Galton estimates two hundred and fifty in a million as in the
"distinguished class," If, as Doctor Ward and others think, many more
might be able to qualify for that position if favorably situated, then
society, which is the loser by every undeveloped person, must learn to
know the possibilities of children as indicated by scientific study
and lessen the present waste of potential talent. Dr. Carl Kelsey says
"Heredity determines what a man may become, but environment determines
what he does become." This is not entirely true, perhaps, since many
noble and wise have risen from untoward surroundings, but it is
largely true.
=Social Need to Learn What Children Are.=--If society is to really set
about the business of getting from the mass of mankind all the
intellectual and moral power and all the real leadership that may be
available for social uses, then surely we must learn first to know
more about all the children in every family. How can this be done? In
many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite
unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In
many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In
other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads
to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the
promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any
case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and
due balance of judgment even between their own children and certainly
not as between their own and the children of other parents.
="Charting Parents."=--There is, to be sure, a new plan of "Charting
Parents" to find out what they are able to do and what they are
actually doing in the moral training and physical care of their
children. "The Parents' Score Card," prepared by Dr. Caroline Hedger,
of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, and published in the
_Woman's Home Companion_ of March, 1922, aims to enable fathers and
mothers "to size themselves up as parents." The points to be noted and
on which parents have a rating as good, bad, or indifferent, comprise
those concerning "physical defects attended to," "adequate supervision
of athletics and recreation," "regulations concerning the below-weight
or nervous child," on "team-work in parents" (whether they pull
together or apart in the discipline of the child), and some very
drastic examination points on "fault-finding," "lying to child,"
"punishing when angry." The chart deals, in general, with the
character influence of the parent. It is said that only one child in
three hundred had a perfect "score card" in an investigation of a
large number of children, and hence only a small proportion of parents
could be supposed to measure up to all the requirements of the
parent's outline of duties.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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