The Education of the Child | Page 7

but only more or less prudent, stupid, amiable,
or bad-tempered examples of the genus man. The still living instincts of
the ape, double, in the case of man, the effect of heredity. Conservatism
is for the present stronger in mankind than the effort to produce new
types. But this last characteristic is the most valuable. The educator
should do anything but advise the child to do what everybody does. He
should rather rejoice when he sees in the child tendencies to deviation.
Using other people's opinion as a standard results in subordinating
one's self to their will. So we become a part of the great mass, led by
the Superman through the strength of his will, a will which could not

have mastered strong personalities. It has been justly remarked that
individual peoples, like the English, have attained the greatest political
and social freedom, because the personal feeling of independence is far
in excess of freedom in a legal form. Accordingly legal freedom has
been constantly growing.
For the progress of the whole of the species, as well as of society, it is
essential that education shall awake the feeling of independence; it
should invigorate and favour the disposition to deviate from the type in
those cases where the rights of others are not affected, or where
deviation is not simply the result of the desire to draw attention to
oneself. The child should be given the chance to declare
conscientiously his independence of a customary usage, of an ordinary
feeling, for this is the foundation of the education of an individual, as
well as the basis of a collective conscience, which is the only kind of
conscience men now have. What does having an individual conscience
mean? It means submitting voluntarily to an external law, attested and
found good by my own conscience. It means unconditionally heeding
the unwritten law, which I lay upon myself, and following this inner
law even when I must stand alone against the whole world.
It is a frequent phenomenon, we can almost call it a regular one, that it
is original natures, particularly talented beings, who are badly treated at
home and in school. No one considers the sources of conduct in a child
who shows fear or makes a noise, or who is absorbed in himself, or
who has an impetuous nature. Mothers and teachers show in this their
pitiable incapacity for the most elementary part in the art of education,
that is, to be able to see with their own eyes, not with pedagogical
doctrines in their head.
I naturally expect in the supporters of society, with their conventional
morality, no appreciation of the significance of the child's putting into
exercise his own powers. Just as little is this to be expected of those
Christian believers who think that human nature must be brought to
repentance and humility, and that the sinful body, the unclean beast,
must be tamed with the rod,--a theory which the Bible is brought to
support.

I am only addressing people who can think new thoughts and
consequently should cease using old methods of education. This class
may reply that the new ideas in education cannot be carried out. But the
obstacle is simply that their new thoughts have not made them into new
men; the old man in them has neither repose, nor time, nor patience, to
form his own soul, and that of the child, according to the new thoughts.
Those who have "tried Spencer and failed," because Spencer's method
demands intelligence and patience, contend that the child must be
taught to obey, that truth lies in the old rule, "As the twig is bent the
tree is inclined."
BENT is the appropriate word, bent according to the old ideal which
extinguishes personality, teaches humility and obedience. But the new
ideal is that man, to stand straight and upright, must not be bent at all
only supported, and so prevented from being deformed by weakness.
One often finds, in the modern system of training, the crude desire for
mastery still alive and breaking out when the child is obstinate. "You
won't!" say father and mother; "I will teach you whether you have a
will. I will soon drive self-will out of you." But nothing can be driven
out of the child; on the other hand, much can be scourged into it which
should be kept far away.
Only during the first few years of life is a kind of drill necessary, as a
pre-condition to a higher training. The child is then in such a high
degree controlled by sensation, that a slight physical pain or pleasure is
often the only language he fully understands. Consequently for some
children discipline is an indispensable means of enforcing the practice
of certain habits. For other children, the stricter methods