests. Parallel with the functioning of the sexual centers in the spinal cord and brain, and the changes in general organic development, there appears a vast complex of automatic and instinctive tendencies, which involve some of the most powerful interests in human life. The entire attitude toward the opposite sex is changed. New habits of dress, new manners, and new modes of social activity are formed. Ambitions and the very ideals of life are modified, and the whole world takes on a different shading in its values.

The atrophy of interest. — As a corollary of this law of sequence in interests, there is a law of decay, or atrophy, of interests. As with other functions of life, if an interest is not satisfied, it will tend to grow feebler and finally disappear. This atrophy of interests is surest and quickest in its results when the interest first manifests itself. Thus a newly hatched chick will peck at everything that suggests food. Its reflex nervous mechanism is ripe for pecking, and it has the associated pecking interest. But if the chick is prevented from pecking for a few days, it will lose both the power of pecking and the interest in doing so. Thereafter, food must be put into its mouth to keep it alive. When a child has reached a certain stage of development, it shows an interest in trying to stand on its feet and walk. If, for any reason it is prevented from doing so, the interest will gradually diminish and may in time fade out entirely.

This is illustrated in the so-called wild children/ who, being deprived in early life of human companionship, have not had the example of upright posture and locomotion. I once saw a little girl of three years who was unable to walk or even stand alone. She would make no attempt to do either and seemed to have absolutely no interest in getting up on her feet or walking. The child seemed perfectly well, and her parents had become very anxious about her. Inquiry revealed the fact that when she was nine months old, the little girl had been injured by a fall, and had been kept very closely confined for six months, at first in her crib and later in a high chair, never being allowed to stand on her feet. When she was at last put upon the floor, she began her creeping just as she had been in the habit of doing six months before. Nor did she show any disposition to do otherwise than creep, even after her strength had been fully recovered. It required several months of careful attention on the part of the parents, in exercising her in standing and walking, to awaken any interest whatsoever in these activities. This law of atrophy through disuse undoubtedly operates throughout the entire range of human interests, not only in those interests more closely related to organic life, but also in the intellectual, moral, and religious interests. It is manifestly of great concern to parents and others who have the care of children that all normal interests be given a chance to function at

I Cf. Cornish, Animals at Work and Play, pp. 315-23.

the right time and in the right way. There can be no question that intellectual sluggishness and moral and religious indifference are frequently due to an atrophy of interest at those periods of life when the intellectual, moral, and religious ideas and feelings are awakening. It is probably a literal scientific fact that a child's interest in God or some phase of moral conduct is as completely subject to the law of atrophy as the chick's pecking interest or the child's interest in walking.

The biological view of interest, therefore, identifies it with the vital needs of life. Interest is a measure of survival values. The interested individual lives and grows; the uninterested individual dies. That subject-matter in education and those methods of instruction that lay hold upon the interests of children, promote life and growth. That subject-matter, those methods of instruction that do not lay hold upon the interests of children, produce arrest of development and death. Thus does a scientific estimate of the primary economy of interest confirm the instinctive convictions of the educational reformers. The protest of these men against a view of life, and a type of education, that regarded human nature as intrinsically evil, and the great elemental interests of the soul as false and dangerous, was not only broadly human and sympathetic; it was also true.

Opposition to the doctrine of interest. — If, then, the doctrine of interest in education has the sanction of four centuries of educational reform; if, according to Herbart and his followers, it is indispensable to the mental processes involved in education; and if, according to biological psychology, it is an index of the significance and value of experience, how comes it that it is still vigorously opposed as a principle of education and conduct? One reason, and the principal one, has already been given. Real interest is fundamentally a natural reaction of the soul. It therefore comes under condemnation along with everything else that belongs to the category of the natural. As we have found, there was a time in the history of Christian civilization when human nature was regarded as utterly vile and depraved. It is less than two hundred years since Jonathan Edwards, the greatest of American theologians, said: "God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise, to keep any natural man out of hell one moment. Natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell. They have deserved the fiery pit and are already sentenced to it."^ Such a view of human nature is certainly sufficient to account for much of the antagonism toward the doctrine of interest. To a man who thought thus of the "natural man," any suggestion that the spontaneous interests of children, who are in the highest degree natural, are significant guides in their care and training, would seem little short of blasphemous. While the conception of human nature as a thing intrinsically evil is rapidly

I Sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

fading from the modern mind, there are still some people, influential in intellectual and social life, who talk about education and parental government as though they believed in innate depravity. And there are not a few men and women who evince a lurking suspicion that it is not safe to trust the leadings of a boy's interests either in education or every-day conduct.

But a belief in innate depravity is not usually given as a reason for rejecting the doctrine of interest. The more conmion one is, that to consult the interests of children means to follow the lines of least resistance, and this means to weaken the will. This reason assumes that if a task is interesting the effort put forth in its execution will be less. But the fact is that interest increases effort. A classic illustration of this truth is the play of children. Play in the child's life realizes completely the idea of manysided interest, and yet it is just the form of activity that calls forth the most complete self-expression and stimulates the greatest effort. Everybody who has observed the plays of children knows that a healthy, enthusiastic boy on the playground is tireless and indefatigable in his efforts. A like principle holds in the work of adults. What man in practical life believes that his efforts are greater and more sustained if his work is uninteresting and distasteful to him? Quite the opposite is true. Edison, the inventor, is probably one of the hardest workers in America, and he is probably one of the most completely absorbed in the interest of his tasks.

From the point of view of education, the fact that a study is interesting is not proof that it diminishes effort. Interest is indissolubly bound up with attention, and, as Professor James contends, attention is the center of will. Interest, indeed, does not produce the effortless dawdlers in schoolrooms, as every practical teacher knows. It is the indifferent pupils, the uninterested ones, that dawdle over their work; and it is just these who are apt to suffer in a deterioration of will. The truth is there is no really effective effort in education, or elsewhere, without a deep, fundamental interest in the work. Interest, indeed, economizes energy and makes a task easier. But this does not mean that effort is less intense while the task lasts. It means the contrary. And when the task is completed in less time, and with a less expenditure of energy, there is time and energy available for other tasks. No small amount of human energy has been wasted in trying to achieve the merit of lifeless drudgery; and not a few failures in human life have been due to choosing for children the path of greatest resistance simply because it was the most difficult.

This is no plea for shirking a disagreeable task. Things must be done sometimes that seem uninteresting and cruelly hard. But if the life has been made strong through achieving its ends along the lines of its desires, it will face the occasional hard and uninteresting tasks in the joy of mastering difficulties. On the other hand, if a child is trained under a regime of uninteresting tasks, if it is kept involved in difficulties for the sake of inuring it to hardships, its spirit will suffer from an atrophy of desires, its life will lack motive and intensity, and while it may go through the hard crises of life uncomplainingly and with what seems to be the spirit of a martyr, its fortitude will be due not so much to heroism as to apathy.

But there is another reason assigned for rejecting the doctrine of interest. It is asserted that some interests are undeniably bad. This is true, but such interests come under the general law of perverted fimctions and are quite apart from the normal standards of life. I have defined interest as "biological responsiveness." That is to say, it is a function correlated with every vital process. If, then, any vital process be perverted, the interests correlated with such process will also be perverted. Thus there are nutritive interests associated with the process of nutrition. The child craves food, and, under normal conditions, this craving has correlated with it interests that are healthy. But through some perversion of the nutritive process, either hereditary or acquired, or through some ill-advised gratification of appetite that has excited nervous sensations which have resulted in a perversion of appetite, it may crave food that is harmful. In such case, its nutritive interests will be abnormal. Or, again, there are interests associated with the child's emotional life, as those correlated with fear, anger, love, etc. Thus the child craves the companionship and affection of other children, and, under normal conditions, its craving is a healthy one. But there may be some twist in its affectional life. It may be too affectionate, or its affections may seek an outlet through wrong channels. In such case, the child's social interests will be abnormal. So it is with all the various classes of interest. Intrinsically, they are all good. Bad interests are perverted or diseased forms, and the cure lies not in suppression, but in seeking out the cause of the perversion and removing it. A boy's interest in athletics, for instance, or a girl's interest in dress, to such a degree that their high-school work is interfered with, cannot be most satisfactorily regulated by attempting to eradicate it. It is primarily a healthy interest, and has become harmful only through excess. The remedy lies in discovering the causes of this excess and removing them.