Influencing the Child

Parents and teachers make it a business to influence children because they think they know what children ought to have, ought to learn, ought to be. I disagree. I never attempt to get children to share my beliefs or my prejudices. I have no religion, but I have never taught one word against religion; nor for that matter against our barbarous criminal code, nor against anti-Semitism, nor against imperialism. I would never consciously influence children to become pacifists, or vegetarians, or reformers, or anything else. I know that preaching cuts no ice with children. I put my trust in the power of freedom to fortify youth against sham, and against fanaticism, and against isms of any kind.

Every opinion forced on a child is a sin against that child. A child is not a little adult, and a child cannot possibly see the adult’s point of view.

Let me give an illustration. One night, I said to five boys whose ages ranged from seven to eleven, “Miss Y has influenza and is feeling bad. Try not to make a noise when you are going to bed.” They promised to be quiet. Five minutes later, they were having a pillow fight with great noise. Leaving out of consideration the chances of their having an unconscious desire to make life nasty for Miss Y, I contend that the fault lay in their age. It is true that a stern voice and a whip would have secured peace for Miss Y, but peace at the expense of introducing fear into the lives of those children. The universal method of dealing with children is to teach them to adapt themselves to us and our needs. This method is wrong.

Few parents or teachers ever grasp the truth that talking to a young child is wasted breath. No child who ever lived really benefited from the time-honored parental reaction to pulling the cat’s tail, “How would you like it if someone pulled your ear!” Furthermore, no child ever really comprehends what parents mean when they say, “So you stuck a pin in baby? Just to show you that a pin hurts, I’ll ... (screams). That will stop you from doing that again.” It may stop him--but the ultimate results throng our clinics.

I am trying to convince parents of the fact that a child cannot see cause and effect. To say to a child, “You’ve been so naughty that you won’t get your Saturday nickel,” is wrong. For when Saturday comes and he is reminded of his misdeed and its punishment, he simply is genuinely angry and frustrated. Because what happened on, say Monday, is a thing of the long, long past--a thing with no connection with the present Saturday nickel. He does not feel the least bit guilty; but he does feel very hateful against the depriving authority.

A parent should always question whether he is not imposing directives because of his own power drive and his need to satisfy that drive by fashioning someone else. Everyone seeks the good opinion of his neighbors. Unless other forces push him into unsocial behavior, a child will naturally want to do that which will cause him to be well regarded, but this desire to please others develops at a certain stage in his growth. The attempt by parents and teachers to artificially accelerate this stage does the child irreparable damage.

I once visited a modern school where over a hundred boys and girls assembled in the morning to hear a clergyman address them. He spoke earnestly, advising them to be ready to hear Christ’s call. The principal asked me later what I thought of the address. I replied that I thought it criminal. Here were scores of children, each with a conscience about sex and other things; the sermon simply increased each child’s sense of guilt.

Another progressive school compels all pupils to listen to Bach for half an hour before breakfast. Now this attempt to elevate by giving a standard of values has psychologically the same effect on the child as the old Calvinistic threat of hell. It makes the child repress what he is told is a lower taste.

When a principal of a school tells me that his pupils love Beethoven and won’t have jazz, I am convinced that he has used his influence because my pupils, by a large majority, favor jazz. I personally hate the noisy, quacking stuff. But I’m sure that principal is wrong, though he may be a good fellow and an honest one.

When a mother teaches a child to be good, she suppresses the child’s natural instincts. She is saying to the child, “What you want to do is wrong.” This is equivalent to teaching the child to hate himself. To love others while hating yourself is impossible. We can only love others if we love ourselves.

The mother who punishes her child for a small sexual habit is always the woman whose attitude to sex is a dirty one. The exploiter sitting as magistrate on the bench is honestly indignant at the accused man who stole a purse. It is because we haven’t the courage to face our own naked souls that we become moralists. Our guidance of children is subjectively a guidance of ourselves. We unconsciously identify ourselves with our children. The child we dislike most is always the child who is most like ourselves. We hate in others what we hate in ourselves. And because each of us is a self-hater, the children get the results in cuffs and scolding and prohibitions and moral preachments. Why are we self-haters! It is the vicious circle. Our parents tried to improve what nature gave us.

In dealing with malefactors, the parent or teacher or magistrate has to face emotional factors in himself. Is he a moralist, a hater, and a sadist, a disciplinarian? Is he a suppressor of sex in the young? Has he any glimmering of depth psychology? Does he act conventionally and through prejudice? In short, how free is he himself!

None of us is entirely free emotionally because we were conditioned in our cradles. Perhaps the right questions to ask are: Are we free enough to keep from butting in on the life of another, however young that other may be? Are we free enough to be objective?

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 656