Concerning Children. Gilman Charlotte Perkins

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СКАЧАТЬ little children are trained. The things we are compelled to do in obedience we make no progress in. They are either obeyed or disobeyed, but are not understood and improved upon: they stand like the customs of China. The things we learn by understanding and practising are open to further knowledge and growth.

      A normal human act, as distinguished from the instinctive behaviour of lower animals or from mere excito-motary reaction, involves always these three stages, – impression, judgment, expression. These are not separate, but are orderly steps in the great main fact of life, – action. It is all a part of that transmission of energy which appears to be the business of the universe.

      The sun's heat pours upon the earth, and passes through whatever substance it strikes, coming out transformed variously, according to the nature of the substance. Man receives his complement of energy, like every other creature, – physical stimulus from food and fire, psychical stimulus from its less known sources; and these impressions tend to flow through him into expression as naturally as, though with more complexity than, in other creatures.

      The song of the skylark and Shelley's "Skylark" show this wide difference in the amount and quality of transmission, yet are both expressions of the same impressions, plus those wider impressions to which the poet's organism was open.

      The distinctive power of man is that of connected action. Our immense capacity for receiving and retaining impressions gives us that world-stock of stored information and its arrested stimulus which we call knowledge. But wisdom, the higher word, refers to our capacity for considering what we know, – handling and balancing the information in stock, and so acting judiciously from the best impression or group of impressions, instead of indiscriminately from the latest or from any that happens to be uppermost.

      This power, in cases of immediate danger, we call "presence of mind." Similarly, when otherwise intelligent persons do visibly foolish things, we call it "absence of mind." The brain, as an organ, is present in both cases; but in the former it is connected with action, in the latter the connection is broken. The word "thoughtless," as applied to so large a share of our walk and conversation, describes this same absence of the mind from the place where it is wanted.

      In training the brain of the child, first importance lies in cultivating this connection between the mind and the behaviour. As with eye or hand, we should induce frequent repetition of the desired motions, that the habit of right action be formed. If the child is steadily encouraged to act in this natural connection, in orderly sequence of feeling, thought, and action, he would grow into constant "presence of mind" in his behaviour. Habits work in all directions; and a habit of thoughtful behaviour is as easy to form, really easier, than a habit of obedience, – easier, because it would be the natural function of the brain to govern behaviour if we did not so laboriously contradict it. We have preferred submission to intelligence, and have got neither, – not intelligence because we have so violently discouraged it, and not submission because the healthy upward forces of human brain growth will not submit. Those races where the children are most absolutely subservient, as with the Chinese and Hindu, where parents are fairly worshipped and blindly obeyed, are not races of free and progressive thought and healthy activity.

      The potential attitude of mind involved in our method is shown in that perfect expression of "childish faith," – "It's so because mamma says so; and, if mamma says so, 'tis so if 'tain't so." That position makes it very easy for mamma as long as "childish faith" endures; but how does it help the man she has reared in this idyllic falsehood? The painful truth is that we have used childish weaknesses to make our government easy for us, instead of cultivating the powers that shall make life easy to them. A child's limitless credulity is the open door of imposition, and is ruthlessly taken advantage of by mother and father, nurse and older companion generally.

      As a feature in brain-training, this, of course, works absolute harm. It prolongs the infant weakness of the racial brain, keeps us credulous and open to all imposture, hinders our true growth. What we should do is to help the child to question and find out, – teach him to learn, not to believe. He does learn, of course. We cannot shut out the workings of natural laws from him altogether. Gradually he discovers that fire is hot and water wet, that stone is hard to fall on, and that there are "pins in pussy's toes." His brain is always being healthily acted upon by facts, his power of discrimination he practises as best he may, and his behaviour follows inevitably.

      Given such a child, with such and such an inheritance of constitution and tendency, submit him to certain impressions, and he behaves accordingly. He has felt. He has thought. He is about to do. Here comes in our universal error. We concern ourselves almost wholly with what the child does, and ignore what he feels and thinks. We check the behaviour which is the logical result of his feeling and thinking, and substitute another and different behaviour for his adoption.

      Now it is a direct insult to the brain to try to make the body do something which the brain does not authorise. It is a physical shock: it causes a sort of mental nausea. There are many subconscious activities which go on without our recognition; but to call on the body to consciously go through certain motions, undirected by previous mental processes, is an affront to any healthy brain. It is sharply distasteful to us, because it is against the natural working of the machinery. The vigorous functional activity of the young brain cries out against it; and the child says, "Why?" "Why" is an articulate sound to express the groping of the brain for relation, for consistency. We have so brow-beaten and controverted this natural tendency, so forced young growing brains to accept the inconsistent, that consistency has become so rare in human conduct as to be called "a jewel." Yet the desire for consistency is one of the most inherent and essential of our mental appetites. It is the logical tendency, the power to "put two and two together," the one great force that holds our acts in sequence and makes human society possible.

      We demand consistency in others, and scoff at the lack of it, even in early youth. "What yer talkin' about, anyway?" we cry. "There's no sense in that!" We expect consistency of ourselves, too. It is funny, though painful, to see the ordinary warped brain trying to square its own conduct with its own ideals. Square they must, somehow, however strained and thin is our patchwork connection. We check the child's act, the natural sequence of his feeling and thought, so incessantly as to give plenty of basis for that pathetic tale of the little girl who said her name was Mary. "And what is your last name?" "Don't," said she. "Mary Don't." By doing this, we constantly send back upon the brain its own impulses, and accustom it to such continual discouragement of natural initiative that it gradually ceases to govern the individual behaviour. In highest success, this produces the heavy child, whining, "What shall I do now?" always hanging about, fit subject for any other will to work on; and the heavy adult, victim of ennui, and needing constant outside stimulus to "pass away the time."

      The slowness, the inertia, the opaque conservatism, and the openness to any sort of external pressure, easiest, of course, on the down side, – which so blocks the path of humanity, – largely come back to that poor child's surname, Mary Don't. It is thoroughly beaten into us when young, and for the rest of life we mostly "Don't." But beyond the paralysing "Don't!" checking the natural movement of the organism, comes a galvanising "Do!" shocking it into unnatural activity. We tell the child to perform a certain action toward which his own feeling and thought have made no stir whatever. "Why?" he demands. And we state as reason our authority, and add an immediate heaven or hell arrangement of our own making to facilitate his performance. He does it. Hell is very near. He does it many, many times. He becomes habituated to a course of behaviour which comes to its expression not through his own previous impression and judgment, but through ours; that is, he is acting from another person's feeling and thinking. We have asserted our authority just before his act, between it and his thought. We have made a cleft which widens to a chasm between what he feels and thinks and what he does. Into that chasm pours to waste an immeasurable amount of human energy. The struggles of the dethroned mind to get possession of its own body again, as the young man or woman grows to personal freedom, ought to strike remorse and shame to the parental heart. They do not, because the devoted parent knows no more of these simple psychic processes than the Goths knew of the priceless manuscripts they СКАЧАТЬ