Chapter XX Conclusion, and Future Outlook
In concluding this volume we wish again to remind parents of the necessity of working for specific results in the rearing of their children. Modern man, unlike his ancestor, who roamed over the earth, is a creature of complex and highly refined make-up which no primitive or natural environment could possibly produce. The forces that work upon his character development are so radically different from those which formed the life of his remote forbears as possibly to account for the contrasts in the two forms of finished personality.
Although there is evidence to support the theory that man belongs to the general evolutionary scheme of animal life, the progress of the race has been so very slow that a thousand years of time can show no very distinct improvement either in physical form or mental quality. While the human young is exceedingly plastic as an individual,—yielding easily from one side of his inherent activities to another,—the race is relatively fixed and stable.
Strive for Preconceived Results
Parents and other instructors of the young must therefore accept their charges as made up of very complex potentialities of learning and achievement—each a bundle of latent characters transmitted to him from the ancestral line. Many of these inherited characters are too weak in any given individual ever to show in his life conduct; many others will come to the surface only in response to proper stimuli and practice; still others will break out and show a predominance almost in defiance of any training intended to counteract them.
But the teacher and trainer of the infant child may accept the theory that the latter, if taken in time, can be bent and modified many ways in his character formation; that such plasticity is, however, always subject to the relative strength or weakness of the many inherited aptitudes and activities latent within the individual.
There is no good reason, therefore, why the parent should not begin early to build up the character of his child in accordance with a preconceived plan; provided such plan do no violence to any of nature’s stubborn and inexorable laws. The parent may also accept this task as a long and tedious undertaking, and expect to get results in proportion as he works intelligently for them. The farmer does not even think of producing good crop results from his land without hard work and much thought; then, why should he expect so delicate a plant as the human young to reach satisfactory maturity without much care and consideration? By far the greatest sin against the child is neglect of his training.
Consult Expert Advice
We must not be unmindful of the necessity of a balanced schedule of activities for the child. The vegetable plant must have air, sunlight, moisture, nitrogen, and so on, to support its growth. If one of these essential elements be lacking, the result is fatal to the fruitage. So with the child. If the best character results are to be expected, certain essential elements must be put into use. We have named them as play, work, recreation, and social experience. But as one approaches the individual problem of child training it does not prove so simple and easy as these terms imply. When and how to give each of these necessary exercises, how much of each to furnish, the means thereof, and the like—these and many other such questions begin to arise.
When the parent reaches the point of perplexity in dealing with his child, it is a fairly good indication that his interest is aroused, at least. But what is to be done? Simply the same thing he would do at the point of perplexity in the wheat propagation, consult an expert. If one of the work mules becomes lame or reveals a bad disposition, should the owner take it to an electrician for advice? If the family cow becomes locoed or shows an unusual result in her milk product, should one consult a piano tuner? Yet, strange to say, parents are often known to do similarly in dealing with the perplexing problems of child-rearing. Consult the popular magazines and the book shelves any day and you will find many lengthy dissertations on the boy and the girl, written not infrequently by persons who have spent a lifetime studying something else. But they are very fond of children and they mistake this fondness for knowledge of an expert kind; and worst of all, they offer it as such.
The farm parents who wish to receive expert advice in the treatment of their children must learn to consult directly or through literature only those who have made a long and intensive study of child problems. And in the latter case they need not expect to obtain all necessary help from one source alone. Usually the child-study expert is a specialist in only one certain part of the field. For example, at the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Lightner Witmer, there has been made a specialty of the sub-normal child. We should probably obtain from that source more expert help in that one phase of child welfare than from any other source in America. If one wishes reliable help on the subject of diseases of children, he should naturally expect to obtain it from some medical authority, from one Who has spent long years practicing in a general hospital for children. One of the very few great sources of information on the general psychology of child development is Clark University, where many child-welfare problems have been worked out by experts under the able direction of Dr. G. Stanley Hall.
Meet Each Awakening Interest
A very reliable general rule of guidance for the parent child trainer is to strive to furnish intensive practice for each and every childish and juvenile interest at the time of its awakening. As stated in Chapter II the most predominant interests in the young emerge in response to the unfoldment of instincts and the development of organic growths within. Perhaps all do so. But the point of importance for the parent is to meet each of these awakenings at the time of its highest activity with intensive training. The instinct to play, to fight, to steal, to run away, to work (?), to fall in love, to engage in some occupation, to marry and make a home, to have children—these have been named as especially important by virtue of their awakening successively the individual’s interests in matters of great consequence to character development.
But instincts are blind. Their possessor does not foresee the way they point. They come suddenly and catch the subject unprepared to direct their force in what we call intelligent ways. Hence, the extreme necessity of there being present at the side of the child, at the time of his instinctive awakening, some mature and intelligent person who has been through the experiences the former is about to begin, and who will sympathetically point the right way and insist that it be followed.
Work for Social Democracy
One can scarcely become deeply interested in the future of his own child without coming intimately into touch with the child welfare problems at large. Even country parents, isolated though they may be, will discover that serious study of the matter of bringing up a family of good children will require that they study the lives of other human young. Moreover, they will need the use of other children as “laboratory” material for training their own. All this will gradually lead the way to a fuller social sympathy in such parents and to the inculcation of more wholesome social ideals in the minds of their offspring.
Finally, the rural parents who are seeking a full and adequate development of the young members of their own family will most probably see their way clear to assume a helpful leadership of the young people of the neighborhood as advocated in Chapter X of this volume.
While many agencies for the betterment of rural youth have been discussed,—such as the County Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scout Movement, and the Social and Economic Clubs,—the neighborhood which has at least one of these agencies intensively at work may be considered fortunate. And it may be said that such a neighborhood is well on the way to economic improvement as well as social improvement.
The Outlook Very Promising
Throughout the United States there is being manifested a general tendency to accept the theory that our human stock is relatively sound. While there are seemingly large numbers of the criminal, delinquent, and dependent classes, they are in reality comparatively few in proportion to the entire population. And when we accept the estimate of the experts that about ninety per cent of the cases included in the classes just named are preventable through wise foresight and training, the outlook for a better race of human beings becomes most cheering.
“The proper study of mankind is man,” says the poet. But for many generations we have regarded this statement as mere poetry and not necessarily truth. Our policy up to the recent past has been rather this: The proper study of mankind is everything except man, leaving the all-important problems of child-rearing to the decisions of wise old grand-mothers and debating societies. But a radical change has come, and that within this present generation. Men and women highly trained in the colleges and universities are now applying their scientific methods to the study of man with no less zeal and earnestness than that which has characterized the student of the non-human problems for many generations of time.
Through the able conclusions of the painstaking expert the so-called institutional life has been especially improved. The industrial (reform) schools are now practicing a system of balanced activities—of study, work, play, and the like—such as the findings of these investigators have warranted. The method of paroling the delinquent child, after he has spent a term of preparation, was proved most helpful through the careful tests of a large number of cases. Recently the parole system has been effectively applied to certain classes of penitentiary convicts. A most productive agency for good now in use in many of the prisons and all the industrial schools is that of building up the waste places in the individual life through specific training and instruction. The first question raised in such cases is, What is the particular moral defect of the individual? second, What are the causes? third, What will reconstruct his character and give permanent relief? That is, the expert psychologist and the expert sociologist are being called into service with the expert alienist and physician. The purpose is to save and reconstruct the whole man. Compulsory education and trade schooling are now very common in state prisons.
In the care and protection of the insane and the feeble-minded our country can boast of but slow progress. Many of the members of these classes are permitted to run at large and even to marry and beget their kind. Now, while our human stock is in its mass very sound and sane, there are constantly being thrown off from it these mentally defective classes. The complete obliteration of all such classes to-day would not result in their complete disappearance from the race. Others would be born as variants from normal parentage. But the evil of it all lies in the fact that we are still permitting many of these defectives to multiply, and that in the face of the fact that a normal child has never been reported among the offspring of two feeble-minded parents.
The Modern Service Training
Of all the institutions contributing to the direct improvement of the race there is perhaps none surpassing in importance the modern training school for social workers. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and other large cities such may be found usually affiliated with some university or college. The general purpose is that of training men and women to go into the field of social service and apply the methods and conclusions worked out by the research student. Hitherto, much of the social work has been conducted by persons possessing merely religious zeal and enthusiasm. Their efforts were praiseworthy, but they lacked the training necessary for coping with modern educational and economic problems. The distinctive feature of the new methods is that it is based on scientific and business principles. That is, the social worker is trained in the same methodical way as the prospective lawyer or school teacher, and is also paid reasonably for his services.
The modern social worker not only proceeds with a well-defined plan, but he usually makes or requires a survey of his newly-opened field. The social survey—now becoming more common as a means of beginning a campaign of improvement in the cities—has revealed some most interesting, as well as distressing, situations in the submerged districts. The housing situation, sanitary conditions, wages and incomes of different classes, sweat-shop employment, the protection of workmen in shops and factories, child-labor conditions, and so on—these are examples of the problems of the investigator, while his tabulated reports serve to guide the social worker. Now, the duties of the latter are many, but in general they lie in the direction of improvement of the conditions as found. Among the undertakings that often fall to his lot are: establishing new social centers in congested districts, providing for new parks and playgrounds, locating reading and recreation rooms, organizing self-help and home-improvement clubs among the lower classes, conducting cooking and sewing schools, and the like.
Of special interest to the rural dweller is the fact that the modern methods of first making surveys and then applying remedial agencies is now being extended into the country districts, giving many marked results already and promising greater ones for the future.
The State Doing Its Part
That the nation and the state are active participants in these new forms of child-conserving and man-saving endeavor is indicated on every side.
The national government has encouraged the states in the enactment of stringent child-labor laws. In the usual instance children under fourteen to sixteen years of age are prohibited from working away from home at gainful occupations. Correlated with this is the compulsory-education law in the several states.
The national and state governments have also coöperated in the enactment of laws prohibiting the adulteration of foods and foodstuffs and in enforcing better sanitation. As a result of such measures, state and local, together with the help of greatly improved hospital practice, the infant mortality in several of the large cities has been reduced more than fifty per cent in the past decade.
Inspired by the splendid pioneer work of the National Playground Association, the cities and towns have recently made very rapid progress in the establishment of playgrounds and recreative centers for old and young. Many millions of dollars have already been expended for such purposes. Now the country districts are adopting the same means of social improvement.
The primary system of selecting candidates for political office is proving to be a most potent agency for the general uplift. By means of it, better men are being inducted into office. Better still, the old corrupt practice of the ward politician, so deleterious to the character of youth, is losing its once powerful influence on government.
The so-called social evil, so damaging to the health and morals of thousands of our best young men and young women, is now under fair promise of improvement. The remarkable survey of the Chicago Vice Commission and the work of the other well-planned organizations looking to the solution of the same general problem have proved most effective in revealing the true conditions and of awakening the public conscience. All of these activities in the interest of putting down the sex evils point very clearly one moral to all conscientious parents; namely, that the best and most certain method of inculcating lessons of purity in the case of the young is through preventive measures, and through the practice of purity during the years of growth. Open and frank discussion of the sex problems as they arise normally out of the experiences of the child, admonitions and prohibitions in regard to impure associates, the insistence upon a single, and not a double, standard of purity for the two sexes—these are some of the specific duties of parents.
As an instance of what may be achieved by way of helping the weak and depraved to defend themselves against debasing habit, and especially of what may be done by way of prevention of a character-destroying habit in time of youth, the Kansas prohibitory law is cited. The longer this statute remains, the more effective its work and the more unanimous the public sentiment supporting it. So popular has this measure become that no political party and no faction of any other class has been able to take any effective stand against it. It can be shown to any fair-minded investigator that the great majority of the citizens of Kansas are total abstainers from the use of intoxicants; also that the state has brought up a new generation of tens of thousands of men, now mostly voters, who have no personal knowledge of the use and abuse of alcoholic drinks and who have become confirmed as total abstainers for life.
Another unique Kansas measure—ignored and derided at first only less than was the prohibitory liquor law when new—is the statute forbidding the use of tobacco in any form on the part of minors. The wisdom of this statute is supported by the conclusions of scientific study of the effects of tobacco on the young. The general purpose of the law is to prevent the youth from taking up the tobacco-using habit before reaching full maturity of years and judgment. The general result will be the gradual development of a generation of total abstainers from the use of tobacco.
The New Era of Religion
Even into the sanctuary of the modern church is the new scientific spirit finding its way. It has become an accepted principle of procedure among ministers and other church workers of late that the best way to save souls is not to depend wholly upon divine grace, but to assist this subtle power by means of the constructive work of many human agencies. Preventive measures that aim at safeguarding the young against evil contaminations, the institution of social improvement organizations and of literary and economic clubs, the formation of good-fellowship societies, of societies for conducting social surveys, of committees for giving vocational guidance and for the administration of spiritual healing—these and numerous endeavors of the same class give evidence of the great service which the modern church is rendering young humanity. And all this splendid work is being carried forward without doing any violence to the essential doctrines of the great historical institution so long engaged in its serious efforts in behalf of human salvation.
Final Conclusion
As a closing remark the author can only express again his belief that no past age ever held out such inspiring hope and such splendid encouragement to the many parents who appreciate the needs of intelligent care and training for their children. And because of the natural advantages of the surroundings, country parents have the greatest justification of all for being enthusiastic over the outlook. Now, let them go patiently and reverently at the work of bringing up for the service of the world a magnificent race of men and women—men who have brain and brawn and moral courage and religious devotion; women who have a profound sense of maternal responsibility, an inspiring superiority over the perplexing duties of the household, a deep and far-reaching social sympathy, and such a poise and sublimity of thought as to reveal the divinity inherent in their characters. For lo! In the hidden depths of the natures of the common boys and girls there lie slumbering these splendid possibilities!
References
The Meaning of Social Science. Albion W. Small. University of Chicago Press. An epoch-making book, restating ably the general problem of social reconstruction.
Report of Committee on Rural Social Problems, National Conference Charities and Corrections. Address Porter R. Lee, Sec’y for Organizing Charity, Philadelphia, Pa.
Annual Report. Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1211 Cathedral Street, Baltimore.
Government Report on Children as Wage-earners. Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington, D.C. This department is bringing out nineteen volumes in all, each covering a particular problem of women and children as wage-earners. The following are especially related to the subject matter of this chapter:—
The Beginnings of Child Labor Legislation in Certain States;
A Comparative Study.
Conditions under which Children leave School to go to Work.
Juvenile Delinquency and its Relation to Employment.
Causes of Death among Women and Child Cotton Mill Operatives.
Family Budgets of Typical Cotton Mill Workers.
Hook Worm Disease among Cotton Mill Operatives.
Employment of Women and Children in Selected Industries.
Reports and Circulars National Christian League for Promotion of Purity, 5 East 12th Street, New York.
Annual Report of National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1911. Charities Publication Committee, New York. See this valuable volume for reports of progress in the different lines of child-welfare effort.
The White Slave Traffic. Outlook, July 16. 1910.
The Rockefeller Grand Jury Report of White Slave Traffic. McClure, May, August, 1910.
Moral Research in Social and Economic Problems. G. Connell. Westminster Review, February, 1910.
My Lesson from the Juvenile Court. Judge Ben. B Lindsey. Survey, Feb. 5, 1910.