The Education of the Child | Page 8

are entirely
unnecessary even at this early age, and as soon as the child can
remember a blow, he is too old to receive one.
The child must certainly learn obedience, and, besides, this obedience
must be absolute. If such obedience has become habitual from the
tenderest age, a look, a word, an intonation is enough to keep the child
straight. The dissatisfaction of those who are bringing him up can only
be made effective when it falls as a shadow in the usual sunny

atmosphere of home. And if people refrain from laying the foundations
of obedience while the child is small, and his naughtiness is
entertaining, Spencer's method undoubtedly will be found unsuitable
after the child is older and his caprice disagreeable.
With a very small child, one should not argue, but act consistently and
immediately. The effort of training should be directed at an early period
to arrange the experiences in a consistent whole of impressions
according to Rousseau and Spencer's recommendation. So certain
habits will become impressed in the flesh and blood of the child.
Constant crying on the part of small children must be corrected when it
has become clear that the crying is not caused by illness or some other
discomfort,--discomforts against which crying is the child's only
weapon. Crying is now ordinarily corrected by blows. But this does not
master the will of the child, and only produces in his soul the idea that
older people strike small children, when small children cry. This is not
an ethical idea. But when the crying child is immediately isolated, and
it is explained to him at the same time that whoever annoys others must
not be with them; if this isolation is the absolute result, and cannot be
avoided, in the child's mind a basis is laid for the experience that one
must be alone when one makes oneself unpleasant or disagreeable. In
both cases the child is silenced by interfering with his comfort; but one
type of discomfort is the exercise of force on his will; the other
produces slowly the self-mastery of the will, and accomplishes this by a
good motive. One method encourages a base emotion, fear. The other
corrects the will in a way that combines it with one of the most
important experiences of life. The one punishment keeps the child on
the level of the animal. The other impresses upon him the great
principle of human social life, that when our pleasure causes
displeasure to others, other people hinder us from following our
pleasures; or withdraw themselves from the exercise of our self-will. It
is necessary that small children should accustom themselves to good
behaviour at table, etc. If every time an act of naughtiness is repeated,
the child is immediately taken away, he will soon learn that whoever is
disagreeable to others must remain alone. Thus a right application is
made of a right principle. Small children, too, must learn not to touch

what belongs to other people. If every time anything is touched without
permission, children lose their freedom of action one way or another,
they soon learn that a condition of their free action is not to injure
others.
It is quite true, as a young mother remarked, that empty Japanese rooms
are ideal places in which to bring up children. Our modern crowded
rooms are, so far as children are concerned, to be condemned. During
the year in which the real education of the child is proceeding by
touching, tasting, biting, feeling, and so on, every moment he is hearing
the cry, "Let it alone." For the temperament of the child as well as for
the development of his powers, the best thing is a large, light nursery,
adorned with handsome lithographs, wood-cuts, and so on, provided
with some simple furniture, where he may enjoy the fullest freedom of
movement. But if the child is there with his parents and is disobedient,
a momentary reprimand is the best means to teach him to reverence the
greater world in which the will of others prevails, the world in which
the child certainly can make a place for himself but must also learn that
every place occupied by him has its limits.
If it is a case of a danger, which it is desirable that the child should
really dread, we must allow the thing itself to have an alarming
influence. When a mother strikes a child because he touches the light,
the result is that he does this again when the mother is away. But let
him burn himself with the light, then he is certain to leave it alone. In
riper years when a boy misuses a knife, a toy, or something similar, the
loss of the object for the time being must be the punishment. Most