Searchlights on Health: The Science of EugenicsJefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Philosophy
Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics
Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage; Medicine, Popular; Sexual ethics
7. We do not intend to be understood that a child must have everything
that it desires and every whim and wish to receive special recognition
by the parents. Children can soon be made to understand the necessity
of obedience, and punishment can easily be brought about by teaching
them self-denial. Deny them the use of a certain plaything, deny them
the privilege of visiting certain of their little friends, deny
them the privilege of the table, etc., and these self-denials can be
applied according to the age and condition of the child, with firmness
and without any yielding. Children will soon learn obedience if they
see the parents are sincere. Lessons of home government can be learned
by the children at home as well as they can learn lessons at school.
8. The trouble is, many parents need more government, more training
and more discipline than the little ones under their control.
9. Scores of times during the day a child is told in a short,
authoritative way to do or not to do certain little things, which we
ask at the hands of elder persons as favors. When we speak to an elder
person, we say, would you be so kind as to close the door, when the
same person making the request of a child will say, _"Shut the door."_
_"Bring me the chair."_ _"Stop that noise."_ _"Sit down there."_
Whereas, if the same kindness was used towards the child it would soon
learn to imitate the example.
10. On the other hand, let a child ask for anything without saying
"please," receive anything without saying "thank you," it suffers a
rebuke and a look of scorn at once. Often a child insists on having a
book, chair or apple to the inconveniencing of an elder, and what an
outcry is raised: "Such rudeness;" "Such an ill-mannered child;" "His
parents must have neglected him strangely." Not at all: The parents
may have been steadily telling him a great many times every day not
to do these precise things which you dislike. But they themselves have
been all the time doing those very things before him, and there is no
proverb that strikes a truer balance between two things than the old
one which weighs example over against precept.
11. It is a bad policy to be rude to children. A child will win and be
won, and in a long run the chances are that the child will have better
manners than its parents. Give them a good example and take pains in
teaching them lessons of obedience and propriety, and there will be
little difficulty in raising a family of beautiful and well-behaved
children.
12. Never correct a child in the presence of others; it is a rudeness
to the child that will soon destroy its self-respect. It is the way
criminals are made and should always and everywhere be condemned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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