Chapter III: Part 3

New truth is seen by new brains. As the organ we think with grows from age to age, we are able to think farther and deeper; but, if the growing brain is especially injured in any one department in early youth, it will not grow as fast in that one line. As a general rule,--a rule with rare exceptions,--we do thus injure the baby brain in the line of ethical thought and action. In other sciences we teach what we know, when we teach at all, and practise fairly; but, in teaching a child ethics, we do not give even what we have of knowledge, and our practice with him and the practice we demand from him are not at all in accordance with our true views.

In glaring instance is the habit of lying to children. A woman who would not lie to a grown friend will lie freely to her own child. A man who would not be unjust to his brother or a stranger will be unjust to his little son. The common courtesy given any adult is not given to the child. That delicate consideration for another's feelings, which is part of our common practice among friends, is lacking in our dealings with children. From the treatment they receive, children cannot learn any rational and consistent scheme of ethics. Their healthy little brains make early inference from the conduct of their elders, and incite behaviour on the same plan; but they speedily find that these are poor rules, for they do not work both ways. The conduct we seek to enforce from them does not accord with our conduct, nor form any consistent whole by itself. It is not based on any simple group of principles which a child can understand, but rests very largely on the personal equation and the minor variations of circumstance.

Take lying again as an instance. 1. We lie to the child. He discovers it. No evil is apparently resultant. 2. He accuses us of it, and we punish him for impertinence. 3. He lies to us, and meets severe penalties. 4. We accuse him of it, rightly or wrongly, and are not punished for impertinence. 5. He observes us lie to the visitor in the way of politeness with no evil result. 6. He lies to the visitor less skilfully, and is again made to suffer. 7. He lies to his more ignorant juniors, and nothing happens. 8. Meanwhile, if he receives any definite ethical instruction on the subject, he is probably told that God hates a liar, that to lie is a sin!

The elastic human brain can and does accommodate itself to this confusion, and grows up to complacently repeat the whole performance without any consciousness of inconsistency; but progress in ethics is hardly to be looked for under such conditions. It is pathetic to see this waste of power in each generation. We are born with the gentler and kinder impulses bred by long social interrelation. We have ever broader and subtler brains; but our good impulses are checked, twisted, tangled, weighed down with many artificial restrictions, and our restless questionings and suggestions are snubbed or neglected. A child is temptingly open to instruction in ethics. His primitive mental attitude recognises the importance of the main principles as strongly as the early savage did. His simple and guarded life makes it easy for us to supply profuse and continuous illustrations of the working of these principles; and his strong, keen feelings enable us to impress with lasting power the relative rightness and wrongness of different lines of action.

Yet this beautiful opportunity is not only neglected, but the fresh mind and its eager powers are blurred, confused, discouraged, by our senseless treatment. Our lack of knowledge does not excuse it. Our lingering religious restriction does not excuse it. We know something of ethics, and practise something, but treat the child as if he was a lower instead of a higher being. Surely, we can reduce our ethical knowledge into some simple and teachable shape, and take the same pains to teach this noblest, this most indispensable of sciences that we take to teach music or dancing. Physics is the science of molecular relation,--how things work in relation to other things. Ethics is the science of social relation,--how people work in relation to other people. To the individual there is no ethics but of self-development and reproduction. The lonely animal's behaviour goes no farther. But gregarious animals have to relate their behaviour to one another,--a more complex problem; and in our intricate co-relation there is so wide a field of inter-relative behaviour that its working principles and laws form a science.

However complex our ultimate acts, they are open to classification, and resolve themselves into certain general principles which long since were recognised and named. Liberty, justice, love,--we all know these and others, and can promptly square a given act by some familiar principle. The sense of justice developes very early, and may be used as a basis for a large range of conduct. "To play fair" can be early taught. "That isn't fair!" is one of a child's earliest perceptions. "When I want to go somewhere, you say I'm too little; and, when I cry, you say I'm too big! It isn't fair!" protests the child.

In training a child in the perception and practice of justice, we should always remember that the standard must suit the child's mind, not ours. What to our longer, wider sweep of vision seems quite just, to him may seem bitterly unjust; and, if we punish a child in a way that seems to him unjust, he is unjustly punished. So the instructor in ethics must have an extended knowledge of the child's point of view,--that of children in general and of the child being instructed in particular, and the illustrations measured accordingly. It ought to be unnecessary to remark that no more passion should be used in teaching ethics than in teaching arithmetic. The child will make mistakes, of course. We know that beforehand, and can largely provide for them. It is for us to arrange his successive problems so that they are not too rapid or too difficult, and to be no more impatient or displeased at a natural slip in this line of development than in any other.

Unhappily, it is just here that we almost always err. The child's slowly accumulating perceptions and increasing accuracy of expression are not only confused by our erroneous teaching, but greatly shocked and jarred by our manner, our evident excitement in cases of conduct which we call "matters of right and wrong." All conduct is right or wrong. A difference in praise or blame belongs to relative excellence of intention or of performance; but the formation of a delicate and accurate conscience is sadly interfered with by our violent feelings. It is this which renders ethical action so sensitive and morbid. Where in other lines we act calmly, according to our knowledge, or, if we err, calmly rectify the error, in ethics we are nervous, vacillating, unduly elated or depressed, because our early teachings in this field were so overweighted with intense feeling.

Self-control is one of the first essentials in the practice of ethics,--which is to say, in living. Self-control can be taught a child by gently graduated exercises, so that he shall come calmly into his first kingdom, and exercise this normal human power without self-consciousness. We do nothing actively to develope this power. We simply punish the lack of it when that lack happens to be disagreeable to us. A child who has "tantrums," for instance,--those helpless, prostrate passions of screaming and kicking,--is treated variously during the attack; but nothing is done during the placid interval to cultivate the desired power of control. Self-control is involved in all conscious acts. Therefore, it should not be hard to so arrange and relate those acts as to steadily develope the habit.

Games in varying degree require further exertion of self-control, and games are the child's daily lessons. The natural ethical sense of humanity is strongly and early shown in our games. It is a joy to us to learn "the rules" and play according to them, or to a maturer student to grasp the principles and work them out; and our quick condemnation of the poor player or the careless player, and our rage at him who "does not play fair," show how naturally we incline to right conduct. Life is a large game, with so many rules that it is very hard to learn by them; but its principles can be taught to the youngest. When we rightly understand those principles, we can leave off many arbitrary rules, and greatly simplify the game. The recognition of the rights of others is justice, and comes easily to the child. The generosity which goes beyond justice is also natural to the child in some degree, and open to easy culture. It should, however, always rest on its natural precursor, justice; and the child be led on to generosity gradually, and by the visible example of the higher pleasure involved.

To divide the fruit evenly is the first step. To show that you enjoy giving up your share, that you take pleasure in his pleasure, and then, when this act is imitated, to show such delight and gratitude as shall make the baby mind feel your satisfaction,--that is a slow but simple process. We usually neglect the foundation of justice, and then find it hard to teach loving-kindness to the young mind. Demands on the child's personal surrender and generosity should be made very gradually, and always with a clearly visible cause. Where any dawning faculty is overstrained in youth, it is hard and slow to re-establish the growth.

One simple ethical principle most needful in child-training, and usually most painfully lacking, is honesty. Aside from direct lying, we almost universally use concealment and evasion; and even earlier than that we assume an artificial manner with babies and young children which causes the dawning ethical sense strange perturbations.

It is a very common thing to demand from little children a show of affection without its natural prompting. Even between mother and child this playing at loving is often seen. "Come and kiss mamma! What! Don't you love mamma? Poor mamma! Mamma cry!" And mamma pretends to cry, in order to make baby pretend to love her. The adult visitor almost invariably simulates an interest and cordiality which is not felt, and does it in a palpably artificial manner. These may seem small matters. We pass them without notice daily, but they are important in the foundation impressions of the young brain. Children are usually very keen to detect the pretence. "Oh, you don't mean that: you only say so!" they remark. We thus help to develope a loose, straggling sense of honesty and honour, a chronic ethical inaccuracy, like a bad "ear" for music.

The baby-educator should see to it that she show only real feelings to the child; and show them in large letters, as it were. Do not say, "Mamma is angry," or "Mamma is grieved," or "Mamma is ashamed," but be angry, grieved, or ashamed visibly. Let the child observe the effect of his act on you, not hear you say you feel thus and so, and see no signs of it. We depend far too much on oral statements, and neglect the simpler, stronger, surer means of conveying impressions. The delicacy of perception of a child should be preserved and tenderly used. We often blur and weaken it by giving false, irregular, and disproportionate impressions, and then are forced to use more and more violence to make any impression at all. All this sensitiveness is to ethics what the "musical ear" is to music. In injuring it, we make it harder for the growing soul to discriminate delicately in ethical questions,--a difficulty but too common among us.

The basis of human ethics, being social, requires for its growth a growing perception of collective and inter-relative rights and duties. Our continual object with the child is to establish in his mind this common consciousness and an accurate measure in perception. It is at first a simple matter of arithmetic. Here is the group of little ones, and the equal number of cookies: palpably, each should have one. Here is one extra cookie. Who shall have it? Robby, because his is the smallest. Jamie cries that his is as small as Robby's. Is it? The fact is ascertained. Divide the extra cookie, then: that's fair. Or here is one who was not well yesterday and had no cookies. Give it to him. These things are not to be ostentatiously done nor too continually, but always with care and accuracy, as lessons more important than any others. The deeper and larger sense of social duty,--not the personal balancing of rights, which is easy to even the youngest mind, but the devotion to the service of all, the recognition that the greater includes the less,--this must be shown by personal example long before it can be imitated.

Parents neglect this where it would help them most, and substitute, to meet the child's inquiries, only personal authority and compulsion. If the parent would constantly manifest a recognition of duty and performance of it even against desire, it would be a great help to the child. Most children imagine that grown persons do just as they want to; and that the stringent code of behaviour enforced upon them is requisite only in childhood, and enforceable only because of their weakness. Much of the parent's conduct can be used as an object-lesson to the child; but its skilful employment needs clear ethical perception and much educational ability. For instance, if the mother elaborately explains that she is obliged to do something which seems to the child absurd, or if she claims to have to do a certain thing which the child can see that she really enjoys, the impressions made are not correct ones. A recognition of the importance of right teaching of ethics to the child would help adult conduct in most cases. And, if the child were receiving proper grounding in ethics from a special educator, he could come home and perplex his parents with problems, as a bright child often does now in other sciences.

This, of course, points to the need of accepted text-books on ethics, and will allow of disputes between authorities and disagreement on many points; but these conditions exist in all sciences. There are different authorities and "schools," much disagreement and dispute and varying conduct based on our various scientific beliefs. But out of the study, discussion, and ensuing behaviour comes the gradual proof of what is really true; and we establish certain generally accepted facts and principles, while still allowing a margin for divergence of opinion and further knowledge.

Our dread of studying ethics as a science on account of this divergence of opinion is a hereditary brain tendency, due to the long association of ethical values with one infallible religious text-book,--Koran or Bible or Talmud or Zend-Avesta.

"It is written" was the most conclusive of statements to the ancient mind. The modern mind ought by this time to have developed a wide and healthy distrust of that which is written. While our "written" ethics has remained at a standstill always until the upward sweep of social conduct demanded and produced a better religion, our unnoticed practice of ethics has worked out many common rules.

In the fearless study of this field of practical ethics lies our way to such simple text-books as may be used to teach children. There is no question as to whether we should or should not teach ethics to very little children. We do, we must, whether we will or not. The real question is what to teach and how. They learn from our daily walk and conversation; and they learn strange things. Most palpable of all among the wrong impressions given to our children is that of the pre-eminent importance of the primitive relations of life, and the utter unimportance of the great social relations of our time. Whatever ideas of right and wrong the child succeeds in gathering, they are all of a closely personal nature, based on interpersonal conduct in the family relation, or in such restricted and shallow social relations as is covered by our code of "company manners."

The greatest need of better ethics to-day is in our true social relation,--the economic and political field of action in which lie our major activities, and in which we are still so grossly uncivilised. Not until he goes to school does the child begin to appreciate any general basis of conduct; and even there the ethics of the position are open to much clearer treatment.

As the mother is so prominent a factor in influencing the child's life, it is pre-eminently necessary that she should be grounded in this larger ethics, and able to teach it by example as well as by description. She needs a perception of the proportionate duties of mankind,--an understanding of their true basis, and a trained skill in imparting this knowledge to the child. If she cannot properly teach ethics, she should provide a teacher more competent. At present the only special ethical teaching for the child outside the family is in the Sunday-school; and Sunday-school teachers are usually amiable young ladies who are besought on any terms--with no preparation whatever--to give this instruction. Once we boldly enter the field of ethical study, and reduce its simple principles to a teachable basis,--when we make clear to ourselves and our children the legitimate reasons of right conduct,--the same intelligence and ambition which carry us on so far in other sciences will lift the standard of behaviour of our race, both in theory and practice. Meanwhile, with such knowledge and practice as we have to-day, let us see to it that we give to little children our best ethics by precept and example, with hopes that they may go on to higher levels.

VI.

A PLACE FOR CHILDREN.

The one main cause of our unfairness to children is that we consider them wholly in a personal light. Justice and equity, the rights of humanity, require a broader basis than blood relationship. Children are part of humanity, and the largest part. Few of us realise their numbers, or think that they constitute the majority of human beings. The average family, as given in the census returns, consist of five persons,--two adults and three minors. Any population which increases has a majority of children, our own being three-fifths. This large proportion of human beings constitutes a permanent class,--another fact we fail to consider because of our personal point of view. One's own child and one's neighbour's child grow up and pass out of childhood, and with them goes one's interest in children. Of course, we intellectually know that there are others; but to the conscious mind of most persons children are evanescent personal incidents.

The permanence of childhood as a human status is proven by the survival among them of games and phrases of utmost antiquity, which are handed down, not from father to son, but from child to child. If an isolated family moves into a new country, and its children grow up alone, they do not know these games. We should bear in mind in studying children that we have before us a permanent class, larger than the adult population. So that in question of numerical justice they certainly have a right to at least equal attention. But, when we remember also that this large and permanent class of human beings is by far the most important, that on its right treatment rests the progress of the world, then, indeed, it behooves us to consider the attitude of the adult population toward the junior members of society.

As members of society, we find that they have received almost no attention. They are treated as members of the family by the family, but not even recognised as belonging to society. Only in modern history do we find even enough perception of the child's place in the State to provide some public education; and to-day, in some more advanced cities, some provision for public protection and recreation. Children's playgrounds are beginning to appear at last among people who have long maintained public parks and gardens for adults. Also, in the general parks a children's quarter is often now provided, with facilities for their special care and entertainment. But except for these rare cases of special playgrounds, except for the quite generous array of school-houses and a few orphan asylums and kindred institutions, there are no indications in city or country that there are such people as children.

A visitor from another planet, examining our houses, streets, furniture, and machinery, would not gather much evidence of childhood as a large or an important factor in human life. The answer to this is prompt and loud: "Children belong at home! Look there, and you will see if they are considered or not."

Let us look there carefully. The average home is a house of, say, six rooms. This is a liberal allowance, applicable only to America. Even with us, in our cities, the average home is in a crowded tenement,--only two or three rooms; and in wide stretches of country it is a small and crowded farm-house. Six rooms is liberal allowance,--kitchen, dining-room, and parlour, and three bedrooms. Gazing upon the home from the outside, we see a building of dimensions suited to adults. There is nothing to indicate children there. Examining it from the inside, we find the same proportionate dimensions, and nothing in the materials or arrangement of the internal furnishings to indicate children there. The stairs are measured to the adult tread, the windows to the adult eye, the chairs and table to the adult seat. Hold! In a bedroom we discover a cradle,--descended from who knows what inherited desire for swinging boughs!--and, in some cases, a crib. In the dining-room is often a high chair (made to accommodate the adult table), and sometimes in the parlour a low chair for the child. If people are wealthy and careful, there is, perhaps, a low table, too; but the utmost that can be claimed for the average child is a cradle or crib, a high chair, and a "little rocker." There can be no reasonable objection to this, so long as the child is considered merely as a member of a family. The adult family precedes and outlasts the child, and it would be absurd to expect them to stoop and suffer in a house built and furnished for children.

So we build for the adult only, and small legs toil painfully up our stairs and fall more painfully down them.

But the moment we begin to address ourselves to the needs of children as a class, the result is different. In the school-house all the seats are for children, except "teacher's chair"; in the kindergarten the tiny chairs and tables are perfectly appropriate; in the playground all the appointments are child-size. "What do you expect!" protests the perplexed parent. "You say yourself, I cannot build my house child-size. Do you expect me to add a child-size house in the back yard? I cannot afford it."

No, the individual parent cannot afford to build a child-house for his own family, nor, for that matter, a school-house. We, collectively, whether through general taxation, as in the public school, or combination of personal funds, as in the private school, do manage to provide our children with school-houses, because we recognise their need of them. Similarly, we can provide for them suitable houses for a far more early and continuous education,--when we see the need of them. Here the untouched brain-spaces make no response. "What do you mean!" cries the parent. "Do you wish us to club together, and build a--a--public nursery for our children!" This seems sufficiently horrific to stop all further discussion. But is it? May we not gently pursue the theme?

We can and do cheerfully admit the advantages of a public school and a public school-teacher for our children. Some of us admit the advantages of a public kindergarten and a public kindergartner for our children. The step between child-garden and baby-garden is slight. Why not a public nursery and a public nurse? That, of course, for those classes who gladly provide and patronise the public school and kindergarten. The swarming neglected babies of the poor, now "underfoot" in dirty kitchen or dirtier street, part neglected and part abused, a tax on the toiling mother and a grievous injury to the older children who must care for them,--these would be far better off if every crowded block had its big, bright baby-garden on the roof, and their young lives were kept peaceful, clean, and well cared for by special nurses who knew their business. A public nursery is safer than the public street. One hot reply to this proposition is that "statistics prove that babies in institutions die faster than babies even in the poorest families." Perhaps this is so.

But consider the difference in the cases. Children in institutions are motherless, generally orphans. No one is proposing to remove the mothers of the babies in the baby-garden. "But they would be separated from their mothers!" Children who go to school are separated from their mothers. Children who go to the kindergarten are separated from their mothers. Children who play in the street are separated from their mothers. If the mothers of these children had nothing else to do, they could give all their time to them. But they have other things to do; and, while they are busy, the baby would be better off in the baby-garden than in the street. To those who prefer to maintain the private school and the private kindergarten, a private baby-garden would be equally available. "But we do not want it. We prefer to care for our children at home," they reply. This means that they prefer to have their little ones in their own nursery, under the care of the mother, _via_ the nurse.

The question remains open as to which the children would prefer, and which would be better for them. Perhaps certain clear and positive assertions should be made here, to allay the anxiety and anger about "separating the child from the mother."

The mother of a young baby should be near enough to nurse it, as a matter of course. She should "take care of it"; that is, see that it has everything necessary to its health, comfort, and development. But that is no reason why she should administer to its every need with her own hands. The ignorant, low-class poor mother does this, and does not preserve the lives of her children thereby. The educated, high-class rich mother does not do this, but promptly hires a servant to do it for her. The nursery and the nurse are essential to the baby; but what kind of nursery and nurse are most desirable? The kind of servant hired by the ordinary well-to-do family is often not a suitable person to have the care of little children. A young child needs even more intelligent care than an older one.

A group of families, each paying for its children's schooling, can afford to give them a far higher class of teacher than each could afford to provide separately. So a group of families, each paying for its children's "nursing," could afford to provide a far superior class of "nurse" than each can provide separately.

Here again rises the protest that it is not good for small children--babies--to be "herded together,"--see infant mortality in institutions. Again, an unfair comparison is involved. The poorest kind of children, motherless and fatherless, are crowded in undue numbers in "charitable" or "public" institutions, and submitted to the perfunctory care of low-grade, ill-paid attendants, among accommodations by no means of the best. We are asked to compare this to small groups of healthy, well-bred children, placed for certain hours of the day only in carefully planned apartments, in all ways suitable, under the care of high-grade, well-paid expert attendants and instructors.

The care of little children is not servant's work. It is not "nurses'" work. A healthy child should have his physical needs all properly supplied, and, for the rest, be under the most gentle and exquisite "training." It is education, and education more valuable than that received in college, which our little ones need; and they do not get it from nurse-maids.

Then rises the mother. "I can teach my baby better than any teacher, however highly trained." If the mother can, by all means let her. But can she? We do not hear mothers protesting that they can teach their grown-up sons and daughters better than the college professors, nor their middle-aged children better than the school-teachers. Why, then, are they so certain that they can teach the babies better than trained baby-teachers? They are willing to consult a doctor if the baby is ill, and gladly submit to his dictation. "The doctor says baby must eat this and go there and do so." There is no wound to maternal pride in this case. If they have "defective" children, they are only too glad to place them under "expert care," not minding even "separation" for the good of the child.

Any one who knows of the marvellous results obtained by using specially trained intelligence in the care of defective children must wonder gravely if we might not grow up better with some specially trained intelligence used on our normal children. But this we cannot have till we make a place for children. No woman or man, with the intelligence and education suitable for this great task, would be willing to be a private servant in one family. We do not expect it of college-teacher or school-teacher. We could not expect it of baby-teacher. The very wealthy might of course command all three; but that has no application to mankind in general, and is also open to grave question as to its relative value.

A private staff of college professors would not be able to give the boy the advantages of going to college. We cannot have separately what we can have collectively. Moreover, even if the teacher be secured, we have not at home the material advantages open to us in the specially prepared place for children.

A house or range of apartments for little children could be made perfectly safe,--which is more than the home is. From the pins on the carpet, which baby puts in his mouth, the stairs he falls down, the windows he falls out of and the fire he falls into, to the doors to jam the little fingers and the corners and furniture he bumps himself upon, "the home" is full of danger to the child. Why should a baby be surrounded with these superfluous evils? A room really designed for babies to play in need have no "furniture" save a padded seat along the wall for the "grown-ups" to sit on, a seat with little ropes along the edge for the toddlers to pull up and walk by. The floor should be smooth and even, antiseptically clean, and not hard enough to bump severely. A baby must fall, but we need not provide cobblestones for his first attempts. Large soft ropes, running across here and there, within reach of the eager, strong little hands, would strengthen arms and chest, and help in walking. A shallow pool of water, heated to suitable temperature, with the careful trainer always at hand, would delight, occupy, and educate for daily hours. A place of clean, warm sand, another of clay, with a few simple tools,--these four things--water, sand, clay, and ropes to climb on--would fill the days of happy little children without further "toys." These are simple, safe, primitive pleasures, all helpful to growth and a means of gradual education. The home cannot furnish these things, nor could the mother give her time and attention to their safe management, even if she knew how to teach swimming, modelling, and other rudimentary arts.

The home, beside its difficulties and dangers, is full of unnecessary limitations. It is arranged on a scale of elegance such as the adult income can compass; and the natural activities of childhood continually injure the household decorations and conveniences. Perfectly natural and innocent conduct on the part of the child is deleterious to the grown-up home, so patently so that owners of fine houses are not willing to let them to families with children.

A nice comment this on the home as a place for children! Must a home be shabby and bare? Or must the child be confined to his bed? Why not develope the home to its own perfection,--a place of beauty and comfort and peace,--and let the children have a home of their own for part of the day, wherein the order and beauty and comfort are child-size? The child could sleep under his mother's eye or ear, and gradually aspire to the adult table when he had learned how to be comfortable there, and not injure the comfort of others. He could soon have his own room if the family could afford it, and express his personality in its arrangement; but the general waking time of little children could be much better passed in a special house for children than in the parental kitchen, parlour, bedroom, or back yard. "But why not the private nursery,--the sunny room for the child and his toys? Is not that enough?" The private nursery means the private nurse, who is, as a class, unfit to have the care of little children. She is a servant; and the forming ideas of justice, courtesy, and human rights in general, are much injured by the spectacle of an adult attendant who is a social inferior. A servant is not a proper person to have charge of these impressionable years.

Moreover, however perfect the private nursery and private nurse might be, there remains its isolation to injure the child. We grow up unnecessarily selfish, aborted in the social faculties proper to our stage of advance, because each child is so in the focus of family attention all the time. A number of little ones together for part of every day, having their advantages in common, learning from infancy to say "we" instead of "I," would grow up far better able to fill their places as helpful and happy members of society.

Even in those rare cases where the mother does actually devote her entire time to her children, it would still be better for them to pass part of that time in an equally wise and more dispassionate atmosphere. Our babies and small children ought to have the society of the very best people instead of the society of such low-grade women as we can hire to be nurses in our homes. And, while they need pre-eminently the mother's tender love and watchful care, they also need the wider justice and larger experience of the genuine child-trainer.

So long as we so underrate the importance of childhood,--and that in proportion to the youth of the child,--those persons who should benefit our babies by their presence will not do so. Very great and learned men are proud to teach youths of eighteen and twenty in colleges; but they would feel themselves painfully ill-placed if set to teach the same boys at ten, five, or two years old. Why? Why should we not be eager for an introduction to "Professor Coltonstall! He's the first man in America in infant ethics! Marvellous success! You can always tell the children who have been under him!" You cannot have this professor in your nursery. But your children and those of fifty other eager parents could be benefited by his wisdom, experience, and exquisitely developed skill in a place in common.

The argument does not appeal to us. We see no need for "wisdom," "experience," "trained skill" with a baby. We have not realised that we despised our babies; but we do. Any one is good enough to take care of them. We even confide them to the care of distinctly lower races, as in the South with its negro nurses. "Social equality" with the negro is beyond imagination to the Southerner. That gross inferior race can never be admitted to their companionship, but to the companionship of the baby--certainly. Could anything prove more clearly our lack of just appreciation of the importance of childhood? The colored nurse is, of course, thought of merely as the servant of the child; and we do not yet consider whether it is good for a child to have a servant or whether a servant is a good educator.

The truth is we never think of education in connection with babyhood, the term being in our minds inextricably confused with school-houses and books. When we do honestly admit the plain fact that a child is being educated in every waking hour by the conditions in which he is placed and the persons who are with him, we shall be readier to see the need of a higher class of educators than servant-girls, and a more carefully planned environment than the accommodations of the average home.

The home is not materially built for the convenience of a child, nor are its necessary workings planned that way; and, what is more directly evil, the mother is not trained for the position of educator. We persist in confounding mother and teacher. The mother's place is her own, and always will be. Nothing can take it from her. She loves the child the best; and, if not too seriously alienated, the child will love her the best. The terror of the mother lest her child should love some other person better than herself shows that she is afraid of comparison,--that she visibly fears the greater gentleness and wisdom of some teacher will appeal to the young heart more than her arbitrary methods. If the mother expected to meet daily comparison with a born lover of children, trained in the wisest methods of child-culture, it would have an improving influence on the home methods. One of the great advantages of this arrangement will be in its reactive effect on the mother. In her free access to the home of the children, she will see practically illustrated the better methods of treating them, and be in frequent communication with their educators. The mother's knowledge of and previous association with the child will make her a necessary coadjutor with the teacher, and by intercourse with the larger knowledge and wider experience of the teacher the mother will acquire new points of view and wiser habits.

As the school and kindergarten react beneficially upon the home, so this baby-school will react as beneficially, and perhaps more so, as touching the all-important first years. The isolated mother has no advantage of association or comparison, and falls into careless or evil ways with the child, which contact with more thoughtful outside influences would easily prevent. She could easily retain her pre-eminent place in the child's affections, while not grudging to the special teacher her helpful influence. Also, the child, with the free atmosphere of equality around him for part of each day, with association with his equals in their place, would return to his own place in the home with a special affection, and submit with good will to its necessary restrictions.

In all but isolated farm life, or on the even more primitive cattle range, it would be possible to build a home for little children, and engage suitable persons to take charge of them daily. It would take no more time from the housework--if that is the mother's trade--to take the child to its day play-school than it takes to watch and tend it at home and to prevent or mend its "mischief."

"Children are so mischievous," we complain, regarding their ingenious destruction of the domestic decorations. A calf in a flower-garden would do considerable mischief, or kittens in a dairy. Why seek to rear young creatures in a place where they must do mischief if they behave differently from grown people? Why not provide for them a place where their natural activities would not be injurious, but educational?

In cities it is a still simpler question. Every block could have its one or more child homes, according to their number of children thereabouts. The children of the rich would be saved from the evil effects of too much care and servants' society, and the children of the poor from the neglect and low associations of their street-bred lives.

The "practical" question will now arise, "Who is to pay for all this?" There are two answers. One is, The same people who pay for the education of our older children. The baby has as good a right to his share of our educational funds, private and public, as the older child; and his education is more important. The other answer is that an able-bodied mother, relieved of her position as nursery governess, would be able to contribute something toward better provision for her children.

VII.

UNCONSCIOUS SCHOOLING.

A small boy came from an old-fashioned city,--a city where he went to school from day to day, and sat with his fellows in rigid rectangular rows, gazing on bare whitewashed walls adorned with a broad stripe of blackboard; where he did interminable "sums" on a smeary little slate, and spelled in sing-song chorus "Baker! Baker! b, a, bay; k, e, r, ker,--Baker!" He came to a new-fashioned city, where the most important business on earth--the training of children--was appreciated. The small boy did not know this. He saw that the city was clean and bright and full of wide spaces of grass and trees; and he liked it. It pleased him, as a child: it was the kind of place that looked as if it had been planned with some thought of pleasing children. Soon he came to a great open gate, with shady walks and sunny lawns inside, buildings here and there in the distance, and, just at hand, some strange figures among the bushes.

A pleasant-looking lady sat reading in the shade, with a few children lying in the grass near by, reading, too. Our small boy stood irresolute; but the lady looked up, and said: "Come in, if you like. Look around all you want to." Still he felt shy; but one of the reading little boys rose up, and went to him. "Come on," he said cheerfully. "I'll show you. There's lots o' things you'll like. Oh, come on!" So he entered with uncertain steps, and made for one of the queer figures he had seen in the shrubbery. "It's an Indian!" he said. "Like a cigar store!" But the resident little boy resented his comparison. "'Tisn't, either!" cried he. "It's ever so much nicer! Look at his moccasins and his arrows, and see the scalps in his belt! See the way he's painted? That shows he's a Sioux. They are great. One of the best kinds. They live up in the North-west,--Minnesota and round there; and they fight splendid! That one over there is a Yuma Indian. Look at the difference!"

And he took the visitor about, and showed him an interesting collection of samples of American tribes, giving off rivers of information with evident delight. From Indians their attention was taken by a peculiarly handsome butterfly that fluttered near them, pursued hotly by an eager little girl with a net.

"That must be a--well, I forget the name," said the resident little boy. "Do you like bugs?"

"What kind o' bugs?" inquired the visitor, rather suspiciously.

"Oh, tumble bugs and burying beetles and walking-sticks, and all kinds."

"Walking-sticks! What's that got to do with bugs?"

"Didn't you ever see the walking-stick one? Oh, come on in! I'll show you! It's this way." And off they run to a big rambling building among the shady elms. The visitor hangs back, somewhat awed by the size and splendour of the place, and seeing grown people about; but his young guide goes in unchecked, merely whispering, "Got to keep still in here," and leads him down several passages into a large, quiet hall, lined with glass cases.

Such a wealth of "bugs" as were here exhibited had never before been seen by the astonished visitor; but, when the walking-stick insect was pointed out to him, he stoutly denied that it was a "bug" at all. A whispered altercation resulted in appeal to the curator, a studious youth, who was taking notes at a large table bestrewn with specimens. Instantly dropping his work, he took the object under discussion from its case, focussed a magnifying glass upon it, and proceeded to exhibit various features of insect anatomy, and talk about them most interestingly. But, as soon as he detected the first signs of inattention and weariness, he changed the subject,--suggested that there was some good target practice going on in the West Field; and the two boys, after a pleasant walk, joined a number of others who were shooting with bows and arrows, under careful coaching and management. "I can't shoot except Saturdays," said the guide, "because I haven't joined a team and practised. But, if you want to, you just put your name down; and by and by you can hit anything. There's all kinds of old-fashioned weapons--and the new ones, too."

"What do you call this, anyhow?" demands the visitor.

"Call what? This is the West Field: they do all kinds of shooting here. You see that long bank and wall stops everything."

"Yes,--but the whole place,--is it a park?"

"Oh, yes, kind of. It's Weybourne Garden. And that was the museum we went to,--one of 'em."

"Is it open always?"

"Yes."

"And you don't have to pay for anything?"

"No. This part is for children. We learn how to do all sorts of things. Do you know how to build with bricks? I learned that last. I built a piece of a real wall. It's not here. It was one that was broken on the other side, and I built a good piece in!"

A big clock struck somewhere. "Now I must go to dinner with mother," said the guide. "The gate you came in at is on my way. Come on!" And he showed the wondering visitor out, and left him at his own door.

The young stranger did not know where he had been. He did not faintly imagine it. Neither, for that matter, did the other children, who went there every day, and with whom he presently found himself enrolled. They went to certain places at certain hours, because they were only "open" then with the persons present who showed them how to do desirable things.

There were many parks in the city, with different buildings and departments; and in them, day by day, without ever knowing it, the children of that city "went to school."

The progressive education of a child should be, as far as possible, unconscious. From his first eager interest in almost everything, up along the gradually narrowing lines of personal specialisation, each child should be led with the least possible waste of time and nervous energy. There would be difficulties enough, as there are difficulties in learning even desirable games; but the child would meet the difficulties because he wanted to know the thing, and gain strength without losing interest. So soon as a child-house is built and education seen to begin in earliest babyhood, so soon as we begin to plan a beautiful and delicately adjusted environment for our children, in which line and colour and sound and touch are all made avenues of easy unconscious learning, we shall find that there is no sharp break between "home" and "school." In the baby-garden the baby will learn many things, and never know it. In the kindergarten the little child will learn many things, and never know it. He will be glad and proud of his new powers, coming back to share the astonishing new information or exhibit the new skill to papa and mamma; but he will not be conscious of any task in all the time, or of special credit for his performance. Then, as he grows, the garden grows, too; and he finds himself a little wiser, a little stronger, a little more skilful every day--or would if he stopped to measure. But he does not measure. His private home is happy and easy, with a father and mother interested in all his progress; and his larger home--the child-world he grows up in--is so dominated by wise, subtle educational influences that he goes on learning always, studying a good deal, yet never "going to school."

In the wise treatment of his babyhood, all his natural faculties are allowed to develope in order and to their full extent, so that he comes to a larger range of experiment and more difficult examples with a smooth-working, well-developed young mind, unwearied and unafraid. The legitimate theories of the kindergarten carefully worked out helped him on through the next years in the same orderly progression; and, as a child of five or six, he was able to walk, open-eyed and observant, into wider fields of knowledge. Always courteous and intelligent specialists around him, his mental processes watched and trained as wisely as his sturdy little body, and a careful record kept, by these experienced observers, of his relative capacity and rate of development.

So he gradually learns that common stock of human knowledge which it is well for us all to share,--the story of the building of the earth, the budding of the plant, the birth of the animal, the beautiful unfolding of the human race, from savagery toward civilisation. He learns the rudiments of the five great handicrafts, and can work a little in wood, in metal, in clay, in cloth, and in stone. He learns the beginnings of the sciences, with experiment and story, and finds new wonders to lead him on, no matter how far he goes,--an unending fascination.

For his sciences he goes to the museum, the laboratory, and the field, groups of children having about the same degree of information falling together under the same teacher. For the necessary work with pen and pencil there are quiet rooms provided. He has looked forward to some of these from babyhood, seeing the older ones go there.

Each child has been under careful observation and record from the very first. His special interests, his preferred methods, his powers and weaknesses, are watched and worked with carefully as he grows. If power of attention was weak at first, he is given special work to develope it. If observation was loose and inaccurate, that was laboured with. If the reasoning faculty worked with difficulty, it was exercised more carefully. He has been under such training from babyhood to twelve or fifteen years old as to give a full and co-ordinate development of his faculties,--all of them; and such a general grasp of the main lines of knowledge as to make possible clear choice of the lines of study for which he is best adapted. With such a childhood the youth will have much more power of learning, and a deep and growing interest--an unbroken interest--in his work.

The natural desire of mankind to know, and also to teach, and the steadily enlarging field of knowledge open to us, should make education the most delightful of processes. With our present methods the place of teacher is usually sought merely for its meagre salary, by women who "have to work," instead of being eagerly aspired to as the noblest of professions, and only open to those best fitted. The children are so overtaxed and mishandled that only the best intellects come out with any further desire to learn anything. Humanity's progress is made through brain-improvement, by brain-power. We need such schooling as shall give us better brains and uninjured bodies. Fortunately for us, the value of education is widely felt to-day, and new and improved methods are rapidly coming in. Our school-houses are more beautiful, our teachers better trained and more ambitious, and the beneficent influences of the kindergarten and of the manual training system are felt everywhere.

But, while much is being done, much more remains for us. With such honour and such pay as show our respect for the office of teacher, and such required training and natural capacity as shall allow of no incapables, we could surround our children from birth with the steady influence of the wisest and best people. More and more to-day is the school opening out. It connects with the public library, with art and industry, with the open fields; and this will go on till the time is reached when the child does not know that he is at school,--he is always there, and yet never knows it.

Where residence was permanent, the teachers of different grades could constantly compare their growing records, and the child's unfolding be watched steadily, and noted with a view to still further improvement in method. Travelling parties of children are not unknown to us. These will become more common, until every child shall know his earth face to face,--mountain, river, lake, and sea,--and gain some idea of political division as well.

Two main objections to all this will arise at once: one, that of expense; the other, that a child so trained would not have learned to "apply himself,"--to force himself to do what he did not like,--that it was all too easy.