The State and the Child: Fitting the Child for Useful Work
By Magee Pratt, published in The Mother’s Magazine, September 1909
Republished in Miss Mary's Gazette, September 2004
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When the State assumed the responsibility for the education of the child, it was upon the assumption that it could do more for the child than the parents could do; by virtue of the greater power that it possessed it put aside parental affection and natural desire, and determined that, no matter what attitude the home might take upon the quantity and quality of instruction, every child must conform to all the educational laws made by the State in its own interest. Let us clearly see what this position implies and what it really does.
The implication is purely socialistic. The theory that the State has a larger interest in the child than the parent, destroys the rights of the individual. Every person who is not bound by the tyranny of words believes the State to be right, socialistic though it be. The careless parent injures both the child and the State, therefore the moral claim is larger than the individual; and as education is necessary to the improvement of man, and the State is organized for protection and progress, its attitude upon matters of child culture is logical and wise, and worthy the support of all mothers.
All experiment proves that the State will not do its full duty in anything it undertakes unless the citizens stand behind it, forever watchful, always demanding that further effort be made. Reasons for this need not be considered here; to state the fact is sufficient, and the result in school life has been very unfortunate for the children—insufficient accommodation, bad sanitary conditions, castiron methods of instruction, and in some places, or in many, such sad disregard of simple moral principles that our youth have been ruined by the vile associations and infamous conversations that were the established conditions of the public school. The disclosures of educationalists these last few years make reform simply imperative. Then one other result of State action must be seen. Any wise mother of four or five children could plan a system of education for them so suited to their different personalities and capabilities that the result, if she were permitted to make the experiment, would be better for the children ultimately than the State makes possible. She would not insist upon uniformity of lessons, but upon such variety as would be best for each child, and enable him to attain a richer, fuller maturity. She cannot do this now, because the State has killed private educational possibilities, save for the very rich.
THE LOGIC OF REFORM
As experience has demonstrated that the State is liable to neglect its duty, it has shown the people that incessant oversight on their part is the one condition upon which reform depends. A careless constituency makes careless and dishonest representatives, and bad laws relating to the schools have been the result. We need not study the past, but rather master the needs of the present; our system of government puts responsibility upon the people. When they want better things, they can have them; and here comes in the mother’s responsibility and power. They can have any sort of school they desire, any variety of education they believe to be the best, any sort of moral atmosphere in the school they demand—because anything good can be done. The idea that we must put up with the inferior, the vicious, the destructive, is more nonsensical in the realm of education than anywhere else. The school exists to teach the laws of right living, to develop power to live at our best, and not simply to show how to perform certain mental feats set before us in question of arithmetic and grammar: it is to see the child as a compound being, with body, mind and soul, each one made up with different proportions of the same materials, thus insuring variety of power for the service and adornment of a social state of almost infinite variety—and each one spoiled in a measure unless special treatment is given. Into this world come natural mechanics, natural agriculturists, natural commercial minds; there are born artists, musicians, preachers, physicians, nurses; every variety of talent and quality comes out of the unknown for the good of earth and its evolution into higher realms of daily living. This question, first of the mothers, then of the fathers, electors, State representatives, is this: How can we make the most of the raw material God gives for the good of the world? The purpose of the professional educationalist is to find the answer, and it is not yet found.
WHAT SORT OF EDUCATION IS ESSENTIAL
There are certain principles, fixed and unchanging, essential for every human life. And these are the ascertained moral laws. They can be taught without instruction, in any special religious system; all of us who are decent believe that honesty, truth, decency in conduct and speech, regard for the rights of others, fair play everywhere, in school ground or marketplace, love of freedom and equality, can and should be made universal, can and should be taught. The neglect to teach them in the public schools of the past is responsible for most of the existing national evils. And any attempt to remedy the defects will fail without the cooperation of the mother. In her hands, placed there by the immutable will of the great Lawgiver, lies the future of the nation and the earth. The mother has full control of the child’s life for seven important years. No State has interfered, none ever will, successfully. Why? Because, in those years the one great lesson must be taught the child if its life is to be in the highest sense useful—the lesson of obedience. No one, not State, or Church or school, can do the mother’s work properly afterwards, and so God gives the child for seven essential years to the mother’s care alone. Then when the schools teach the scientific principles upon which morality is based we shall see the perfection of beautiful living.
The mother and teacher must work in harmony to secure the full development of the child’s individual mental nature. The present divorce of teacher and parent in this task is as unnatural as absurd. How can a teacher with fifty pupils doing routine tasks know the powers of each child? We criticize the teacher, when we should blame ourselves.
A NEW WATCHWORD
We need a system of education that will fit the child, in place of a system that crushes many children in a vain effort to compel them to fit in. For many to-day hate the school and all its belonging because they are not understood, and therefore not suited; yet they would rejoice if the studies suited their souls by supplying what they crave. And surly this can be secured, for every mind has in it the capability of growth. That capability differs, but it is there, and education should aim to give the nature satisfaction and profit. When the average man and woman looks back at the years spent in school, one conviction is almost universal—that half the time spent and effort used were wasted; they gathered knowledge they could not utilize. Now not only is life not long enough for this waste, but energy is too valuable to throw away on useless studies. And this also is to be remembered: that study suited to the mind acts as a drill to enlarge capacity, while useless labor produces deformity. A friend with whom I was driving said: “My horse will be worn out before the journey is half done; that collar frets him.” Uncongenial studies have the same effect; they wear the mind out, and thus deprive it of power that could be profitably used. A boy said to a companion, “I’m going to play hookey to-day; it’s grammar day.” Had he gone to school, his mind would have been truant, and that perhaps would have been really worse in its final effect than an absent body.
The new method will not compel an examination of the pupil in certain studies. There will not be an outside standard up to which he must measure, that examination mainly depending upon the natural memory he may have. The pupil will himself be measured. What has the school made of him? What has it taught him to do? Ex-president Eliot recently declared the grammar school graduate to be useless for all the practical purposes of life. This statement, made by one of the greatest educational authorities in the nation, ought to be enough to sweep the whole present system into everlasting oblivion, and set every teacher and every mother upon the search for a better.
When we see clearly that memory is but a tool of the mind, and the kindred truth that a good mind may have a bad memory, the old system will be doomed. A person may have the English, Latin and Greek verbs in all their relations firmly fixed in the memory without possessing the least love of true speech and right conduct. Another may be a good mechanic or farmer, and hate algebra emphatically; or a wise leader of men, yet know no music and be ignorant of art. When we realize that genius lies in peculiarity, talent in superiority to others, that we all have a sphere of our own, and the mission of life is to do God’s will as written in our own natures, then the horrible machinery of fixed, definite lessons for all children by which, in deformed misfortune, the natural originality is crushed and lost, will be relegated to the place where other instruments of torture are consigned by the consent of all the world, and, remembering the counsel of ex-president Eliot, we will inaugurate a system of education which will make our children fit for very useful work in the world, and that, the task God fitted them to do.
Victorian Clip Art