15. Give some experience of your own (or of a friend) in the training
of a child wherein a success has been achieved.
16. Are there any questions you would like to ask or subjects which
you wish to discuss in connection with the lessons on the Study of
Child Life?
Note.--After completing the test sign it with your full name.
Supplementary Notes
on
STUDY OF CHILD LIFE
BY MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE
APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES.
In this "Study of Child Life" we have considered some of the
fundamental principles of education. When we think of the complex
inheritance of the American people it is, perhaps, no wonder that many
families contain individuals varying so widely from each other as to
seem to require each a complete system of education all to himself.
We are a people born late in the history of the race, and our blood
is mingled of the Norseman's, the Celt's, and the Latin's. Advancing
civilization alone would tend to make us more complex, our problems
more subtle; but in addition to this we are mixed of all races, and
born in times so strenuous that, sooner or later, every fibre of our
weaving is strained and brought into prominence.
In the letters from my students this fact, with which I was already
familiar in a general sort of way, has been brought more particularly
to my attention. In all cases, the situation has been responsible for
much confusion and difficulty. In a good many, it has led to
family tragedies, varying in magnitude from the unhappiness of the
misunderstood child to that of the lonely woman, suffering in adult
life from the faults of her upbringing, and the failure of the family
ties whose need she felt the more as the duties of motherhood pressed
upon her. If it were possible for me to violate the confidence of my
pupils I could prove very conclusively that the old-fashioned system
of bringing up children on the three R's and a spanking did not work
so well as some persons seem to think. I could prove that the problem
has grown past the point where instinct and tradition may be held
as sufficient to solve it. Everyone, seeing these letters, would be
obliged to confess, "Yes, indeed, here is plain need of training for
parents." Yet, at the same time, these same persons would be tempted
to inquire, "But can any training meet such a difficult situation?"
Here is despair; and some cause for it. When one's own mother has not
understood one; when one has lived lonely in the midst of brothers and
sisters who are more strange than strangers; when one's childhood is
full of the memory of obscure but intense sufferings, one flies for
relief, perhaps, to any one who offers it hopefully enough; but
one does not really expect to get it. _Can_ training, especially by
correspondence, meet the need?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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