Honesty; a study of the causes and treatment of dishonesty among children

Front matter

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Preface

Our discussion of honesty and dishonesty in children is particularly addressed to parents and teachers. The field has been wisely delimited by the general editor, and in following his suggestion we shall neither deal with specifically criminal behavior and the material of law courts, nor shall we undertake to outline the subject for those whose professional duty brings constant contact with delinquents. In this volume, rather, we are addressing people who meet the concrete fact of a certain form of misbehavior, namely dishonesty, incidentally to the general affairs of life.

While we are confining ourselves to delinquency as known in the home or school, let none suppose that these early forms of misconduct have no connection with criminalism. On the contrary, a most significant fact on which I am always insisting is that when one traces back the careers of criminals they are practically always found to start in the delinquencies of childhood. Treatment begun in this period when the individual is flexible and habits of mind and character are not yet set — the value of which we wish ever to emphasize — is of vast importance in the light of the possible development of a delinquent career.

The point of deoarture for us throughout, as the general editor at first stated, is properly the specific form of misconduct and what can be done about it. The teacher or parent is confronted by the fact of

PREFACE

stealing, truancy, lying or what not; their first and last considerations are those of therapy and prevention. Our main aim is to show in simple and non-technical phraseology what there may be in the background of inner mental life or outward experience that has to be met in order that the individual problem may be dealt with successfully.

Our handling of delinquencies in categories, such as the subject of this present work indicates, does not ;mean that we in the least agree to anything like the old ideas concerning treatment, expressed particularly in laws that provide for specific offenses being met by specific punishments, to say nothing of the immaturely considered legal refinements of this, when there is even discrimination between petty and grand offenses upon a basis of material values. We insist that our researches clearly show that given types of inner or outer causation may lead to any one of several delinquencies, and that the first requisite of good treatment is to proceed from the misconduct back to the underlying cause. It is of the greatest moment for the protection of society as well as for the welfare of the misdoer that there should be accurate understanding of the real situation involved.

Winnetka, Illinois. William Healy.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Introduction • . . 1

Some general points of view — Adults fail to appreciate vital facts of childhood — Valuable to get appreciation of mental mechanisms — Essential to understand complexity of causes of misconduct — Superficial observation inadequate — Practicability of deeper studies — The common method of repression weak — Parental . attitude of repression — Dangerous unconcern of parents — Possible making too much of the misconduct — The practical method of this volume — General social measures for prevention • ,- of stealing omitted — Approach to the definite.* problem — Mental process always in the immediate background — Practical bearing of the mental background — Mental life being involved does not imply abnormality — Suggestion for practical use of this book.

Chapter I

INTRODUCTION yiD VANCE in methods of attacking the problems x\.of delinquency marks the present day. There is no more reason for supposing that we can not make great progress along this line of human endeavor than for thinking that any social or scientific effort is limited by the achievements of the past. The accretions to knowledge of the most practical sort made through recent application of thorough methods in this field warrant us in looking steadfastly forward to great improvement in the understanding and treatment of misconduct in children.

Some General Points of View. — Our aim in this work does not include criticism of the failures of the past, except as criticism may be based on accurately gathered data about the nature and needs of individual types of children and of causes of misconduct. Above all things, one need not deal here with generalities and theories; they are the weakness of formal systems of ethics and criminal science. But there are several general situations or points of view related to the problems of juvenile delinquency which may well be matters of earnest consideration by parents and teachers, who should be the first to observe the signs of the growth of delinquent tendencies.

Adults Fail to Appreciate Vital Facts of Childhood. — In the first place, it is quite obvious to the careful student of juvenile misconduct that the attitude of parents and other adults involved has its peculiarities and irrationalities. It seems that older people have grown too far beyond their memories of the world of childhood, with its special limitations and view-points, to appreciate the motivations and weaknesses of that period. The investigator of what really happens, especially in the mental life of the child, comes on a whole host of phenomena which, as guiding forces of juvenile misconduct, are neither known to the guardians of the particular child nor to other observers. There is an astonishing lack of any attempt to get down to the bed-level of causation and analyze out the essential facts as they really exist, so important for treatment. We are willing to affirm that very rarely indeed does one find anything like adequate recognition of the real world of the child, wherein always grow the beginnings of character, likewise the beginnings of careers, good or bad.

Valuable to Get Appreciation of Mental Mechanisms. — To get appreciation of these fundamental motives and forces, which mean so much for the conduct of life, I have often thought that it would be worth the while of any intelligent person to consider a single individual, perhaps himself, and gather together all the possible items of early mental life, and to refer them to their sources, and to note their finished product in developed character. Perhaps this procedure would be too difficult without instruction in the art of such character analysis. Perhaps, too, as we suggested above, the older person can not remember early formative conditions. But at least it requires no technical or special knowledge to perceive the general fact that in the mental life of any ordinary child there are ideas and emotions and mechanisms that are usually not even regarded as existent.

Essential to Understand Complexity of Causes of Misconduct. — We warn that it is dangerous to seize on any one item discovered by analysis, and feel it alone was responsible for misconduct ; it may always be found that causative factors are not single. The canons of intellectual honesty demand that all the main possible sources of difficulty should be investigated; even though trouble in one direction is ascertained, this is no sign that elsewhere everything is right. In our own treatment of special types of individuals and causes in the following pages, we never mean to indicate that one cause alone bears on the production of delinquency: if impelling mental imagery is involved, so is paucity of healthy mental interests and unfortunate early experiences; if mental incapacity is at fault, so is environmental opportunity, and defective parental guardianship. It should hardly be necessary to say that this complexity of causation is important in considering treatment; while a satis factory outcome may seem thereby to be rendered more difficult, in reality, through some one feature of the case, a promising avenue of approach may be opened up which otherwise would remain undiscovered.

Superficial Observation Inadequate. — Really intensive study of one or more difficult cases of stealing by children can not fail to bring fairminded acknowledgment from all of us that yearlong observation of children by ordinary methods, in families or in school groups, may leave the observer with small conception of what often is dynamic in the youthful mind. What we may actually find there, impelling to action, demonstrates the truth of the contentions of the modern masters of psychological analysis, who insist that there are many important mental activities and items of mental content of which the onlooker, and even the subject himself, knows little or nothing. The existence of these underlying forces challenges consideration, while it suggests great possibilities in the way of better preventions and treatments that may come through better understandings.

Practicability of Deeper Studies. — Any careful student of large experience with misdoers would call attention to the great variety and differences in causes, found through the scientific investigation of cases. One does not expect from a parent or guardian a detailed knowledge of these manifold conditions, but one may fairly ask for a greater appreciation of the fact that superficial observation seldom tells the story, and that there is urgent practical need for digging into the foundations of conduct. One feels justified in insisting that many of the beginnings of delinquency could be averted if only this appreciation existed and an effort was made to follow the lines of common-sense investigation. Indeed, it is to point out the practicability of more thorough attempts at understanding and treatment (always insisting, however, on the frequent necessity for special studies being made of the problemchild) that this volume is written.

The Common Method of Repression Weak. — Quite in line with the above intimations of why failures arise in treatment of children's misconduct is another point : that concerning common methods of meeting misbehavior. "Thou shalt not,'' is the typical response that delinquency receives in the home, or the school, or the court. Indeed, we might shorten the phrase and assert that the customary effort to check undesirable behavior is embodied in the single word, ''Don't." Thus to attempt to repress the tendency to misconduct by mere admonition (accompanied perhaps by punishment) savors strongly of the old drug therapy for illnesses — the symptoms, fever, etc., were then the objects of attention; the underlying pathology was not even suspected. Even theoretically we might expect failure from similar methods applied to misdoers; practically, our daily experience uncovers clearly the dearth of results from such ill-considered endeavors.

Parental Attitude of Repression. — Parental repressions form the best example of the faulty method. The parent, the one whom we should expect above all to know the ins and outs of the child's causes of misbehavior, often does just as badly as some impersonal agency, for instance, the law. The actual reaction of parents, as we observe it, ranges all the way between the following extremes: On the one hand, the child is merely told not to repeat the offense, and is expected to follow the warning. *T have told him not to do such things," is then the plea if there is further trouble. There is no parental idea of doing anything else about the matter. At the opposite extreme is the case where the parent hales the young offender before the juvenile court, occasionally at the tender age of ten or twelve years (I have seen many such instances), and, stating that nothing can be done with the child, begs that a reform-school sentence be imposed. The dehnquent is said to disgrace the family, to be impossible to control, to be a young criminal, to deserve nothing good. In any of these cases, including those at either extreme of the attitude toward punishment, there is not the slightest thought of causes and the constructive elements of treatment.

Dangerous Unconcern of Parents. — ^Two other contrasted features of the attitude of guardians, both to be deplored, should be mentioned. (There is often met, as teachers well know, an unfortunate tendency on the part of parents to regard their children's delinquencies with lightness and unconcern. Among the many things we have learned in juvenile court work is that this light attitude, in which the young individual is mainly let alone to work out his own destiny, may result in the growth of distinctly criminalistic behavior)) This is true whether the parents' attitude arises from selfish and lazy pushing aside of the issue, or whether the indifference is really due to the conviction that children's misconduct is a natural and temporary phase of their life, and that they will work themselves clear of it. ("I was wild when I was a boy and got over it. I guess it's all right; he'll do the same," is an expression we have heard many times.) The grave dangers of this let-alone principle are connoted by the discussion on most pages of this volume — the reader can think them out for himself.

Possible Making Too Much of the Misconduct. — An entirely opposite attitude of parents, encountered more seldom, is distinguished by too great concern and too much worry. Perhaps a single childish thieving expedition may be taken so hard that the advice of public authorities is sought and severe measures of retribution are considered. A v^oman, whose boy of eleven years had, under crowd influences, broken into some church building and stolen a few things, came with him in utter despair. He was a splendid little fellow who had followed out a gang-inspired idea of adventure. It was hard to persuade the mother that it was a very normal impulse carried too far. She thought his deed must betoken a real spirit of evil active within him. She represented a type of parent whose over-concern, and perhaps harshness, should be combated. Such people forget, perhaps, their own youth or, at least, the childhood of others who have been, through the accident of a momentary impulse or of crowd-suggestion, heavily delinquent and who have turned out to be quite normal morally. Sound treatment does not require such over-concern nor the conception of any evil spirit that rules children.

The Practical Method of this Volume. — Our method of attacking the topic of dishonesty proceeds from these considerations of general reasons for failure of treatment, to the specific facts of causation found by study of many hundreds of cases. We shall set forth, with much less attempt at formal arrangement than if we were writing a technical treatise, the various types of findings. While thus aiming at a practical presentation of the subject, for parents and teachers especially, the whole field has been outlined. By virtue of this it is to be hoped that the work will serve as a book of direct reference when a case of stealing is encountered by home or school guardians of children. Various issues will, of course, in particular cases have to be gone into much more thoroughly than is detailed here — ^professional advice will then often have to be sought.

General Social Measures for Prevention of Stealing Omitted. — It should be obvious that it is not our business now to deal with general social measures that are concerned with the prevention of delinquency. But these are of such vital import for every community that we can not forego their mention. Undoubtedly the most socially economical approach to the problem of stealing is through ascertaining in every city and town what the conditions are that peculiarly make for delinquency. No more important social survey can be contemplated. (One can but be delighted to note that expert services are being used recently in this direction.) Then there are the fine efforts of organizations built up along the lines of a juvenile protective association, in which there is attempt to work back from the delinquency of the child to the social conditions which are implicated and causative. I particularly commend both these types of effort.

Approach to the Definite Problem. — Now, concerning the immediate approach to a case of dishonesty, when such arises: Common-sense viewing of the whole matter of treatment leads to appreciation of the fact that before treatment can be applied it must be known what there is in conditions or in the individual to be treated. Diagnosis comes before therapy. Knowledge of the etiology, or source of the trouble, is the first step. This requires such intimate acquaintance with the child as is only afforded by viewing him in the light of the known general causations for misconduct. Observing the special traits of the young offender, knowledge of which may well lead to the application of special measures for his benefit, the endeavor should be to trace back to their beginnings, which may lie in several directions, the impulses which preceded the stealing.

Mental Process Always in the Immediate Background. — There is no point of greater general value for the student of delinquency to keep firmly fixed than that all conduct, including misconduct, is the direct outcome of mental processes. This should be accepted as axiomatic. In its simplest or physiological terms conduct may be defined as motor response to orders received from cerebral centers. To be sure, not all action that may be called social behavior is consciously controlled from the brain. There are many cerebral and even mental activities that go on below the level of consciousness, but some sort of mental process directly originates and rules every bit of conduct.

Practical Bearing of the Mental Background. — We are not here concerned with theoretical matters, we simply bring up this important issue because its validity is thoroughly demonstrable by the most practical considerations. It is clearly discernible from our years of experience that the most economical method of procedure in the study of cases of delinquency is first to ask ourselves what kind of mind we have in the given misdoer, and what there is in this particular mind that causes the undesirable behavior-tendencies. Even let it be a case where environmental causative factors are paramount; we can best understand these through considering the mental activities that they have influenced or started going in unfortunate directions. Not only is this method intrinsically important for the scientific understanding of the case, but, also, one soon learns that the quickest way to alter the tendencies is through modifying the most immediate causal agency — and that is found always in the mental processes of the child.

Mental Life Being Involved Does Not Imply Abnormality.' — It should be plain, even from the above remarks, that the author does not imply that delinquents are at all necessarily abnormal individuals, or subject to pathological states of mind. He has hoped throughout not to bear too hard on the aberrant types who so readily do engage in stealing; most childish misconduct does not arise from such a cause. The insistence on the part which mental phenomena play in conduct involves, very largely, discussion of quite normal processes of mind. Even when treating of adolescence and its instabilities, as related to dishonesty, we have not wished to over-emphasize the characteristics of that period as being abnormal and not susceptible to transmutation through self-control and healthful activities. Above all, the standpoint of the theorist who views all misconduct as evidence of individual queerness, is to be avoided.

Suggestion for Practical Use. — That this book may prove most serviceable, apart from the ordinary reading of it for information, we may offer the following suggestion : When brought face to face with an instance of dishonesty in a child — one of the commonest of delinquencies — ^the way to proceed rationally, that is diagnostically, is through obtaining an answer to all the main problems suggested in the separate chapters. And, we repeat, even if one source of trouble is discovered, there should be further seeking until all the main possible causes of stealing are ruled out. Is the child normal, defective, or peculiar mentally; was the stealing done under the influence of companions; is there some particular mental content urging toward delinquency; what, if any, are the weak points in home management or home interests, and so on? The chapter heads and the synopsis as given in the Table of Contents form a schedule by which can be covered all parts of the field of causation involved in the dishonesty of children.

Chapter II

MUCH has been said by certain students of the psychology of childhood concerning the resemblance of the conduct of the young child to characteristics exhibited during primitive stages of the human race. We find no occasion whatever in our practical work for making much of the supposed likeness; at once we can relegate this conception of child behavior to the theoretical field where it belongs. If we must philosophically pass upon the question of morality in young children the words of Sully may be used, ^'The first thing that strikes one in all such attempts to fix the moral world of the child is that they are judging of things by the wrong standards. The infant, though it has a nature capable of becoming moral or immoral, is not as yet a moral being; and there is a certain impertinence in trying to force it under our categories of good and bad, pure and corrupt."

Age of Moral Awakening. — At what age children acquire the ideas of right and wrong and, as particularly applicable to our present discussion, develop the distinction of meum et tuum is not to be fixed except in the terms of a range of years. The period in individual cases depends on innate mental abilities, on home teachings and discipline, and since so much of youthful mental development, as Royce insists, is due to imitation, the age greatly depends on the social life of the particular household and community. This last point must be well taken into account in consideration of the age factor in the development of moral traits.

Determinants of Beginnings. — What goes on in his immediate entourage is of prime importance for initiating the child's conceptions of property rights. It is not a matter of poverty as compared with affluence — there are many other incidental conditions that make for the result. It is easy to appreciate that if, for instance, there is an unusual community of interests in the household, the Individual brought up under these circumstances may readily fail to perceive in the first years of general social intercourse what a stigma pertains to the appropriation of property away from home. Children in some families, including both rich and poor, as a matter of custom are allowed to help themselves to whatever they please in the way of small things at home. We have learned that this extends even to their being privileged to take money from the parental purse. Under such conditions it can not be expected that there should be shown early that respect for property rights that obtains

16 HONESTX

when there are sharp rules in the home circle about not interfering with the belongings of others.

Inculcating Respect for Property. — In the light of the fact that a considerable amount of dishonesty, especially during the years of childhood, originates simply through the lack of respect for the rights of others, we may be fairly asked how best the early notion of right and wrong in this particular can be inculcated. We unhesitatingly answer that it is to be accomplished, first and foremost, by environmental example, and, if necessary, by well directed discipline. I shall never forget the case of the young man, an arrant thief, who analyzed out with me the beginnings of his own tendencies, and who, after sincere deliberation, could come to no other conclusion than that it all began with his early practise of taking money from his father's pockets. It seemed that his father, a typical ^'moderate drinker,'' was accustomed to come home from work too surly to give his wife a proper allowance, and her recourse was to have her little boy of six years get money from the paternal pockets after her husband had gone to sleep. This was the source of the boy's delinquent tendencies — at the age when he should have been building up his notions of property rights and forming the basis of what would later be called honesty he was often engaged in what strongly resembled stealing. His conception of his possibilities in life always included, from that time on, the chances for obtaining money and its equivalents by unfair means. If in the home life there is proper respect for the needs and possessions of husband, wife, brother and sister, a recognition of their rights, this forms the most adequate of all moral instruction concerning property. That it may be, and often is, necessary to add even to good example the force of sharp discipline in order that the sense of property rights may be awakened at the earliest moment goes without saying. But more often adoption of a reasoning and teaching attitude with the child offers better service to the desired end.

Need of Child for Property. — ^We have been constantly struck in our practical experience with the fact that decided values appertain to letting even a very young child have things which belong to itself alone. Beautiful as is the spirit of communal interest in the family life, it is entirely inadequate in meeting the desire for possession that is certainly a part of every normal child's mental life. We are not here concerned with the general possibilities of mental development from experience with possessions, but only with the effect on generating the idea of the rights of possession. I would argue that many of the general causes of dishonesty, such as poverty and avarice, have also their representation in the familiar conditions of early life. A child without individual possessions, whether in a poorly or a well supplied family, experiences poverty. He comxcs inevitably to desire things for his own, to be jealous of those who have their own possessions, and is prone to think of how he may acquire such treasures. On the other hand, a child whose ideas of Hfe develop in connection with satisfactory and permanent, even though simple, possessions has much that affords soil for the growth of the best conceptions of property morality. In general, it may be said that the home, as well as the society, which permits individual poverty, is largely responsible for the tendency to dishonesty which may develop as an immediate or indirect reaction.

Innate Qualities vs. Experiences Forming Tendencies. — We have every reason to emphasize the innate differences of individuals as explaining character variations, and yet I would be far from alleging that innate differences have more influence than such environmental conditions as we have just mentioned in the formation of character tendencies and so-called moral perceptions. Taking it altogether, we have every proof that environmental and disciplinary conditions influence greatly where innate and even inherited traits seem to stand out predominatingly as determinants of the age at which the young individual is to develop, if ever, the full sense of right and wrong. A case in point is the following: A boy of five was showing tendencies that alarmed his most excellent father and mother greatly. He was stealing from other places besides his own home, and was running away for half a day at a time. He had taken quite valuable objects under impulses which could not, of course, be well formulated by himself or others, but evidently they expressed a direct desire for acquisition. The question brought up by the parents was whether or not in this boy defects of inheritance were showing, for a certain male in his direct ancestral line had been a criminal. The boy was found mentally normal and with only slight physical defects that could easily be remedied. The highly intelligent parents, though not well off, were capable of planning with us and carrying out a campaign which included setting a high standard of property rights within the household, giving to the youngster a sufficient supply of simple objects to allow him to develop his own world of possessions. Immediate discipline, too, was used to combat the invasion by the boy of the rights of others. In spite of the bad beginning, at the end of four years now there has long been a complete cessation of the youthful delinquency, although we know well that there might have been expected during this particular period a considerable further development of the tendency to misdoing.

Age Periods of Moral Growth. — From consideration of the above several types of facts, we may rest assured that the age of onset of moral apperceptions can not be fixed or even approximated in any such sense as the processes of physical growth or the items of mental development are to be scheduled. Of course, concerning the matter of appreelation of property rights, we can say that at three or four years one can expect but Httle perception and controlled conduct, and we can also say that at seven to ten years there should be sufficient development of apperceptions to form the basis of good behavior in this respect. But even at this there is ever the possibility of great individual differences. To get at a general conception of moral age levels I have been interested to inquire from a kindergarten teacher of wide experience concerning the amount of stealing that goes on among children of the kindergarten age, in this instance averaging about five and one-half years. Taking a group of one hundred pupils in daily attendance, and coming mostly from two foreign nationalities which supply our courts with a large number of offenders, we learn that a case of theft in or about the schoolroom occurs on an average only about once a week. It must be remembered, too, that here the children come from the homes of poverty where there is neither a good supply of toys, nor much concern with ethical education, and that the kindergarten material would naturally be attractive as a childish possession. If we wanted to go by general figures, which is far from our purpose in this discussion, we might say then that already before six years there is usually to be found development of the idea of property rights adequate for simple social needs. A definite age of unmorality, which Goddard and some others have intimated might exist at about nine years, or its equivalent mental age in defectives, has not been substantiated by any large observations, and anyhow has no bearing on a possible earlier development of moral apperceptions.