The school and the family; the ethics of school relations

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

Deceived IAN 4 1893 • l89
^Accessions No . *4Q X 0. o. . Class No .

THE SCHOOL ADD THE FAMILY

THE ETHICS OF SCHOOL RELATIONS

Br JOHN KENNEDY

INSTRUCTOR IX TEACHERS' INSTITUTES

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

FKANKLIN SQUARE

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE.

THE doctrine of this treatise was embodied
in a paper entitled " The Philosophy of
School Discipline," read before the New
York State Teachers' Association at Pitts-
burgh, K Y., July 25th, 1877. The paper
was favorably received by the Association,
and was afterwards published in pamphlet
form in order to subject it to the careful
examination and criticism of the education-
al public.

Many opinions of the " Philosophy " have
been received from leading educational au-
thorities. Those opinions, while pronounc-
ing the doctrine sound and its formulas use-

IV PREFACE.

ful, have been accompanied by urgent re-
quests for a more elaborate discussion of the
principles laid down ; and it is in compli-
ance with these requests that the present
work is undertaken.

The author fully believes that there ex-
ist in the nature of things materials for a
Science of School Discipline. If this work
should fail of scientific accuracy and com-
pleteness, he trusts that it may at least have
the effect of stimulating inquiry, and hasten-
ing the time when we shall have an authen-
tic science of this important subject. Pie
is convinced, from extended observation in
many of the foremost states in the Union,
that the educational energy of this nation is
suffering from a vicious empiricism. We see
much guess-work abroad in the land, and
many haphazard ventures, without uniform-
ity of thought, and consequently without real
progress.

PREFACE.

Until the profession of teaching rests upon
scientific formulas it will ever be in its in-
fancy. By empirical methods each teacher
spends his life in more or less blundering
experiments, and dies when he is beginning
to understand his vocation. His successor
repeats the same round of experience.

Science would save this great waste of ex-
periment, and conserve the fruits of experi-
ence from slipping into the grave. Experi-
ment could then be utilized in doing real
pioneer work, and not be wasted on prob-
lems that had been solved ages before. With
a science of school discipline promulgated,
teachers would not be found, as now, inquir-
ing of each other, "What would you do in
this case ?" but rather, " What is the scien-
tific solution ?" Science gives an authority
representing not merely individual experi-
ence, however good, but rather the collective
experience of ages. Its dicta ought certainly
to be entitled to respect.

Vi PREFACE.

Having access to a science of his profes-
sion, the young disciple is enabled to get his
eyes open in advance of blundering steps ; he
has a ready authority in case of doubt or un-
certainty ; and he has a vantage-ground for
really original achievements. A scientific ba-
sis welds a profession together and increases
its momentum. But the science of school
discipline extends beyond the profession, and
would tend to shape the thoughts and livea
of families and communities.

The work, as now elaborated, has several
ends in view, which may account for the
rather composite style in which it is writ-
ten. It aims to reach the thinker, and for
his purpose would observe a closely philo-
sophical method. It aims to reach the
parents and the community ; and, in con-
sequence, it has at times a fulness of ex-
emplification which would be unnecessary in
a strictly philosophical or professional work.

PKEFACE. VH

It aims to be an instrumentality in the work
of practical reform; and for that reason it
has in places an intensity of language that
would otherwise be without meaning. Prac-
tical reforms are not accomplished without
hard blows against the evils to be removed.
The inertia of custom is overcome only by
vigorous shaking. It has the general pro-
fessional and literary aim of calling attention
to a great field of research, comparatively
untouched in this country — viz., the field of
educational science.

Our gigantic empiricism may have been
all needed in order to furnMi the data for
generalization. But if so, we have already
accumulated such a surfeit of facts as
ought to delight the soul of the philoso-
pher. It would seem that the time has ar-
rived for a new departure. If it were
necessary in the beginning to feel our way
and acquire educational opinions, we should

Vlll PREFACE.

hereafter see our way and possess educa-
tional knowledge. He who will co-ordi-
nate the truths discovered by our empiri-
cism, and fasten them in a wTell - defined
terminology, will do a great public good.

Hoping that the aims of the book will
invite a merciful forbearance of its faults,
it is respectfully submitted to the public.

JOHN KENNEDY.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFACE iii

INTRODUCTION 11

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE 14

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE DISTRICT 17

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS 25 ^

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE CHILDREN 44

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER 49

CAUSES OF DISORDER 72

RIGHTS OF THE DISTRICT 80

RIGHTS OF THE PARENTS 82 ''

RIGHTS OF THE CHILDREN 84

RIGHTS OF TEACHERS 87

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE 109

TABULAR ANALYSIS , 127

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS 130

DISTRICT PROBLEMS 134

FAMILY PROBLEMS 152 "

YOUTH'S PROBLEMS 179

TEACHERS' PROBLEMS 182

INDEX , , 201

OF THE

TJHIVEIISITY

THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

INTRODUCTION.

EXACT knowledge is acquired originally by
induction — that is, by investigating the prop-
erties of particular facts, noting their resem-
blances and differences and the order of their
occurrence.

Resemblance and difference give rise to
a classification of facts, and to the mental
process of generalization ; order of occur-
rence gives rise to the conception of causa-
tion.

When we have effected a classification, of
a particular family of facts, and detected the
order of causation, w^e have a subject. A
subject in this sense is the summing-up of

12 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

our discoveries and conclusions within a
specified limit of research.

The knowledge embraced in the subject
may be imparted in two ways: 1st. Objec-
tively— that is, by causing the learner to ob-
serve particular facts, and to make his own
deductions successively to the ultimate con-
clusions of the subject. 2d. Subjectively—
that is, by asserting the conclusions and il-
lustrating their soundness by application to
particular cases.

Objective instruction is best suited to
young minds, which generalize slowly and
with difficulty. When, however, the mind is
measurably practised in generalization, the
subjective method may be pursued with profit.

Subjective learning consists in apprehend-
ing the meaning of propositions, and mak-
ing the application to particular cases.

Subjective instruction is effective only
wrhen it results in edification. Edification is
the fulness and strength resulting from the
complete possession of the thought. Start-

INTRODUCTION. 13

ing with the proposition, the mind sweeps
through the field of particulars, and obtains
complete possession of the thought only
when it finds its application and verification
in experience. With edification begins men-
tal growth. Teaching should be to edifica-
tion ; reading, or attention, should be to edi-
fication.

We shall employ the subjective method in
this work, and shall aim to give that clear-
ness of statement which will be favorable
to understanding and edification.

The widest generalization in a subject is
its definition. This, when correct, embraces
all that enters into the subject, and finds
its exemplification in a subsequent logical
analysis. We can, therefore, expect the defi-
nition to be but partly understood at the out-
set, as all the subsequent treatment tends to
explain it. Through a series of minor prop-
ositions, involving less mental effort, we end
with grasping the full significance of the
definition.

14 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE.

Definition. — Discipline, in the sense of
government, is that power of control which
produces and sustains order.

Definition. — Order is fitness of condition
in things.

Throughout creation we see evidences of
purpose. Every created thing has a definite
end to fulfil in the economy of the universe,
and relations to sustain to all other things.
The extent of these relations is known only
to the Infinite Mind; but copious gKmpses
of them are allowed to mortal discernment.
It is the part of wisdom to search out the
purposes, of which things are but the expres-
sions. Without the purpose we but half
know the thing.

Change, activity, is the universal law of
things. Where these infinite activities occur

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. 15

in accordance with creative purposes, there is
no conflict, no disorder, but rather the di-
vinest harmony. In inanimate nature, also,
among non-rational creatures, this harmony
appears. All things within these classes fulfil
their appointed purposes with the most un-
questioning obedience.

It remains for the volition of man to dis-
turb the harmony of creation. Hence we
can understand the poet's tendency to retire
from things which appear out of joint, and
find his inspiration in the harmonies of obe-
dient nature.

Poetic genius is but a soul attuned to the
harmonies of divine purpose, and to whom
Nature's voices are intelligible. It turns
from man only when he is at war with
order; but it returns to him again when he
is worthy of notice, and finds its grandest
paean in a grand man.

Man was intended to be the crowning
glory of creation, instead of its single blot.

If the volition of man is the only source

16 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

of disorder, when, then, is he in order ?
When he is disposed "to will and to do of
the good pleasure" of Him who gave him
his existence and his possibilities. Then is
he in fitness of condition — then is he in
order.

Order as applied to a school means fitness
of condition in all the parties comprehended
in the idea of a school. The parties in this
idea are as follows: 1st, the district as a
body politic; 2d, the parents or guardians;
3d, the children ; 4th, the teacher.

The school is in order when, and only
when, all these parties are in order. These
parties are in order wThen they are in the
condition most favorable for the upbuilding
and advancement of the school.

"We may examine this point under more
specific conditions.

CONDITIONS OF OKDEK FOli THE DISTRICT. 17

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE DISTRICT.

THE district is in order — 1st, when it is
able to pay the necessary expenses of the
school; 2d, when it is willing to contribute
freely to the wants of the school ; 3d, when
it possesses a decorous and law-abiding pub-
lic sentiment.

1st. In the case of a private school, its
district is unlimited in area and wealth. Its
order, then, will depend principally upon the
last two conditions, together with those of
the remaining factors.

It is different, however, in the case of the
public schools. In this case the territory is
parcelled out into definite areas for purposes
of taxation. There is no disadvantage in
this, provided the area has sufficient wealth
to sustain an efficient school.

Some states have wisely restricted the di-
B

18 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

mensions to which the areas of taxation may
be reduced. The town or township is au-
thorized to tax itself for the support of a
sufficient number of schools to accommo*
date the wants of its people.

Under this basis of taxation, the concen-
tration or extension of schools will be regu-
lated by the financial ability of the town-
ship.

It is perhaps true that every township in
the nation has the ability to support one or
more good schools. There is, therefore, un-
der this organization, no financial necessity
for a bad school. If the township chooses
to multiply its schools in order to diminish
the travelling of isolated inhabitants, it per-
forms an act of folly, assumes burdens that
it is not able to bear, and thus prejudices
the first condition of order.

But this condition of order is ruined in
other states by a pernicious system of un-
limited subdivision of territory. The ability
to subdivide is abused by the desire to save

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE DISTRICT. 19

travelling to and from the school-house ; and
BO the children's legs are saved at the ex-
pense of their brains and character. An-
other unworthy incentive to subdivision is
the desire to get school-houses near enough
to be nurseries for infants, an utter perver-
sion of the purposes of a school.

Subdivision produces inability to support
a good school ; this poverty produces disor-
der. The children will not respect the coops
that are too often prepared for their recep-
tion ; they cannot respect a cheap teacher :
there results demoralization to the school,
and ultimately to the community.

The general evils attendant upon minute
subdivision of territory are aggravated by
special evils peculiar to the nature of the
case. The business of the district is not
transacted in a systematic manner ; no delib-
erative body discusses its necessities, hears
suggestions for its improvement, or keeps
a record of its proceedings as a guide to
future action. The pure democracy use

20 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

their privilege principally in deciding who
shall control the pittance of patronage ; then
comes in the most unseemly nepotism to
give the finishing blow in the murder of a
school.

When we add the neighborhood animosi-
ties resulting from scrambles after territory
and schools, we have a fair recapitulation of
the evils resulting from minute subdivision.

As intimated in the beginning, this philos-
ophy has been developed inductively, though
treated subjectively. The results alluded to
throughout the work are not simply what
might occur under given circumstances, but
what have actually occurred in the American
attempt at popular education. The writer
has seen in the leading states of the Union
what he chooses to call the created evils of
legislation at work sapping the efficiency of
education and the welfare of society with it.

It is not easy to write with philosophic
composure when the theme recalls the intel-
lectual and moral destruction of so many

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE DISTRICT. 21

thousands of a promising generation whose
maturity the country needs.

The nation has been so blind to the real
condition of things as to listen with rapt
attention to repeated eulogiums on the little
school-houses dotting the land. When one
knows how many of these structures may
well bear on their portals the flaming in-
scription, "Who enters here leaves hope be-
hind," the sight of them is more likely to
awaken a shudder than a thrill of joy.

It is an encouraging sign, however, that
educational thought is moving against minute
subdivision, and in favor of rational organi-
zation. Several states have obliterated sub-
district lines, and have organized educational
work on the basis of the township system.

But the old evils are largely entailed upon
the new system: the so-called school-houses
having an existence are permitted to settle
the question of how many schools are to be
supported in the township.

Poverty, then, affects discipline by making

22 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

it impossible to secure suitable school-houses,
apparatus, and competent teachers.

2d. Free communities control their own
property. The ability to support a good
school would be null without willingness on
the part of the people to advance the funds
necessary to put the school in order.

3d. The discipline of the school must nec-
essarily be affected by the condition of public
sentiment in the community. The children
imbibe their character from every adult of
their acquaintance : the teacher is but one
among many wTho have access to them dur-
ing the day. His efforts to inculcate subor-
dination wall not prosper while vicious asso-
ciates are instructing the children that rebell-
ion and license are the proper order of life,
and the only things that are manly. His
corrections wrill not have the desired effect
while a neighborhood tells the children that
they are martyrs, that the teacher is their
enemy, and that they should retaliate their
wrongs upon him at the earliest possible day0

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE DISTRICT. 23

Unless the teacher's precepts find a fair
degree of corroboration outside, they will
but produce irritation and increase the dis-
order. Instances are on record where teach-
ers who wanted order have been thrown out
of the school -house by the large boys, and
the neighborhood laughed at the joke.

That is not a commendable state of senti-
ment where sucli boys become the heroes of
breakfast-tables. Yet the writer has in mind
a school in which, after one teacher had been
thrown out with a broken leg, his successor
escaped the same fate only by his quickness
of action and the rapidity with which he
administered bruises.

Instead of being frowned down by the
community, and taught to hang their heads
with shame after the first offence, those un-
fortunate boys came back with the spirit of
heroes in search of fresh laurels. These are,
of course, exceptional cases ; but they serve
to illustrate how important an element of
discipline is law-abiding public sentiment in

24: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

a community. License has its fascinations
for the young, and even in the best-ordered
communities the children are exposed to the
corrupting example and instruction of too
many bad persons.

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 25

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS.

THE parents are in order — 1st, when they
appreciate the value of education to the
child ; 2d, when they are wise in the daily
management of their children's time, with
a view to school duties and relations ; 3d,
when they are properly affected towards the
school, and thereby sustain its management.

1st. It is a great misfortune to children,
and a great source of disturbance in dis-
cipline, when parents have no lively sense
of the value of education. It is common
for parents of limited culture to regard edu-
cation as a mere instrumentality in the trans-
action of business, and that a smattering of
reading, writing, and computation will an-
swer all the purposes of life.

They overlook entirely the higher nature
of the child — the existence of mental and

26 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

moral faculties ; the capacity of these facul-
ties for growth and development, and the
relation of this growth and development to
happiness and usefulness. They are deficient
in a proper ideal of maturity and character,
and fail to appreciate the germs intrusted to
their care. Though they are not wanting- in
affection, yet they see only the germs of
physical growth, and are unaware that their
ideals are only adult children. / Dr. Young
speaks of " hoary youth," and there is a
world of meaning in the expression.

Among the finer phases of human life is
that of the poor but wise widow making the
most painful personal sacrifices in order to
procure that education which she knows her
child needs. The contrast is that of her op-
ulent neighbor sending his children to an
incompetent and inexperienced teacher, and
fearing the effects of over-education.

There is no such thing as over-education ;
but where this bugbear haunts the imagi-
nations of parents, they will not second the

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 27

teacher's efforts to awaken emulation and
ambition.

"While there is no such thing as over-educa-
tion, there is, however, such a thing as mal-
education ; and the notion of over-education
has arisen from a confusion of ideas. True
education strengthens the common - sense of
the individual, while mal-education may leave
him an utter imbecile.

Where the parents do not approve of cult-
ure, the teacher's efforts to diffuse it will meet
with friction, and the order of the school will
be disturbed. •

2d. Punctuality and regularity of attend-
ance are eminently essential to the good order
of a school. The teacher arranges his plans
on the assumption that his pupils will be
regular and punctual in their attendance.
The teacher rules through his system. Ab-
sence and tardiness tend to break into and
demoralize that system.

There is no doubt that parents are mainly
responsible for absence and tardiness : they

28 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

could suppress them almost entirely if they
would.

That parents do not suppress absence and
tardiness is due to three causes — viz., 1, want
of systematic home government ; 2, thought-
lessness or overweening sentimental indul-
gence ; 3, covetousness.

In well-governed homes the children retire
at a given time ; they rise refreshed at a
given time ; and after discharging their morn-
ing duties in order, they start for school in
season. Habits of procrastination and irreg-
ularity will find them unprepared to move
when schooltime arrives. Instead of retiring
to rest at bedtime, to recuperate their strength
and spirits for the demands of the coming
day, many children are subjected to the forc-
ing process of acquitting themselves in even-
ing parties and entertainments. The time
which should be devoted to repose is given
to actual dissipation. The dissipation re-
garded as respectable is attended with phys-
ical, mental, and moral wear and tear just as

CONDITIONS OF OKDER FOB TIIE PARENTS. 29

truly as is the license which society condemns.
An adult dreads the ordeal of meeting tyran-
nical custom in the night, because his judg-
ment tells him it will be a tax on all his pow-
ers. But an adult requires less rest than a
youth, because he has his growth, has learned
law, and has acquired a habit of husbanding
his forces. Young people, on the contrary,
have no conception of law ; prudence forms
no part of their capital ; they are susceptible
of the most intense excitement, and are en-
tirely at its mercy; they rush headlong to
prostration without experiencing a restrain-
ing motive. To rob a child of its rest and
expose it to the strain of night excitement
is a sin attended writh the most serious con-
sequences. Parents who thus surrender their
children to the tyranny of vicious custom
inflict lasting injury upon the children and
great disorder upon the school. The wearied
young victims are apt to be late. But this is
only an item in the disorder. They are op-
pressed with a sinking lassitude, and have no

30 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

zest for exertion ; their faculties are clouded
and benumbed, making thinking difficult and
repulsive ; their minds are absent, wandering
back to the scenes of excitement and dwell-
ing upon new-found emotions. The faithful
teacher sees and feels the change with dis-
may. The school of yesterday, which was
beginning to feel the spur of emulation, has
been thrown back almost irretrievably by the
shock of outside forces. Yet who will say
that this teacher is incapable of governing
because the accident of a night has intro-
duced such disorder into his school? It is
not sufficient to the purposes of government
that the teacher be in order ; it is necessary
that the other factors be likewise in order.
He who watches the clock, and sees that the
school-child retires before nine is governing
the school; he who countenances late hours
is introducing disorder.

In the above wTe have depicted a fault in
family government that is so universal as to
be national. It is not only destroying the

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 31

order of our schools, but it is also weakening
the quality of our people; it is introducing
the inevitable consequence of excess, human
deterioration. The reaction of this night ex-
citement is seen in a series of evil conse-
quences. The more delicate children succumb
to the unnatural strain and disappear from
school. "Where are they to be found there-
after ? Not in the broad arena of action,
wielding the forces of a world. Many have
furnished business to undertakers and tomb-
gtone manufacturers, while the mission of the
rest is to remind these enterprising establish-
ments that business is not in danger. Night
excitement has for its fruit an army of candi-
dates for early -grave accommodations. But
the dissolution of the body is preceded by
the wail of dying hope. Could our parents
hear that continuous wail from the myriad
victims of misgovernment, they would be
prompt in getting their children to bed.

But the children who survive the frightful
ordeal in consequence of their great recupera-

32 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

live physical powers are also sufferers ; they
bear the scars of intellectual and moral reac-
tion ; their higher nature is seared by the
hot iron of injustice. The good instructor
who has an ideal of capacity to which he
would have his pupil attain knows that he
must first arouse in that pupil the emotions
of emulation and ambition. Growth of pow-
er is conditioned in emotion; there must be
the will born of confidence and hope. Tem-
porary or spasmodic emotion will not supply
the conditions of development ; the emotion
must be sustained. There is a limit to the
recovery of emotion from the depressing
reactions of dissipation; the child at length
becomes incapable of the proper emotion,
and goes to swell the ranks of passive fail-
ures.

"We want a national sensibility that will
abhor the practice of making children ape
the ways of maturity. If we protect them
from excitement by jealously guarding their
hours of repose, we do much to assure their

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 33

good behavior in school and their success in
life. Buttdo children not need diversion?
They do ; but not after nine o'clock at night ;\
at that point their sovereign need is refresh-
ing sleep. Under healthy government the I
children will wake with the lark and rouse
the household at dawn. Under right living,
mankind will, as they should, wake up with
the rest of nature. A household sleepy in
the morning bespeaks violated law. But
what about the lessons that require late study ?
The teacher is censurable for assigning such
lessons. He is employed to instruct the
children ; he has no right to compel them
to take time from their rest in order to in-
struct themselves. He should, it is true, en-
courage application, and enforce, if need be, a
certain amount of it ; but he can err seriously
by imposing heavy tasks. A household ruled
on the principle of a time for everything, and
everything in its time, will give not only
punctual pupils, but also punctual men and
women.

C

34 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

But we have only begun the list of cumu-
lative evils suggested by the fatal "nine."
That hour marks a crisis in youth's daily
history. If wakeful excitement continues
beyond that point, there is death lurking in
the minutes.

Some w^ell - meaning parents detain their
children at home from time to time on the
most trifling pretexts, thinking that the loss
of a single day will not .affect their progress
materially; or they let the children absent
themselves on a mere freak. Regularity is
essential to close work and solid advance-
ment, and a discouraged mind may find its
cause in the absence of a single day.

But the most unworthy cause of absence
and tardiness is covetousness. Many parents
discover a commercial value in the services
of the child. They can estimate with very
close accuracy the value of those services
from year to year, up to that period when
the law gives the little sufferer his release.

That release is but a comfortless boon to

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 35

one who lias been robbed of his youth, and
who is now cast upon the world shorn of his
strength, maimed in body, intellect, and soul.

No, the commercial parent is not concerned
with questions of over-education and indul-
gence ; his motive in detaining his children
from school is dollars and cents. If for
form's sake he lets them put in an appear-
ance occasionally, it is with the regret of the
miser who sees a penny slipping from his
hoard.

This is not the relation of parent and *
child ; it is the relation of slave and master./
The slavery that above all others cries to*
heaven for vengeance, is the slavery of a
helpless child who feels within himself the
promptings to noble things, but is ground
down to the dust by the heavy hand of au-
thority.

No parent has a right to discover a com- A
mercial value in his child. It is true that/
both natural and civil law give him the cus-
tody of the child ; but it is not for com-

36 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

mercial considerations. The custody is grant-
ed as a tribute to the affections, and solely for
the child's sake. It is presumed that the par-
ent loves his child, and will provide for the
wants of its growing existence more complete-
ly than any other party.

Love is not a task-master ; it sacrifices it-
self for its object ; it rejoices in giving, not
taking. Where could we presume that the
child would be more likely to find justice
than in the bosom of its parent ?

The only services from the child to which
the parent is justly entitled are obedience,
respect, and filial love. But these are given
in exchange for love; he may forfeit them
by ignoring his own share of the contract.

But we are not arguing that children
should be idlers. It is contrary to their
nature to be idle ; they are called bundles of
activities. Nature has certain things for the
child to do ; the parent should give her a fair
chance to work her purposes. It is then his
duty to train his child to industry, economy,

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 37

and practical skill in doing things as a prep-
aration for a useful life.

But it should be remembered that the aim
is training ; and the training should not be
exhausting.

If material value results from the activity
expended in the training, there is no wrong.
This is property which the parent has right-
fully acquired, just as the state finds property
in the activities of the criminals it is trying
to reform. But it would be wTrong in either
party to covet such property.

The wisest parent will do well to leave a
very large part of the training to nature ;
and a serious mistake may be made, even, in
calling in the aid of the schoolmaster at too
early a day.

3d. To be properly affected towards the
school is to be disposed to do the school
justice. The parent who is properly affected
towards the school will not pass hasty judg-
ment on the teacher's action on the ex parte
testimony of the child, and conclude that a

38 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

? wrong is done because the child happens to
think so. Where a wrong is suspected the
teacher will not be condemned without a

I hearing, nor till after all available testimony

1 has been weighed.

The most important evidence in making
up just judgment is the evidence of one's
senses. Parents should see the discipline to
which their children are subjected, and upon
which so much depends. It is entirely un-
accountable on what grounds parents neg-
lect the duty of school inspection. But this
neglect is so general throughout the land
that parental visitation is a rare exception.

It would seem that natural concern for
the welfare of the child would impel the par-
ent to visit the school and possess himself of
the most absolute of all evidence, that of per-
sonal observation, in regard to the discipline.
That there is not almost continually a sprink-
ling of anxious fathers and mothers looking
in upon the discipline of their children is
phenomenal, and almost puzzles philosophy.

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 39

The fact bears on its face a terrible charge,
that of indifference as to what manner of
maturity the children may take on. To a de-
gree, the charge is sustained by facts. Oth-
er parents compromise with their consciences
by supposing that hired watching will suffice.
"We shall discuss hired watching farther on.

Bad discipline exists because it exists un-
seen ; it would wither under the common-
sense of parental scrutiny. The difficulty
with hired watching is that it does not see
with the eye of affection. There can be no
substitute for parental visitation. Discipline
will lag and be misinterpreted until parents
discharge this sacred duty.

It is common to hear parents discussing
the teacher. Such discussions are fruitless,
unless those parents have seen that teacher
at work. They cannot discuss profitably
what they do not know ; they do not know
the teacher whose work they have not seen.

The parent wTho is properly affected rec-
ognizes the necessity of having authority in

40 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

/ the schoolroom, and will not weaken that
[ authority by criticising the teacher in the
! presence of the child. All discussions of the
teacher should be absolutely removed from
the child's ear. To the child the teacher
should be perfection. The child's own im-
pressions of the school should be taken for
just what they are worth; but while he re-
mains he should be required to respect the
authority and superiority of the teacher.
There is little chance for order where par-
ents believe the teacher is unworthy of re-
spect, and openly tell their children so.

The parent who is properly affected will
remember that the teacher is in loco par entis,
and that the child should carry to the school-
room the same submissive allegiance which
he renders at home. Under no circum-
stances should the parent encourage insub-
ordination. It is a lesson in crime. Crime
consists in a violation of law ; and he who
has learned to trample upon the laws of the
schoolroom is a criminal in all respects except

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 41

the disgrace of legal punishment. He is ripe
for the commission of such trespasses as will
place him behind prison-bars.

We see in this instance the important re-
lation existing between order in the scho6l-
room and order in the state, or public order.

But the foundation of all is family order.
If there is not a recognized authority at home,
it will be difficult to secure recognition of au-
thority elsewhere.

Insubordination generally takes its rise at
home, and springs from three causes — viz. :
1st, conflict of authority ; 2d, abuse of au-
thority ; 3d, abdication of authority.

A conflict of authority occurs when the
father and mother have opposing wishes in
regard to the child's conduct. The child,
being unable to obey both, is led, after a
period of confused volition, to disobey both.
Abuse of authority occurs when unjust exac-
tions are required from the child, or when
unjust punishments are inflicted upon him.
The effect is to arouse resentment, which is

42 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

the forerunner of rebellion. Family trag-
edies are but the collisions of wills which
have been thrown out of their proper rela-
tions either by conflict of authority or the
abuse of it. \A rebellious child is the fruit
of faulty home discipline. Such a child is
not a good subject for school discipline. /
Abdication of authority occurs when par-
ents permit disobedience, and deliver the
child over to its own inclinations. This is
one of those amiable weaknesses which it is
difficult to condemn. It results from large
affection, which is of itself one of the grand-
est qualities of humanity. The child is given
to understand that he may obey his parent's
wishes if it chances to be pleasant for him
to do so. But if the obedience involves any
personal discomfort or any violence to incli-
nation, the kind parent would not for the
world have him put himself to any incon-
venience.

r The misguided affection which abdicates
(authority may be at times so shocked with

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE PARENTS. 43

the caprice of a spoiled child as to employ
entreaty and remonstrance in order to re-
strain it, But these only emphasize the ab-l
dication, and give the child additional assur/
ance that he is a law unto himself.

Authorities exist in the schoolroom and in
the state; the child should be prepared to
encounter them by experiencing a whole-
some subjection at home.

The will of the parent is the law of the
household, beyond which there is no appeal,
so long as he does not transcend the provis-
ions of civil law. This will should be in-
flexible on all points of duty and allegiance
from the child. It may, if needed, employ
force in order to secure submission, but will
not push the force beyond the necessities of
submission. The firm, unyielding will of the
just parent produces subordination; the iron
will of the unjust parent drives his child
into rebellion.

4:4: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE CHILDREN.

THE children are in order — 1st, when they
are happy ; 2d, when they respect the teacher
and his office ; 3d, when they feel interested
in the school and have pride in its success. ;

1st. The happy alone are tractable. This
is a law of human existence. The pursuit
of happiness is the mainspring of human
activity. Happiness is fruition, content; un-
happiness is want, uneasiness. Happiness is
a phase of love; and love is submission.

Volition has its origin in the desires; the
desires originate in want; they wrere created
for the express purpose of making the person
unhappy, so that he would will to supply the
want in order to escape the unhappiness.
The desires are blessings without which hu-
man existence would suddenly cease; for
reason alone is inadequate to the preserva-

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE CHILDREN. 45

tion of life. In an important sense, then, the
desires are our masters — imperious, despotic
masters — enforcing their authority with the
sanction of keenest torture.

The desires of childhood are few and
simple, but intense, in consequence of the
excessive demands of growth. The desires
at this period are mostly physical, as they
have the task both of sustaining life and
providing increase of structure. These im-
perative physical desires may be summed up
in the desire for food, the desire for exer-
cise, and the desire for repose — three things
absolutely essential to physical development.

Children have one imperious moral desire —
viz., the desire of love. In addition to these
desires, they have susceptibilities, which are
either incipient desires or the germs of fut-
ure desires.

Now, when abundant provision is made for
the imperious desires, and reasonable provis-
ion for the susceptibilities, the child is in-
tensely happy and tractable. It is in conse-

46 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

quence of the susceptibility of the child to
enjoy sweet sounds and beautiful sights that
music and pictures are introduced into the
schoolroom, and shrubbery into the play-
ground, as aids to discipline. When the
conditions of happiness are understood and
supplied, much has been done for order.

This relation of happiness to obedience is
universal. Suffering armies have been saved
from mutiny, not by the authority of the
commander, but by his skill in recalling their
minds from their physical sufferings to the
happiness of contemplating the recollections
of the 'past, the merits of their cause, and
future rewards. What is the inspiration to
do and dare but an overwhelming sense of
happiness which stifles minor tortures ?

The authority of a national government is
tolerated when its people are happy; when
anhappiness seizes them, the government is
menaced. This is right ; governments exist
for the happiness of the governed.

In the schoolroom the teacher cannot ex-

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE CHILDREN. 47

pect proper submission to his will while the
children are lashed into agony by one or
other of their despotic desires. There occurs
a conflict of authority which demoralizes the
volition of the child and disturbs the order
of the school.

2d. Eespect for superior ability and the
functions of authority are everywhere the con-
ditions of willing subordination. Unwilling
subordination is not discipline ; it is tyranny.
There will not be order in the school if the
teacher is jeered and insulted by his pupils
out of school. This may or may not be owing
to the teacher's fault, but it is nevertheless
destructive of order while it continues.

3d. Discipline is much advanced when the
children realize that the school is theirs as
completely as it is the teacher's; that he is
only a necessary part of it. "When this point
has been reached, there will be need of but
few commands from the teacher ; the neces-
sities of the school may be freely discussed,
and the orders issued by the common voice of

48 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

the pupils. Discipline has indeed triumphed
when the pupils take upon themselves the
task of preserving order.

The most orderly schools in this country
are governed by the public opinion of tlie
school. It has been the writer's good fort-
une to see several schools which have reach-
ed this grand consummation. In these cases
the presence or absence of the teacher made
no difference ; the pupils were on their hon-
or, and that sufficed for order.

We are searching for the nature of that
power of control which produces and sustains
order in a school; and we begin already to
see that it is a moral power. We get the
highest control over others by teaching them,
both by precept and example, to control them-
selves. We control most powerfully by indi-
rection ; the wrord of the popular leader will
control millions to his purpose, while that of
the titled monarch is set at naught. None
but a moral power could bring about the
conditions which we have so far found to be
essential to order in a school.

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 49

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER,

THE teacher is in order — 1st, when he is
thoroughly master of himself; 2d, when he
possesses the clearest mastery of the subjects
he is presumed to teach ; 3d, when he ap-
prehends correctly the relations surrounding
and centring in him.

1st. Self-mastery is character. Character
is a life conformed to the moral law. It is
a growth ; it is the seal of man's maturity ;
it is the symbol of victory in the struggles
writh the evil propensities of human nature.

To the man of character life has become a
science ; his volition is no longer controlled
by impulse, but by fixed and definite princi-
ples of action. His principles are his iden-
tity ; if they are defeated in a single instance,
he is humiliated in his own esteem. To him
any shock to self-respect is more painful than
D

50 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

the criticisms of the public. His ready sense
of rectitude and propriety, his conscience, he
prizes above all other considerations. He is
under the dominion of conscience.

Deportment may be formed by external in-
fluences; but character is shaped only from
within. The world is too apt to mistake
deportment for character; but the deception
is short-lived. There come occasions in the
history of every man which test his quali-
ties, and tear away the mask from his real
strength or weakness.

Complaisance is but the shadow of char-
acter ; it is folly to ape the form and ignore
the substance. A habit of appearing good is
pleasant to the eye, but deceptive and treach-
erous to the experience ; but a habit of be-
ing good is beyond all price ; it is the rock
upon which society rests.

Perhaps nothing in the history of society
has been so completely perverted and abused
as politeness. It should be the mark of
greatness of soul ; but it has too often been

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 51

studied in all its points and put on as a gar-
ment to conceal the designs of a villain.
Every community in civilized countries lias
had its experience with polished rascality,
which for the moment has eclipsed the
merits of virtuous and honorable men wrho
chanced to have some angles in their man-
ners.

We would not defend coarseness, nor make
it the infallible sign of excellence ; but wre
would have that breeding which begins at
the core and finishes on the surface. We
have had abundance of whitened sepulchres ;
the type is immortalized in " The mildest-
mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut
a throat." What we want is character ; and
we shall be glad to have it polite. The
amenities of life which we prize so highly
have had their origin in innate kindness.

But character is essential to discipline in a
school; it gives a rally ing -point for order,
and gives to precept the sanction of example.
None but a settled character is competent to

52 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

preside over the discipline of a school. The
children have more logic than they are gen-
erally credited with, and are quick to detect
the variance between precept and example.
They are loath to cleave to duty when they
perceive it to be a one-sided affair.

There are stages in character. First there
is uncertain character ; then there is either
character or want of character. We choose
to use these terms in making the distinc-
tions, in order that the grand word charac-
ter may be saved to a specific and definite
meaning. It means such a loyalty to con-
science as will not deviate a hair's -breadth
though the heavens fall. It means a deter-
mination to do right because it is right, re-
gardless of consequences. It means the cour-
age to endure pain and loss, if need be, in or-
der to vindicate the right.

That is not character which does right
when it is convenient or politic, but does
wrong when unobserved or when trial comes.
Doubtless many people are self-deceived as

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 53

to which of the stages they are in, and may
imagine that they have character because
they have never been tempted to do wrong.

Only the person of character is competent
to preserve order. The villain can only
poison and demoralize ; the person of uncer-
tain character is imbecile.

Uncertain character is an accompaniment
of youth, the period of the strife between
good intentions and bad propensities. The
actions of the individual at this period are
marked by the most striking contrasts and
inconsistencies, without any fixed centre of
motive. One so loose in conduct is not
adapted to impart stability to others. When
wrangles occur between the child-teacher and
the other children under his charge, the par-
ents will be apt to take sides with their own
children as against the stranger.

Whether this uncertain character will de-
velop into character or want of character is
often a mere problem of circumstances. In
any case, it imports disaster to the order of a

54: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

school when persons in this stage are ap-
pointed to exercise its government.

Youth is not a crime ; but it is a crime to
employ that youth for purposes to which it
is not fitted. The purpose to which it is
least fitted is that of allaying the turbulent
and often disordered impulses of childhood.
It needs the experience of self-mastery in
order to read correctly the childish nature
and be prepared to deal with it. Maturity
may be hastened by effort ; but it is also
true that many persons never pass the thresh-
old of youth, and die young though they live
to be fourscore.

Character not only gives the teacher influ-
ence in the schoolroom, but it also protects
him from being misrepresented and misun-
derstood outside, and so contributes to other
conditions of order.

We have said that character is shaped
from within. Without introspection the for-
mation of a symmetrical character is almost
an impossibility. What do we see on looking

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 55

within ? We behold a complex structure of
organs, faculties, and powers, rising in a given
order of importance, all having certain func-
tions to perform, all having certain relations
to sustain to each other and to the surround-
ing universe ; we see, in short, " How fearful-
ly and wonderfully we are made !" We see
the temple of man's personality, the house
intrusted to his special care, and for which
he is held to a solemn accountability ; we
see the purposes of its parts, the conditions
of their health, and the method by which
the house is kept in order.

We take an inventory of our possessions,
note the purposes to which they were de-
signed, and begin our first act of govern-
ment. That government consists in restrain-
ing rebellious parts, and rousing into activity
others which have a tendency to lie dormant.
When the evil propensities are held in check,
and all the faculties roused to the full dis-
charge of their functions, we have an harmo-
nious existence — we have a stable man.

56 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

But this government is not a phase of self-
ishness, nor of self-sufficiency. Rising above
all the other faculties and powers in the hu-
man composition are enthroned the natural
and spiritual affections, craving objects be-
yond self, and drawing man into communion
with his Maker and his kind. This is the
status of character — an enlightened will in-
fluenced by love. This is the character req-
uisite to the preservation of civil order, of
wrhich a school is but a phase.

We will not discuss here the influence of
character in shaping the children's lives ; our
present purpose is to show its relation to
discipline. In order to do this, we are
obliged to reveal its nature and the manner
of its acquisition.

2d. Attention is an essential and powerful
element of order. The absolute calm of a
" spell - bound " audience is a thing well
known; and its laws are in a measure un-
derstood. It is not regarded as an act of
volition in compliment to the speaker. It

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOE THE TEACHER. 57

is known to be due to the relation of mind
to ideas, of which the speaker is but the
exciting cause.

He arrests attention by making vividly
present a train of ideas which recall the
wandering activities of the mind to a con-
centration in a given direction. This con-
centration produces stillness. While the en-
forced stillness of a few moments is painful,
audiences have been known to hang for hours
on the words of an effective speaker with-
out any discomfort, and to regret even then
that the end was come.

The power of vivid ideas in securing or-
der is not limited to any class of humani-
ty ; the vile and low, as well as the wor-
thy and cultivated, are equally susceptible
to its influence. This power has been so
often illustrated as to give rise to the prov-
erb, "They came to scoff, but remained to
pray."

Cultivated persons acquire measurable con-
trol over their attention, and can direct it

58 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

at will to given subjects. Training likewise
produces habit ; and so, after much practice,
there may result a habit of giving attention.
But children are under the control of phys-
ical impulses and mental fancies, and, in
consequence, they are prone to manifesta-
tions of activity that are not in keeping
with order. But they are not exempt from
the power of ideas; and this power steps
in to win them from themselves.

But there is no flashing of ideas in rote-
teaching. It proves an irksome drudgery to
the children, increasing their discomfort and
multiplying the tendencies to disorder. A
parody on true teaching is that process of
giving the children text -books and telling
them to get knowledge and culture for them-
selves— knowledge and culture which per-
chance the teacher does not possess. Noth-
ing is better fitted to discourage the learner
utterly, and make him distrust his mental
powers, than such a course. Discourage a
child by mechanical teaching, and you pre-

CONDITIONS OF OEDEK FOR THE TEACHEK. 59

pare him to become either an adult dolt or
a distinguished reprobate.

Mechanical teaching is worse than none ;
it is a positive injury : it perverts the child-
ish nature, and is largely responsible for the
imbecility and crime which afflict the country.

In the United States to-day vast sums are
annually expended in the production of in-
jury to individual happiness and to the
national welfare. It would seem that evil
is plentiful enough without paying for it.
Many taxpayers have had this thought dawn
upon them, and have wisely decided to pay
as little as possible for the evils imposed
upon them. In many communities the pub-
lic school is practically repudiated, though
the forms are retained. The forms are en-
dured in order to comfort some people who
think forms are capable of accomplishing
something, and because forms are necessary
in order to secure state aid.

That mastery of the subject which intro-
duces the power of ideas into the govern-

60 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

ment of a school is wanting — 1st, in those
persons who never had a solid grasp of any
subject — that is, persons who have been su-
perficially educated, or rather ??ia/-educated ;
2d, those persons who were once in fair
mental condition, but have lost their stu-
dious habits.

He who ceases to advance in knowledge
must recede. The individual who some time
ago reached a resting-place in his mental
achievements is properly called a fossil. A
fossil is a dead thing retaining some hints
of its former self. So, too, knowledge may
die, and yet retain resemblances to its living
state.

Yivid ideas mean literally live ideas, pul-
sating ideas. There is in live knowledge a
circulation, just as there is a circulation with-
in the frame of the living animal. This cir-
culation in knowledge is called the law of
mental association. The sum total of knowl-
edge is a unit. "We have a universe in which
all things known and unknown are tied to-

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 61

get her into one whole by the interweaving
strands of relations. These strands are clues
which the mind loves to follow, and which
the cultivated mind must follow. When a
new idea is discovered, it must be adjusted.
The mind runs down the existing strands to
see that the connection is complete, and in
its progress illuminates and vitalizes the pre-
vious wisdom. Again, the mind gathers im-
petus for new conquests by swift excursions
over existing lines.

Herein we see the mental circulation and
the vitalizing effects produced by fresh in-
vestigations. The reviews necessitated by
research, and impelled by discovery, bring
out our old knowledge into greater distinct-
ness, and adorn it with new meanings.

By such discipline the mind becomes so
familiar with its strands that it acquires a
habit of sweeping through them with light-
ning speed on the least exciting occasion.
Then ideas do not come singly, but in
trains — for the mind must sweep the strands.

62 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

Stop your progress and you stop the ne-
cessities for excursions; soon you stop the
habit of excursions, and ere long the old, un-
visited stores become mere reminiscences in
memory. When the mind would get at
them, it must stumble with crutches over
ground which it once swept with the swift-
ness and ease of Mercury. It adheres anx-
iously to any old waymarks that may be left,
and hugs the ruts as its only salvation from
being utterly lost. Gone are the trains of
ideas ; gone the power to captivate the mind
and recall it from its disorder.

What remains ? Nothing but a process of
hooking up the dead and stale ideas of the
past and forcing them into unwilling minds
that have no appetite for even wholesome
food. Either that or words — words, the coun-
terfeits of knowledge — a leaning on the lan-
guage of the text -book instead of on the
possessions of the mind.

It is characteristic of teachers who are
not masters of their subjects to be very con-

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 63

scientious about compelling the children to
master them. The state of the appetite
and the quality of the food are altogether
overlooked, while the business of cramming
by quantity goes grimly and persistently on.
There is an old adage about the ability to
lead a horse to water, and the inability to
make him drink. The animal can protect
his organs of nutrition from abuse ; but the
poor child undertakes to gorge himself with
the innutritious things set before him, and
in consequence gets his mind into the ut-
most disorder. So great and permanent is
this disorder that it has given rise to the
term " unlearn," a word familiar to good
teachers who have been compelled to re-
ceive the relics of mismanagement.

In alluding to superficial teachers, we do
not necessarily mean the young; nor, in al-
luding to fossil teachers, do we necessarily
mean the old. The distinction occurs on
inherent condition, not on age; the terms
are frequently reversed.

64: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

None but a progressive teacher is compe-
tent to discipline a school. In addition to
the laws already laid down, we may add
that the discovery in him of any halting
ignorance or want of clearness will imme-
diately undermine his authority by weaken-
ing respect for him.

The mark of a progressive teacher is in-
tellectual diligence inspired by a thirst after
knowledge. He may be known by the com-
pany he keeps — that is, by the books he reads
and the studies he pursues out of school.
Unless his record is satisfactory on these
points, the presumption is against his power
to produce and sustain order.

3d. We use the term apprehension of re-
lations rather than knowledge of relations.
A knowledge of all the relations centring in
a particular school is something that would
require long -continued observation, even if
the task did not prove infinite. But a ready
apprehension of relations, accompanying dil-
igent observation, will enable a person to

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOB THE TEACHER. 65

begin the great work of disciplining a
school.

The manifestations of disorder are effects
of given causes. A very ordinary mind will
be conscious of the disorder; but ready ap-
prehension of relations in the teacher will
enable him to detect the cause lying back
of the manifestation.

We are now prepared for an analogy
which is true and complete, and through
which the whole nature of discipline dawns
upon us. Disorder is of the nature of dis-
ease ; the teacher is the physician on whom
devolves the task of cure; and discipline is
a remedial system. The physician is latent
while the school is in order, and then the
instructor has the floor; but the physician
steps forward at the first symptoms of ill-
ness, reads its nature, and begins its treat-
ment.

In medicine, a failure to understand the
symptoms leads to disaster in the treatment;
the quack, by his blunders, makes the diffi-
E

66 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

culty chronic instead of driving it from the
system in its acute stages. Moral disease is
more intricate than physical maladies, and re-
quires a higher order of skill and science in
its treatment.

As we ascend in the scale of being, we dis-
cover more complex structure, more delicate-
ly interwoven relations. We rise through the
physical and mental before we reach the mor-
al nature. But, in addition to greater com-
plexity, there is the greater difficulty of mor-
al investigation. The things of the physical
nature may be seen by the physical eye, felt
by the physical touch, and their relations de-
termined by a simple exercise of intellectual
apprehension ; but the things of the moral
nature are apparent only to moral discern-
ment. Besides, as moral disorder often re-
sults from physical causes, the moral phy-
sician must be wise in physical things. It
is therefore a higher science.

And yet nations throw the strongest legal
safeguards around medicine, while they leave

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 67

the flood-gates open for the most unlimited
moral quackery. The evils of physical mal-
practice strike mainly at individuals, who
have refuge at least in death; while moral
malpractice strikes at society, the individual
that never dies.

The wise teacher, then, will put a disor-
derly school under treatment. Time is al-
wrays an element in treatment ; it is essential
to have faith in remedies and in patience; a
sudden transition from chaos to order is an
impossibility.

The disorder may take its rise in the school-
room, produced, perhaps, by physical discom-
fort. In that case, the remedy consists in im-
proving the seats, and attending to the warmth,
ventilation, and all the other conditions of
happiness. But the child may come freight-
ed with tendencies to disorder imposed upon
him outside. In this case the treatment be-
comes more complex and cure less sudden.
It is the teacher's duty to reclaim this child,
and to do it with the least possible loss to the

68 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

school. It is not only his duty, but also his
interest — the most direct means of securing
order.

People's notions are generally mere notions ;
they are not conclusions founded on any ex-
tensive ratiocinations. When the teacher has
apprehended the specific causes of disorder in
his district, it is his business to get the people
out of their notions — to make them think ;
that is, it is his business to be an influence.
He will find ways and means of getting access
to their thoughts. It has been done, over and
over; the notions of communities have been
completely revolutionized by good schools ;
and the children have often proved the most
efficient missionaries. It is only a problem
in human nature which is everywhere the
same ; the teacher should not despair of suc-
cess.

Apprehension of relations is a great power
in the teacher, for it enables him to utilize
immediate and present facts in his govern-
ment and instruction.

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 69

It will, perhaps, be already inferred that
the teacher cannot enforce order by a mere
act of will. A firm will is a valuable ele-
ment in the production of order when sup-
plemented with the other conditions. There
are no fruits of human activity without in-
tense and sustained volition. It is unfortu-
nate that most of the will-power in the
world is expended in behalf of selfishness.
This selfishness will appear in the govern-
ment of the school-room.

We have said that it requires very little
mind to be conscious of disturbance. Self-
ishness is annoyed by the manifestations of
disorder, and wills their summary suppres-
sion. Its pride of authority is offended by
failure to comply with its commands ; and
violence is enlisted to give the sanction of
fear. But the violence does not always have
the credit of an external though mistaken
motive ; it too often occurs as a simple ex-
plosion of the teacher's anger, and is there-
fore intensely selfish.

70 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

The worst disorders in schools are pro-
duced by disorderly teachers. This tyran-
nical self-assertion may so far triumph as to
produce the silence of the grave. Even then
we have the antipodes of order ; for we have
a company of unhappy children learning to
hate authority and restraint, and ready to in-
dulge in the wildest license as soon as the
fear-inspired restraint is removed. We have
children who will wield power as brutally,
wrhen it is placed in their own hands, as
they found it wielded over themselves.

We want strong will in the world ; but we
want the will that is not selfish ; we want the
will of Howard, of Wilberforce, of Florence
Nightingale, of Bergh. The end of govern-
ment is order. That end will not be at-
tained by wrong methods. In the majority
of cases we can but approximate to order;
we approximate by creating tendencies tow-
ard order and removing the tendencies to
disorder. There is no other way. If vic-
tory is slow in some cases, there is comfort

CONDITIONS OF ORDER FOR THE TEACHER. 71

in the consciousness of some advance, be it
never so small. When the case is thorough-
ly understood, and when proper methods are
brought to bear, then there is use for the ut-
most will-power in pushing the conflict be-
tween good and evil.

72 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

CAUSES OF DISORDER.

IN the pathology of our remedial system
there are found three general causes of dis-
order: viz., 1st, natural deformity; 2d, mere
neglect; 3d, the reaction of injustice. The
first gives incapacity for principles, the sec-
ond want of principles, and the third bad
principles.

1st. A few unfortunate children are born
without a moral nature, and are consequent-
ly incapable of any moral life. They are
helpless wrards on the sympathy and charity
of others, and seldom enter among the prob-
lems of school discipline.

2d. Children may have such negative or
passive influences about them that their
moral qualities are in no way excited. In
this case we have a mere animal existence,
or what is called vegetation. The moral

CAUSES OF DISOKDEK. 73

powers become torpid by disuse ; and the
principal motives to action are the physical
sensations. We have a sort of stupid and
meaningless amiability, an utter absence of vo-
lition, while the conditions of physical com-
fort are supplied. But mere amiability is
not order ; on the contrary, it constantly
jeopardizes order by its want of moral per-
ception. The uncultured child is not always
amiable ; it may be possessed of a comba-
tive and undiscriminating obtuseness result-
ing from its own innate propensities.

In either case the child is out of order.
There is order only where there is intelli-
gent volition — that is, where obedience is im-
mediately enforced by the dictates of an en-
lightened conscience. This point is reached,
however, through the employment of many
mediate forces. Some of these mediate forces
have been hinted at already, and others will
be discussed farther on. Where there is only
moral torpidity, the task of government is
much less difficult than where there lias been
moral perversion.

74: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

3d. Torpidity or moral nonentity can only
occur where there are no schools. A school
excites the mental and moral faculties, and
tends to make the children either better or
worse than they would naturally vegetate.
There is little chance for pure vegetation in
this country now, our schools are so universal,
and have been so long established ; they have
touched several generations. The effect, how-
ever, has been mostly for the worse. The
country is full of notions, a result unques-
tionably due to the schools. The aggressive
reprobates who poison the morals and order
of communities are undoubtedly the products
of the schools. We mean by this, of course,
mismanaged schools, which have inflicted the
most wide -spread injustice and consequent
disorder.

We have reached, then, the prevailing cause
of disorder, and shall examine it closely. In-
justice is a violation of personal rights, and is
a specific form of wrong. Wrong is an act
or omission at variance with the will of the

CAUSES OF DISORDER. 75

Creator ; injustice is an abuse of the relations
existing between man and man.

All men are equally God's creatures, equal-
ly dependent on his beneficence, and are en-
titled to an equal share of the blessings he
bestows upon a fruitful earth. God is 110 re-
specter of persons; there is no monopoly of
blessings.

The power to breathe and the necessity for
breathing carry with them the right to use
the air which has been placed around the
globe. The power to feed and the necessity
for feeding carry with them the right to par-
take of the productions of nature. And so,
generally, faculties and necessities carry with
them the right to their proper nutriment. In
short, man has a right to fulfil the purposes
of his existence and to share in the things
necessary to that fulfilment.

This is the general law of rights, the moral
law, the will of God in regard to his creatures.
The sacredness of these rights comes from
the sanction of Omniscience.

76 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

Moralists have summed up the rights of
men into the right to life and the right to
liberty. Our Declaration adds the right to
the pursuit of happiness ; but this is em-
braced in the right to liberty.

These rights are called inalienable — that is,
inseparable from human personality ; they
are the leading characteristics of manhood,
and whoever restricts them performs an act
of injustice.

Our government is founded on the prin-
ciple of equal and exact justice to all. The
nation will never be truly prosperous until
this principle is universally recognized and
applied.

There are three recognized causes of just
alienation of personal rights : viz., 1st, volun-
tary choice ; 2d, crime ; 3d, the necessities of
society.

A man may surrender his liberty or even
his life, a thing often done with credit in the
cause of benevolence or patriotism. Where
this is done, human nature rises to the sub-

CAUSES OF DISOEDEE. 77

lime. Self-abnegation is the true measure of
size and greatness. Mere intellect may fill a
space and be intensified in power by wicked-
ness ; but it is always measurable. It may
even appear contemptible in its littleness
when analyzed and laid open in its naked de-
formity. Only greatness of heart catches at
the infinite and defies analysis. We cannot
measure the motive to the act of generous
self - immolation ; we can only admire the
flash from the spirit of Eternal Goodness.
The grave of noble self-sacrifice is the only
shrine of greatness. It would seem that such
graves are given us to be our instructors, to
show the possibilities of human powers. A
single deed of generous devotion embodies
more of wisdom, more of instruction, more
of grandeur, than a cycle of plodding, jostling
selfishness. Happy the community that has
such eloquence in its midst. Shame on the
muse that would prostitute its gift to the un-
seemly and mercenary task of galvanizing
little selfishness while the earth's bosom is

78 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

enriched with the remains of so many real
kings !

A man may encounter danger or death in
the assertion of his convictions; but this is
not surrender. It is rather the exercise of the
highest liberty, that of liberty of conscience.
The patient endurance of the martyr ranks
with the voluntary offering of the hero, in
that it rises above selfishness. The one dig-
nifies the human heart, while the other digni-
fies the human conscience. The one is sub-
lime in his impulse, the other is sublime in
his courage and constancy to principle. They
are both heroes in that they can defy danger
in order to do what they think is right. But
there is this distinction between them : the
intellect may be at fault in its cause, the
heart never.

A man may with propriety restrict his own
rights through prudential motives ; but if he
endangers them through merely selfish mo-
tives, there is no heroism in the act ; other-
wise the burglar is a hero.

CAUSES OF DISOEDEE. 79

Criminals forfeit all rights ; and the just
punishments for crime consist in losses of
rights proportioned to the nature of the of-
fence.

Society is the condition of man's existence.
He is born into society. It is only through
society that he can attain his highest end. It
is for these reasons that society can justly
command his services and use his powers,
though the use may cost him his liberty and
even his life. Society has the right to com-
mand its members to act in accordance with
its necessities. But society has no right to
be capricious and to invade the rights of in-
dividuals at will. Society, like individuals,
finds the origin of its rights in faculties
and necessities ; and its rights are likewise
summed up in the general right to attain its
end.

With this general view of the nature of
rights and injustice, we shall proceed to no-
tice the personal rights at stake in a school.
There are four persons or factors concerned

80 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

in a school ; there will, consequently, be four
classes of personal rights.

The district has a right — 1st, to the careful
preservation of the property it purchases ;
2d, to the comfort of an improved public
sentiment resulting from a well-ordered
school ; 3d, to the enhanced value of prop-
erty resulting from the same cause.

The nature of the first and third rights
will be apparent to all, and the propriety of
their existence self-evident.

The second may also be made to appear a
tangible reality. It includes two things : viz.,
happiness and security. The pursuit of hap-
piness is one of the great ends of life, and
every increase of happiness is gain. That
moral and intelligent neighbors are a source
of happiness will be conceded on imagining
them to be suddenly exchanged for others
low and vile.

Insecurity not only detracts from happi-
ness, and thus robs life of its reward, but it
also increases expense — the expense of heavy

CAUSES OF DISORDER. 81

police and armies. A people instructed in
the nature of right and wrong, and in respect
for authority, are less liable to violate the laws
and disturb the peace of communities than
those who are ignorant and vicious ; that is,
they are self-governing ; and the expensive
machinery of protection may be reduced or
dispensed with.

It is on the supposition that returns are
made in the forms of happiness and security
that communities justify the taxation of pri-
vate property for the support of public
schools. Hence the community has a right
to those returns. The right is precisely the
same in the case of private schools, which
are supported by voluntary taxation.
F

82 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

RIGHTS OF PARENTS.

THE parents have a right — 1st, to feel that
their children are managed with thoughtful
kindness and^care with reference to their
physical, moral, and mental well-being; 2d,
to the gratification of beholding the devel-
oped powers and possibilities of their chil-
dren; 3d, to the assurance that their chil-
dren are prepared for correct and success-
ful lives.

The first and third rights embrace the
scope of parental responsibility. These are
the things due to the child from the par-
ent, and the payment of which is intrusted
to the promptings of affection. Schools are
devised to enable parents to pay their debts ;
and the parents have a right to feel that their
creditors are justified, especially since the cred-
itors are of their own flesh and blood.

EIGHTS OF PARENTS. 83

The second right embraces the principal
parental reward. "When parents do their
duty they are entitled to their reward.
The school should insure that reward, in-
stead of intercepting it.

84: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

EIGHTS OF CHILDREN.

THE children have a right — 1st, to find
their parents' affection in the teacher's
chair, inspiring their faith, hope, and perse-
verance ; 2d, they have a right to sound in-
struction and correct example ; 3d, they have
a right to that perfect and strong maturity
that comes of correct training.

1st. Schools and teachers are artificial
contrivances ; there are no such existences
in the natural order of things. Instruction
is a parental duty. It is founded upon the
affections, which secure to the parent the
custody of the child.

Love considers the welfare of its object;
and instruction is essential to the welfare
of the child. Many circumstances make it
expedient to procure this instruction through
schools. The teacher, when such a contri-

EIGHTS OF CHILDREN. 85

vance is devised, is simply a person in loco
parentis, vested with certain parental rela-
tions for the discharge of certain parental
duties.

"We have said that the one imperious
moral desire of the child is the desire of
love. The child has a right to that love
which it craves, and should never be out
of its atmosphere. It is presumed that the
child is ever within reach of parental sym-
pathy and assistance, both at home and at
school. Its duties to the teacher are like-
wise the same as those to the parent — viz.,
obedience, respect, and filial love. The mut-
ual relations remain unchanged.

2d. The susceptibility to instruction and
example gives rise to the right to sound in-
struction and correct example. The child
is helpless to select wholesome physical,
mental, or moral food ; hence the selection
is a parental duty.

Sad, indeed, are the results of failure to
read the whole meaning of innocent, help-

86 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

less, trusting childhood ! Infamous are the
customs that make traffic of their rights,
and change them from budding angels into
incarnate fiends!

3d. But towering above all the specific
rights of childhood, and embracing them
all in its wide significance, is the grand
right of maturity — the right to the com-
plete unfolding of its powers; the right to
attain its end; the right to be a man; the
right to read the Creative Mind spread
abroad upon his works; the right to the
infinite pleasures that await upon mature
susceptibilities ; the right to scatter happi-
ness here — the right to retire in peace from
a well-employed mortality!

This is the meaning of childhood and its
rights. This is the grand fabric which af-
fection should build, but which ruthless in-
justice is everywhere preventing by making
an early ruin.

EIGHTS OF TEACHERS. 87

RIGHT 8 OF TEACHERS.

THE teacher's contract gives him no moral
right. He only acquires rights as he gets
himself into his proper condition. He then
has a right — 1st, to his pay ; 2d, to the obe-
dience, respect, and love of the children ; 3d,
to the confidence and support of the par-
ents and the community.

1st. " The laborer is worthy of his hire."
The general conscience of mankind concedes
to the faithful laborer the right to compen-
sation for his services. But it is on the
supposition that the service has been of
value. Under his contract the incompetent
teacher may draw pay, but the transaction is
legalized fraud. From a moral standpoint
it is viewed as the plunder of a sacred fund.

2d. Only when the teacher shows parental
spirit is he morally entitled to the duties of

88 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

childhood. He may have extravagant no-
tions of his authority, but that authority is
none other than the parental authority of
custody intrusted to the affections. Many
teachers act on the principle that might
makes right, and employ physical force as
the sine qua non of discipline. Such teach-
ers have no rig] - 1 to the duties of the child.

If the teacher is not in his proper condi-
tion, his very presence is a moral wrong — the
efficient cause, in fact, of the endless wrongs
and miseries which work the ruin of order
in schools.

A violation of any of the rights men-
tioned works injustice. It is incumbent
upon the argument to show that this in-
justice works disorder in school.

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 89

REACTION OF INJUSTICE.

LET, for instance, the property be contin-
ually damaged and destroyed. This is an
injustice, inasmuch as it violates the first
right of the district. It will immediately
react upon one of the conditions of order —
viz., willingness to contribute freely to the
necessary expenses of the school.

Dilapidation is not always due to penu-
riousness. It may be evidence of a dis-
couraged district that has witnessed wanton
waste and destruction. It becomes an ap-
parently useless task to make improvements,
if improvements are only to whet the ap-
petite of vandalism; so dilapidation is per-
mitted to have its course. Good dwellings,
fences, barns, and churches go up, while
the school-house goes down. It is not un-
common to see very shabby school -houses

90 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

in very enterprising and well-to-do commu-
nities. It would be wrong to infer penuri-
ousness or want of public spirit in a people
who are unwilling to submit to injustice.

Dilapidation is destructive of order; in-
justice may have caused the dilapidation;
and the teacher is responsible for the in-
justice. It is the function of discipline to
get the school in order; and children who
are in order will not destroy property.

The community which some might call
stingy has suffered other injustice besides
waste of school property — it has suffered
the loss of teachers' salaries. The returns
to which it was entitled, in the forms of
happiness, security, and enhanced value of
property, have not been forthcoming, but
rather their opposite evils. Unwillingness
to be taxed under such circumstances is
natural.

Unkind and violent treatment is an in-
justice, since it violates several rights. It
violates the first right of the children and

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 91

the first right of the parents. It affects all
the children's conditions of order and also
the third condition of the parents. Chil-
dren cannot be happy under nnkind and
violent treatment, they cannot respect and
love a harsh teacher, nor can they feel an
interest in a school that is suggestive of
torture. They may give partial obedience,
but it is not given to discipline — it is given
to their own physical fear, which for the
moment becomes the superior motive. The
inclination to disobedience is increased.

Loose conduct in the teacher is an in-
justice. It violates the second right of the
children, the first right of the parents, and
the second right of the district. Loose con-
duct includes everything that is not honor-
able, manly, and noble in daily walk and
conversation. It includes every phase of
grossness and impropriety.

If this appears exacting, it is true, then,
that teaching is a very exacting profession.
He who regards good conduct as a strait-

92 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

jacket would do well to omit teaching. The
teacher should be everywhere the rallying-
point for propriety, which is the essence of
order. We do not use the term propriety in
the sense of stilted formality. Naturalness
is the most pleasing of all things; and the
conduct which springs from a pure heart
and reasonable seriousness of purpose will
constitute a wholesome example for the
children. Manners will take their com-
plexion from the heart. A man who is free
from gross intentions will not indulge in
gross deportment. Delicacy is inseparable
from goodness — it is to a degree inborn in
all human beings. We should aim to culti-
vate a natural grace rather than teach how
to talk, wralk, and behave by rule. Mere
book - behavior is a heartless thing ; it is
often cultivated at the expense of soul, and
destroys that frank and open candor which
is the mark of true manliness.

A knowledge of the conventionalities of
society is useful in putting a man at ease in

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 93

different situations. But those convention-
alities are no test of conduct. A man may
be ignorant of them, and yet live without
reproach.

It is a mistaken supposition that good con-
duct interferes with pleasure. The teacher
should be supremely happy, and should take
all the relaxation and recreation necessary
to make him so. In fact, he is not master
of himself unless the red blood of health
mantles in his cheek, and the light of a
buoyant spirit sparkles in his eye. He
should never cast a shadow, but should ever
carry with him the warmth of a genial nat-
ure. He must unbend at times, or he will
become permanently rigid. While providing
for his own relaxations, he should encourage
the relaxations of others, and so contribute
to the general happiness. In holding that
he should be the rallying-point of propriety,
we do not mean that he should appear as
an iceberg to put out the fires of enjoy-
ment.

94 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

The hypochondriac is out of place in the
school-room. The teacher would do well to
consult his glass, and when he sees the
pallor attacking his cheeks and heaviness
seizing upon his eyes, surrender his school
and betake himself to the mountains. He
has had all the needed evidence that he is
no longer fit to govern. An act or trait
good in itself may be pushed to excess. A
few teachers are what may be called om-
nivorous students. They oscillate between
the study and the school-room, keeping their
mental powers under continual strain. The
result is general exhaustion, a shattered ner-
vous system, and total unfitness to govern.

But while good conduct does not pre-
clude pleasure, it does preclude rude man-
ners and the offensive habits resulting from
low instincts.

Loose conduct, like every other injustice,
reacts upon the conditions of order. It
shakes the respect of the children for the
moral superiority of the teacher; it dimin-

EEACTION OF INJUSTICE. 95

islies the confidence of the parents, affects
the willingness of the district, and lowers
the tone of public sentiment, making in the
aggregate such an onslaught upon order as
no other qualities can counteract.

Ignorance and intellectual idleness in the
teacher are rank injustice to the children,
the parents, and the district. They violate
every right of all the other factors by mak-
ing the school a sham and a pretence. The
mind that is not open for the reception of
instruction is not the fit vehicle for impart-
ing it. The child is "the heir of all the
ages in the foremost files of time," and the
opaque teacher steps between him and his
birthright. The teacher, who should trans-
mit the inheritance, makes the inheritance
an impossibility.

Nature, with her thousand voices, is wait-
ing to instruct the recipient teacher, offer^
ing him free lectures, free text-books, free
cabinet, and free apparatus. The scientists,
the poets, the historians of thirty centuries,

96 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

are ready to pour out to him the wealth of
their discoveries; and yet with sublime com-
posure he ignores all these avenues of wis-
dom, and assumes to keep school on a knack
which he has picked up from the external
manifestations of others. The farce would
be ludicrous were it not for its ghastly con-
sequences.

But our immediate point is the reaction
of ignorance upon order. It reacts upon
happiness, respect, confidence, and willing-
ness. The very conscientiousness of an ig-
norant teacher makes him only the greater
infliction on the school. Starting with
wrong methods, the more he pushes them,
the more damage he does. Confusion be-
comes worse confounded, until recovery is
almost hopeless. It would be a good thing
for the cause of education, the welfare of
the country, and the pockets of taxpayers
if people could realize how much better no
school at all is than such a school.

Dulness of apprehension of relations in

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 97

the teacher is an injustice. It violates the
third right of the children. The teacher
may be thoroughly upright and well-be-
haved, he may be scholarly and studious ;
but if he is wanting in apprehension, he will
inflict, though unintentionally, the greatest
injustice, and seriously disturb order.

He will be apt to reprimand and even
punish the children for disorder caused by
discomfort. This disorder, instead of being
a delinquency, is a signal from Nature that
the conditions of health and happiness are
wanting. The wise teacher rejoices in the
signal, and promptly obeys its behests. It
may apprise him that the air is foul, and
that the children are in danger of being
poisoned. It may apprise him that the
children are suffering from cold, perhaps sit-
ting in damp garments, thus having their
health dangerously exposed. It may apprise
him that the seats and desks are so con-
structed as to cause present discomfort and
permanent injury to the bodily frame. It
G

98 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

may apprise him that the light is not prop-
erly distributed, and that the cause of the
children's discomfort threatens danger to
their eyesight. Many graves and many bro-
ken and deformed bodies are the work of
the kindest, best -behaved, and, it may also
be said, of the most scholarly and studious
teachers.

Apprehension of relations will enable the
teacher to administer correction with dis-
crimination, and prevent him from fixing
responsibility where it does not belong.

Apprehension will inform the teacher when
the mental strain is sufficient, and when the
young brain needs rest and relaxation ; oth-
erwise, with the kindest of motives, he may
murder the child, and be a too successful
instructor.

It is clear that want of apprehension of
relations causes great injustice, suffering,
and injury. But it reacts upon order by
diminishing happiness and by diminishing
the teacher's outside influence ; it interferes

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 99

with the pointed missionary work which is
part of the task of discipline.

In like manner, every conceivable act of
injustice reacts somewhere upon the condi-
tions of order. It is well that it is so; it
is Nature's voice proclaiming against injus-
tice.

The function of discipline, then, is to ad-
minister justice. When complete justice is
done, there will be order. The teacher
should be competent 'to clearly define the
rights of all the parties at issue, and ulti-
mately to secure those rights to their pos-
sessors in their fullest exercise. If he pro-
ceeds from any other standpoint of action,
he will fail to get his school in order. If
he trusts to mechanical imitation of the ex-
ternal methods of others, or to the dictates
of sudden impulse, he will fail. He can only
succeed by being absolutely just.

But rights and their reasons are only part
of the moral law. "We rise to a full concep-
tion of the great ethical system which the

100 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

Creator has instituted for the moral gov-
ernment of his creatures only when we
grasp the idea of reciprocity. Giving in re-
turn for receiving is the law. Every right
involves the obligation of payment. This
payment is called duty. Every moral gov-
ernor should be clear not only in the nature
of rights, biit also in that of their corre-
sponding duties. Until the sense of obli-
gation is aroused in the governed, the gov-
ernment will not be successful.

We have said before that perfect order
results from the immediate influence of an
enlightened conscience. Conscience is a
lively sense of duty — the internal court
which sits in judgment upon our conduct
and motives, enforcing its mandates with the
terrors of retribution. The law of retribu-
tion is one of the earliest learned by the
child. In its infant ignorance it violates
natural law, and pain and suffering are the
consequences. "A burned child dreads the
fire." The caution resulting from experi-

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 101

ence of pain is but the physical conscience.
The sanctions of moral conscience are also,
in a sense, caution against suffering — tho
moral suffering of remorse as well as tho
physical suffering incurred by moral delin-
quency.

Discipline cannot overlook the uses of suf-
fering— it is one of the important mediate
forces employed before conscience assumes
the ascendency and renders it unnecessary.
But the correct employment of suffering in
discipline is one of its most delicate prob-
lems. It requires the clearest conviction
that suffering is the proper force required
in the case. Then occur the important
questions of the character and amount of
suffering fitted to have the desired effect.
The line is delicately marked, on one side
of which suffering serves as an educator to
conscience, and on the other side of which
it proves a destroyer of order. In this deli-
cate case the good disciplinarian will choose
to err on the side of mercy.

102 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

Teachers who are not in order often abuse
the force of suffering by inflicting unjust and
brutal punishments. Boards of education in
some places have found it necessary to pro-
tect the children from unjust violence. They
have, however, taken the wrong course ; in-
stead of dismissing the disorderly teachers,
they have dismissed corporal punishment,
which is equivalent to dismissing discipline
and accepting disorder. The act is an admis-
sion that the children's rights are in danger.
The proper protection would be to remove
those persons who endanger these rights, and
not to try to remodel the Creator's laws. Ret-
ribution is inseparable from evil-doing. It
cannot be abolished at the option of a gener-
ous school-board; its operation can only be
delayed, to fall, at last, with more telling
and crushing force.

The duty involved in a vested right em-
braces— 1st, a recognition of the possession ;
2d, gratitude to the giver; 3d, humble and
loving submission to the will of benevolent

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 103

superiority. Obedience is founded in faith;
and faith is the fruit of evidence of kindly
ability. Suffering will have its best effects
after the children have acquired faith in the
good intentions of the teacher. Instead of re-
senting what under other circumstances would
appear unjust pain, they are filled with lively
remorse for the misdeed which caused it.

Discipline consists in instruction in duty;
and to this end all mediate forces will be sub-
ordinated. Duty means but one thing; it is
a scientific reality, accessible to all who seek
after its nature. It is the highest form of
knowledge, as it is the most useful form of
knowledge; it is the key to individual hap-
piness and to the happiness of mankind in
their necessary social relations.

The discipline of a school should not be
intrusted to any one who is not master of
this important branch of knowledge, because
everything is involved in it. If duty be made
the first subject submitted to candidates for
admission to the profession of teaching, our

104 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

schools will be measurably protected from dis-
order. We have trusted to tact, to our sor-
row ; it is time to insist upon knowledge.

Some men claim to govern by inspiration ;
they have within them an indescribable some-
thing which they call executive ability, and
which carries them at once to the root of
each problem that arises in daily experience.
Such men scorn to be interrogated upon the
particular details of duty ; they are not given
to analysis; they know a delinquency by in-
tuition; and by intuition they suppress it,
and make themselves masters of the situation.
If it is true that these men dive with unerr-
ing instinct to the roots of every problem in
school discipline, we can see how a great fi-
nancial gain would be effected by getting a
few of them to go to "Washington and run
the nation by inspiration.

But we must confess our scepticism as to
this whole subject of executive ability, as com-
monly understood. While we believe that cer-
tain men are born with an itching to com-

EE ACTION OF INJUSTICE. 105

mand, yet we do not believe that they will
command well until they know how. We
would be inclined to discourage a candidate
who offered no assurance of his fitness to
govern but a breastful of faith driven by a
forty -horse power of determination. From
our ignorance of the secret springs of execu-
tive ability, we would have to regard him as an
enthusiastic Juggernaut, and keep our children
out of his way. We would want a man to be
in order, and be able to demonstrate it under
a critical examination. We regard our chil-
dren as subjects of instruction, not subjects
of experiment ; and those wTho would instruct
must know what they would teach.

We see that the duties of childhood are all
associated with its rights. When its last and
greatest right, maturity, is vested, its duties are*
not absolved, but increased in number and
character. The parent still retains the right to
the child's duty, though he loses the custody
of his person. But with the loss of the right
of custody there occur new classes of rights.

106 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

The burden of duties performed and ad-
vancing years are making inroads upon pa-
rental vigor ; nature is beginning to call back
that vitality which has served its purpose;
the weak, dependent child has become the
powerful, aggressive man; there seems to
have occurred a transfer of strength, a re-
versal of relations.

Now, the parent has a right to lean upon
the strong tower which his own exhaustive
struggles have reared : as he descends through
the stages of weakness and decay to the grave,
he is entitled to a return of that sympathy
which his own warm, manly heart bestowed
upon childhood's tribulations. The chivalry
with which a dutiful child, after maturity,
rushes to the support and comfort of its
'parents' declining years has its exact counter-
part in that other chivalry with which a true-
hearted man rushes to the rescue of his coun-
try. Patriotism is not an unexplained phe-
nomenon; it is conscience, sense of duty to
that other parent, the state, which has nur-

REACTION OF INJUSTICE. 107

tured its helpless infancy with the benefi-
cence of its laws.

But what shall we say of the parent by
proxy, the teacher ? Is there no debt of grat-
itude, support, and sympathy due to him in
his extremity ? Is there no dereliction of
duty anywhere when he is cast aside, like a
worn-out horse, after his usefulness in the
school-room is ended ? Most assuredly there
is. The child whom he has led by the hand
to man's estate is in an important sense his
child. His weakness should call forth filial
sympathy ; he should share in the strength
which he has imparted to his pupils. The
state also owes him a debt of substantial
gratitude for the strong pillars of citizen-
ship which he has added to its structure.

The correct and faithful disciplinarian
should have no occasion to fear the approach
of age. Discipline will suffer an irremedi-
able loss if he is obliged to betake his pow-
ers into other employments in order to se-
cure a competency for his declining years.

108 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

In return for his useful labors society owes
him sympathy and comfort. It has not with-
in its borders more venerable or sacred monu-
ments than those persons who have given the
strength of their maturity to the discipline
of schools. The moral hero who has fought
and wron the great battle of discipline should
sink to rest amid the benisons of his coun-
try, and the tear of affectionate remembrance
should fall above his well-marked grave.

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. 109

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE.

WE have discussed the general law of dis-
cipline. There are phases of its operation to
be noticed before closing.

We have in this country systems of school
supervision. Their nature and functions
should be thoroughly understood by all in-
quirers into the philosophy of school disci-
pline. The schools of a city, town, county,
or state are placed under the direction of an
official head called a superintendent. This
individual is supposed to be a person of su-
perior wisdom and experience, who can judge
of the wants of the schools, and who can by
his counsel and authority enforce improve-
ment. The conception of supervision is a
wise one ; for it enables a person of superior
disciplinary powers to extend his usefulness

110 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

over a wider field without detriment to
order.

Supervision simply creates a larger school ;
but it does not alter the character of its fac-
tors or their relations. The superintendent
is still the teacher ; and he is morally respon-
sible for the discipline of all the schools un-
der his charge. Having pronounced him a
teacher, it is sufficient to say in regard to his
duties and relations that they have been dis-
cussed already under their proper heads. But
there is this peculiarity about his functions:
he can multiply his personality so as to be
properly represented in places where he is
unable to be in person. The theory is an
excellent one, that discipline should not be
at the mercy of circumstances, but rather un-
der the control of superior experience.

Supervision, then, is the source, the foun-
tain-head, of wide-spread disciplinary activity.
Poison the source and you pollute the entire
stream. "When supervision proves false to its
trust, the pall of death settles down upon the

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. Ill

discipline of its field. It could not be other-
wise ; when the guardian sells out his charge
for a price, that charge must languish. We
have called discipline moral heroism : the his-
tory of supervision in this country has been
too largely a history of moral cowardice, if
not moral perversion.

This is due to the system of getting super-
vision rather than to the wilful perversity of
men. If the aim had been to deprive the su-
perintendent of his conscience and make the
schools a laughing-stock, a more ingenious
system than ours could not have been devised
to that end. The prime cause of the failure
of our supervision was the original blunder
of connecting it with politics. A little re-
flection might have foreseen the evil fruits
of such a plan. Our early educational legis-
lators were doubtless blinded by the force of
analogy, and by misconception of the scope of
the doctrine of local self-government and the
sovereign rights of the people. Our laws de-
cided that a superintendent of schools should

112 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

be chosen for certain areas by the ballots of
the legal voters.

This system, intended doubtless to conserve
the rights of the people, was fitted in its nat-
ure to trample down every sacred right of
community as well as of individuals. It will
be conceded that whatever affects the wel-
fare of the children affects the welfare of
the community, for they are the constantly
on-coming community. Now, it is a fact
well established in political experience that
the existence of a political office creates a
horde of office-seekers \vho are willing to
hold any office under the sun. There can
be no doubt that if medical practice and the
ministry of the Gospel were made the func-
tions of politically elected incumbents, these
gentlemen would all run for the office of doc-
tor or clergyman. Professional office-seekers
are persons of ubiquitous volition, and are
serenely indifferent as to the province in
which their valuable services are employed,
providing it lias emoluments.

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. * 113

Now, the effect of making supervision po-
litical lias been to make the entire system of
schools under its charge political. Questions
of efficiency have been entirely superseded
by questions of patronage, until the great
aggregation of American free schools has
become one grand system of spoils. The
politically elected superintendent is not per-
mitted to select his teachers, even if he
chances to be competent to discharge such a
weighty task. Where the law makes a Her-
bert Spencer ineligible, and gives the office
to the party who can best manage the com-
binations of a caucus and a political cam-
paign, the chances are not in favor of brill-
iant professional ability. But, be that as it
may, he is immediately beset by candidates
for teaching who are more anxious to ex-
hibit their "claims" than their qualifications.
These claims are in the shape of " influence "
which has either contributed to his election or
is capable of punishing him should he ever
again be a candidate for public favor. Hav-
II

114: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

ing secured his office, he is considered very
ungrateful if he prevents other people from
getting their offices.

In this rush for place it is not to be sup-
posed that the public is frenzied with zeal to
instruct the rising youth ; it is frenzied with
zeal to fill the offices and draw the salaries.
It is a chase to see who shall have the privi-
lege of spoiling the children. The air re-
sounds with clamor for patronage, while the
poor children, whose rights are thus bartered,
are dumb.

Political men with a long line of political
aspirations like to be "popular." It is pos-
sible to be in politics and at the same time
be both popular and honest; but not in the
office of superintendent of schools, elected
by the people. The honest superintendent
will tell some candidates that they are not
qualified to do good work as teachers. The
disappointed candidates and their relatives
and friends take umbrage at a man wrho will
not perjure himself in order to accommo-

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. 115

date them. Many such cases make large in-
roads upon his popularity. Of course, these
good people do not want the superintendent
to perjure himself ; but they do want him to
certify to their qualifications, whether he can
find them or not.

The superintendent sees that he does his
duty at his peril; the disaffected control his
daily bread; he has but one chance in con-
nection with duty, and that is for a glorious
martyrdom. But a man who fights a hard
political campaign in order to get this office
is not quite ready for martyrdom; he gen-
erally has a few other projects on the tapis
with which martyrdom would seriously in-
terfere.

Where no awkward scruples stand in the
way, his course is clear : give the people what
they want, and be -popular. No one demands
duty, but crowds are demanding certificates.
It is possible that the incumbent never was
troubled with any scruples, or, if he was, that
he lost them in the campaign which carried

116 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

him into office. In that case he can scatter
certificates as thick as the autumn leaves, and
yet sleep as soundly as a new-born babe.

This is all very well as a burlesque ; but it
is a sad commentary on the condition of edu-
cation in this country that such things are
possible. We have many brave superintend-
ents who are trying to protect their schools
against the tide of political pressure ; but
they are groaning in anguish under the
strain.

We find, in the nature of things, that the
power of discipline is the power of con-
science. If conscience is eliminated, we have
Samson shorn of his locks; we have size and
form minus power. Schools are perverted
from their purposes when they become mat-
ters of business, patronage, and emoluments.
Political schools surest n'o other idea than

oo

that of plunder, the basest of plunder, since
it fattens upon the rights of childhood and
the interests of society. Under political
supervision there is great energy expended ;

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. 117

but it is not expended towards building up
strong and virtuous citizenship ; it is expend-
ed towards capturing the school funds.

Free schools were established in this coun-
try for the purpose of preserving self-govern-
ment by training up intelligent patriotism.
Tinder political supervision, instead of breed-
ing patriots they have been breeding vam-
pires ; they have flooded the country with
physical, mental, and moral wrecks. Still we
have good people in the country, or we should
have immediate disintegration. Fortunately
the maturity of our children is not altogether
at the mercy of political schools. We have
other moral forces which tend to save many
of them from the corrupting influence of
vicious discipline.

Family discipline is still fighting against
the tide ; and many fortunate children get
their dominant moral characteristics at home.
The churches are everywhere wielding a
mighty power in the moral education of the
race ; and organized society, public opinion,

118 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

constrains many men to honor. So if good
people come up out of political schools, it
may be inferred that they do so in spite
of the schools, and not by reason of them.
But we have other conserving forces which
need to be noticed. Political supervision,
though altogether too general, is fortunately
not universal. We have superintendents who
are appointed by competent bodies of men
who are responsible to their constituents for
the faithful discharge of their trust. The ad-
vantages of this system are obvious. Re-
sponsibility makes men cautious in selecting ;
and the probabilities are altogether in favor
of securing a competent incumbent. In se-
lecting by universal ballot, responsibility at-
taches nowhere ; and the force of caution is
altogether lost. The appointed superintend-
ent finds himself measurably at liberty to at-
tend to school questions rather than to polit-
ical ones. He can face successive elections
with comparative composure, feeling that he
has demonstrated his usefulness, and that the

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. 119

better judgment of the appointive body will
sustain him.

Kepresentative deliberative bodies are con-
strained to be judicial in their decisions ; so
discipline is measurably protected. We use
the term " measurably " because absolute pro-
tection does not lie in expedients ; selfishness
has been found capable of penetrating to a
degree the strongest special safeguards yet
devised. Absolute protection lies only in a
sensitive popular conscience. But the fruits
of appointive supervision have been sufficient-
ly gratifying, on the whole, to create hopes of
the success of public education. Schools un-
der appointive supervision have made great
advance towards order, and to that extent
have proved a beneficent force in the coun-
try. Supervision is reasonably untrammelled
when it dares to inaugurate principles of ac-
tion ; and this is what our appointed superin-
tendents, as a body, have done. Principles
bear fruits of faith and obedience. In some
communities the will of a judicious super-

120 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

intendent has become already almost abso-
lute.

While considering the conserving forces
which have saved us from the complete con-
sequences of our educational blunders, it
would be unjust to omit mention of the
private schools which prevail so extensively
throughout the land. These institutions, to-
tally dissevered from politics, and relying
upon efficiency for recognition and support,
have done a great good work for the coun-
try in the way of building up scholarship and
character.

But the free school is the boon of American
childhood and the bulwark of American na-
tionality. It should therefore be the aim of
the philanthropist and statesman to make it
efficient. Efficiency lies, 1st, in having right
views of discipline ; 2d, in having a correct
system of organization.

We have considered political supervision,
under which King Caucus manipulates his
patronage, perverting the schools from their

SPECIAL PHASES OF DISCIPLINE. 121

proper purposes to selfish uses. There is
another injurious phase of supervision to be
noticed. It is injurious in a negative rather
than in a positive sense. We refer to what
we may call nominal, or rather restricted
supervision. Under this form the superin-
tendent is assigned a limited list of duties,
beyond the discharge of which his official con-
nection with the schools ceases. This places
the superintendent in an anomalous position.
It is a form of educational paralysis. It is
the creation of a vigorous head, supplied with
sensor but not with motor nerves. This head
becomes cognizant of things which should be
done ; it has the will, but not the power, to
act.

If we hold the teacher responsible for the
discipline of his school, he should certainly
have ample liberty in managing the details of
the school. It is wrong to hold a superin-
tendent responsible for evils which he is for-
bidden to check. We have areas of nominal
supervision within which there are other areas

122 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

of political supervision, constituting states
within a state, and thoroughly untrammelled
in their license. Supervision is defeated of
its purpose unless it has the power of exact-
ing reasonable uniformity and unquestioned
efficiency.

CONCLUSION. 123

CONCLUSION-.

WE have completed an examination of the
theory of discipline, and have endeavored to
trace its law. "With whatever of strength or
weakness this has been done is a question
for the reader to decide. We shall be glad
if some degree of truth is recognized in the
propositions laid down ; wherein we are in
error we shall as gladly stand corrected when
the error is made known to us. It is alto-
gether improbable that a single individual
may escape error in pursuing such an intri-
cate subject ; but if the method herein em-
ployed prove suggestive to other explorers,
this labor has not been expended in vain.

The great need is for more general think-
ing in discipline as a subject ; and we be-
lieve this end will be hastened by formu-
lating into a science the truths discovered

124: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

and demonstrated by experience. Experience
palls on those who are destitute of method.
We would institute a method of progress.

We have been compelled to say severe
things, but have endeavored to be just. No
one has less reason than ourselves to speak
slightingly of the existing institutions of our
country. We would be glad to be spared the
office of censor, and so devote ourselves to
the more pleasant duties of philosophy and
eulogy ; but we know it would be wrong to
cloak the evils which every candid observer
must admit. The present demands earnest-
ness and sincerity. It would be severe, but
true, to say that during the century, instead
of building up a system of education, we
have only called into existence a vast aggre-
gation of educational symbols. Why ? Be-
cause we have given the building over to
novices and charlatans, and have driven away
the constructive brain and the skilful hand.
A nation's vitality may stand such a strain
for a time ; but there always is a point at

CONCLUSION. 125

which the accumulation of evils produces a
crash. When we rise to criticism, we rise
to make a case in behalf of the children, in
behalf of a national citizenship, and in be-
half of mankind against a dishonest and de-
structive empiricism.

Our reasonings have led us to the conclu-
sion that our teachers should be wise. We
want absolute evidence of that wisdom be-
fore they be permitted to touch the delicate
structure of a child's mental and moral nat-
ure. An artificer should be acquainted with
his materials, and should have clear notions
of the product he would bring forth. Is it
more important to construct a house or a
railroad than to build a man ? And yet how
cautious people are to intrust the former
tasks only to competent talent ! Of all the
improvements that can be introduced into a
country, the most powerful and useful are
improved people. He is the highest bene-
factor who gives to his country the services
of a fully equipped man. We want a guild

126 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

of thought and soul builders, who will take
the raw materials of a child's possibilities
and fashion them into the fabric of a strong
and symmetrical maturity.

But these are truisms. The specific point
is that the teacher should be familiar with
natural philosophy, human physiology, men-
tal and moral science, as a condition of dis-
cipline. He should likewise be enthusiastic
in his calling, and not gauge his labors by his
pay. If he has the heart of a true teacher,
he will be inspired by but one motive, and
that is the advancement of his pupil. How
these qualifications may be secured and as-
sured we shall discuss under the head of
Practical School Ethics.

TABULAR ANALYSIS.

127

TABULAR ANALYSIS.

DEFINITION. Discipline (government). That power of

control which produces and sustains
order.

DEFINITION. Order. Fitness of condition in things.

{1. District.
2. Parents.
3. Children.
4. Teacher.

C I. Ability to support.

'l District \ 2' wminSness to support.

' j 3. Healthy public senti-

l ment.

r 1. Appreciation of knowl-

edge.

CONDITIONS OF

J 2. Wisdom in family man-
3. Parents. nt

ORDER. I | 3. Proper affection towards

school.

{1. Happiness.

2. Respect for superiors.

3. Interest in school.

rl. Self-mastery.

. 4. Teacher. \ 2. Sound scholarship.

1 3. Correct apprehension.

DEDUCTION. The power of discipline is a moral power.

DEDUCTION. Discipline is a remedial system.

DEDUCTION. Moral order is the undisturbed exercise

of rights and the complete discharge
of duties— the reign of justice.

128

THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

CAUSES OF DIS-
ORDER.

DEFINITION.

'1. Parents.

2. District.

PERSONAL RIGHTS.

DEDUCTION.

{(involved
in a vest-
ed right).

DEDUCTION.
DEDUCTION.

1. Natural deformity.

2. Neglect.

3. Reaction of injustice.

Injustice. Violation of personal rights.

1. Teacher's kindness and

care.

2. To enjoy the develop-

ment of the children.

3. To be assured of their

children's success.

1. Preservation of prop-

erty.

2. Improved public senti-

ment.

3. Enhanced value of prop-

erty.

1. Parental kindness and

care.

2. Sound instruction and

correct example.

3. Maturity.

1. Pay.

2. Respect, obedience, and

filial love.

3. Confidence and co-op-
L eration.

Rights and duties are correlates.

•] 1. Recognition of the possession.

1 2. Gratitude to the giver.

J 3. Submission to benevolent superiority.

The production of order is the education
of conscience.

The education of conscience involves the
employment of mediate forces. A me-
diate force is a special restraint upon a
diseased will, and is discontinued as
conscience assumes control of the will.

3. Children.

I

4. Teacher
(condition- 1
al).

TABULAR ANALYSIS. 129

POSTULATE. Retribution is the inseparable consequent

of violated law.

DEDUCTION. The education of conscience involves ex-

perience of retribution; hence disci-
pline employs suffering as a mediate
force.

POSTULATE. Retribution is the complement of aspira-

tion ; it is the compulsion of nature to
right living — that is, to the diligent ex-
ercise of the various human faculties.

DEDUCTION. Subordination to justly constituted au-

thorities is a natural state of man.

1. Conflict of authority.

2. Abuse " "
INSUBORDINATION. ( a Abdication of „

CAUSES OF j \ %££
~~N'(3..

DEDUCTION. Selfishness is subversive of discipline;

intuition is inadequate to its delicate
decisions ; actual knowledge of natural
law is the essential condition of the ad-
ministration of discipline.

130 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS.

UNDER this head we open a department for
the unlimited discussion of practical school
problems. It should be the exemplification
of the science of school discipline ; and it can
be made the test of any system assuming sci-
entific completeness. Practical ethics will be
established on a proper basis only after we
have an authentic and accepted science of dis-
cipline. It ought, then, to give us an excep-
tionally rich educational literature, coming up
from the practical workers in their varied
fields of experience. But all contributions to
practical ethics should be to the point ; they
should either enrich our science (after we get
it) or illustrate it. We should conserve dis-
cussion to really new thoughts (the science
will take care of the old ones). By so doing
all educational thinkers may feed on real dis-

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 131

coveries, and keep together in the line of edu-
cational progress. We have no time to listen
to vaporing ; nor have we time to listen to an
individual's experience unless he is quite sure
that it is not the common experience of the
profession. Of all weariness, the most excru-
ciating is that resulting from listening to the
labored presentation of an oft-told tale.

A profession is not built up by rhetoric,
by plodding empiricism, nor by dogmatic as-
sertion ; it is built up only by careful toil
within prescribed limits. The professional
talk which embodies only what has been well
said before is a double infliction, because, in
addition to disgusting the auditors, it also
takes time from progress.

The most general educational problem of
the hour is that of providing a citizenship
fitted to enjoy the institutions of free govern-
ment, and fitted to develop the boundless re-
sources of the American domain. To do this,
education has not only to train up American
childhood to fitness for its royal prerogatives,

132 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

but it has also to assimilate into sturdy citi-
zenship the heterogeneous elements pouring
in upon us from all quarters of the globe ; it
has the task of making patriots out of stran-
gers. It has the task of uprooting habits of
thought fastened by older civilizations, and of
giving free and universal scope to the Amer-
ican idea.

This American idea contemplates a brother-
hood of citizens having common political aspi-
rations undisturbed by phases of private opin-
ion and belief. It means the enthronement
of order, freedom, and progress. It means to
show that mankind can attain its majority and
dispense with the paternal nursings that have
been practised upon its infancy. It means
the creation of a public opinion powerful
enough to crush all fraud and political heresy
here, and capable of instructing other nations
in the pathways of political freedom and
progress. The American idea is generous in
its intentions and broad in its purposes.
Whether it shall be permitted to pass into

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 133

history as a mere fanciful conception or as a
powerful reality is the problem of American
education.

It has certainly suffered hitherto; the many
triumphs of selfishness have put us sadly out
of countenance. But if we begin in earnest
now, we still have the resources of victory.
Nothing but a strong-handed education will
save the American idea, and with it the
intended career of the American republic.
We must rescue our schools from the char-
latanry and selfishness which have over-
whelmed them, and restore them to their
original purpose of nourishing healthful
brain and soul for the nation. Nations have
been crushed by superior force, and have
disappeared in glory ; but the most pain-
ful lessons of history are those of national
suicide. Our example would be the most
doleful of all, because we have had the best
opportunities and the best possessions to
throw away.

This strong-handed education calls for or-

134: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

ganizers, for leaders. Sucli talent is in the
country ; a portion of the organizing skill
expended in selfish or even wicked projects
would give us a capital educational system.
Men of genius enter our ranks from time to
time ; but, finding no field for their abilities,
they soon abandon us to our charlatanry and
seek growth in other vocations. Even they,
while with us, were not good teachers ; they
only had the possibilities of good teachers.
They know that we permitted them to use
us as stepping-stones in their own ambitions
while they gave us the benefit of more or
less ingenious experiments.

This strong-handed education calls for a
profession. How shall we get it ? By want-
ing it. Demand calls into existence a supply.
But what if our professional standard should
exclude many who are now officiating as
teachers ? All the better ; we wrant to get
rid of empirics. It will do them no harm to
go back to school, learn the things we wish
them to know, and come out as rational and

PEACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 135

competent teachers. They must, of course, at-
tend the right schools ; for the longer they
stay in certain schools, the less prepared will
they be to pass a critical examination. Schools
which do not make them think will leave
them in a sad plight to approach a thinker.
An important point in our practical ethics is
the injustice done to an individual by permit-
ting him to teach before he is ready. We
thereby stop his growth, cripple his mental
stature, and dwarf his maturity. Where we
intend a personal kindness we inflict serious
injustice. It is important both for the teach-
ers and the schools that such injustice should
cease.

The question of facilities for training a
corps of teachers is a proper one to be con-
sidered under practical ethics. The facili-
ties for obtaining the requisite literary and
scientific knowledge together with mental
training are already ample. We have many
institutions which give sound instruction and
proper mental exercise. These have a capac-

136 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

ity for training all the teachers we need, if
the candidates for teaching would only enter
them. But inasmuch as wTe practically place
a premium on ignorance, these institutions are
abandoned to candidates for other vocations.
No candidate for teaching can plead want
of facilities in justification of his ignorance.
The energy proper to a teacher can readily
find facilities near at hand, if he wrishes to
avail himself of them.

But, in addition to general culture, the
teacher needs special professional preparation.
He needs instruction in the science and art
of discipline, and in the science and art of in-
struction. He needs training to skill in hand-
ling the complex problems of school work.
There are fair facilities for meeting even this
want ; professional schools for teachers are
already somewhat common in the United
States. They are doing good work, too, and
are endeavoring to impart that fitness wThich
teachers should possess. But in consequence
of the evils heretofore mentioned, the experi-

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 137

ence of the normal schools in this country has
been rather ludicrous. They have been creat-
ing a supply for which there is no demand.
The normal graduate finds that the districts
don't want him ; he has become too good and
costly an article for them. He finds the mar-
ket glutted with parties holding certificates
of fitness, and discovers that his chances to
teach would have been greatly improved had
he never attended "the normal." The badge
of knighthood conferred by the superintend-
ent politician demolishes the diploma of the
professional graduate ; four years' hard labor
is beaten by an " interview ;" incompetence
has possession, and merit must seek its bread
elsewhere. Appointive supervision is saving
a fragment of normal material to the profes-
sion ; but the majority of it is driven away.
Normal schools will scarcely have a vocation
until a professional diploma is made the only
legal evidence of fitness to teach. In conse-
quence of the disadvantages with which nor-
mal graduates have to contend, the ruinous

138 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

competition they have to encounter, our nor-
mal schools have been obliged to descend
from their high professional functions and
place a premium on attendance to prevent
entire desertion. This premium is in the
form of academical or non-professional in-
struction. Students of deficient education
will enter for the benefits of the academy,
making the professional curriculum a sec-
ondary consideration.

But normal schools are not censurable
for offering this premium on attendance.
It is absolutely necessary, under the present
state of things. A strictly professional cur-
riculum would constitute inducement to very
few ; the schools would be compelled to
close their doors for want of employment.
Medical schools are supported because the
law will not permit men to practise with-
out absolutely obtaining a diploma. Law-
schools are supported because the law will
not permit men to practise without virtually
possessing a diploma. Theological schools are

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 139

supported because church law requires diplo-
mas. Normal schools are neglected because
their diplomas have no particular legal or
moral significance. In the State of Mas-
sachusetts several of the more enterprising
cities have been enabled to fill strictly pro-
fessional training-schools with students, in con-
sequence of making the diplomas of those
schools the requisite evidences of fitness to
teach.

Were such requirements universal, our nor-
mal schools could then repudiate the pre-
mium which they are now paying, and con-
centrate their resources on strictly profes-
sional work. These schools are not to blame
for their own defects — the blame rests with
our laws and customs. It is rather ludicrous
to be compelled to pay in arithmetic and
grammar for the privilege of teaching edu-
cational science and art. But the fact is
indicative of the state of our educational
work. We should have such a demand for
educational science and art as would tax

1-iO THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

our normal schools to their utmost capacity,
and call into existence others.

The masculine gender has been employed
throughout this work. It is perhaps unnec-
essary to say that this is only a form of
expression intended to include both sexes.
We have been treating of human nature,
not particularly of masculine nature. But
the question of female power in discipline
is a vital one in practical ethics. We em-
ploy many female teachers, but in practice
we discriminate against the sex as such.
This is, at the same time, unjust and highly
impolitic. If our discrimination is a charge
of universal incapacity in the sex, then we
should not employ the sex at all ; we can-
not afford to use incapacity in any form.
But this assumption has been repeatedly
overthrown by facts; some of our most ca-
pable disciplinarians are females. Discipline
does not depend on sex, but on the quali-
ties heretofore discussed. Where these quai-
ties are found, they should be recognized

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 141

and preferred, regardless of sex. Indeed, if
there is to be any discrimination in school
management, it should be in favor of the
capable woman: with equal intellectual ca-
pacity, she is likely to have the greater
moral resources of the two.

It is true that experience has discovered
many cases of female incapacity — an utter
deficiency of organizing power and force.
But so long as we aim, by our system of
education, to keep our girls always children,
we cannot expect a different experience.
We make boys men by treating them as
men; by reminding them of their possibil-
ities and arousing their ambition. "We dis-
cuss serious subjects with our boys, and thus
give them mental gymnastics; we avoid se-
rious subjects with children, in which class
we have practically placed the girls. The
result of such a procedure is obvious : we
come to make a distinction really on ma-
turity, while we suppose it is founded on
sex. This is the educational fallacy we

142 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

would refute. It is well known that boys
can be kept young by the same processes
employed with girls. Effeminacy has come
to be regarded as another term for child-
ishness. We have effeminate men, who are
simply the product of a system which aimed
to keep them children, and succeeded.

It is known that women mature after
they are treated as adults — that is, after
they are compelled by circumstances to as-
sume responsibilities; the clinging vine be-
comes the self - supporting trunk ; and the
child develops the largest business capac-
ities. It is known, also, that woman does
not necessarily lose her loveliness by be-
coming self-centred and strong ; though shal-
low observers would associate with strength
such unseemly qualities as mannishness arid
hatefulness. We have been pursuing the
error of keeping our girls weak in order
to keep them lovely. Accomplishments are
pleasing when they adorn a substance; a
cornice without a house is a monstrosity.

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 143

A weakling will not make a disciplinarian;
if we wrould fit our girls for teaching, we
should give them a substantial and serious
training. It would be well to assume that
all our girls are to teach; for the same
training that fits them to be successful teach-
ers would make them excellent mothers.

We have excluded from most of our
strictures that portion of free education
which chances to be under the management
of appointive supervision. We have inti-
mated that even that portion suffers to
some extent from the inroads of selfishness,
and that it is still a practical problem how
that selfishness may be checked. It can be
most effectually checked by fixing by law
a genuine and uniform standard of fitness
to teach. Individuals are flexible in matters
of option ; but law is inflexible where it is
specific. There appears at present no safer
criterion of fitness than the diplomas of
professional schools. It is the function of
these institutions to study the wants of

144: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

schools and supply those wants. But the
faculty should be made impeachable for der-
eliction of duty. The creation of a fraudu-
lent teacher should be a crime punishable
with the severest penalties. Legislation of
this character would only be in keeping with
that already enacted for the protection of
medical practice.

But appointive supervision, in wThich we
take some comfort, is confined almost ex-
clusively to cities. It becomes, therefore, an
important point in practical ethics to con-
sider the consequences of regaling our rural
population with an educational farce. The
rural population is the nation. Its condi-
tion and characteristics are the condition and
characteristics of national life. Cities are
but special instrumentalities for serving the
wants of the rural population Cities are
not self-sustaining, either in substance or in
men. Cities are rooted in the country, and,
in return for the conveniences they afford,
they absorb and consume a portion of the

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 145

substance arid blood of the country. The
country produces men, and cities wear them
out. Cities also feed upon the morals of
the country, which is the real source of a
wholesome public opinion. Cities move their
mighty operations because they always con-
tain some countrymen who are not yet worn
out ; cities contain honor and respectability
mainly because they have some countrymen
who are not yet altogether corrupted.

The main significance of a city is its ca-
pacity for consuming physical and moral
stamina. The significance of the country is
its capacity for producing physical and moral
stamina. Many reasons could be advanced
in support of these assertions. We will se-
lect a few. The country air is pure, while
the city air is poisoned with pestiferous ex-
halations. The country has pure water and
fresh food; the city's food is stale, to say
the least, and its water is such as circum-
stances and contrivances make it. The coun-
try sleeps at night, while the city runs riot,
K

14:6 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

wearing out vitality and scattering the seeds
of vice. The country has youth, while the
city has " juveniles." The country, then, has
the materials for stalwart men — viz., phys-
ical soundness and moral health. But it has
not only the materials, but also the condi-
tions, for large manhood. Country labor
is largely physical, and so contributes to
sound rest, instead of impairing it. Much
of this labor is needed exercise; shattered
constitutions have been restored by engag-
ing in it. The enterprise of the country
is based on the simpler laws of nature,
and on accurate predictions ; so the men-
tal problems are few, and consequently the
mental wear and tear small. The coun-
try incites to honesty and character. In a
measure, they are inbred. They are also
enforced by the circumstances of the situa-
tion. In the country the family institution
prevails in its purest form ; children are
born into the patriarchal system, and asso-
ciate mostly during early life with father,

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 147

mother, sisters, and brothers. They are con-
strained by the ties of nature to be true
and loyal to these associates, and are under
the moulding influence of honest parentage.
The result is a rural conscience, which is
sharply contrasted with city caution ; the
one is the monition of the heart, the other
the monition of the head ; the one is the
motive of personal dignity, the other the
motive of personal safety; the one is an in-
ternal, the other an external motive ; the one
is a tribute to individual strength, the other
a compliment to the force of social organi-
zation ; the one is a respect for right, the
other a respect for comfort and convenience.
Furthermore, rural transactions are per-
sonal; it is more difficult to wrong those
we know, and wTith whom we must mingle
in daily association, than those who have
but a mythical existence on paper. So ed-
ucation, habit, circumstance, contribute to
moral life and growth in the country. • Nor
will it be far-fetched to assert that Mother

148 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

Nature warms the heart to just and noble
purposes. We have enumerated some ex-
cellent moral forces in the country. They
need but to be supplemented with sound in-
struction, whereby the eyes of thought may
be opened and the soul aroused to a reali-
zation of its possibilities. With this want
provided, the country becomes the grand
producing - ground of manhood and public
opinion.

In consequence of this want, there is a
constant exodus from the country of fam-
ilies who wish to place their children within
reach of intellectual advantages. This in-
volves a double calamity ; for the children
who go to cities to be instructed get their
knowledge at the expense of moral loss, while
the country suffers in tone by the loss of its
better elements and by the influx of inferior
classes. This exodus of families, and also of
brilliant youths, drawn to the dazzling op-
portunities of cities, leads many to suppose
that knowledge and culture are incompatible

PEACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 149

with rural life and pursuits. But the as-
sumption is not true. It is not vocation
that distributes men, but rather congeniality
of ideals. If we aim to fasten upon the
country population a totally uninspired ex-
istence, we must expect the more sensitive
souls to flee away from it. Human nature
cannot endure isolation ; man must mingle
with his kind, or be unhappy.

Eural pursuits, as such, are not distasteful
to scholarship. They are, on the contrary,
the preferred employments of some of our
most cultured men. We can fortunately
point to some college farmers. Agriculture
thrives when science strikes the fields; we
have then improved products, increased pro-
duction, and organized thought. Our agri-
cultural societies are evidences that some
brain has forced its way into the domain
.of production ; and the proceedings of those
societies have evinced the deepest learning
applied to the most practical things. Our
scholar-farmers are lifting agriculture out of

150 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

a retrogressive and wasteful empiricism into
a broad science ; and where is the man who
is too large to treat the subject of agricultural
science ? The scientific farmer is the largest
and wisest man in the nation, because all
social problems have their roots in his; his
line of thought and interest commands the
whole domain of social activity ; he has the
only training for the ideal statesman.

We expect to sec our new-born agricult-
ural societies dealing ere long with this
problem of education ; for it is an agricult-
ural problem. It will be apparent that the
rural districts will be profited as much by
improved men and women as by improved
cattle, soils, and cereals. Empirical farming
curtails production and exhausts the lands
it operates upon ; science reaps its golden
stores, and leaves the ground fatter for fut-
ure production. Mere muscle has had its
day; we have learned the uses of an intelli-
gent soldiery; we will learn the uses of an
intelligent yeorritoty.

PRACTICAL SCHOOL ETHICS. 151

We need, perhaps, but recapitulate that
every consideration of national welfare, as
well as every consideration of right and jus-
tice, impels us to carry the torch of instruc-
tion into the rural districts. Instead of a
system of make-believes, propagating imbe-
cility, let us have a system of schools that
will take hold of the children and strength-
en the fibres of their threefold nature — physi-
cal, intellectual, and moral. Let us have a
system that begins to make maturity by first
knowing what maturity is. Let us erect such
safeguards around the vocation of teaching
that educational quackery in this country will
be impossible.

152 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

FAMILY PROBLEMS.

WE have discussed some of the ethics of
the community. We pass to other classes of
problems more restricted, perhaps, though not
less weighty, nor less important. Blessed are
the wise parents. In nothing do the beauty
and wisdom of divine purpose shine out
more clearly than in the family relation.
The family is not only society in miniature ;
it is also an epitome of all the problems of
society. Men aspire to wealth and influ-
ence ; he who has a family possesses both.
The Roman matron, when asked to display
her jewels, led forward two glorious boys.
Her sense of affluence was not affected by
the absence of horses, dogs, lands, and trin-
kets. Her gallery, however, contained the
richest of earthly treasures — living statuary
and breathing pictures : she held two bright

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 153

and loving souls who honored and cherished
the mother that nourished them. No won-
der that her bosom heaved with the sense
of great possession ; she led by the hand
Koine's freedom and the liberties of man-
kind. Cornelia and her bright -eyed boys
are moving the world to-day after the lapse
of two thousand years; the trinkets of her
haughty neighbors hang in our museums,
inviting speculation as to the individuals
for whom history gives no sign.

She knew her wealth, for she knew the
toil and watchful solicitude that produced it.
The artist mother recognized her handiwork
in every graceful movement, in every brill-
iant conception, in every lofty sentiment that
found expression in her children. She had
put them there. She was but a woman, the
daughter of Africanus ; yet she proved her-
self worth two sons. Her case illustrates a
universal truth ; if parents choose to put their
own souls into their children, they can do it.
But they ought to see to it that they have

154: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

good souls to put into them. An energetic
Dacian mother would doubtless have made
the Gracchi successful hunters; an Egyptian
mother would have prepared them to toil
submissively in the quarries all their lives, in
order to furnish a tomb for a tyrant king ; a
Spartan mother would have made them val-
orous thieves ; but the Roman Cornelia made
them men. They were men because she
wanted them to be men, and because she
knew what constitutes manhood, and how it
is developed. She had an ideal, a purpose,
and a skill ; she was, in short, fitted for the
parental office. She blessed her boys when
they bared their breasts against the ranks of
injustice; she thanked her lucky stars for
such boys, as she received their mangled
bodies, and closed their eyes in death. Her
boys had sentiments, and were true to them.
Death in a cause is the highest proof of
earnestness ; as she buried her heroes she felt
that he is but a feeble moralist who will take
no risk in behalf of his principles.

FAMILY PKOBLEMS. 155

Yes, a family supplies wealth and influ-
ence— an influence of a definite character,
which can be estimated. A parent's influ-
ence is not precarious, at the mercy of rare
opportunities ; he has possession of the child,
and with it unlimited opportunity. The par-
ent can renew himself in his child and re-
pair the blunders of his own career, which
experience has made apparent to him. If
the parent has external ambitions, he can ad-
vance them by inspiring his child with the
game purposes ; and surely if he wishes to
influence the community, he cannot find a
more favorable point to operate upon than
his child. His suggestions fall upon a friend-
ly ear ; he is sure of carrying conviction. If
a parent has view^s, he makes a great mistake
in withholding them from his children.

But men are intellectually ambitious, and
like scope for their powers. There is no
wider field for the exercise of intellectual
activity than that afforded by family prob-
lems. He who will condescend to study

156 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

them will find the most edifying exercise
and the most wide-reaching science. A par-
ent can find his best personal interests in
the line of his duty ; he can find the larg-
est life in dealing out justice to his child.
He is absolute monarch of an interesting
domain ; his government, when he chooses
to exercise it, gives scope for the largest
capacity, and is attended with the most
gratifying results.

Besides dereliction of duty, a man makes
a great mistake in stepping over the prob-
lems of his family to reach those beyond.
Before he attempts to govern the public,
he should first be satisfied in his mind that
he has been a successful governor in his
own household. It makes a large discount
on a man's supposed greatness to find that
he is the parent of wayward children. In
attempting to cultivate distant fields, he has
let the garden of his household be overrun
with weeds. He must thereafter ever face
the evidences of failure — evidences patent

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 157

not only to himself, but to all who know
the condition of his domestic establishment.
A wayward household is an ungoverned
household, in which government has either
abdicated its function, or has been over-
thrown by its own rebellious subjects in
consequence of its own usurpations of un-
constitutional powers. Here is the rub. It
is folly to attempt the mastery of state con-
stitutions until one understands that consti-
tution on which they are modelled.

As gravitation is the basis of universal
order and law, so is the bread - and - butter
problem the basis of all other family prob-
lems. But this would be a desolate and
dreary universe were all other forces sus-
pended but that of gravitation. The mul-
tiplied forms of beauty, which result from
the combination and co-operation of forces,
would give way to a dread monotony. So
likewise may there be dread desolation in
the household if the parent sees nothing
in his mission beyond the necessities of

158 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

the table and the wardrobe. He has made
beauty possible ; but instead of securing it
he has invited either the drear waste of in-
anity or the black storms of satanic forces.
In all this we have assumed that the par-
ent has supplied the bread, which is his
duty to do. Matters are brought to a
worse pass when he so far violates natural
law as to regard his children as bread-win-
ners instead of opening buds. True, he
should prepare them to be good bread-win-
ners when they pass from his jurisdiction;
but they are not the bread-winners of his
household. But the abuses of the bread
question are intensified when the parent
compels his children to be money-makers
for their own sakes. That is but an ac-
cursed thrift which is acquired at the ex-
pense of soul and body. But the greatest
abuse occurs when the parent compels the
children to make money for his sake. The
other error, though serious in its conse-
quences, carries with it some extenuation

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 159

in the form of intended benevolence. But
this last is the blackest of crimes, and goes
farther than any other one thing to prove
the doctrine of total depravity. Nothing
could better show the utter absence of
worthy sentiments and emotions than the
coining of one's own flesh and blood into
filthy lucre.

The parent who is awake sees a hundred
other problems besides that which concerns
the cupboard and the clothes-press. He
sees before him plastic minds and souls, ca-
pable of receiving any impression he may
choose to make upon them, and capable
of becoming things of beauty and joy for-
ever. He considers how he may awaken
and feed aptitudes ; he watches with in-
terest those which burst forth spontaneous-
ly, knowing them to be the suggestions
of nature, revealing the bent and qual-
ities of soul ; he sees a thousand oppor-
tunities for impressing practical lessons in
thought, feeling, and morals. Happy the

160 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

individual who can do a good thing, and
say, " 'Twas thus my father taught me to
act."

All children have the common mission of
becoming mature men and women ; but the
special mission of each in life should de-
pend upon the preponderance of aptitudes.
It is a parental problem to detect this pre-
ponderance and know in advance what the
child's mission is to be, long before it makes
the selection. This knowledge will enable
the parent to speed that mission. The se-
lection should always be made by the child ;
the parental function is to make a wise se-
lection probable. Genius chafes and pines
when it is out of its element; most failures
are due to the arbitrary selection of voca-
tions.

Every faculty in the human constitution
has beauty in its construction and grandeur
in its purpose. The parental problems are
coextensive with these faculties, and may
best be referred to them. The problems of

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 161

duty are to supply nourishment to all the
faculties, and to see that none are perverted
or withered by disuse.

There is a very common reluctance on
the part of parents towards entertaining any
of the family problems except that of bread
and butter. There are circumstances which
render it questionable how far even this is
unselfish. Parents must eat, and must there-
fore have a furnished table to which the chil-
dren are necessarily admitted. It is doubtless
true that culinary matters are considered, for
the most part, from the standpoint of parental
appetite. But parents are under compulsion
of law and custom to feed and clothe their
children ; so it remains an open question
how far this feeding is a thoroughly benevo-
lent act. It is certain that some parents per-
mit their children to go hungry while they
gratify their own appetites at prodigious ex-
pense.

But whether or not we trace selfishness
to the table, we certainly do trace it to other
L

162 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

problems of the family. Many parents re-
gard the advent of children as a calamity
and their presence an annoyance. The chil-
dren are interlopers who interfere with the
routine of habit, or disturb the weighty re-
flections that possess parental minds. "When
the children are good-natured, they are dan-
dled on the knee as interesting toys; but
when they are in trouble, they are bundled
off to the nursery or to an infant school.
The fact that the child is troubled is over-
looked; the only thing realized is that he
is troublesome. Banishment is the remedy
for his sufferings — banishment from the pa-
rental bosom to the management of a testy
nurse or nervous school-teacher. We have
the common phenomenon of a parent en-
casing himself in selfishness and keeping
his children at bay. It has a suggestion of
frost. The advances and encroachments of
childhood are little knockings at the pa-
rental heart. Instinct tells the child that
that is his place wherein he may nestle and

FAMILY PKOBLEMS. 163

be warmed by the fires of affection, just as
the chicken knows by instinct that comfort
prevails under the parent wing. The warm
solicitude and faithful parentage of the brute
creation put to blush, in many cases, the
parentage of man. The sense of desolation
and suffering in a banished child must be
horrible beyond comparison. Such parental
mistakes prepare the way for frightful re-
actions.

Parents who wish to solve family prob-
lems will dismiss entirely from mind the
idea that children are, in any sense, en-
cumbrances. They will not seek the so-
ciety and applause of heartless flatterers in
preference to the society and love of their
affectionate babes. They will not seek di-
version in companionship steeped in sin,
while angels of purity are waiting in their
own household to cheer their hours and
teach them the way to heaven. "Out of
the mouth of babes and sucklings cometh
praise ;" the parenc who starts in earnest

164: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

to instruct his child will find himself the
most instructed of the two. The little one
is freighted with suggestions from the In-
finite, untarnished by the faults and fallacies
of the world ; and he cooes into the parental
car the voice of the Eternal Father. The
parent will heed the knockings ; he will open
the door of his heart and let his little dar-
lings in, never again to be separated from
his consciousness while life lasts.

The significance of the knockings is that
the little ones would be shielded from the
clammy touches of the world and have a
strong bulwark between them and evil.
Vice recruits its ranks from the victims of
parental selfishness ; it is powerless to reach
such children as Cato's daughter or Corne-
lia's sons. Parental exclusiveness is the Mo-
loch of modern times ; parents are so pre-
occupied with business and social cares that
they have no time nor inclination to ward
off the many -armed monster that is reach-
ing after the fresh and blooming children.

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 165

Parents would justify this exclusiveness
on the ground that they support institutions
for the instruction and training of children.
The excuse is not valid. Schools are design-
ed as supplements to parental effort, not
as substitutes for it. Schools address them-
selves mainly to intellect ; they do not hold
examinations in virtue. The culture of the
heart is peculiarly the work of the home.
Cornelia was not mistress of the calculus,
nor the German language ; but she wras mis-
tress of the soul. Instead of heart-culture at
schools, the chances are altogether in favor of
finding evil associations, calling for renewed
efforts on the part of parents to counteract
them. The parent has no right to possess
thoughts, tastes, and purposes secluded from
his children. The child inherits all the ex-
perience of the parent ; and the latter should
hasten to put the little one into possession.
A domestic Sphinx or Sir Oracle was never
contemplated by nature any more than a do-
mestic tyrant. Professional men are espe-

166 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

cially apt to withdraw into themselves, in
consequence of the preoccupation of their
studies, and to lose the thread of the fami-
ly's daily history. The law of family hap-
piness and prosperity is freedom of associa-
tion. Whatever checks this is detrimental
to all the family problems. Business neces-
sitates a certain amount of separation be-
tween parent and child ; but the worst form
of separation is that which occurs when they
are together — the separation of souls. Busi-
ness is a stern necessity, connected with the
bread problem ; but it should not be carried
home.

But in the beautiful order of things one
parent is free from business engagements.
The mother cannot be excused for becoming
oblivious of her children. The Creator has
given her warm affections and unlimited op-
portunity for domestic culture. She is the
real parent, the home - builder. While her
husband is wrestling with the bread problem,
she is especially responsible for the solution

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 167

of the others. It is her function to detect
the spiritual and intellectual needs of her
children, and to furnish the nourishment
which those needs require. She is the gar-
dener of the household, who sows the seeds
of virtue, waters its plants and flowers, and
uproots the little springing weeds of vice.
'Tis she who must arouse and nourish the
aptitudes; 'tis she who must inculcate self-
restraint and subjection to just authority.
She has to manage not only her children,
but also her husband; she is the inductive
philosopher of the household, and she has to
indoctrinate her husband and children with
the fruits of her observations. If home
draws its members away from competing
allurements, the victory is hers. If home is
enriched with the jewels of a true nobility,
the pride of achievement is hers.

It is, then, a great privilege to be a mother.
Her office is the most dignified and influen-
tial on earth. The sort of greatness which
domineers a senate does not compare either

168 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

in quantity or quality with the greatness
that successfully rules a family. As family
organization is the model of social organiza-
tion, so is family statesmanship the model of
social statesmanship. Family statesmanship
finds its embodiment in the thoughtful, ju-
dicious, faithful mother. She is the ideal of
earthly excellence, the centre and source of
the best social forces. If mothers are faith-
ful to their trust, the problems of school dis-
cipline will be greatly simplified. We have
some modern Cornelias who are giving noble
men and women to society. Perhaps not all
who contemplate the massive unselfishness
and generosity of Washington are conscious
of the extent to which he was indebted for
his traits to the training of his mother. But
motherhood is beginning to receive recogni-
tion as a mighty power ; and in the near fut-
ure, maternity, instead of paternity, will be
taken as the key to a man's character. He
is such as his mother makes him ; and there
will cease to be an analysis which does not

FAMILY PROBLEMS. 169

include the mother. But the great mis-
sion of motherhood affords no time for
vanity. Her problems are such as to re-
quire earnest, persevering purpose.

170 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

TOUTED PROBLEMS.

IF parents were always in order, there
could be no necessity for discussing the prob-
lems of youth : children could be referred
to their parents for counsel in all matters
pertaining to their ambitions. But inasmuch
as many children are jostled aside by parent-
al selfishness, and compelled to solve their
own problems, it becomes proper to make
them an audience. The trouble with young
people is inexperience. They feel that they
have problems, but they do not understand
them ; they engage in a blind battle with
fate. They feel within themselves an in-
stinct to do and to be : it is the divine pur-
pose spurring them on to their mission.
They are conscious of something around
them called the world — an indefinite some-
thing— to which they must adjust them-

YOUTH'S PROBLEMS. 171

selves ; they have indistinct notions of growth
and a future; they are totally ignorant oi
law, but sanguine of success, and are prone
to plunge headlong across the lines of rela-
tions into numberless mistakes.

Wisdom is not the portion of youth ; that
comes only by experience. Since youth is
blind, its first need is wise and benevolent
counsel in which it can trust with implicit
faith. It never gives this faith to dogma-
tism; it only yields it to sympathy. Young
people are prone to secretiveness in regard
to their personal purposes. They could not
make a greater mistake than to nurse a soli-
tary ambition ; their prosperity and happiness
would be greatly enhanced by discussing
their intentions with an older friend. But
youth's ideals are too sacred to be exposed
to any but the most friendly eye. The best
test of sympathy and goodness is a child's
confidence. Happy the parent who has the
confidence of his child; happy the child
whose parent can command its confidence.

172 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

Happy the teacher who gets the confidence
of his pupil ; happy the pupil who finds a
teacher worthy of confidence. The youth
who has his own problems to solve should
select his mentor, his pilot, his older self with
whom he can hold most intimate communion.
He will thus have ballast and direction to
guard him from disaster. A youth who is
without any counsel but his own instincts is
in a precarious condition ; he is exposed to so
many dangers of whose existence he is entire-
ly unconscious that one cannot observe him
without trembling. His future may be ru-
ined by the accidents of an hour, all his
bright possibilities eclipsed in the eternal
night of failure.

Young people are prone to a remarkable
fallacy — that of eagerness to get rid of their
youth, as though youth were a reproach. We
have not too much youth at the best; we
cannot afford to lose any portion of it. Ma-
turity is conditioned in the uses of youth ; in
proportion as youth is destroyed, maturity

YOUTH'S PROBLEMS. 173

is impaired. Those who grow restive with
youth, and inflate themselves into an imagi-
nary manhood, are likely to possess but an im-
aginary manhood while they live ; they are
as dwarfs disporting in giant's trappings.
Never, until they become humble and realize
their true dimensions, will they grow towards
fitting the garments they have selected for
their persons. It is sad to see self -conse-
quence demanding the homage of the crowd
and smarting under the crowd's indifference.
It is sad to see a youth embarrassed by his
fancied size, and wincing under the supposed
gaze of thousands who do not see him at all.
Young people are doubtless goaded on to
casting away their youth by the notions of
the knowing ones. Good people, of course,
never sneer at greenness ; they consider it a
very proper and beautiful thing, its juices
giving rich promise of the vigorous fibre
and the ripened fruit further on. But the
corrupt, who have blackened their own nat-
ures, find purity offensive, and aim to make

174: THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

it dissatisfied with itself. Youth makes the
mistake of supposing that only the know-
ing ones are wise, and that good people are
fogies. It hastens to smirch its own white-
ness and earn the badge of maturity by pro-
ficiency in vice. The blushing boy is fas-
cinated by the composure of the " blood,"
while he is exasperated by his taunts ; he
hastens to be himself a blood with loud cos-
tume, a defiant eye, an aggressive gait, a foul
vocabulary, loathsome habits, and a loath-
some record. The boy escapes the specific
persecution, it is true ; but he escapes tempo-
rary annoyances at the expense of perdition.
The innocence and modesty, which the wick-
ed call greenness, are a boy's brightest pos-
sessions. They are the characteristics of real
boyhood ; and a real boy is a pleasing sight
— a boy who acknowledges a novelty and
opens his eyes with wonder. There is hope
for a boy who can be surprised. Growth is
pleasing, but precocity is offensive, especially
the precocity of evil: the so-called young
men are nondescripts.

175

Almost every school tests a boy's moral
courage; for it is almost sure to contain a
certain amount of taunting precocity, even if
it does not contain an element of finished
bloods. A boy with a conscience is put to
the torture of doing wrong to escape sneers.
The knowing ones enthrall him, while the
massive dignity of his preceptor is unfelt. It
is thus that vice and disorder propagate them-
selves. Precocity in schools has its grada-
tions, from the urchin who fastens pins in
the seat to the college blood who patronizes
his old professors and languidly pooh-poohs
the superstitious ideas of mankind in regard
to goodness. This last-named individual is
a character. In his " diversions " he has
run the whole gamut of mischief and wicked-
ness, causing a thousand heartaches to parents,
teachers, and friends. He reaches a point at
last where exhaustion and seniorial traditions
combine to secure a fair exterior. After
having jested with every sacred thing, and
after having given unbridled rein to all his

176 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

passions and propensities, he relapses into a
quiet cynicism, smiling ironically at the
youthfulness of the world, because it does
not grow old as fast as he did. He is a
sphinx-like terror to the unspoiled freshman ;
his smile is more tantalizing than the open
sneers of younger reprobates.

It will be observed that the evil world is
very attentive to the boys, driving and luring
them into its ranks. If the good world com-
peted for the boys with equal diligence, we
should have fewer failures. But the good
world is generally so absorbed in great en-
terprises as to be oblivious of such things as
boys and their destinies. Boys are brushed
aside with such lack of sympathy that it
seems as if the good world forgets that it
once passed through the stage of boyhood.
Boys must have wise and sympathetic coun-
sel, or they will win their wisdom at the
expense of lost opportunities. Hero-worship
is characteristic of youth. Boys become bad
because they are permitted to seek their own

YOUTH'S PROBLEMS. 177

models, and because bad models are obtru-
sively thrust upon them. Those who are too
weak or vile to command the homage of the
world revel in the gushing homage of the
boys. But boys are as willing to deify good-
ness if it does them a kindness and reaches
their sympathies. Boys are imaginative and
constructive. They must admire. If not
drawn to revere strong models, they will dress
up a fiend with virtues. We forget that boys
are to be courted when we try to drive them
into the ways of rectitude. It is strange that
boys are not understood by those who have
been boys : the most sensitive natures are left
to build their air-castles alone, and have their
hopes dashed by repeated slights and rebuffs.
The problems of unaided youth are certain-
ly very weighty ones.. It seems as though
the world conspires against them : those who
carry through to manhood a consistent am-
bition have to lift mountains. This is all
wrong ; the mature generation owes the boys
a helping hand, and pilotage instead of sup-
M

178 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

pression. No boy is fully capable of under-
standing his destiny and shaping correct ends
unaided. The " excelsior " impulse is im-
planted within him ; but it may drive him
on to the rotten branch that overhangs the
yawning abyss. He needs the warning voices
of those who know the roa.d. But as his im-
pulses originate in his breast, he likewise
hears only with his breast ; he comprehends
only the logic of affection. His one active
sense must be reached in order to control
him. A Socrates or Confucius will draw
the boys, while they give the scowling Di-
ogenes a wide berth.

The Quixotic impulses of youth do not re-
quire suppression, but direction. Show them
the windmills, but do not depress their
chivalry. As experience brings its light they
will direct their onslaughts upon real foes.
Happy the boy who is not tamed by his ex-
perience and who gets his light without loss
of volition. In practice wre seek simply to
conquer the irrepressible boys, and we sue-

YOUTH'S PROBLEMS. 179

ceed. The world has strategy ; the boys have
none. "We thus fill the world with quaking
cowards, where there ought to be lion-hearted
heroes. The boys throw down the gauntlet
to destiny ; they rush upon unseen weapons ;
they are punished, overcome, humiliated, dis-
couraged. Select the bitterest misanthrope,
and you will find an individual who started
into life a veritable Bayard. When we speak
of the " cold world," we mean the conquered
boys whose enthusiasm vanished with their
hopes, and who have been driven to assume a
desperate defensive. But the young genera-
tion are ever warm with generous sentiments
and noble, unselfish purposes. The hope of
society is not in the blasted trunk, but in the
thrifty, pliable sapling.

What a beautiful order of things surrounds
the air-castles of youth ! Therein are ceru-
lean skies, embowering landscapes ; beauty
everywhere in infinite variety of forms ; man
at his best estate vying with his kind in vir-
tue ; all prosperity, happiness, love ; a general

180 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

movement in unison with the soul of the In-
finite. This is holy ground — the vision of
earthly destiny brought by new arrivals that
have not yet learned the discords in real
things. The awakening from this ideal
world to the real world of wrong, of suffer-
ing and despair, is a harsh and terrible crisis
in a human life. But though the dream de-
parts, its standard of perfection remains to in-
spire efforts of reform. The attempt to cor-
rect things, though bootless, is worthy of all
praise and admiration. Maturity is wise
when it keeps an ear close to the suggestions
of dreaming youth and tries to analyze the
earthly heaven of a boy's brain. Maturity is
true when it keeps watch and ward over the
boy and protects him from the snares which
he cannot himself see. Maturity is unwise
as well as unkind when it robs a boy of his
visions before he is ready to face a disordered
world.

A youth should not trust to his own un-
aided judgment in shaping his future. No

YOUTH'S PEOBLEMS. 181

single step should be resolved upon without
counselling with maturity. He will thus be
saved the punishment attendant upon mis-
takes. His parent is his proper mentor. But
if deprived of parental guidance, he should
seek a substitute for it among the worthiest
of his acquaintance. That substitute should
be one who lives well, and who both knows
and feels. He is fortunate if he can find his
cabinet in his teacher.

The enemies of youth are internal as well
as external ; and he encounters both under
the same disadvantage of inexperience. He
is subjected to a fiery warfare of propensities
and passions without understanding their nat-
ure or the law of self-control. He learns law
by experience, it is true ; but his knowledge
may come after violation of law has worked
his ruin, and after he has become the slave
of habit. The problems of youth are all
involved in the general problem of getting
development and a rich experience without
personal loss.

182 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

TEA CHERS ' PR OBLEM8.

THE teacher's problems are great, even
when he approaches them with due prepara-
tion and in the proper spirit. His problems
are the improvement of society through the
development of the young and the diffusion
of intelligence and morality. As free gov-
ernment extends through the world it anch-
ors its hopes in the schoolmaster. The teach-
er is the connecting link between the great
past and the great future. He is the conser-
vator of progress. The great future appeals
to him through the eyes of the little ones,
and asks him for the report of time. Time
has brought knowledge and wisdom to light ;
the future is prepared to use them, and trusts
him to transmit the heritage. Viewed sim-
ply in his relation to the ages, the teacher's
responsibilities are vast, and should be ap-

TEACHERS' PROBLEMS. 183

preached with reverence. But in regard to
his immediate surroundings, he stands in im-
portant relation to the welfare of society, and
to the highest good and happiness of sensitive
and immortal beings.

That deep reflection is required in order to
meet the demands of these responsibilities
and relations will scarcely be questioned.
But what is it to reflect ? It is to think, to
reason, to find out law. "What is law ? It is
the normal form of an activity. The teacher
is the exponent of discipline, the personifica-
tion and efficient director of that power which
is to control the school to the best interests of
all concerned. We have discussed the nature
of that power and the conditions of its suc-
cessful operation. It is needless to urge that
a knowledge of those conditions is essential
to success. But when philosophy has ex-
hausted itself, it only carries the teacher to
his problems ; his success then depends upon
his own personal power. That power con-
sists— 1st, in making up his case and stating

THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

it truthfully ; 2d, in carrying out faithfully
the suggestions of philosophy.

In making up his case he distinguishes and
defines with accuracy the salient peculiarities
of his field — including, among other things,
his general physical surroundings, the charac-
teristics of the people, and the history of past
government in the school. Most of the data
for the case may be obtained in advance of
the opening of school. The teacher who thus
collects it will be prepared to anticipate, or
at least understand, the manifestations of the
children when they assemble. His minute
inquiries will make a favorable impression
upon the people by indicating something of
his capacity and earnestness. The people are
seldom lukewarm towards a teacher; they
either like or dislike him intensely. The
children know this verdict, and are influ-
enced by it in their own conduct. First im-
pressions take deep root; and the teacher
makes a mistake in leaving those impressions
at the mercy of disorderly children.

185

But in the case of collecting data the im-
pressions were only a secondary motive. In
like manner, every really wise and well-con-
sidered act starts a widening circle of good
influences. But the opposite is also true, that
an unwise act has its series of evil concomi-
tants. It is difficult to entirely repair a blun-
der, for one can seldom tell how far the
poison has spread. These facts should not
make teachers cowardly, but only cause them
to defer decisive action till after mature re-
flection. There is a difference between gov-
ernments that are elastic and those that are
inconsistent ; better defer a decision than re-
call an impolitic edict. The latter is defeat,
and paralyzes discipline. The delay of rigid
authority is not weak temporizing ; it is only
giving principles time to bear their fruits ; it
is a recognition of the important fact that au-
thority must be established before it can be
exercised.

It will aid the teacher in the analysis and
management of his case to commit his data

186 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

to writing ; for it may become quite volumi-
nous after the preliminary information has
been supplemented by the revelations of the
school-room. He relieves his memory there-
by, and is also better enabled to study his
case. The rule should be to make every in-
cident affecting discipline a matter of record
and reflection before decisive action. Disci-
pline is a growth in each particular school ; it
is not the application of rigid universal rules.
The teacher who brings a list of rules to be
enforced and defended invites and secures de-
feat. The rules which are admirably adapted
to one school may be very inapplicable to
another. The issues which call for decisive
action will arise fast enough without precipi-
tating a fight along the whole line by the in-
troduction of artificial rules. It is easier to
conquer an enemy by cutting off his detach-
ments in detail than by inviting a general
concentration of forces.

Decisive action upon an issue does estab-
lish a rule, for it carries the implication that

187

all similar cases will be disposed of in a simi-
lar manner. In this way there will grow up
a list of rules for that particular school. The
establishment of rules marks the progress of
discipline, and with it the progress of the
children and the people. A rule properly
established is an event of great importance
in the history of a school; it records the
growth of just authority, and its correlate
submission. A rule established is a fortress
won, in which are implied all the skirmish-
ings with the outposts, the gradual invest-
ment, the sapping and mining, the forward
movement to the ultimate reduction and final
surrender. A rule established is a record of
work.

The teacher's data may exhibit a long cat-
alogue of disorders. It would be very con-
venient if these could be at once obliterated
by the promulgation of rules and penalties.
Canute would give rules to the sea, and the
sea dashed over him and his rules. So, like-
wise, the great sea of human feeling, emotion,

188 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

passion, defies the edict of a little despot. If
the teacher assumes that the children are a
mob, they will ultimately justify his assump-
tion by becoming a veritable mob. He may
possess brute force enough to suppress the
mob for the time being ; but the mob spirit
is there awaiting its opportunity for license.
Must we look for the qualities of the prize-
fighter in the person wre would pronounce fit
to control a school ? This requirement would
rule out many estimable and powerful teach-
ers. The solution must be sought in other
qualities. In fact, anything particularly san-
guinary ought to tell against the candidate.
But a steady eye and force of character are
not brutish; they indicate power of soul.
Moral resolution (the power needed) may be
found in a frame that would abhor physical
struggles.

What will the teacher do who has collected
his data, and discovers that past mismanage-
ment has organized a mob for him ? He will
utterly ignore the office of policeman, and

189

assume his proper character of parent and
friend. He will dissolve the mob by con-
vincing it that there is no occasion for its
existence; he will guard against all fretful-
ness and preserve a cheerful, benignant de-
meanor ; he will reach the better sentiments
of the children, and organize those sentiments
as a basis of discipline. He will keep in
abeyance his policy as a ruler until he has
established his character as a friend. Even
then he will not reveal his policy except as
circumstances permit it to become law. The
teacher's acts are proper topics of comment ;
his intentions are his own ; besides, it strength-
ens a man to be supposed to have reserved
power. If a teacher wishes counsel on his
policy, he should obtain it by a discussion of
general principles or of supposititious cases.
An important reason why a teacher should
not reveal his intentions is that he is not
fully committed to a policy until he has crys-
tallized it into decisive action.

But the policy is all - important. What

190 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

kind of government shall the teacher seek
to introduce into the school? Doubtless all
will answer the government of just and salu-
tary principles. But what is the form of this
government of just and salutary principles?
The despot may hold that he embodies it;
the autocrat may claim that he represents it ;
the drill-sergeant may insist that he has the
true conception of order and its laws. We
believe that the best teachers will dissent
from all these forms and seek to create a
democracy. The discussion of government
with the governed tends to enlighten them
as to its uses : it distributes responsibility
and infuses loyalty. A rule established by
common consent raises an impregnable bar-
rier against disorder. Delinquents feel the
government of the school, and not the sever-
ity of the teacher. The teacher becomes the
executive officer of a system, the represent-
ative of a constituency. The teacher origi-
nates and matures measures under the dem-
ocratic system; but he only enforces what

191

has met with general acceptance. By this
system his government escapes the reactions
of untimely innovations, and he escapes the
unpopularity of being regarded as a martinet
and theorist. The teacher will bide his time,
working meanwhile upon the general condi-
tions ; he will submit his points as he feels
the sentiment ripe for their adoption ; and
he will thereafter enforce them with the
most unflinching firmness. The non-enforce-
ment of a rule is as detrimental to discipline
as the creation of an untimely rule. The
work of discipline is to bring volition under
law. The experience of law should be that
of wholesome firmness.

In the matter of actual government we
observe that the teacher should proceed with
the utmost deliberation ; but in the matter of
making the people governable he may pro-
ceed with the utmost activity and persistence.
What acts tend to make the people govern-
able? Any act that tends to uproot a preju-
dice ; any act that tends to enlarge their con-

192 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

ceptions of things ; any act that increases their
confidence in the goodness and capacity of
the teacher ; any act that awakens their grat-
itude ; any act that arouses their sense of re-
sponsibility; any act that enlightens them as
to the nature of duty and the proper sphere
of government. There are a thousand acts
both small and great which are attended with
these fruitful results, and which are compre-
hended under the teacher's proper problems.
The proper method of managing a school
is the most comfortable ; there is a joy in
doing good ; and there is an ecstasy in each
victory over disorder. The autocrat is sel-
dom happy; his blunders heap coals of fire
upon his own head. He drifts into an un-
known school and finds himself face to face
with serious disorder. He attempts to har-
ness the disorder with his rules, and finds it
fractious. He becomes worried, petulant, an-
gry ; he precipitates collisions, employs vio-
lence, brings about a state of war, and stirs up
much bad blood in the neighborhood. If he

TEACHERS' PROBLEMS. 193

holds liis post, he holds rankling hate that
requires to be watched with argus eyes, giv-
ing not a moment's sense of security. His
nerves are under continual excitement ; he
feels condemned to the most excruciating tort-
ure ; he considers that he has the most " aw-
ful" neighborhood and the most "awful"
scholars that ever persecuted an unhappy
teacher. He longs for his release, and on
that point at least his pupils are with him ;
they are as unhappy and miserable as he.
But this is all retribution for beginning
wrong; it is the terrible reaction of injus-
tice; it is disastrous failure.

The above is a very common experience
in school management. It is noticeable that
while those teachers report their own pangs,
they seem utterly unconscious of having in-
flicted any. They have inflicted pangs, and
they have clouded young lives. They suffer-
ed and failed because they did not come to
their work with generous intentions; they
came with the selfish motive of earning a
N

THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

little money comfortably; and inasmuch as
the unhappy children robbed them of their
comfort, they feel that they are martyrs.
There is no comfort except in the observ-
ance of law. The teacher who studies his
problems in order to conform to law in his
movements will find the thorns disappearing
from his pathway and beds of roses taking
their places.

But it may appear laborious to discover the
individuality of the district, the parents, and
the children, and to operate from the stand-
point of this individuality according to the
laws of development. True, it requires exer-
tion ; but there is not the wear and tear in
it that occurs in a blind battle with forces.
The exertion involved in rational govern-
ment is the exercise of one's superior powers
— exercise that gives the teacher development
for his reward, exercise that makes him great
and strong for occasions, instead of wear-
ing him out. Then he has, furthermore, the
teacher's highest reward — the intense satisfac-

TEACHERS' PROBLEMS. 195

tion of seeing liis little well-disciplined army
moving steadily onward to success, after they
leave his jurisdiction, with colors flying and
hearts freighted with hope and confidence.
He knows that each will do a soldier's duty
wherever the fortunes of war may place him,
and at the end of the campaign send in a
glorious report to headquarters. Surely the
possibility of such rewards ought to nerve
the teacher to any amount of exertion needed
to subdue and master his situation. These
possibilities are not confined to any one dis-
trict ; they exist in all.

It is, then, a high privilege to have the
moulding of youthful emotions, the shaping
of youthful conceptions. The teacher is that
maturity that stoops to youth, that it may con-
quer; 'he is that maturity that adjusts the
real to the ideal without doing violence to
the suggestions of nature; he is that older
friend who protects the untrained footsteps
of youth from error ; he is that maturity that
saves the faith of man in the sympathy and

196 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

generosity of his kind. Let us have in our
schools that kind of government which con-
duces to the good of all, and not that kind of
government which scatters discord, unhappi-
ness, and failure. Our matter-of-fact age, in
its intellectual tendencies, would underesti-
mate the value of the affections ; it proscribes
"gush." But there will come a reaction. It
seems scarcely possible that the cynic shall
dictate the universal form of human exist-
ence. The highest type of man is he who
can feel as well as know. It has taken ages
of injustice to make us a race of cynics; it
may take other ages of kindness to restore us
to our normal condition of "good will towards
men." The cynic himself concedes that man
has a spiritual nature, the seat of the affec-
tions, but holds that he should 'grow away
from it, instead of letting it unfold and grow
with him.

We know in order that we may feel, not
that we may dispense with feeling: our high-
est sensibilities are fed by knowledge. We

TEACHERS' PROBLEMS. 197

would be delivered from that professed ma-
turity which offers as its credentials a with-
ered heart. True generosity will not halt
in its noble undertakings because icy selfish-
ness chooses to stigmatize its expressions as
"gush" and "sentiment." The teacher needs
the courage to be good, and to profess good-
ness.

The teacher finds his problems all around
him in the imperfections to be removed, and
in the qualities and aptitudes to be nourished
and developed. He is the physician of the
modern school who repudiates plasters and
nostrums, and who assists nature to arrest
disease and shake it off. Those problems are
numerous ; to discuss them all would take
much space. But they are not all revealed ;
widening experience will bring more and
more to light. Those desirous of seeing
them will find them in the data of the good
governor. Each problem is a case represent-
ing a large class of similar experiences. We
need an educational literature giving in full

198 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

the history of the solution of each problem.
Science and literature will be indebted to the
recorded observations and operations of the
capable teacher.

But can \ve afford good government ? — that
is, can we afford to employ wisdom and skill
to preside over our schools? The answer will
be found in other queries. Can we afford to
be happy? Can we afford to dispense with
the dead weights which intellectual and mor-
al ignorance are ever imposing upon society ?
Can we afford a population of producers, in-
stead of drones and wrecks to be carried ?
The answer comes from the districts them-
selves. The small salary of an autocrat is
felt to be a burden; and it is a real burden,
for it is so much dead loss and waste. Com-
plaints about expenses prevail mostly in dis-
tricts that pay small salaries, because those
districts have not received benefits from their
expenditures. Districts which have passed
through the same stages of complaint have
been known to pay cheerfully much larger

199

salaries in order to retain the services of a
capable teacher. It will not pay to use in-
competency gratis ; but there will result the
best returns from giving a living compensa-
tion to merit.

We reiterate, in closing, the necessity for
educational doctrines and formulas to unify
the educational power of the nation, to con-
serve experience, to facilitate progress, and to
protect the profession and the cause from
abuses. We have hinted at a grand correla-
tion of principles in education, that would en-
dow the young with the experience of the
old, and make the experience of one the expe-
rience of all. For the teachers and the pub-
lic we need distinct and uniform educational
doctrines ; for the profession we need to have
those doctrines formulated under an exhaust-
ive classification and fixed technology. We
believe the time is near at hand when a teach-
er's orthodoxy may be tested by terms, when
he will be required to discuss the things and
relations of educational science as he now

200 THE SCHOOL AND THE FAMILY.

discusses the things and relations of English
grammar.

The science of education is quite as easy
to comprehend as the science of sentences.
They are both logical sciences ; the distinc-
tions in the one are neither more refined nor
abstruse than in the other. Our art of talk-
ing has led us to perceive the laws of speech
or the science of grammar. Our art of teach-
ing should lead us to the laws of develop-
ment or the science of education.

It should be easy to decide which of these
sciences ought to have the preference. Bad
grammar makes us offend against taste ; bad
education makes us offend against the fun-
damental laws of being.

INDEX.

Absence, causes of Page 28

Activity of childhood 31, 170

universal law of 14

Affections, ground of custody 36

spiritual, the culmination of our moral nature .... 56

Allegiance due from the child 4C

American educational problem, the. . . fZTT, r.7\. 132

Analysis, tabular ./. 127

Assimilation of citizens the work of education .'. 132

Association of ideas illustrated, the 57, 61

Attention essential to order ^. f J 56

how produced . » 57

Authority, abdication of , 42

abuse of 41

conflict of 41

Character a power in discipline 53

defined 49

how formed 54

Cheerfulness necessary in the teacher 93

Compensation due to service of value. , 87

Complaisance deceptive 50

Confidence secured by sympathy '171

Conscience defined 100 «

the immediate cause of order 73

Conserving forces in society 117

Corporal punishment, proper use of 101

Counsel an absolute need of youth 171

Covetousness a cause of absence 34

Crime a violation of law 40

Criminal punishments are losses of rights 78

Custody granted to the affections 36

INDEX.

Desires produce volition Page 44

Dilapidation of school property, causes of 89

Discipline defined 14

Disobedience, causes of 41

Dissipation produced by custom 28

Domestic culture the work of the mother 1GI

Duties of parents 83

Duty a branch of knowledge 103

Edification defined 12

Education an art 12G, 153

Educational science 136

Eligibility to educational offices 113

Enforced stillness, evils of 57, 70, 88

Examination of teachers should include educational sci-
ence 105, 135

Excitement, effects of 29

Executive ability delusive 104

External training 22, 173

False maturity 178

Family government 28

Female education 141

teachers 140

Fossil teachers GO

Happiness a condition of order 44

Heroism, uses of 77

Hero-worship a necessity of childhood 17G

Hours of rest 33

Human nature, elements of 55

Ideality characteristic of youth 179

Illogical notions G8

Imitation, powerlessness of 9G

Induction defined 11

Indulgence, effects of , 34, 42

Injudicious criticism 39

Injustice defined 74

reaction of 89

Insecurity expensive 80

INDEX. 203

Instinct the child's law Page 1(12

Insubordination, causes of 41

Intellectual idleness 95

Judicial decision 37

Legal protection needed GO

License caused by undue restraint.. 70

consists of 91

Love, solicitude of 36

test of character 56

the basis of instruction 84

Mai-education 27

Manners, how formed 92

Maturity a right of childhood 84

defined 86

tested'. 49

Migration caused by educational wants 148

Misanthropy, how caused 179

Missionary work of teachers 68

Moral courage an clement of character 52, 78

law defined 75

power necessary to the teacher 48. 188

remedies in discipline 65

Motherhood, importance of 167

Music a power over conduct 46

Natural imbecility 72

signals 97

Normal schools 136

Obedience depends on faith 103

produced by conscience 73

the duty of the child 43

Objective instruction defined , 12

Order defined 14

Over-education a fallacy 26

Parental exclusiveness 1 64

opinions fallacious 25

204: INDEX.

Parental visitation of schools Page 39

Parties in a school 15

Patriotism a cause of self-sacrifice 76

Perjury, incentives to 115

Poetic genius a perception of law and order 15

Practical reforms related to youth's ideals 180

Precocity, phases of 175

Preoccupation a parental fault 165

Prerogatives of citizenship 131

Presumptive perfection of the teacher 40

Procrastination, effects of 28

Professional education, need of 134

Progress a factor in discipline 60

indications of 64

Propensities, contest with 53, 181

Prudence wanting in children 29

Public opinion, power of 132

Public order related to happiness 46

related to order in schools 41

Punctuality, importance of 27

Rebellion encouraged 23

Reciprocity the law of acquisition 100

Reflection defined 183

Relaxation a need 93

Respect a condition of obedience 47

Retribution inseparable from Avrong action 100, 192

Rights, how alienated 76

inalienable 76

of children 84

of district 80

of parents 82, 106

of property , 37

of society 79

of teachers 87. 107

origin of 75

Rote-teaching injurious 58

Rules, use and abuse of .. . 186

Rural education, importance of 144

opportunities 145

INDEX, 205

School patriotism Page 47

polity 189

Schools, purpose of. 82

Selfishness abuses government , G9

destroys schools 133

in the family 101

Self-mastery in the teacher a power in discipline 49

Sentiments cultivated 153

Services due from children 3G

Slavery of children 35

Society the condition of human development „ 79

Subdivision of territory affects discipline 19

Subject defined 11

Subjective instruction defined 12

Superintendent a teacher, the /. 110

Supervision a phase of discipline 109

appointive. , , . . . 118

nominal 121

political 112

Support the prime family problem 157

Susceptibilities defined , 45

Tardiness, causes of 28

Taxation, grounds of 81

Teachers' facilities for preparation 136

Township system 18

Training, industrial, a parental duty 36

Tyranny of custom 29

Unprofitable discussions 39

Violence a violation of rights 90

springs from selfishness 69

Volition, origin of 44

Weakness of youth 54

Wealth, what constitutes 152

Will power an evil and a good , 69

Wrong defined 74

UNIVERSITY

USEFUL BOOKS FOR
FAMILY READING,

PUBLISHED BY

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

ither of the following books will be sent by wail, postage pre-
paid, to any part of the United Slates, on receipt of price, except
where otherwise indicated.

HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
54 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $3 oo each ; Half Calf,

$5 25-

The best monthly periodical, not in this country alone, but in the
English language. — Philadelphia Press.

HARPER'S WEEKLY. 20 vols., Cloth, $7 oo
each; Half Morocco, $10 50.

"A complete pictorial history of the times."

HARPER'S BAZAR. A Repository of Fashion,
Pleasure, and Instruction. 9 vols., Cloth, Gilt,
$7 oo each ; Half Morocco, $10 50.

The young lady who buys a single number of HARPER'S BAZAR is
made a subscriber for life. — N. Y. Evening Post.

ABBOTT'S YOUNG CHRISTIAN SERIES.

The Young Christian Series. By JACOB ABBOTT.
Illustrated. 4 vols., i2ino, Cloth, $i 75 earh.

THE YOUNG CHRISTIAN.
THE CORNER STONE.
THE WAY TO DO GOOD.
HOARYHEAD AND M'DONNER.

2 Useful Books for Family Reading.

ABBOTT'S CHILD AT HOME. The Child
at Home ; or, The Principles of Filial Duty fa-
miliarly Illustrated. By JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
Illustrated. i6mo, Cloth, $i oo.

ABBOTT'S MOTHER AT HOME. The Moth-
er at Home ; or, The Principles of Maternal
Duty familiarly Illustrated. By JOHN S. C.
ABBOTT. Illustrated. i6mo, Cloth, $i oo.

MISS BEECHER'S HOUSEKEEPER AND
HEALTHKEEPER. The Housekeeper and
Healthkeeper : containing Five Hundred Rec-
ipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking ;
also, many Directions for securing Health and
Happiness. Approved by Physicians of all
Classes. By CATHARINE E. BEECHER. Illus-
trated. 1 2 mo, Cloth, $i 50.

MISS BEECHER'S TRAINING OF CHIL-
DREN. The Religious Training of Children
in the Family, the School, and the Church.
By CATHARINE E. BEECHER. 121110, Cloth,
$i 75-

BURTON'S CULTURE OF THE OBSERV-
ING FACULTIES. The Culture of the Ob-
serving Faculties in the Family and the School ;
or, Things about Home, and how to make them
Instructive to the Young. By WARREN BURTON.
i6mo, Cloth, 75 cents.

BEMENT'S AMERICAN POULTERER'S
COMPANION. A Practical Treatise on the
Breeding, Rearing, Fattening, and general Man-
agement of the various Species of Domestic
Poultry. By C. N. BEMENT. Illustrated with
Portraits of Fowls, mostly taken from Life ;
Poultry-Houses, Coops, Nests, Feeding-Houses,
&c., &c. i2mo, Cloth, $2 oo.

YB

RO

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY