School educationMason, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Maria)
Philosophy
School education
Mason, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Maria)
Education -- Curricula; Education -- Philosophy
=Omniscience of Parents and Teachers.=—Parents and teachers must, of
course, be omniscient; their children expect this of them, and a mother
or father who can be hoodwinked is a person easy to reckon with in the
mind of even the best child. For children are always playing a game—half
of chance, half of skill; they are trying how far they can go, how much
of the management of their own lives they can get for the taking, and how
much they must leave in the hands of the stronger powers. Therefore the
mother who is not _up to_ children is at their mercy, and need expect
no quarter. But she must see without watching, know without telling, be
on the alert always, yet never obviously, fussily, so. This open-eyed
attitude must be sphinx-like in its repose. The children must know
themselves to be let alone, whether to do their own duty or to seek their
own pleasure. The constraining power should be present, but passive,
so that the child may not feel himself hemmed in without choice. That
free-will of man, which has for ages exercised faithful souls who would
prefer to be compelled into all righteousness and obedience, is after all
a pattern for parents. The child who is good because he must be so, loses
in power of initiative more than he gains in seemly behaviour. Every
time a child feels that he chooses to obey of his own accord, his power
of initiative is strengthened. The bearing-rein may not be used. When it
occurs to a child to reflect on his behaviour, he should have that sense
of liberty which makes his good behaviour appear to him a matter of his
own preference and choice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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