The mother in education

Front matter

Class 4-_U

Book

_

Foreword

better way than in giving to the world better citizens.

In education the beginning is everything. Happy is that child whose foundation has been well laid at home, before he goes to school where he will be dealt with as one of a crowd ! What I state I have proved by practice. I know that school education can be shortened by several years through the efforts of a mother, and that nothing outside can sujDply the place of an atmosphere of home culture.

Nor is the work complicated or hard. The scheme outlined in this book is so practical and simple that it will surely appeal to all mothers who desire to do their best by their children. To such I dedicate it, with the earnest hope that they may find as much satisfaction in it as I did while working it out in actual practice.

For permission to reproduce some matter which has appeared in their pages in the form of magazine articles thanks are due the Woman's Home Companion and the New England Magazine.

F. H. W.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction i

I The Inspiration of Mother Love .... 1

Introduction

IN starting out upon any work we first try to classify our materials, putting together all those things that are related, and setting aside those that are incongruous with our general plan. What builder, wishing to construct a cement house, would have a pile of granite blocks occupying the center space in his lot ? Or what housekeeper, intending to make cake, would begin by setting out an array of pots and skillets on her working table % In order to get the best results the artist who has an oil painting in hand concentrates his mind altogether on the process of oil painting, eliminating for the time everything belonging to crayon or water colors, and devoting himself entirely to the work he is setting out to do.

This is the law for the reformer in morals and for the educator also. The very first thing that either of them try to effect is the separation of classes of individuals according to certain well known qualities. Then, when they have their soldiers drawn up in line ii INTRODUCTION'

they go to work to drill them, and subject them to disciplinary regulations which are made according to the standardizing of their several capacities. For the purpose of show nothing could be better. It is a pretty sight to see a crowd moving in harmony, uniting their voices in a stirring song, wearing almost the same expression of countenance as they are inspired with the same sentiment of patriotism or devotion. They look very much alike and form a perfect community so long as the necessity for acting together keeps them joined. This is all that their disciplinarians either attempt or effect. The instant they are let loose from one another things begin to happen. Nature has a chance to re-act against artificial restraints, and the individual shows what his raw material consists in, separated from that part of him which has been so nicely drilled.

Who has not marked with some interest the sailors taking their shore leave from a man-of-war ? They go about the town near which their ship is anchored, not singly, but in groups, leaning up against one another, as dependent as schools of fish, almost as helpless as the fish to resist baits thrown to them by exploiters of their simplicity. If one gets off by himself he

INTRODUCTION iii

is almost certain to fall into mischief. Then he is punished like a child, and not allowed more leave for some time, in order that he may learn to obey certain rules of conduct that have come to answer for him in the place of self-imposed moral standards. But there are always sailors who are above the average; who incur no punishments, who are trustworthy and beyond the reach of common temptations. They are the sailors who come of good families, who have had some training at home before entering the navy, whose intelligence has been developed in childhood and whom their mothers taught things never learned so well in later life. Or else they belong to that brave, rare squad, the self-educated, who have some fine instinct in them that puts them above the average man, and who, despite all obstacles and stumbling blocks work out their own salvation. But it is at a terrible waste of life and strength. In moral training as in all matters of education the beginning is everything. It takes more time and power to undo a wrong beginning and go straight afterwards than to live two ordinary lives, where the beginning has been normal.

Now, similarly, the schools drill children in squads, rating them according to the most general rules, standiv INTRODUCTION

ardizing their capacities on the hedonistic principle of the best good for the greater number even though injustice must thereby be done to exceptional pupils. For the learning of facts the system is fair enough, although even there those gifted with the best memories will forge ahead of the rest and then weary for new matter long before the others are ready for it. But superficially looked at the results are very striking. Twenty children, a hundred, a thousand children, all with eager, interested faces, looking and listening, imbibing knowledge according to the easy fashion of present day instruction, and seemingly making rapid progress in science, literature and history. Looked at in the mass there is no appreciable difference in them, or in their ability to receive and digest learning. The most efficient system that educational reformers have been able to devise is now in operation in all our better schools, and nothing that can be done to make learning easy has been neglected. Constant improvements are being made in the classifying system, strenuous efforts attempted in the way of " individualizing " instruction so as to bring out the natural ability of the child. It is heroic, this enthusiasm of teachers to separate from the mass particular

INTRODUCTION v

atoms and minister to their personal needs. But they have a work in hand here that must always be increasingly difficult ; that is beset by drawbacks that no enthusiasm can overcome, because they are planted on the bed-rock soil of natural differences not possible to be understood by strangers or appreciated by any one who is not intimately acquainted with the character of the child from the very beginning of his life.

Moreover, in justice to all, no exceptions may be made in the regulations that are for the welfare of the mass. If a certain child is to be taken out of the mass on account of one particular quality yet cannot be elevated to the class above on account of not being up to its standard in other essentials, he must remain where he is, with his efficiency standardized according to its lowest manifestation. Not only in the big schools does this difficulty arise but in every school. One of a principal's chief troubles is to classify his pupils especially when his classes are small, and his boast is that he gives " individual " instruction. Always the one rule must be observed because getting away from it is an impossibility: the child must be rated according to his ignorance and not acvi INTRODUCTION

cording to his knowledge. He will be taught that which he has no use for along with that which he should have because the others need both. He must lose time and energy because his loss is a necessary part of the game that plays fair with the rest.

So he is drilled with his class. Again, it is a fair and sightly instance of modern methods in education, this drama of crowds of young people all having the same general outside appearance of knowledge, all having, as the valedictorians say, " traversed the same paths of learning, and now separating for their individual careers." But now that the mutual dependence of class interests and — to be frank — class aid secretly practised, is over and each tub stands on its own bottom, what will be the fate of the tub ? If it is a leaky vessel, a defective individuality, now is the time when all its defects will become painfully apparent. Idiosyncrasies will start into relief, never having been suspected while the crowd concealed them, and deficiencies unprovided for by a system that applied to all will make the individual quake with a sense of ignorance and overwhelm him with a conviction of being at a disadvantage with life. Diogenes in his tub was well enough, but how about a troupe

INTRODUCTION vii

of Diogeneses, all at odds with the world and determined to be eccentric?

The school trains children well for community needs, for citizenship and the exigencies of war and fires. It opens up to them the world of literature and science by teaching them the letters. It offers them a liberal knowledge of business and the arts by the power to read the newspapers. It sends them forth fortified in soul by acquaintance with heroes of history and by reiterated rules of conduct that apply to all their public relations with one another. All this is within its function, and it performs its duty well.

But there ar.e things that the school cannot teach, that it can never teach though it should burst in the effort, and these things are what make life most worth the living. The best system of school instruction that can be devised can only effect the partial development of a human being. All those qualities that are peculiarly his own, that make him " different " and consequently valuable to himself, are untouched by methods of instruction that have treated him simply as a member of the community. He has been taught to read; it may be a blessing, it may be a curse. That depends upon the bent of his viii INTRODUCTION"

mind; upon the kind of influences his character has been subjected to for the larger period of his growth and development, which is manifestly that portion of his time that is or ought to be spent at home. If it is spent in the street then so much the worse. But in any event it is a thing apart from the school. The tastes and tendencies that have been encouraged in him either by a wise parent or by his comrades in the street will decide his destiny; not the fact of his knowing who Abraham Lincoln was. Not knowledge but our sympathies inspire us to any sort of action; and sympathy is a matter of infantile habit. The child leams to be hard and cruel or generous and forbearing from his mother. Else in the furnace of affliction, else not at all. And out of his sympathies comes his rank in the world. Nothing can gain place for him, nothing limit him but his capacity for sympathy, which, is the force that moves his intelligence. It is the duty of the school to shut the door against the very display of personality which is the life and soul of individual development. Even if an odd teacher encourages the expression of unusual ideas the school community in general will hoot it down. Consequently it is a mat-

INTRODUCTION ix

ter of anxious effort on the part of the unusual child to conceal his eccentricities. He endeavors with all his might to be n,o better and no worse than the average of his class ; no wiser and not more ignorant, to be the essential opposite probably, of what he desires to be, in order to subserve the ends of popularity.

Tlie child should be educated as an individual. If he cannot get the education at school is he to go without it ? There are many children who apparently must go without it; the children of parents who are too ignorant or too busy to do their duty. For emigrants, for the very poor and ignorant the school steps in and offers a makeshift at this work. It has tried hard to fulfil the duty of " character building " which implies the development of qualities and talents, of tastes and habits ; and in the case of the docile ignoramus, having no offset at home which he can respect so much as he respects his teacher, no code that disagrees, no social influences that re-mold his ideas, it answers. It is better than no effort at all. But are parents who have means and leisure, who have culture not only above the average but capacity that seeks an outlet beyond the routine of daily work, x INTRODUCTION

who yearn for opportunities to benefit the world, are these in the right to leave the individuality of their child to be treated in the rough as the nature of the less fortunate is ? This is not equality but brutality. This is losing the advantage of possessing the means of the higher education and putting our child down again on the level from which his family has arisen by its own worth.

Every child should have the best possible start in the race. If he can be entered in class B he should not be sunk to class J or K. An immense quantity of time and power may be saved not only to himself but to the state by his receiving at home all the previous education his parents can give him. If the child of educated parents could be entered in school in the rank above the primary grade that grade could be left for the advantage of those who have not the good fortune to possess educated parents. The child of happier chance would not then have his budding ambition to make rapid progress weakened and stultified by being kept back with a weaker class, and that class would be enabled to proceed at the leisurely rate agreeing with its relatively lower intelligence. It is both a selfish and hedonistic proposition, taking

INTRODUCTION xi

account of the best welfare of onr own child first but giving heed also to the real welfare of the mass outside. The one objection that may be urged against removing the child of cultured parentage from association with those of ignorant parents at the stage of primary training, to the seeming loss of the latter, is met in this way: in infancy the influence of evil — and ignorance is to be so ranked in this connection — is much stronger than the influence for good among those of equal age. The less intelligent child, or child whose intelligence is not developed, will be more prominent through his ignorance than the better instructed child is through his ability. Every solecism committed by the child who comes into social circles above his experience furnishes food for comment and conceit in his more fortunate companions. He would himself rate it a joy to escape this ordeal until he shall have received a little more preparation. And the superior child would also have the advantage of being only among his compeers for that period of his life when his mind is at its most susceptible state for receiving impressions. Conceit would be kept down in him and ambition stimulated. He would feel the need of doing his best in order to keep his place xii INTRODUCTION.

among those as well prepared as himself. The average standard would he raised hy the superiority of individuals.

The school is a world by itself. Does any one doubt that it is better for the individual to enter into this world fortified against evil influences by a character previously strengthened by some mental discipline than to go forth as tender as an unfledged chicken ?

One of the objections brought against large schools by careful parents is that of bad associations. The weight and truth of this objection is much greater than is commonly known when it is uttered. But it is done away with when the child mingling with ignorant or vicious children knows enough to resist evil and to afford an example of better conduct. If he has received at home the essential preliminary education he can go through that ordeal unscathed. A strong individuality is powerful against low community influences.

Only in the home can the child properly develop his individuality. Let parents cease to believe that they do their whole duty in sending their child to school. A complete education must combine the

INTRODUCTION xiii

community teaching of the school with the individual teaching of the home. Putting aside the question of physical and moral education, even intellectual education itself depends for its best interests largely upon parents. For mental activity starts from feeling, and all the higher thoughts that come to us as the result of knowledge have their springs deep down in our emotional life. What we learn to admire, what we learn to love in our earlier years, becomes the object of our ambition in maturity; and as will is merely a wish turned into an action, and our ultimate character is the result of willing, it is evident that the most powerful agents of our destiny are those that first stir up in us aspirations and intentions.

Is it not important then, that the parent who possesses the influence to mold character should exert it intelligently? Is it not a mother's duty to give all the time and pains necessary to that individual education of her children that can only be carried on in the home and under her supervision? Household work is becoming every day more scientific and consequently less arduous ; women have more and more time for the higher things of life: what is higher xiv INTRODUCTION

than the training of the young beings given into their charge ?

Perfect education is the blending of home care with school discipline, the uniting of individual development with community life. To the school belongs its indispensable part but to the parent belongs a duty that is even more important. If the child could receive but one part of his education I doubt very much if it would not be better for his ultimate welfare that his character should be trained and his intelligence developed by a home education than that he should miss this entirely and only profit by school discipline.

It is a striking proof of the truth of this assumption that the individuals who are leaders in the world in the cause of humanity have had mothers whose characters have been an influence in their lives, while those who stand for everything that makes against the general welfare have been early thrown upon the care of the state for their entire training and have missed the gentler culture of the home.

CHAPTER I The Inspiration of Mother Love

u Everywhere throughout this nation the School of Home was the most important detail of the educational system. Woman gave her time to managing it, by love and being loved. Real love it was, born of her minute knowledge of her children and their faith in her. Continual association only could produce such love and faith.

" We have abandoned the home school and almost all its principles. It made men. We educate our children by the thousand and no longer by the one. Our learning, like much of our living, has been syndicated. But the men whom we have given to the world, who put humanity into their debt, were mother-taught in the little School of the Home. Washing-ton, Webster, Lincoln, Greeley, Mark Twain, Edison — all were educated in it. It was the cradle of American preeminence. Mother was a potent word in those days, strange as that may seem to children of the rising generation. We men know that any country can be made or unmade by its mothers." — Irving Bacheller.

HE was sitting on the door-sill, this blueeyed mite of four, his rosebud mouth slightly open, and his fair little brows slightly puckered, while his unsteady baby fingers essayed to stand a certain troublesome block on top of his tower. Eor half an hour he had been working, and the moment of triumphant result was at hand. He was too absorbed to hear approaching footsteps, and started in alarm as a quick, impatient man's voice sounded in his ears, "What are you making such a litter in the doorway for ? Into the house with you, Teddy. Here, let me pass, I'm in a hurry."

And with a careless, rough sweep of his cane the father cast aside the pile of toys and made his way down town in a perfectly complacent frame of mind and with not the least idea of the ruin his momentary irritation had wrought. But oh, the pity of it! Where the stately tower had stood, wrought with such patience by those small, weak fingers, was only an unsightly pile of blocks. And where in the soul of the baby architect had been elation, hope, pride, at the crisis of an achievement, were grief and disappoint-

INSPIRATION OF MOTHER LOVE 3

ment, and something harder to bear — a dumb, vague resentment against the world which treated him thus contemptuously.

But as he fought with two big tears a gentle arm came about his neck and a soft voice cooed, " What is the matter with my little man? The nice house had a tumble ? Mother will straighten things out and then sit here and watch Teddy build it all up again. Cheer up, all builders have some troubles, you know. Be a good sport ! "

And in the sunshine of his mother's sympathy and understanding the mite feels it possible to set to work with fresh energy, and contentment and peace returns to his heart. Well for his soul that what the thoughtless father spoils the mother's tender fingers restore. The thing meddled with was not simply a material object, capable of sustaining shocks and recovering, but that fragile, intangible thing which is like the iridescent light playing over a prism. Break the glass and it is gone. Do you not recollect that day in your childhood when after a period of anticipation that seemed like years to you, the palpitating moment approached that was to crown the work that had cost many moments or hours of self-sacrificing effort, and

4 THE MOTHER IE" EDUCATION

some ruthless authority, knowing nothing of your hopes and plans, spoiled your little house of mirth? Perhaps only yesterday a meddlesome hand knocked over some one of your hopeful houses of cards. You know well the sting of the disappointment ; the feeling that the world has not appreciated you, but has, on the contrary, given you a cruel rebuff. So flees happiness.

Of all the millions of little ones, busy at this hour with their trivial occupations, silly to adult eyes, but covering, if we could see beneath the surface, a mighty ebb and flow of human passions, how many are being hurt and baffled every second by some thoughtless act of their elders ! Yet these elders are seldom moved by the deliberate wish to do injury to children. They merely lack sympathy, and consequently, understanding. The evil they do comes from their absorption in what they please to term the practical, important concerns of life. Grown people are mostly in haste to go about their business, and they believe themselves justified in knocking over or scattering whatever lies in their path. Eathers must earn the living, and in their headlong rush after the nimble dollar they do not pause long enough to comprehend the meaning of the

INSPIRATION OF MOTHEE LOVE 5

dramas they catch glimpses of from time to time in their homes. The unfolding of the delicate buds of child character is a mystery they do not undertake to fathom. And the habit of indifference begets a certain callousness or cynicism that is the last blow to confidential relations.

I have known a very few men who had the gift of a maternal instinct, so that when the mother of the family passed away they were able to supply the place of a woman in the care of their children. Such men had very curiously, the feminine nature; and they were not successful in the usual pursuits that men undertake. But most men are of the build which takes to the more robust occupations of life and " leaves sentiment to women." At this moment a little scrutiny into conditions reveals that modern women also disdain sentiment in quite a manly fashion and consider all their duty done when they provide for the material well-being of their offspring. In effect, if not in so many words, numerous mothers exclaim daily, " Get away, little soul, while I trim a dress for your little body. I like better to use a needle and busy myself with this pretty fancy work, which allows my mind to be idle, than to strain my wits trying to keep up with the race of your young intellects or weary myself developing your good instincts and checking erring tendencies. Don't make demands upon my attention. Let me alone ! "

Ah, mothers, mothers, you know not what you do» It were better to deny yourselves the indulgence of pretty, easy work, and accept the great work which is your supreme duty on earth, and the one fraught with the sweetest blessing humanity knows. There is no other duty so exigent to a woman as that of fostering and protecting the happiness of a child. Through the making of the child's happiness she can develop within him the seeds of goodness more effectually than if she labored sternly and assiduously to correct his faults. The world hardens and harshens us, but deep within our hearts there always lives one little oasis where brood some memories of our childhood's happy days. And when the meaner impulses of our nature pull us down these delicate memories swing us back into the right path, and we are the better men and women because once, in the long ago, we were happy children.

No wicked man is wholly wrong if he can look back once in awhile to a sweet, wholesome day in his wayward life. No erring woman is lost whose eyes brim inspiration or mother love 7

with tears as there rushes across her vision some scene in her innocent yonth when the snn shone on a brightly upturned little face, and dancing baby feet keeping time to the heart-beat of happiness. But there is not much hope for the regeneration of unhappy men and women whose childhood was barren and hard. They might pardon circumstances for the wreck of their lives, but for a miserable childhood they cannot pardon God.

So it does mean something when we carelessly and roughly turn the bright hues of hope in a baby breast into the gloom of mourning. It means something definite and very important to his future when a little one murmurs into a tender ear, " Mother, I've had a happy day ! "

There are no little things in life. The airy trifles are the mighty forces which turn the material wheels of our existence. Who knows at what instant we are changing the tenor of a human career ! A light word at the wrong time, a blighting sentence when tenderness was needed, mockery w T hen one's little efforts should have been treated with seriousness, gloom when the mother's eye should have beamed with joy — all these mistakes are the spades that dig graves for those over whom our influence is strong, and for whose welfare we are responsible.

And what wonderful things mothers have done for children whose trust and confidence they have never lost ! The artist Elaxman said that it was " his mother's smile at the right moment which made him an artist." Napoleon valued the good opinion of his mother more than that of any other person, and at the height of his glory consulted her when he refused to defer to another mortal. How many great statesmen and brave soldiers can look back to some incident of their childhood when a single word fitly spoken, an appreciative smile when the beginnings of ambition were stirring in infantile breasts, furnished the magnetism that set their ambition afire!

We should not forget that it is emotion that supplies the vital force for all enterprises. Though the head plans the heart directs, and a child that is downhearted, discouraged, at odds with the world, cannot make his mind work as it should. The world would cease to move along, even in a mechanical way, were it not for the push of strong feeling. Ferrier asserts that the springs of most of our later activities are drawn from early recollections of things that were

INSPIRATION OF MOTHEE LOVE 9

agreeable to us, or that provoked in us some strong desire. It is one of the peculiar privileges of a mother to guide her child aright through furnishing him with a happy environment; to bathe him from infancy in the glow of sympathy, to encourage him continually by her understanding of his immature but perhaps permanent ambitions, and never to ridicule his ideas, however absurd they may seem. The first stirring of a real desire may be an hereditary impulse toward a pursuit for which the child has a veritable talent. On the other hand, anything that is absolutely nonsensical will soon be out-grown ; the child voluntarily abandons what has no foundation in common experience.

A little girl of ten years, whose forebears had been in several instances remarkable linguists, was seized with a strange ambition to invent a new tongue. After some secret attempts to twist the roots of her mother tongue to strange and unnatural usages, she approached her mother with the passionate declaration that if she had to give her life to the object she meant to invent a. new language. The mother was a discerning woman. Looking thoughtful, she observed gently, " It's a great idea. But there are a good many languages in the world now. I wonder if after all, we really need another one? However, I'll be glad to help you out if I can. If you get into difficulties come to me and we'll talk the matter over."