Your Child Today and Tomorrow | Page 5

airship," they feel the call of duty to punish him for his lies!
Many of us have realized in a helpless sort of way that there is need for expert knowledge in these matters, and have comfortably shifted the responsibility to the teacher. Parents are often heard to say, when a troublesome youngster is under discussion, "Just wait until he begins to go to school." It is not wise to wait. There is much to be done before the school can be thought of, or even before the kindergarten age is reached. Indeed, a child is never too young to profit from the application of thought and knowledge to his treatment.
Of course, the training value of the school's work is not to be underestimated. The social intercourse that the child experiences there, the regularity of hours, the teacher's personality, all have their favorable influence in the molding of the child's character. But neither must we overestimate the powers of the school. The school has the child but a few hours a day, for barely more than half the year; the classes are unconscionably large. We all hope that the classes will be made smaller, but they never can be small enough, within our own times, for the purpose of really effective moral training. The relations between teacher and pupil can never be as intimate as are those of parent and child. The teacher knows the child, as a rule, only as a member of a group and under special circumstances; the parents alone have the opportunity to know closely the individual peculiarities of the child; they alone can know him in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow, in his strength and in his weakness. The parents can watch their child from day to day, year after year; whereas the teacher sees the child for a comparatively short period of his development, and then passes him on to another.
The time was--and for most of our children still is--when the teacher had to know nothing but her "subjects"; the nature of the child was to her as great a mystery as it is to the ordinary person who never learned anything about it. She was supposed to deal with the "average" child that does not exist, and to attempt the futile task of drawing the laggard up to this arbitrary average and of holding the genius down to it. The effort is being made to have the teacher recognize the individuality of each child; but the mother is still expected to confine her ministrations to his individual digestion.
In a dozen different ways the effective methods in the treatment of children, at home or in school, in the church or on the playground, depend upon knowledge and understanding, as is the case in all practical activities. Instincts alone are never sufficient to tell us what to do, notwithstanding the fact that so much really valuable work has been achieved in the past without any special training.
It may be true that in the past the instincts of the child adapted him to the needs of life. It may also be true that the instincts of adults adapted them in the past to their proper treatment of children. We should realize, however, that the conditions of modern life are so complex that few of us know just what to do under given conditions unless we have made a special effort to find out. And this is just as true of the treatment of children as it is of the care of the health, or of the building of bridges. It is for this reason that the results of child study are important to all who have to do with children--whether as teachers or as parents, whether as club leaders or as directors of institutions, whether as social workers or as loving uncles and aunts.
It is impossible to guarantee to anyone that a study of child nature will enable him or her to train children into models of good behavior. Knowledge alone does not always produce the desired results; nevertheless, an understanding of the child should enable those who have to deal with him to assume an attitude that will reduce in a great measure their annoyance at the various awkward and inconsiderate and mischievous acts of the youngsters. Such a study should make possible a closer intimacy with the child. And, finally, it should make possible a longer continuance of that intimacy with the child, which is so helpful for those in authority as well as for the child himself.

II.
THE PROBLEM OF PUNISHMENT
Picture to yourself a dark hallway. Behind the door stands an indignant mother with a strap in her hand. It is past the dinner hour and William has not yet returned. But here he is now. He comes bounding up the