Education; Educational psychology; Moral education
The crude material of instinct is, in most respects, equally capable
of leading to desirable and to undesirable actions. In the past,
men did not understand the training of instinct, and therefore were
compelled to resort to repression. Punishment and fear were the great
incentives to what was called virtue. We now know that repression is
a bad method, both because it is never really successful, and because
it produces mental disorders. The training of instincts is a totally
different method, involving a totally different technique. Habits and
skill make, as it were, a channel for instinct, leading it to flow one
way or another according to the direction of the channel. By creating
the right habits and the right skill, we cause the child’s instincts
themselves to prompt desirable actions. There is no sense of strain,
because there is no need to resist temptation. There is no thwarting,
and the child has a sense of unfettered spontaneity. I do not mean
these statements to be taken in an absolute sense; there will always be
unforeseen contingencies in which older methods may become necessary.
But the more the science of child psychology is perfected, and the more
experience we acquire in nursery-schools, the more perfectly the new
methods can be applied.
I have tried to bring before the reader the wonderful possibilities
which are now open to us. Think what it would mean: health, freedom,
happiness, kindness, intelligence, all nearly universal. In one
generation, if we chose, we could bring the millennium.
But none of this can come about without love. The knowledge exists;
lack of love prevents it from being applied. Sometimes the lack of
love towards children brings me near to despair--for example, when I
find almost all our recognized moral leaders unwilling that anything
should be done to prevent the birth of children with venereal disease.
Nevertheless, there is a gradual liberation of love of children, which
surely is one of our natural impulses. Ages of fierceness have overlaid
what is naturally kindly in the dispositions of ordinary men and
women. It is only lately that many Christians have ceased to teach the
damnation of unbaptized infants. Nationalism is another doctrine which
dries up the springs of humanity; during the war, we caused almost all
German children to suffer from rickets. We must let loose our natural
kindliness; if a doctrine demands that we should inflict misery upon
children, let us reject it, however dear it may be to us. In almost all
cases, the psychological source of cruel doctrines is fear; that is one
reason why I have laid so much stress upon the elimination of fear in
childhood. Let us root out the fears that lurk in the dark places of
our own minds. The possibilities of a happy world that are opened up by
modern education make it well worth while to run some personal risk,
even if the risk were more real than it is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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