The Moral Instruction of Children by Felix Adler (read after txt) 📕

what time does conscience enter on the scene? To what acts or omissions does the child apply the terms right and wrong? If observations of this kind were made with care and duly recorded, the science of education would have at its disposal a considerable quantity of material from which no doubt valuable generalizations might be deduced. Every mother especially should keep a diary in which to note the successive phases of her child's physical, mental, and moral growth; with particular attention to the moral; so that parents may be enabled to make a timely forecast of their childrens' characters, to foster in them every germ of good, and by prompt precautions to suppress, or at least restrain, what is bad.

I propose in the present lecture to cast a glance at the moral training which the normal child receives before it enters school, and the moral outfit which it may be expected to bring with it at the time of entering. Fortunately, it is not necessary to go very deeply into the study of development of conscience for this purpose. A few main points will suffice for our guidance.

First Point.—The moral training of a child can be begun in its cradle. Regularity is favorable to morality. Regularity acts as a check on impulse. A child should receive its nourishment at stated intervals; it should become accustomed to sleep at certain hours, etc. If it protests, as it often does vigorously enough, its protests should be disregarded. After a while its cries will cease, it will learn to submit to the rule imposed, and the taking of pleasure in regularity and the sense of discomfort when the usual order is interrupted become thenceforth a part of its mental life. I do not maintain that regularity itself is moral, but that it is favorable to morality because it curbs inclination. I do not say that rules are always good, but that the life of impulse is always bad. Even when we do the good in an impulsive way we are encouraging in ourselves a vicious habit. Good conduct consists in regulating our life according to good principles; and a willingness to abide by rules is the first, the indispensable condition of moral growth. Now, the habit of yielding to rules may be implanted in a child even in the cradle.

Second Point.—A very young child—one not older than a year and a half—can be taught to obey, to yield to the parent's will. A child a year and a half old is capable of adhering to its own will in defiance of the expressed will of father or mother. In this case it should be constrained to yield. We shall never succeed in making of it a moral person if it does not realize betimes that there exists a higher law than the law of its will. And of this higher law, throughout childhood, the parent is, as it were, the embodiment. When I say that obedience can be exacted of a child of such tender age, that a child so young is capable of deliberately opposing the will of the parent, I speak from experience. I know a certain little lady who undertook a struggle with her father precisely in the way described. The struggle lasted fully thirty-five minutes by the clock. But when it was over, the child stretched out her little arms and put up her lips to be kissed, and for days after fairly clung to her father, showing him her attachment in the most demonstrative manner. Nor should this increase of affectionateness excite surprise—it is the proper result of a conflict of this sort between father and child when conducted in the right spirit. The child is happy to be freed from the sway of its wayward caprice, to feel that its feeble will has been taken up into a will larger and stronger than its own.

Third Point.—What is called conscience does not usually begin to show itself until the child is about three years old. At this age the concept self usually emerges, and the child begins to use the personal pronoun I. This is one of these critical turning points in human development, of which there are several. The beginning of adolescence marks another. I am inclined to suspect that there is one at or about thirty-three. There seem to be others later on. At any rate the first turning point—that which occurs at three—is marked unmistakably. At this time, as we have just said, the child begins to be distinctly self-conscious; it says "I," and presently "you," "he," and "they." Now, moral rules formulate the relations which ought to subsist between one's self and others, and to comprehend the rules it is clearly necessary to be able to hold apart in the mind and to contrast with one another the persons related. It is evident, therefore, that the emergence of the concept self must have a decided effect on moral development.

I feel tempted to pause here a moment and to say a word in passing about the extreme importance of the constituent elements of the concept self. For it must not be supposed that the pronoun "I" means the same thing on the lips of every person who uses it. "I" is a label denoting a mass of associated ideas, and as these ideas are capable of almost endless variation, so the notion of selfhood is correspondingly diversified in different individuals. In the case of children, perhaps the principal constituents of the concept are supplied by their outward appearance and environment. When a child speaks of itself, it thinks primarily of its body, especially its face, then of the clothes it usually wears, the house it lives in, the streets through which it habitually walks, its parents, brothers, sisters, school-masters, etc.[7] If we analyze the meaning of "I" in the case of two children, the one well-born and well brought up, the other without these advantages, we shall perhaps find such differences as the following: "I" in the one case will mean a being living in a certain decent and comfortable house, always wearing neat clothing, surrounded by parents, brothers, and sisters who speak kindly to one another and have gentle manners, etc. In the other case, the constituents of the concept self may be very different. "I" in the case of the second child may mean a creature that lives in a dark, filthy hovel and walks every day through narrow streets, reeking with garbage. "I" may mean the child of a father who comes home drunk and strikes the mother when the angry fit is upon him. "I" stands for a poor waif that wears torn clothes, and when he sits in school by the side of well-dressed children is looked at askance and put to shame. It is obvious that the elements which go to make up the concept self affect the child's moral nature by lowering or raising its self-esteem. I remember the case of one, who as a boy was the laughing-stock of his class on account of the old-fashioned, ill-fitting clothes which he was compelled to wear, and who has confessed that even late in life he could not entirely overcome the effect of this early humiliation, and that he continued to be painfully aware in himself, in consequence, of a certain lack of ease and self-possession. Hence we should see to it that the constituent elements of the concept self are of the right kind. It is a mistake to suppose that the idea of selfhood stands off independently from the elements of our environment. The latter enter into, and when they are bad eat into, the very kernel of our nature.

We have seen that the development of the intellect as it appears in the growing distinctness of self-consciousness exercises an important influence on the development of the moral faculty. But there is still another way in which this influence becomes apparent. The function of conscience further depends on the power of keeping alternative courses of action before the mind. Angels capable only of the good, or fiends actuated exclusively by malice, could not be called moral creatures. A moral act always presupposes a previous choice between two possible lines of action. And until the power of holding the judgment in suspense, of hesitating between alternative lines of conduct, has been acquired, conscience, strictly speaking, does not manifest itself. We may say that the voice of conscience begins to be heard when, the parent being absent, the child hesitates between a forbidden pleasure and obedience to the parental command. Of course, not every choice between alternative courses is a moral act. If any one hesitates whether to remain at home or to go for a walk, whether to take a road to the right or to the left, the decision is morally indifferent. But whenever one of the alternative courses is good and the other bad, conscience does come into play.

At this point, however, the question forcibly presents itself, How does it come to pass in the experience of children that they learn to regard certain lines of action as good and others as bad? You will readily answer, The parent characterizes certain acts as good and others as bad, and the child accepts his definition; and this is undoubtedly true. The parent's word is the main prop of the budding conscience. But how comes the parent's word to produce belief? This is indeed the crucial question touching the development of the moral faculty. Mr. Bain says that the child fears the punishment which the parent will inflict in case of disobedience; that the essential form and defining quality of conscience from first to last is of the nature of dread. He seems to classify the child's conscience with the criminal conscience, the rebel conscience which must be energized by the fear of penalties. But this explanation seems very unsatisfactory. Every one, of course, must admit that the confirmations of experience tend greatly to strengthen the parent's authority. The parent says, You must be neat. The child, if it does as it is bidden, finds an æsthetic pleasure in its becoming appearance. The parent says, You must not strike your little brother, but be kind to him; and the child, on restraining its anger, is gratified by the loving words and looks which it receives in return. The parent says, You must not touch the stove, or you will be burned. The disobedient child is effectually warned by the pain it suffers to be more obedient in future. But all such confirmations are mere external aids to parental authority. They do not explain the feeling of reverence with which even a young child, when rightly brought up, is wont to look up to his father's face. To explain this sentiment of reverence, I must ask you to consider the following train of reasoning. It has been remarked already that the parent should be to the child the visible embodiment of a higher law. This higher law shining from the father's countenance, making its sublime presence felt in the mother's eye, wakens an answering vibration in the child's heart. The child feels the higher presence and bows to it, though it could not, if it tried, analyze or explain what it feels. We should never forget that children possess the capacity for moral development from the outset. It is indeed the fashion with some modern writers to speak of the child as if it were at first a mere animal, and as if reflection and morality were mechanically superadded later on. But the whole future man is already hidden, not yet declared, but latent all the same in the child's heart. The germs of humanity in its totality exist in the young being. Else how could