[Sidenote: Natural Talent]

Of course, if she is naturally musical some kind of help and sympathy must be given her in her attempt to master the piano or violin or to manage her own voice. But while she should be allowed to learn as much as her unurged energies permit her to learn, she should not be required to practice more than a very small amount, say half an hour a day. The bulk of her musical education should be acquired in the vacation time, when she can give two hours a day without overstraining.

The same general rules hold good of dancing, painting, the acquirements of foreign languages, a special course of reading, or any other work undertaken in addition to the regular school work. This latter, as it is now constituted, is quite as severe a nervous and intellectual strain as most young people can undergo with safety.

[Sidenote: "Enthusiasms"]

There is one characteristic in young people which needs to be noted in this connection:—the desire to take up some form of work, to strive with it furiously for a brief while, to drop it unfinished; take up another with equal eagerness, drop that in turn and go on to a third. This performance is peculiarly irritating to all systematic and ambitious parents. Sometimes they rigidly insist that each task shall be finished before a new one is assumed. But in reality, is this necessary? It seems to be as natural for a young mind to set eagerly to work for a short time at each new bit of knowledge, as it is for a nursing child to require refreshments every two or three hours. It is an adult trait to stick to a task, even though a very long one, until it is accomplished. The youthful trait is to take kindly to a clutter of unfinished tasks.

The youthful consciousness is of a world full of jostling interests. Why not let the children alone, and allow them to spring lightly from one enthusiasm to another? Of course you will help them to finish, either at the first sitting or at the second or at the third, the task that was undertaken when that particular enthusiasm was at its height. The drawing which has remained on the easel during the foot-ball season may be suggestively brought to notice again in the quiet times between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The boat begun last summer may well be finished in the days of the succeeding Spring when all the earth is full of the sound of running water. Thus each task, though not completed at once, gets done in the end; and the youthful capacity for many sympathies and many desires has not been narrowed.

[Sidenote: Parental Vanity]

Such a line of conduct presupposes, of course, that the parent considers only the child's best welfare, and not his own parental vanity. He is not desirous that his son shall do anything so well as to attract the attention and admiration of the neighbors. He is desirous merely that the boy shall grow up wholesomely and happily, showing such superiority as there may be in him when the fitting time and opportunity present themselves. He will not attempt to make a musician of an unmusical child, nor a mechanic of an artistic child. He will not object to the brilliant and impractical dreams of the young inventor, but will help to make them practicable; and though he may squirm at some of the investigations of the budding scientist, he will not forbid them.

[Sidenote: Development of Intellect]

For such a parent recognizes that the important thing, educationally, is to secure the reaction of expression upon thought and feeling. That is, he is not trying to secure at this time—at any time during youth—perfect expression of any thought or feeling, but only to deepen feeling and clarify thought by encouraging all attempts at expression. He does not wish his child to make a finished picture or a perfect statue, but to acquire a greater sensitiveness to color and form by each attempt to express that color and form which he already knows. Thus whatever studies and accomplishments his child may be in the act of acquiring are seen to be nothing as acquisitions, but the child himself is seen to be growing stage by stage within the clumsy scaffolding.



FINANCIAL TRAINING

The financial training of children ought really to be considered under the head of moral training, but in some respects it can come equally well under the head of intellectual training; for to spend money well requires both self-control and intelligence. Some persons seem to think that all that a child can be taught in this regard is to save money, and they meet the situation by purchasing various shapes and styles of savings banks. But it is entirely possible to teach the child too thoroughly in this respect and to make him so fond of his jingling pennies safe within a yellow crockery pig or iron cupolaed mansion that be will not spend them for any object, however laudable. Others evade the issue as long as possible by giving the child no money at all; while most of us pursue an uncertain and wabbly course, sometimes giving money, sometimes withholding it, sometimes exhorting the child to spend, and sometimes to save.

[Sidenote: Regular Allowance]

In truth spending wisely is a difficult problem. As a rule the child may safely be induced to lay by for a season and then encouraged to spend for some generous purpose. Christmas and other festivals offer excellent opportunities for proper disbursement of the hoarded funds. These may be supposed to have accumulated from irregular gifts; but as the child grows older he should come into receipt of a regular definite allowance, perhaps conditioned upon his performance of some stated duty. A certain part of his allowance he may he permitted to spend upon such frivolities as are naturally dear to his young heart; another part of it he should be encouraged—not commanded—to put aside for larger purposes.

The giving of this allowance must not be confused with the pernicious habit of bribing the child to the performance of those little daily courtesies and duties which he ought to be willing to perform out of love and a sense of right. A certain part of his daily work, such as seeing that the match-boxes all over the house are filled, or some similar share of the general labor of the household, may be regarded as that for which he is paid wages; and any extra task which does not justly belong to him, he may sometimes be paid for performing; but not always. For instance, he ought to be willing to run to the grocery for mother without demanding that he be paid a penny for the job; yet sometimes the penny may be forthcoming. The point is that he should be ready to work, even to work hard, without pay, and yet that he should never feel that his mother withholds pay from him when she can give it and he receive it without injury.

[Sidenote: Spending Foolishly]

When the money is once his, he should be allowed to feel the full happiness and responsibility of possession, and if he insists upon spending it foolishly, should be allowed to do it and to suffer to the full the uncomfortable consequences. If, on the contrary, he will not spend it at all, his mother must use every means in her power to lessen the desire for ownership and to increase his love for others and his eagerness to please them.

As judgment develops the allowance may well be increased to provide for necessities in the way of incidentals and clothing until at the "age of discretion" he is in full charge of the funds for his personal expenses. He should be encouraged to apply his knowledge of commercial arithmetic in the keeping of personal accounts.

Experience in spending a fixed amount of money is especially needful for the daughters. Most young men have the value of money and financial responsibility forced upon them in the natural course of events, but too often the young wife has not had the training qualifying her for the equal financial partnership which should exist in the ideal marriage.



RELIGIOUS TRAINING

[Sidenote: Sunday School Teachers]

If the common school is not sufficient for the secular education of the child, certainly the Sunday School is not sufficient for his religious education. In the common schools the teachers are more or less trained for their work. It is a life occupation with them; by means of it they earn their living, and their daily success with their pupils marks their rate of progress toward higher fields of endeavor. Nothing of this sort is true in the Sunday School. While occasionally it happens that a day school teacher becomes a Sunday School teacher, this is seldom true, for most teachers who teach during the week feel that they need the Sunday for rest; and while some Sunday School teachers betray a commendable earnestness and zeal for their work, and associations and conventions have latterly added somewhat to the joint effort to better the conditions, still it remains true that the teaching in the Sunday Schools is far below the pedagogic level of the common schools. Yet the subject which is dealt with in the Sunday Schools, instead of being of less importance than that dealt with in the common schools, is of pre-eminently greater importance. Because of its subtlety, its intimacy with the hidden springs of conduct, it calls for the exercise of the very highest teaching skill.

Some sort of recognition of these two facts—that Sunday School teachers are in most cases very inadequately trained for their work, and that the work itself is of great importance, and of equally great difficulty—has led to the issuing of many quarterlies, International Lesson Leaflets, and other Sunday School aids. Necessary as such help may be under present conditions, they cannot possibly meet the many difficulties of the case. If the central committees, who issue these leaflets, were composed wholly of the wisest men and women on earth, it would still be impossible for them to give lessons to the millions of children in their various denominations which should meet the personal needs, and daily interests of these young people.

[Sidenote: Sunday School Training]

As a consequence, Sunday School teaching is and must be largely theoretical and still more largely exegetical, and with neither theory nor exegesis is the young mind of the developing child very much concerned. What he needs is not the historical side of religion or of that great body of religious literature which we call the Bible, but a living faith which links all that was taught by the prophets and apostles, centuries ago, with what is happening in the child's own town and family at that very moment. It is a wide gap to bridge, and it cannot be bridged by a semi-historical review backed by picture cards, golden texts, and stars for good behavior. These things are merely the marks of an endeavor to fitly accomplish a great task, an endeavor almost absurdly out of proportion to this aim, rendered significant, however, because it is the earnest of a great faith and a great hope.

So far as Sunday Schools help children, it is because of this spirit of faithfulness, and not because of the form which it has assumed.

In choosing, then, whether you shall send your child to a Sunday School, choose by the presence or absence of this spirit. If you know the teachers of the Sunday School to be earnest, loving, and devoted, you may with safety assume that their personal influence will make up for what is archaic in their method of teaching. Where the spirit is present only in a few, or where it manifests itself only occasionally, as at seasons of revival, you may well hesitate to let your child attend. A great improvement would come about if parents would show a greater interest and encourage proper teachers to take charge of classes. It is a thankless task at present.

[Sidenote: Theory Not Practice]

There is one great danger in the teaching of any Sunday School—one which the best of them cannot wholly escape—and that is, that, in the very nature of things, they teach theory and not practice. Harmful as this may be, indeed as it surely is in adult life, it does not begin to be so harmful as it does in youth, for the young child, as we have seen, is and should remain a unit in consciousness. His life, his intellect, and his will are one—an undivided trinity. The divorce of these three is at any time a regrettable occurrence; the divorce of them in early life is an almost irreparable disaster.

[Sidenote: Useless Truths]

The current theory is that children will learn many truths in the Sunday School which they will not put into practice then, perhaps, but which they will find useful in later life. This fallacy underlies, of course, almost all conventional education and has only been overthrown by the dictum of modern psychology, that there is but small storage accommodation in the brain for facts which have no immediate relation to life. What may be termed the saturating power of the brain is limited, and after it has soaked up a rather small number of truths, it can contain no more until it has in some way disposed of those that it still has—either by making them part of its own living structure, which is done only by making immediate application of them; or by dropping them below the threshold of consciousness, that is, in common language, forgetting them. Moreover, the brain may form the habit of easily dropping all that relates to a given subject into the limbo where unused things lie disregarded, and when this becomes the habitual method of disposing of religious instruction, the results are particularly deplorable.

[Sidenote: The Mother as Teacher]

Feeble as her own knowledge may be, a mother has certain advantages as a teacher of her children over any but the exceptional Sunday school teacher. For, first, she knows the children, and, knowing them, knows their needs. Secondly, she knows their daily lives and continually during the week can point out wherein they fail to live up to their Sunday's lesson. And again and most important, she loves them tenderly, and from love flows wisdom. Usually the mother gives her own children a love far beyond that given by anyone else, and this deeper love sharpens her intellectual faculties and makes her both a keen observer and a good tactician. Giving her children some simple lesson on Sunday afternoon, she finds a hundred opportunities to make the lesson living and vital to them during the succeeding week.

[Sidenote: Religious Enthusiasm]

In the early years of the child's life, the mother is usually the one to decide whether he shall attend Sunday School or not, but as he approaches adolescence he is likely to take the matter in his own hands, and if it happens that some revivalist or a new stirring preacher comes in contact with his life at this time, he is very likely to be swept off his feet with a sudden zeal of religious enthusiasm, which his mother fears to check. The reports of memberships, baptisms, etc., show that a large number become converted and join the church during adolescence. While this does not in the least argue that the conclusions that they reach at that time are therefore unsound—for adolescence is not a disease, nor a form of insanity, but a normal, if excitable, condition—still it does prove, when coupled with the further fact that in adult life these young converts often relapse into their previous condition, that a more lasting basis for religion must be found than the emotional intensity of this period of life. A religion to be lasting must be coldly reaffirmed by the intellect: the dictum of the heart alone is not sufficient. Religious enthusiasm, like all other forms of enthusiasm, tends of itself to bring about the opposite condition, and to be succeeded by fits of despondency and bitterness as intense and severe as the enthusiasm itself was brilliant and ecstatic. The history of all great religious leaders amply proves this. They had their bitter hours of wrestling with the powers of darkness, hours which almost counter-balanced the hours of uplift. Only clearly thought-out intellectual convictions reinforced by the habit of daily righteous living can secure the soul against such emotional aberrations.

[Sidenote: Danger of Reaction]

Therefore, although the religious excitability of adolescence must not be thwarted lest it be turned into less helpful channels, and lest religion lose all the beauty and compelling power lent to it by the glow of youthful feelings, yet it must be so balanced and ordered by a clear reason, and especially by the habit of putting each enthusiasm to the test of conduct, that the young mind may remain true to its law of growth, developing harmoniously on all three sides at once.

The danger of permitting a young boy or girl while under the influence of this emotional instability to enter into any special form of religious service is the danger of reaction. He will discover that all is not as his early vision led him to suppose—because that early vision was of things too high and holy for any earthly realization—and he may turn against what seems to him to be hypocrisy and pretense with a bitterness proportioned to his former love. Many honest, faithful men and women remain in this state of reaction for the rest of their lives.

[Sidenote: A Difficult Period]

Nevertheless, it will not do to thwart these young beginnings. They must neither be nipped in the bud nor forced to a premature ripening. Above all they must not be suffered to endure the killing frost of ridicule. The period is a difficult one, but, as Dr. Stanley Hall points out, it is supremely the mother's opportunity. If she can hold her boy's or her girl's confidence now, can ease their eager young hearts with an intelligent sympathy, she can probably keep them from any public commitment. Perhaps they may desire to confide in the minister; if so, let the mother confide in him first. Perhaps they have bosom friends, passing through the same stirring experience; then let the mother win over these friends.

Her object should be to shelter this beautiful sentiment; to keep it safe from exposure; above all, to utilize it as a motive-power—as an incentive to noble action. The Kindergarten rule is a good one: as quick as a love springs in a child's breast, give it something to do. When the love of God awakes there, give it much to do. Usually, the only way open is to join the church, to make a public profession. The wise mother will see to it that there are other ways, urging the young knight to serve his King by going forth into the world immediately about him and fighting against all forms of evil, giving him a practical, definite quest. The result of such restriction of public speech, and stimulation of private deed, will be a sincere, lowly-minded religion, so inwoven with the truest activities as to be inseparable from them. Such a religion knows no reaction.

[Sidenote: Bible Study]

Now is supremely the time for a study of the Bible. Interesting as a Divine Story Book to the young children, it becomes the Book of Life to these older ones. In teaching it at home, a few simple rules need to be borne in mind. The first is that the Bible must be thought of not as a series of disconnected texts and thoughts, but as a connected whole. The division of King James' Bible into verses and chapters is but poorly adapted to this purpose. The illogical, strange character of the paragraphing, as measured by the standards of modern English, is apparent at a glance, for often a verse will end in the middle of a sentence, and the sentence be concluded in the next verse. The chapters in the same way often fail to finish the subject with which they deal, and sometimes include several subjects. Therefore, the mother who undertakes to read the Bible to her children needs first to go through the lesson herself, and to decide what subject, not what chapter, she will take up that day. There is a reader's edition of the Bible, and one called the "Children's Bible," both of which aim to leave out all repetition and references and to arrange the Bible narrative in a simple, consecutive order, nevertheless employing the beautiful Bible language. These editions might prove of considerable help to mothers who feel unequal to doing the work by themselves.

[Sidenote: Children's Bible]

Second, comparable to this in importance is the reading of the Bible and talking about it in a perfectly ordinary tone of voice; for what you want is to make the Bible teachings live in to-day. You must not, therefore, suggest by your tone or manner that they belong to another day, and that they are, in some sense, to be shut out from common life and speech. This does not mean such common use of Biblical phrases in every day conversation as to cause it to grow into that form or irreverence known as cant, but it does mean simple usage of Bible thought, and the effort to fit it to the conditions of daily life. Such a habit in itself will force any family to discriminate as to what things in the Bible are living and eternal, and what things belong rightly to that far away time and place of which the Bible narrative treats, thus practicing both teacher and pupils—that is, both parents and children—in the art of finding the universal spirit of truth under all temporal disguises. Without this art the Bible is a closed book, even to the closest student.

[Sidenote: Making Lessons Real]

Again, every effort should be made to help the home Bible class to understand the period studied in that week's lesson, and to this end secular literature and art should be freely called upon, not only such stories, for example, as "Ben Hur," but other stories not necessarily religious, which deal with the same time and place; they are of great help in putting vividly before the children and parents the temporal setting of the eternal stories. Cannon Farrar's "Life of Christ" is a very great help to the realization of the New Testament scenes, as is also Tissot's "Pictorial Life of Christ." In short every art should be made to deepen and clarify the conceptions roused by the study of the Bible.



[Sidenote: In Conclusion]

The mother who undertakes the tremendous task of rightly training her children, will need to exercise herself daily in all the Christian virtues—and if there are any Pagan ones not included under faith, hope, charity, patience, and humility, to exercise those also. With these virtues to support her, she will be able to use whatever knowledge she may acquire. Without them she can do nothing.



TEST QUESTIONS

The following questions constitute the "written recitation" which the regular members of the A.S.H.E. answer in writing and send in for the correction and comment of the instructor. They are intended to emphasize and fix in the memory the most important points in the lesson.



PART III

Read Carefully. In answering these questions you are earnestly requested not to answer according to the text-book where opinions are asked for, but to answer according to conviction. In all cases credit will be given for thought and original observation. Place your name and full address at the head of the paper; use your own words so that your instructor may be sure that you understand the subject.

1. How can you bring the influence of art to bear upon your child?

2. What is the influence of music? How can you employ it?

3. Do you believe in fairy tales for children? State your reasons.

4. How would you encourage the love of nature in your child?

5. What is it that the Kindergarten can do better than the home?

6. Suppose that your child had some undesirable acquaintances, how would you meet the situation?

7. What can you say of accomplishments for children?

8. If manual training, physical culture, domestic science, etc., are not taught in your schools and you wish your children to get some of the advantages of these studies, how will you set about it?

9. What do you understand to be the correlation of studies?

10. Should parents become acquainted with the teachers of their children and their methods? Why?

11. How may children be taught the use of money?

12. State the advantages and disadvantages of Sunday schools. What have they meant in your own experience?

13. How will you train your child religiously? Can anyone take this task from you?

14. What rules must be borne in mind in teaching the Bible at home?

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?

Not wholly, of course, let us be frank to admit. No amount of theory, however excellent, can take the place of the drill given only in the hard school of experience. But when the theory is not merely theory, but sound principle, based on scientific observation, confirmed by the wide experience of many persons, it is as valuable in practical life as any rule of mathematics to the practical engineer. We all know that the technical correspondence schools really do fit young mechanics to move on and up in the trade. By correspondence he is given what Froebel calls the interpreting word. The experience in application the student has to supply himself.

So in the matter of education. There are genuine principles which underlie the development of every child that lives—even the feeble-minded, deaf, and blind. Read Helen Keller's wonderful life, if you want to see the proof of it. Just as surely as a child has two legs and has to learn to walk on them by a series of prolonged experiments, just so surely he has (a) a sense of justice, (b) an instinct for freedom, (c) a love of play. Every kind of child has all these instincts, as much as he has love for food and drink; and to educate him consists in developing these instincts into (a) the habit of dealing justly by others, (b) the right use of freedom, (c) love of work. The particular methods may differ. The principles do not and CANNOT DIFFER.

She who would succeed in child training must hold to these truths with all her might and main—making them, in fact, her religion, for they are the doctrines of the Christian religion as applied to motherhood. To hold them lightly, or even experimentally, will not do. One most walk in faith. And that the faith may not be blind, but may be based on experience and understanding, let me suggest this means of proof: Instead of asking yourself how the laws laid down in these little books would fit this or that particular child, your own or another's, ask how they would have fitted you, if they had been applied to you by your own mother. Take the chapter on faults, pick out the one which was yours, in childhood—oh, of course, you've got over it now!—think of some bitter trouble into which that fault hurried you, and conceive that, instead of the punishment you did receive, you had been treated as the lesson suggests—what, do you think, would have been the result? And so with the other chapters—even with that much-mooted question of companionship. Test the truth of them all by their imaginary application to the child you know best. When you can, find the principles that your own mother did employ in your education, and examine the result of what she did. Some of the principles will suddenly become luminous to you, I am sure; and some things that happened in the past receive an explanation.

Such a self-examination, to be of any value, must be rigidly honest. There is too much at stake here for you to permit any remnants of bitter feeling to influence your judgment—and you will surely be surprised to find how many bitter resentments will show that they yet have life. The past is dead, as far as your power to change it is concerned; but it lives, as a thing that you can use. Here is your own child, to be helped or hindered by what you may have endured. It will all have been worth while, if by means of it you can save him from some bruises and falls. Every bitterness will be sweetened if you can look through it and find the truth which shall serve this dearer little self who looks to you for guidance.

Then, when you have found the principles true—and not one minute before!—put them rigidly into practice. I say, not one minute before you are convinced, because it is better to hold the truth lightly in the memory as a mere interesting theory you have never had time to test, than to swallow it, half assimilated. Truth is a real and living power, once it is applied to life; and to half-use it in doubt, and fear, is to invite indigestion and consequent disgust. Take of these teachings that which you are sure is sound and right, and use it faithfully, and unremittingly. Be careful that no plea of expediency, no hurry of the moment, makes you false. If you are thus faithful in small things, one after the other, in a series fitted to your own peculiar constitution, the others will prove themselves to you; for they are coherent truths, and not one lives to itself alone, but joins hands with all the rest. Being truths, they fit all human minds—yours and mine, and those of our children, no matter how diverse we may be.



OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN

Isn't it ridiculously true that, as soon as we get enlightened ourselves, we burn to enlighten the rest of the world? We do not seem to remember our own feelings during the years of darkness, and the contentment of those who remain as we were surpasses our power of comprehension. It is really comforting to my own sense of impatience and balked zeal to find how many of my pupils are dreadfully concerned about other people's children. This one's heart burns over the little boy next door who is shamefully mismanaged and who already begins to show the ill effects of his treatment. That one has a sister-in-law who refuses to listen to a word spoken in season.

Between my smiles—those comfortable smiles with which we recognize our own shortcomings—I, too, am really concerned about the sister-in-law's children. It is true that their mother ought to be taught better, and that, if she isn't, those innocent lambs are going to suffer for it. Off at this distance, without the ties of kindred to draw me too close for clear judgment, I see, though, that we have to walk very cautiously here, for fear of doing more harm than good. Better that those benighted women never heard the name of child-study, than to hear it only to greet it with rebellion and hatred. Yet to force any of our principles upon her attention when she is in a hostile mood—or to force them, indeed, in any mood—is to invite just this attitude.

Most of us, by the time that we are sufficiently grown up to undertake the study of child life, have outgrown the habit of plainly telling our friends to their faces just what we think of their faults; yet this is a safe and pleasant pastime beside that other of trying to tell them how to bring up their children. You stand it from me, because you have invited it, and perhaps still more because you never see me, and the personal element enters only slightly and pleasantly into our relationship. I sometimes think that students pour out their hearts to me, much as we used to talk to our girl friends in the dark. I'm very sure I should never dare to say to their faces what I write so freely on the backs of their papers!

You see, the adult, too, has his love of freedom; and while he can stand an indirect, impersonal preachment, which he may reject if he likes without apology, he will not stand the insistence of a personal appeal. I've let "Little Women" shame me into better conduct, when I was a girl, at times when no direct speech from a living soul would have brought me to anything but defiance—haven't you? We have to apply our principles to the adult world about us, well as to the child-world, and teach, when we permit ourselves to teach at all, chiefly by example, by cheerful confession of fallibility, by open-mindedness. Above all things, we have to respect the freedom of these others, about whom we are so inconveniently anxious.

It is fair, though, that the spoken word should interpret what we do. It is fair enough to tell your sister-in-law what you think and ask her judgment upon it, if you can trust yourself not to rub your own judgment in too hard. If you are unmarried, and a teacher, you will have to concede to her preposterous marital conceit a humble and inquiring attitude, and console your flustered soul by setting it to the ingenious task of teaching by means of a graduated series of artful inquiries. Don't, oh don't! seek for an outspoken victory. Be content if some day you hear her proclaim your truth as her own discovery. It never was yours, anyway, any more than it is hers or than it is mine. Be glad that, while she claims it, she at least holds it close.

If you are a mother, you are in an easier case. You can do to your own children just what she ought to do to hers, and tell about it softly, as if sure of her sympathy. If you are very sincere in your desire for the welfare of her child, you may even ask her advice about yours, and so gain the right to offer a little in exchange—say one-tenth of what she gives.

All these warnings apply to unsought advice—a dangerous thing to offer under any circumstances. Except there is a real emergency, you had better avoid it. If your nephew or little neighbor is winning along through his troubles fairly well, best keep hands off. But if you absolutely must interfere, guard yourself as I suggest, and remember that, even then, you will assuredly get burned, if you play long with that dangerous fire of maternal pride!

When your advice is sought, you are in a different position. Then you have a right to speak out, though if you are wise and loving you will temper that right with charity. No one can be too gentle in dealing with a soul that honestly asks for help; but one can easily be too timid. Think, under these circumstances, of yourself not at all; but put yourself as much as possible in her place; be led by her questions; and answer fearlessly from the depths of the best truth you hold. Then leave it. You can do no more. What becomes of that truth, once you have lovingly spoken it, is no more of your concern.



THE SEX QUESTION

Always convinced of the importance of this subject, convictions have deepened to the point of dismay since learning, through this school, of the many women who have suffered and who continue to suffer, both mentally and physically, because, in early girlhood, they were not taught those finer physiological facts upon which the very life of the race depends. Yet, strangely enough, these very victims find it almost impossible to give their children the knowledge necessary to save them from a similar fate. It is as if the lack of early training in themselves leaves them helpless before a situation from which they suffer but which they have never mastered.

Of course such feelings, in themselves morbid, are not to be trusted. Faced with a task like this we have only to ask ourselves not "Is it hard?" but "Is it in truth my task?" If it is, we may be sure that we shall be given strength to do it, provided only that we are sincere in our willingness to do it and do not count our feelings at all.

It is preposterous to have such feelings, in the first place. They are wholly the product of false teaching. For we have no right—as we recognize when we stop to think about it in calmness of spirit, and apart from our special difficult—to sit in scornful judgment upon any of the laws of nature. When we find ourselves in rebellion against them, what we have to do is to change the state of our minds, for change the laws we cannot. If we women could inaugurate a gigantic strike against the present method of bearing children—and I imagine that millions would join such a strike if it held out any promise of success!—we still could accomplish nothing. To fret ourselves into a frazzle over it, is to accomplish less than nothing;—it is to enter upon the pathway to destruction.

In teaching our children, then, we have first to conquer ourselves—that painful, reiterated, primal necessity, which must underlie all teaching. Having done so, we shall find our task easier than we supposed. The children's own questions will lead us; and if we simply make it a rule never to answer a question falsely no matter how far it may probe, we shall find ourselves not only enlightening but receiving enlightenment. For nothing is so sure an antidote to morbidness as the unspoiled mind of a child. He looks at the facts with such a calm, level gaze that proportions are restored to us as we follow his look.

Many of my letters show that adult women, wives and mothers, still grope for the truth that lies plain to the eyes of any simple child—the truth that there is no such thing as clean and unclean, only use and misuse. Others, through love, and the splendid revelations that it makes, have risen so far above their former misconceptions that they fear to tell a child the facts before he has experienced the love. I can imagine that in an ideal world some such reticence might be good and right—but this is far from an ideal world. We have to train our children relatively, not absolutely, in the knowledge that we do not control all their environment. I think the solution of the difficulty is to teach the facts of sex in a perfectly calm, unemotional, matter-of-fact manner, just as one teaches the laws of digestion. When knowledge of evil is thrust upon our child let us be sorry with him that those other children have never been taught, and that they are doing their bodies such sad mischief. But don't exaggerate it; don't be too shocked; don't condemn the poor little sinners, who are also victims, too severely. Charity toward wrong-doing is the best prophylactic against imitation. We never feel the lure of a sin which grieves us in another; but often the call of a sin which we too strongly condemn. Because the very strength of the condemnation rouses our imaginations, is in itself an emotion, and, since it is certainly not a loving one, must necessarily be linked with all other unloving and therefore evil emotions. As far as possible, let us keep feeling out of this subject, until such time as the true and beautiful feeling of love between husband and wife arises and uplifts it.



FATHERS

And now comes the editor of these lessons and accuses me of neglecting the fathers! Nothing in this world could be farther from my thoughts. Not only do I agree with him that "all ordinary children have fathers, and it might be well to put in a paragraph;" but I am cheerfully willing to write a whole book on the subject, provided that a mere modicum of readers can be assured me. I fairly ache to talk to fathers, having a really great ideal of them, and whenever a class of them can be induced to take up a correspondence course I shall be glad to conduct it.

Joking aside, however, I truly feel that the saddest lack many of our children have to suffer is the lack of fathers; and the saddest lack our men have to suffer is the lack of children. So little are most men awake to this subject that I am perfectly convinced that much of the prevalent "race suicide" is due to their objections to a large family, rather than to their wives'. Upon them comes the burden of support. They get few of the joys which belong to children, and nearly all of the woes. Seldom do they share the games of their offspring, or their happy times; and almost always the worst difficulties are thrust upon them for solution. Not that they often solve them! How can we expect it?

There is Edgar growing very untruthful and defiant. We have concealed all the first stages of the disease for fear of bothering poor tired papa. At last it reaches such a height that we can conceal it no longer. We fling the desperate boy at the very head of the bewildered father, and then have turns of bitter disappointment because the remedies that are applied may be so much cruder, even, than our own. Here is a boy who gets close to his father only to find the proximity very uncomfortable; and a father who becomes acquainted with his son only through the ugly revelations of his worst faults.

Not but that the fathers are somewhat to blame, too. Without urging by us, they ought, of course to take a spontaneous interest in the lives for which they are responsible. They ought to, and they often do; but the interest is sometimes ill-advised, and consequently unwelcome. There are fathers whose interest is a most inconvenient thing. When they are at home, they run everything, growl at everything, upset, as like as not, all that the mother has been trying to do during the day. I know wives who are distinctly glad to encourage their husbands in the habit of lunching down-town, so that they can have a little room for their own peculiar form of activity. And maybe we all have times of sympathizing with the woman in this familiar story: There was a man once who never left the house without a list of directions to his wife as to how she should manage things during his absence.

"Better have the children carry umbrellas this morning; it's going to rain," said he, as he went out of the door. "Be sure to put on their rubbers. And since the baby is so croupy I'd get out his winter flannels, if I were you."

"Yes, dear," said the patient wife. "Make your mind easy. I'll take just as good care of them as if they were my own children." Of course this is an extreme case.

There are other fathers whose whole idea of the parental relation seems to be indulgence. No system of discipline, however mild, can be carried out when such a man wins the children's hearts and ruins their dispositions. It is he, isn't it? (I don't quite recollect the tale) who was sent, after death, to the warm regions, there to expiate his many sins of omission. And his adoring children, who had been hauled to heaven by the main strength, let us say, of their mother, found that the only thing they could do for him was to call out celestial hose company number one and ask them to play awhile upon the overheated apartments of poor tired papa.

The truth is—sit close and let no man hear what we say!—that these fathers are much what we, the mothers, make them. If, under the mistaken idea of saving father from all the worries of the children, we hurry the youngsters off to bed before he comes home in the evening, conceal our heart-burnings over them, do our correspondence-school work in secret and solitude, meditate in the same fashion over plans for their upbringing, talk to our neighbors but never to him about the daily troubles, how can we expect any man on earth, no matter how susceptible of later angelic growth, to become a wise and devoted father? Tired or not, he is a father, not a mere bread-winner. Whether he likes it at the moment or not, it is for his soul's health for him to enter into the full life of his family, including those problems which are at the very heart of it, after his day of grinding, and very likely unloving, work at the office. Here love enters to interpret, to soften, to make all principles live. Here alone he can give himself to those gentler forms of judgment which are necessary as much to the completion of his own character as to the happiness and welfare of his wife and children. Someone has said that we wrong our friends when we ask nothing of them; and certainly it is true that we wrong our husbands when we do not demand big and splendid things of them.

That word demand troubles me a little. So many women demand—and demand terribly! But what they demand is indulgence, sympathy, interest—I think sometimes that they crave a man's utter absorption in themselves much as a man craves strong drink. It is their form of intoxication. Such demanding is not, of course, what I mean. Demand nothing for yourself, beyond simple justice. Not love, for that flies at the very sound of demand, and dies before nagging. But demand for the man himself, call upon his nobler qualities, and don't let him palm off on you his second-best. Many a man is loved and honored by his business associates whose wife and children never catch a glimpse of the finer side of him. Demand the exercise of these fine traits in the home. Demand that he be a fine man in the eyes of his children as in the eyes of his friends. Be sure that he will rise to the occasion with a splendid sense of having, now, a home that is a home, of having a wife who is wived to the man he likes best to be.

This bids fair to be—as I knew it would, if once I permitted myself to write at all on the subject—not a paragraph, but a whole essay—or perhaps, if I did not check myself, a whole volume! But after all, what I want to say is merely that as no child can be born without a father, so he cannot be properly trained without a father's daily assistance. And that, since most fathers come to the task even more untrained than the mothers, some training must be undertaken. By whom? By the mother. It is, I solemnly believe, your duty to go ahead a little on this part of the journey, find out what ought to be done, and teach, coax, induce your husband to co-operate with you in these things. No one knows better than you do that he is only a boy at heart after all—perhaps the very dearest boy of them all. This boy you have to help while yet the other children are little—but be sure that, as you teach him, so, all the time, will he teach you. Every principle laid down in this book, above all others the principle of freedom, will apply to him. He will take the lessons a trifle more reluctantly but more lastingly than the younger boys; and in a little while you will be envied of all your women friends because of the competency, the reliability, the contentment of your children's father.



THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE

When all is said and done, it remains true that the finest, the most subtle and penetrating influence in education is precisely that education for which no rules can be laid down. It is the silent influence of the motives which impel the persons who constantly surround us. If we examine for a little our own childhood we see at once that this is so. What are those canons of conduct by which we judge others and even occasionally ourselves? Whence came that list of impossible things, those things that are so closed to us that we cannot, even under great stress, of temptation, conceive ourselves as yielding to them?

There is an enlightening story of a young man, born and bred a gentleman, who, by the way of fast living falls upon poverty. In the hard pressure of his financial affairs he is about to commit suicide, when suddenly he finds, in an empty cab, a roll of bills amounting to some thousands of dollars. The circumstances are such that he knows that he can, if he will, discover the owner; or, he can, without fear of detection, keep the money himself. He makes up his mind, deliberately, to keep it, and then, almost against his will, subconsciously as it were, walks to the office of the man who lost the money and restores it to him.

Now, doubtless, in his downward career he had done many things which judged by any absolute standard of morality were quite as wrong as the keeping of that money would have been, but the fact remained that he could not do that deed. Others, yes, but not that. He was a gentleman, and gentlemen do not steal private property, whatever they may do about public property. Yet probably, in all his life he had not once been told not to steal—not one word had he been taught, openly, on the subject. No one whom he knew stole. He was never expected to steal. Stealing was a sin beyond the pale. So strong was this unconscious, but unvarying influence, that by it he was saved, in the hour of extreme need, from even feeling the force of a temptation that to a boy born and reared, say, in the slums, would have been overwhelming.

Now, considering such things, I take it that it behooves us, as parents, to look closely at the sort of persons that we are, clear inside of us. To examine, as if with the clear eyes of our own children, waiting to be clouded by our sophistries, the motives from which we habitually act in the small affairs of everyday life. Are we influenced by fear of what the neighbors will say? Have we one standard of courtesy for company times, and another for private moments? If so, why? Are we self-indulgent about trifles? Are we truthful in spirit as well as in letter? Do we permit ourselves to cheat the street-car and the railroad company, teaching the child at our side to sit low that he may ride for half-fare? Do we seek justice in our bargaining, or are we sharp and self-considerate? Do we practice democracy, or only talk it and wave the flag at it?

And so on with a hundred other questions as to those small repeated acts, which, springing from base motives, may put our unconscious influence with our children in the already over-weighted down-side of the scale; or met bravely and nobly, at some expense of convenience, may help to enlighten the weight of inherited evil. Sometimes I wonder how much of what we call inherited evil is the result not of heredity at all, but of this sort of unconscious education.



ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS



THE SELF-DISTRUSTFUL CHILD.

"Your question is an excellent one. The answer to it is really contained in your answer to the question about obedience. If a child obey laws not persons, and is steadily shown the reasonableness of what is required of him, he comes to trust those laws and to trust himself when he is conscious of obeying. But in addition to this general training, it might be well to give a self-distrustful child easy work to do—work well within his ability—then to praise him for performing it; give him something a little harder, but still within his reach, and so on, steadily calling on him for greater and greater effort, but seeing to it that the effort is not too great and that it bears visible fruit. He should never be allowed to be discouraged; and when he droops over his work, some strong, friendly help may well he given him. Sensitive, conscientious children, such as I imagine you were, are sometimes overwhelmed in this way by parents, quite unconscious of the pain they are giving by assigning tasks that are beyond the strength and courage of the young toilers.

"At the same time, much might be done by training the child's attention from product to process. You know the St. Louis Fair does not aim to show what has been done, but how things are done. So a child—so you—can find happiness and intellectual uplift in studying the laws at work under the simplest employment instead of counting the number of things finished."



COMPANY WAYS

"A boy who is visiting us is so beset with rules and 'nagged' even by glances and nudges, that I wonder that he is not bewildered and rebellious. He seems good and pleasant and obedient (12 years old), but I keep wondering why?"

"Perhaps these were company ways inspired by an over-anxiety on his mother's part that he should appear well. Oh, I have been so tempted in this direction!—for of course people look at my children to see if they prove the truth of my teachings, and as they are vigorous, free and active youngsters, with decided characteristics they often do the most unexpected and uncomfortable things! There must be good points both in the boy himself—the boy you mention—and in his training which offset the bad effects of the 'nagging' you notice—and possibly the nagging itself may not be customary when he is at home. And perhaps the mother knows that you are a close observer of children."



THEORY BEFORE PRACTICE

"There is only one danger in learning about the training of children in advance of their advent, and that is the danger of being too sure of ourselves—too systematic. The best training is that which is most invisible—which leaves the child most in freedom. Almost the whole duty of mothers is to provide the right environment and then just love and enjoy the child as he moves and grows in it. But to do this apparently easy thing requires so much simplicity and directness of vision and most of us are so complex and confused that considerable training and considerable effort are required to put us into the right attitude.

"For myself, soon after I took my kindergarten training, which I did with three babies creeping and playing about the schoolroom, I read George Meredith's 'Ordeal of Richard Feveril' (referred to on p. 33, Part I) and felt that that book was an excellent counter-balance, saving me, in the nick of time, from imposing any system, however perfect, upon my children. Perhaps you will enjoy reading it, too."



THE EMOTIONAL APPEAL

"Doing right from love of parent may easily become too strong a factor and too much reliance may be placed upon it. There are few dangers in child training more real than the danger of over working the emotional appeal. You do not wish your child to form the habit of working for approval, do you?"



THE FOOD QUESTION

"The food question can be met in less direct ways with your young baby. No food but that which is good for him need be seen. It is seldom good to have so young a child come to the family table. It is better he would have his own meals, so that he is satisfied with proper foods before the other appears. Or, if he must eat when you do, let him have a little low table to himself, spread with his own pretty little dishes and his own chair, with perhaps a doll for companion or playmate. From this level he cannot see or be tempted by the viands on the large table; yet, if his table is near your chair you can easily reach and serve him. It is a real torment to a young child to see things he must not touch or eat, and it is a perfectly unnecessary source of trouble.

"My four children ate at such a low table till the oldest was eight years old, when he was promoted to our table, and the others followed in due order."



AIR CASTLES

"What a wonderful reader you were as a child! and certainly the books you mention were far beyond you. Yet I can not quite agree that the habit of air-castle building is pernicious. Indeed I believe in it. It needs only to be balanced by practical effort, directed towards furnishing an earthly foundation for the castle. Build, then, as high and splendid as you like, and love them so hard that you are moved to lay a few stones on the solid earth as a beginning of a more substantial structure; and some day you may wake to find some of your castles coming true. Those practical foundation stones underlying a tremendous tower of idealism have a genuine magic power. Build all you like about your baby, for instance. Think what things Mary pondered in her heart.

"No, I'm never worried about idealism except when it is contented with itself and makes but little effort at outward realization. But the fact that you are taking this course proves that you will work to realize your ideals.

"I don't think it very bad either to read to 'kill time.' Though if you go on having a family, you won't have any time to kill in a very little while. But do read on when you can, otherwise you may be shut in, first you know, to too small a world, and a mother needs to draw her own nourishment from all the world, past and present."



DUTY TO ONESELF

"Yes, I should say you were distinctly precocious, and that you are almost certainly suffering from the effects of that early brilliancy. But the degree was not so great as to permanently injure you, especially if you see what is the matter, and guard against repeating the mistakes of your parents. I mean that you can now treat your own body and mind and nerves as you wish they had treated them. Pretend that you are your own little child, and deal with yourself tenderly and gently, making allowances for the early strain to which you were subjected. So few of us American women, with our alert minds, and our Puritanic consciences, have the good sense and self-control to refrain from driving ourselves; and if, as often happens, we have formed the bad habit early in life, reform is truly difficult, but not impossible. We can get the good of our disability by conscientiously driving home the principle that in order to 'love others as ourselves' we must learn to love ourselves as we love others. We have literally no right to be unreasonably exacting toward ourselves,—but perhaps I am taking too much upon myself by preaching outside the realm of child study."



THE MOTHER AND THE TEACHER

"Your paper has been intensely interesting to me. I have always held that a true teacher was really a mother, though of a very large flock, just as a true mother is really a teacher, though of a very small school. The two points of view complete each other and I doubt if either mother or teacher can see truly without the other. They tell us, you know, that our two eyes, with their slight divergence of position, are necessary to make us, see things as having more than one side; and the mother and the teacher, one seeing the individual child, the other the child as the member of the race, need each other to see the child as the complex, many-sided individual he really is.

"In your school, do you manage to get the mothers to co-operate? Here, I am trying to get near my children's teachers. They try, too; but it is not altogether easy for any of us. We need some common meeting ground—some neutral activity which we could share. If you have any suggestions, I shall be glad to have them. Of course, I visit school and the teachers visit me, and we are friendly in an arm's length sort of fashion. That is largely because they believe in corporal punishment and practice it freely and it is hard for us to look straight at each other over this disagreement."



CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.

To the Matron of a Girls' Orphan Asylum

"Now to the specific questions you ask. My answers must, of course, be based upon general principles—the special application, often so very difficult a matter, must be left to you. To begin with corporal punishment. You say you are 'personally opposed, but that your early training and the literal interpretation of Solomon's rod keep you undecided.' Surely your own comment later shows that part, at least, of the influence of your early training was against corporal punishment, because you saw and felt its evils in yourself. Such early training may have made you unapt in thinking of other means of discipline; but it can hardly have made you think of corporal punishment as right.

"And how can anyone take Solomon's rod any more literally than she does the Savior's cross? We are bid, on a higher authority than Solomon's proverbs, to take up our cross and follow Him. This we all interpret figuratively. Would you dream, for instance, of binding heavy crosses of wood upon the backs of your children because you felt yourselves so enjoined in the literal sense of the Scriptures? Why, then, take the rod literally? It is as clearly used to designate any form of orderly discipline as the cross is used to designate endurance of necessary sorrows. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive.'

"As to your next question about quick results, I must recognize that you are in a most difficult position. For not the best conceivable intentions, nor the highest wisdom, can make the unnatural conditions you have to meet, as good as natural ones. In any asylum many purely artificial requirements must be made to meet the artificial situation. Time and space, those temporal appearances, grow to be menacing monsters, take to themselves the chief realities. Nevertheless, so far as you are able, you surely want to do the natural, right, unforced thing. And with each successful effort will come fresh wisdom and fresh strength for the next.

"Let me suggest, in the case you mention, of insolence, that three practical courses are open to you: one to send or lead the child quietly from the room, with the least aggressiveness possible, so as not further to excite her opposition, and to keep her apart from the rest until she is sufficiently anxious for society to be willing to make an effort to deserve it; or two, to do nothing, permitting a large and eloquent silence to accentuate the rebellious words; or three, to call for the condemnation of the child's mates. Speaking to one or two whose response you are sure of first, ask each one present for a expression of opinion. This is so severe a punishment that it ought not often to be invoked; but it is deadly sure."



STEALING

"The question of honesty is, indeed, most difficult. I do not think it would lower the standard of morality to assume honesty, as the thing you expected to find, to accept almost any other explanation, to agree with the whole body of children that dishonesty was so much the fault of dreadfully poor people who had nothing unless they stole it, that it could not be their fault, who had so much—couldn't be the fault of anyone who was well brought up as they were. Emphasize, in story and side allusion, at all sorts of odd moments when no concrete desire called away the children's minds, the fact that honesty is to be expected everywhere, except among terribly unfortunate people—of course assuming that they with their good shelter and good schooling are among the fortunate ones. Then you will give each child not only plenty of everything, but things individualized, easily distinguished, and a place to put them in. I've often thought that the habit of buying things wholesale—so many dolls, all exactly alike, so many yards of calico for dresses, all exactly alike, leads, in institutions like yours, to a vague conception of private property, and even of individuality itself. If some room could be allowed for free choice—the children be allowed to buy their own calicoes, within a given price, or to choose the trimmings or style, etc. I feel sure the result would be a sturdier self-respect and a greater sense of that difference between individuals which needs emphasizing just as much as does the solidarity of individuals."



BIBLIOGRAPHY



BOOKS FOR MOTHERS

Fundamental Books (Philosophy of Education—Pedagogy)

The Science of Rights ($5.00, postage 30c), J.G. Fichte.

Education of Man ($1.50, postage 12c), Friedrich Froebel.

Mottoes and Commentaries of Froebel's Mother Play ($1.50, postage 14c), translated by Susan E. Blow.

The Part Played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man ($2.00, postage 15c), from "A Century of Science," article by John Fiske.

How Gertrude Teaches Her Children ($1.50, postage 14c), Pestalozzi.

Levana, Bohn Library ($1.00, postage 12c), Jean Paul Richter.

Education ($1.25, postage 12c), Herbert Spencer.



General Books on Education

Household Education ($1.25, postage 10c), Harriet Martineau.

Bits of Talk About Home Matters ($1.25, Postage 10c), H.H. Jackson.

Biography of a Baby ($1.50, postage 12c), Millicent Shinn.

Study of Child Nature ($1.00, postage 10c), Elizabeth Harrison.

Two Children of the Foot Hills ($1.25, postage 10c), Elizabeth Harrison.

The Moral Instruction of Children ($1.50, postage 14c), Felix Adler.

The Children of the Future ($1.00, postage 10c), Nora A. Smith.

Children's Rights ($1.00, postage 10c), Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith.

Republic of Childhood (3 vols., each $1.00; postage 10c), Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith.

Educational Reformers ($1.50, postage 14c), Quick.

Lectures to Kindergartners ($1.00, postage 10c), Elizabeth Peabody.

The Place of the Story in Early Education ($0.50, postage 6c), Sara E. Wiltse.

Children's Ways ($1.25, postage 10c), Sully.

Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers ($3.50, postage 20c), Barnard.

Adolescence (2 vols., $7.50; postage 56c), G. Stanley Hall.



Psychology and Advanced

The Mind of the Child (2 vols., each $1.50, postage 10c), W. Preyer.

The Intellectual and Moral Development of the Child ($1.50, postage 12c), G. Compayre.

Child Study ($1.25, postage 14c), Amy Tanner.

The Story of the Mind ($0.35, postage 6c), J. Mark Baldwin.

Psychology (Briefer Course, $1.60; postage 16c. Advanced Course, 2 vols., $4.80; postage 44c), James.

School and Society ($1.00, postage 10c), John Dewey.

Emile ($0.90, postage 8c), Rousseau.

Pedagogics of the Kindergarten ($1.50, postage 12c), Froebel.

Education by Development ($1.50, postage 12c), Froebel.

Kindergarten and Child Culture Papers, Henry Barnard.

Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel ($1.50, postage 12c), Blow.

Studies of Childhood ($2.50, postage 20c), Sully.

Mental Development ($1.75, postage 16c), Baldwin.

Education of Central Nervous System ($1.00, postage 16c), Halleck.

Child Observations, Imitative Symbolic Education ($1.50, postage 12c), Blow.

Interest as Related to Will ($0.25, postage 6c), Dewey.



Religious Training

Christian Nurture ($1.25, postage 12c), Horace Bushnell.

On Holy Ground ($3.00, Postage 30c), W.L. Worcester.

The Psychology of Religion ($1.50, postage 14c), E.D. Starbuck.



The Sex Question

The Song of Life ($1.25, postage 12c), Margaret Morley.

What a Young Boy Ought to Know ($1.00, postage 10c), Rev. Sylvanus Stall.

What a Young Girl Ought to Know ($1.00, postage 10c), Rev. Sylvanus Stall.

Duties of Parents to Children in Regard to Sex ($0.40, postage 4c), Rev. Wm. L. Worcester.

How to Tell the Story of Reproduction to Children, Pamphlet 5c; order from Mothers' Union, 3408 Harrison Street, Kansas city, Mo.



Of General Interest to Mothers

Wilhelm Meister ($1.00, postage 14c), Goethe.

Story of My Life ($1.50, postage 14c), Helen Keller.

The Ordeal of Richard Feveril ($1.50, postage 14c), George Meredith.

Up from Slavery ($1.50, postage 14c), Booker T. Washington.

Emmy Lou ($1.50, Postage 14c), Mrs. George Madden Marten.

The Golden Age ($1.00, postage 10c), Kenneth Grahame.

Dream Days ($1.00, postage 10c), Kenneth Grahame.

In the Morning Glow ($1.25, Postage 12c), Roy Rolf Gilson.

Man and His Handiwork, Wood.

Primitive Industry ($5.00, postage 40c), Abbott.

Every Day Essays ($1.25, postage 10c), Marion Foster Washburne.

Family Secrets ($1.25, postage 10c), Marion Foster Washburne.



BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

Fairy Tales

Grimm's Fairy Tales ($0.50, postage 14c).

Andrew Lang's Green, Yellow, Blue and Red Fairy Books (each $0.50, postage 14c).

Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales ($0.50, portage 14c).

Tanglewood Tales ($0.75, postage 14c), Hawthorne.

The Wonder Book ($0.75, postage 12c), Hawthorne.

Old Fashioned Fairy Tales by Tom Hood, retold by Marion Foster Washburne. (In press.)

Adventures of a Brownie, by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. Edited by Marion Foster Washburne. (In press.)



A Few Books for Various Ages

Water Babies ($0.75, postage 12c), Charles Kingsley.

At the Back of the North Wind ($0.75, postage 12c), George McDonald.

Little Lame Price ($0.50, postage 8c), Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.

In the Child World ($2.00, postage 16c), Emilie Poulson.

Nature Myths ($0.35, postage 6c), Flora J. Cooke.

Sharp Eyes ($2.50, postage 18c), Gibson.

Stories Mother Nature Told ($0.50, postage 6c), Jane Andrew.

Jungle Books (2 vols, each $1.50; postage 16c), Kipling.

Just-So Stories ($1.20, postage 12c), Kipling.



Music for Children

Finger Plays ($1.25, postage 12c), Emilie Poulson.

Fifty Children's Songs, Reinecke.

Songs of the Child World (2 vols., each $1.00; postage 12c), Gaynor.

Songs for the Children (2 vols., each $1.25; postage 14c), Eleanor Smith.

30 Selected Studies (Instrumental), ($1.50, postage 14c), Heller.



Pictures for Children

Detaille Prints, Boutet de Monvil, Joan of Arc.

Caldecott: Picture Books (4 vols., each $1.25; postage 12c).

Walter Crane: Picture Books ($1.25, postage 10c).

Colored illustrations cut from magazines, notably those drawn by Howard Pyle, Elizabeth Shippen Greene, and Jessie Wilcox Smith.

See articles in "Craftsman" for December, 1904, February and April, 1905, "Decorations for School Room and Nursery."

Note.—Books in the above list may be purchased through the American School of Home Economics at the prices given. Members of the School will receive students' discount.



Program for Supplemental Work

on the

STUDY OF CHILD LIFE

By Marion Foster Washburne.



MEETING I

Infancy. (Study pages 3-25)

(a) Its Meaning. See Fiske on "The Part Played by Infancy in the Evolution of Man" in "A Century of Science" (16c).

(b) General Laws of Progression. See Millicent Shinn's "Biography of a Baby" (12c), and W. Preyer's "The Mind of the Child" (20c). Give resumes of these two books.

(c) Practical Conclusions. Hold Experience Meeting to conclude afternoon.



MEETING II

Faults and Their Remedies. (Study pages 26-57)

(a) General Principles of Moral Training. Read Herbert Spencer on "Education" (12c), chapter on "Punishment"; also call for quotations from H.H. Jackson's "Bits of Talk About Home Matters" (10c).

(b) Corporal Punishment. Why It Is Wrong.

(c) Positive Versus Negative Moral Training. Read extracts from Froebel's "Education of Man" (12c), and Richter's "Levana" (12c), Kate Douglas Wiggin's "Children's Rights" (10c), and Elizabeth Harrison's "Study of Child Nature" (10c), are easier and pleasanter reading, sound, but less fundamental. Choice may be made between these two sets of books, according to conditions.

(Select answer to test questions on Part I and send them to the School.)



MEETING III

Character Building. (Study pages 59-75)

Read extracts from Froebel, Pestalozzi, and Harriet Martineau.

(a) From Froebel to show general principles (12c).

(b) From Pestalozzi (14c) or if that is not available, from "Mottoes and Commentaries on Froebel's Mother-Play" (14c), to show ideal application of these general principles.

(c) From Harriet Martineau's "Household Education" (10c), "Children's Rights" (10c), to show actual application of these general principles. Experience meeting.



MEETING IV

Educational Value of Play and Occupations. (Study pages 78-99)

(a) General Principles—Quote authorities from past to present. Read from "Education of Man" (12c) and "Mother Play" (14c).

(b) Representative and Symbolic Plays. See "Education of Man" (12c) and "Letters to a Mother on the Philosophy of Froebel" (12c). Dancing and Drama from Richter's "Levana" (12c).

(c) Nature's Playthings (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water). Ask members of class to describe plays of their own childhood and tell what they meant to them.

(Select answer to test questions on Part II.)



MEETING V

Art and Literature in Child Life. (Study pages 100-112)

Ask members to bring good pictures and story-books, thus making exhibit.

(a) Place of Pictures in Children's Lives. Of Color. Of Modeling. Influence of artistic surroundings. If anyone knows of a model nursery or schoolroom, let her describe it. Are drawing and modeling at school "fads" or living bases for educational processes? See Dewey on "The School and Society" (10c).

(b) Place of fiction in education. See "The Place of the Story in Early Education" (6c).

(c) Accomplishments. Practical discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of music lessons, the languages, and other work out of school. See "Adolescence," by G. Stanley Hall.



MEETING VI

Social and Religious Training. (Study pages 114-140 and Supplement)

(a) The Question of Associations. See Dewey's "The School and Society" (10c), "The Republic of Childhood" (30c). Quote "Up from Slavery" (14c) and "Story of My Life" (14c), to show that the humblest companions may sometimes be the most desirable.

(b) The New Education. See catalogues of the Francis W. Parker School, Chicago, Ill., (4c); The Elementary School, University of Chicago, (6c); State Normal School, Hyannis, Mass., (4c); "School Gardens," Bulletin No. 160, Office of Experiment Stations, Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C., (2c).

(c) The Sex Question. Where are the foundations of morality laid—church, school, home, or street? Read entire, "Duties of Parents to Children in Regard to Sex" (pamphlet, 5c).

(d) Religious Training. Read from "Christian Nurture" (12c) and "Psychology of Religion" (14c). (Select answer to test questions on Part III.)



For more extended program, book lists for mothers, children's book list, loan papers, send to the National Congress of Mothers, Mrs. E.C. Grice, Corresponding Secretary, 3308 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Price, 10 cents each. See also "The Child in Home, School, and State," with address by President Roosevelt.—Report of the N.C.M. for 1905. Price, 50c.

NOTE.—When reference books mentioned in the foregoing program are not available from public libraries, they may be borrowed of the A.S.H.E. for the cost of postage indicated in parentheses. Three books may be borrowed at one time by a class, one by an individual. For class work, a book may be kept for two weeks, or longer, if there is no other call for it. Send stamps with requests, which should be made several weeks in advance to avoid disappointment.



INDEX

Abnormal laziness, 47 Abstract studies, 119 Accomplishments and studies, 119 showy, 123 Accounts, personal, 129 Adolescence, religious excitability, 136 Adult's world, 24 Advantage of positive commands, 61 Affections, cultivation of, 45 Aims of kindergarten, 45 Air as a plaything, 82 castles, 163 Allowance, regular, 127 Alternate growth of children, 14 Anaemia, 47 Answer honest questions, 71 Answers to questions, 160 Application of principles, 141 Aristotle's teachings, 76 Art and literature in child life, 101 and nature, 112 classic, 102 influence of, 101 plastic, 104 Associates, children's, 113 exclusive, 114

Baby-jumpers, 14 Bandaging the abdomen, 21 Beginnings of will, 7 Bible, children's, 139 Bible lessons made real, 139 study, 138 Bonfires, 85 Books for children, 111, 170 Bottle-fed babies, 25 Breaking the will, 29 Busy work, 97

Care of pets, 45 Cause of impudence, 51 of irritability and nervousness, 35 of rupture, 21 of temper, 35 Character building, rules in, 74 Children, other people's, 145 Children's associates, 113 Bible, 139 clubs, value of, 45 hour, the, 118 Child's share in family republic, 65 world, 24 Classic art, 102 Clay modeling, 80 Climbing, 13 Clothing, proper, 20 Color, 102 Colored pictures, 104 Commands, disagreeable, 37 positive, 35 useless, 11 Company ways, 161 Conclusion, 140 Condition at birth, 3 Consciousness of self, 6 Corporal punishment, 54, 166 Correlation of studies, 121 Correspondence training, 142 Costume model, 21 Creeping, 12 Cultivate affections, 45 Cutting and pasting, 99

Daily outing, 18 Dancing for children, 87 Danger of forcing, 12 Dangerous pastimes, 83 Darwin's observations, 9 Depravity, original, 61 Development of intellect, 126 premature, 3 Diagram of Gertrude suit, 23 Diet, simple, 25 Disadvantages of Sunday Schools, 134 Disagreeable commands, 37 Discipline, educative, 57 Disobedience, 30 real, 33 Double standard of morality, 53 Double standards, 158 Drama, 107 Dramatic games, 107 plays, 87 Drawing and painting, 99 Dress for play, 79 Dress, proper, 20 Duties, systematized, 37 Duty to one's self, 164

Education, the new, 120 scientific, 121 Educational beginnings, 5 exercises, 5 value of play, 77 Educative discipline, 57 Effect of Sunday school teaching, 132 Emergencies, 30 Enthusiasm, religious, 135 "Enthusiasms", 124 Essentials of play, 78 Evasive lying, 39 Evils, permanent, 28 resulting from corporal punishment, 55 Example, bad, 52 courteous, 54 evil, 115 versus precept, 34, 68 Exclusive associates, 114

Fairy tales, 109 Family republic, 64 Fathers, 152 responsibilities of, 154 Fatigue harmful to children, 94 Faults and their remedies, 26 real, 28 temporary, 24 Fear versus love, 55 Feeding, indiscriminate, 25 Financial training, 126 Fire as a plaything, 84 First grasping, 8 Fiske's doctrine of right, 64 teachings, 15 Food, natural, 24 question, 162 undesired, 11 Forcing, danger of, 12 Fresh air, 18 Froebel's great motto, 70 philosophy, 59 Fundamental principles of the new education, 59

Games, dramatic, 107 Gardens for children, 81 Gertrude suit, 21 Goodness, original, 61 Goodness, negative, 32 Grasping, 9, 11 Growth of children, 14 of will, 8

Helping, 93 mother, 91 Home kindergarten, 90 How the child develops, 3

Imagination and sympathy, 110 Imitativeness, instinct of, 32 Imaginative lying, 39 Immature judgment, 30 Impudence, cause of, 51 Incomplete development at birth, 4 Indiscriminate feeding, 25 punishment, 55 Industry, willing, 94 Influence of art, 101 Inherited crookedness, 41 disposition, 38 Instinct, 9 of imitativeness, 32 Instrumental music, 107 Intellect, development of, 126 Irritability, cause of, 35

Jealousy, 42 Justice and love in the family, 42

Kindergarten, aims of, 45 as a remedy for selfishness, 44 methods, 62 methods in the home, 90 social advantages of, 113 Knit garments, 22

Law-making habit, 70 Laziness, 46 Liberty, 33, 64 Limitations of words, 67 Literature, 108 and art, 101 Looking, 9 Love of work, 93 versus fear, 55 Low voice commands, 66 Lungs, weak, 21 Luther's teachings, 76 Lying, evasive, 39 imaginative, 39 kinds of, 38 politic, 40

Magazines for children, 111 Magic lantern, 85 Massage, 5 Meaning of righteousness, 72 Model costume, 21 Modeling apron, 81 clay, 80 Monotony undesirable, 95 Moral precocity, 73 training, object of, 60 Mother and teacher, 165 Mother, teaching, 92 Mothers as teachers, 134 Mud pies, 80 Muscular development, 5 Music for children, 106 instrumental, 107 study of, 124 Mystery of sex, 72

Nagging, 96 Naps, 20 Natural food, 24 punishment, 29 talent, 124 Nature study, 112 Negative goodness, 32 Neighbors' opinions, 63 Nervousness, cause of, 35 New education, the, 120 principles of, 59 Normal child, 12 Nursery requisites, 16

Object of moral training, 60 of punishment, 40 Objection to pinning blanket, 21 Obligation of truthfulness, 38 Occupations, 90 Only child, the, 44 Opportunity for growth, 16 Order of development, 9 Other people's children, 145 Outing, daily, 18

Painting and drawing, 99 Parental indulgence, 154 vanity, 125 Pasting and cutting, 99 Permanent evils, 28 Personal accounts, 129 Pets, care of, 45 Physical cause of laziness, 46 culture, 123 culture records, 25 Philosophy, Froebel's, 59 Pictures, colored, 104 Pinning blanket, objection to, 21 Plastic art, 104 Play, 76 educational value of, 77 essentials of, 78 with the limbs, 5 Politeness to children, 69 Politic lie, the, 40 Positive commands, 35, 61 Precautions to prevent attacks of temper, 37 with fire, 84 Precocity, 15 moral, 73 Premature development, 3 Preyer's record, 11, 19 Principles, application of, 141 Prohibitions, useless, 34 Punishment, corporal, 54 indiscriminate, 55 natural, 29 object of, 40 self, 34

Questions, answers to, 160 Quick temper, 35

Real disobedience, 33 faults, 28 Reflex grasping, 7 Regular allowance, 127 Religious enthusiasm, 135 excitability of adolescence, 136 training, 131 Remedy for fits of temper, 36 Responsibilities of fathers, 154 Restrictions of dress, 79 Rhythmic movements, 86 Richter's views, 28, 87 Right doing, 28 made easy, 63 Righteousness, meaning of, 72 Right material for play, 79 Rights of others, 64 Rules in character building, 74 Rupture, cause of, 21

Sand piles, 80 Scientific education, 121 Self-distrustful child, 160 Selfishness, 43 Self-mastery, 29 punishment, 34 Sewing, 98 Sex, 71 mystery of, 72 question, the, 149 Showy accomplishments, 123 Simple diet, 25 Sleep, sufficient, 19 Social advantages of kindergarten, 113 Soft spot in head, 4 Solitude remedy for temper, 36 Songs for children, 86 Spencer's view, 29 Spending foolishly, 128 wisely, 127 Standard of morality, double, 53 Standing, 14 Stanley Hall's views, 137 Stealing, 168 Stockinet for undergarments, 22 Story telling, 93 Studies, abstract, 119 and accomplishments,119 correlation of, 121 Success in child training, 143 Sullenness, 38 Sunday school, disadvantage of, 134 effect of, 132 teachers, 131 Sunlight necessary for growth, 16 Sympathy and imagination, 110 in play, 79 Symptoms of anaemia, 47 Systematized duties, 37

Talent, natural, 124 Teaching mother, 92 Telling stories, 93 Temperament, emotional, 42 Temperature of nursery, 18 Temper, cause of, 35 precautions to prevent attacks of, 37 Temporary faults, 24 Theater, 108 Theory before practice, 161 Thermometer in nursery, 18 Throwing, 10 Tiedemann's teachings, 35 Touching forbidden things, 11 Toys, 83, 88, 89 Training, financial, 126 for parents, 142 religious, 131 Truthfulness, obligations of, 38

Unconscious influence, 157 Underclothing, 22 Undesired food, 11 Undisciplined will, 30 Unresponsiveness, 38 Unsought advice, 148 Untidiness, its remedy, 49 Useless commands, 11 prohibitions, 34

Value of children's clubs, 45 Vanity, parental, 125 Variable periods of growth, 15 Ventilation, means of, 18

Walking, 14 Water as a plaything, 82 colors, 99 Weak lungs, 21 Weight at birth, 4 Wholesome surroundings, 16 Will, beginnings of, 7 breaking, the, 29 growth of, 8 Willful child, 34 Willing industry, 94 Will, undisciplined, 30 Work, beautiful, 96 love of, 93 Wrappings, extra, 21

THE END