That Last Waif; or, Social QuarantineFletcher, Horace
History
That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine
Fletcher, Horace
Child welfare
And, since virtue is secured by early training and habit, the children
of a republic must be trained in ways of honesty, industry and
self-control. It matters not who they are nor where they are, the
State cannot afford to allow them to grow up in ignorance and crime.
The great conspirator, when he aimed to overthrow Rome, corrupted the
young men. When our fathers would conserve liberty for their children
and for mankind, they "fed the lambs": they looked to the proper
training of the young. We have a vast number of humane institutions
for the reclamation and recovery of the wayward and the erring. We
have reformatory institutions, asylums, prisons, jails, and houses of
correction; but all these are only repair shops. Their work is
secondary, not primal. It is vastly more economical to build new
structures than to overhaul and remodel old ones.
The prevention of crime is the duty of society. But society has little
right to punish crime at one end, if it does nothing to prevent it at
the other end. Society's chief concern should be to remove the causes
from which crime springs. It is much more a duty to prevent crime than
it is to punish crime.
Parents should try to be what they would have their children to be.
Parents and society are very clumsy in their management of children.
We have our duties to one another; and we may be sure of one thing:
that any one, however flippant or however scornful, who asks, like
Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" like Cain, has somehow lost his
brother; like Cain, has somehow slain him. It seems to me that two
great ministrant forces engird this universe--love and law. We need
them both in the education and development of human beings--of little
children. The mother love should bind the child to home and duty: the
father power should construct order and administer government. Society
should have both these elements in its government.
As factors in society, what are we doing to prevent crime? We may be
very eloquent in pleading that punishments may be quick, sharp, and
decisive, that the gallows may have every victim that it claims by
law, and that eternal vigilance may be kept on evil-doers. But all
this will not avail. As has truly been said: "Crime cannot be
prevented by punishment. Crime can only be hindered by letting no
child grow up a criminal. Crime can only be stayed by education--not
education of the intellect only, but education of the heart, which is
alike good and necessary for all." We want that sort of education
which has in it more of the aim of character-building.
The end of all culture must be character, and its outcome in conduct.
"Conduct," says Matthew Arnold, "is three-fourths of life." The
State's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law-abiding,
self-governing citizens.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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