CHAPTER XXI.
EDUCATION.
When Viola and Midith returned from the post office on their bicycles the following evening, Mr. Midith’s countenance seemed to be unusually bright and happy. After putting up their bicycles, they walked into the parlor where the other members of the family and a number of visitors, curious to see Mr. Midith, were assembled.
After the formal introduction Mr. Midith said:
“I have received some very favorable correspondence from a number of scientists at San Francisco, who seem to favor an extensive search for my lost projectile which lodged in the Pacific ocean at my arrival here on earth. I have already had some dredging done without success, but my income is not sufficient to get much of that kind of work done. To dredge in a deep ocean requires skill and tools. The men at San Francisco who put the project of dredging on foot will notify me of their financial success.
“If we shall succeed in finding my lost projectile, I shall be able to show you many curious relics of Mars, which I took along to show to the mundane inhabitants and compare them with what you have here. I took along quite a large collection of things that would be curiosities to you. I recollect putting in a little printed book, a knife, a watch, a little pocket microscope, a tiny phonograph, a pen and pencil, a very powerful little telescope, a photograph of a big-house, a bird’s-eye view of our neighborhood, a lady’s and a gentleman’s suit of clothes, some Marsian fruit, grain, nuts, flowers and many other things that will be of interest to you.
“If our search for my projectile proves successful, I can perhaps get sufficient mechanical assistance to return to my native home or establish communication between the earth and Mars. I think the projectile is not much out of repair. It worked splendidly until it entered the dense atmosphere near the earth’s surface. I wish that I would be able, in the future, to show you some of the social and industrial grandeur and harmony of my native world. I shall make every healthful effort that lies within my reach to return to my native home, and establish intercommunication between the earth and Mars. But if I do not succeed in that, I must be content with my lot on earth; perhaps I may be of some use to the earthly inhabitants, so that my journey may be of some value in that direction.
“All we can do is to wait for further development. The Marsites have learned ages ago that we can not transcend the phenomena of nature. The burdens which our highest intelligence and our best healthful efforts can not throw off must be borne. I am sure that I appreciate your kind hospitality as much as this world can furnish at this age. Your kindness and the smiling faces with which I have been surrounded while I have been with you shall always be prominent in my mind, whether I shall have to end my days on earth, or, whether I shall be able, in the future, to return to my native world.”
“I wish you nothing bad, Mr. Midith, but unless you are able to take all of us with you to Mars, I hope that you will not be able to return,” said Viola with a mischievous smile. “By your brilliant narrative of Mars, you have made our earth appear so cruel, rude and superstitious, and then you are going to leave us. No, we will never stand it!”
“I am sure the prospect of my returning is not any too bright yet,” responded Mr. Midith.
“Now, Mr. Midith, you have told us nothing about your schools. It seems to me that in order to produce such perfect men, women and children, you must have a faultless system of education,” observed Mrs. Uwins. “All your other institutions seem so much superior to ours, and your school system must certainly be more so than any other, for education, in its widest sense, constitutes the only difference between the savage and the cultivated person.”
“We have no school system, neither public nor parochial, as you have, nor do we have a school-house, as you know a school-house. We believe that a school system like yours is unjust and despotic to those who are compelled to support it by compulsory taxation; and we further believe that it is very cruel and harmful to the pupils to compel them to attend any institution that they do not wish to. We believe that a system of education like yours does little or no good, but causes an immense amount of evil, which we will consider further on.
“Our children, like our adults, are perfectly free, are not compelled to do anything they do not wish to do. We do not try to compel them to be good, nor to work, nor to attend school against their wishes. We think that any act which is so repugnant to human nature, under right conditions, that exhortation and the reward of its agreeable consequences cannot induce a man or a woman or a child to perform that act without the application of physical force, is not worth doing; it must be unnatural.
“The only object of education is to discover truth, so that we may be able to live in accord with the facts of the universe, the only possible condition under which we can enjoy the greatest happiness; for every violation of a natural function is a violation of a natural law, and every violation of a natural law is attended with suffering; therefore we should be educated. To enjoy the greatest happiness and to avoid all misery should be the end and aim of all education. And that system of education which accomplishes this end most completely is the best system. Therefore, one who possesses information which enables him to live most completely in harmony with the laws of nature is in the true sense most highly educated.
“We believe that in the widest sense and in the only true sense, the whole world should be the school-house, mankind the pupils, our environment the teacher, the entire life of man the school age, and the phenomenal universe the curriculum.
“With these few preliminary remarks, I think I shall be able to give you a clear idea of our schools and our methods of teaching.
“The child’s education with us begins long anterior to its pre-natal existence. The parents’ smiles, virtues and temper reappear in the child after its birth. After birth the child’s direct education begins; but during the period of lactation it is both direct and indirect. The first nursery and school of the child, then, is the internal mother’s bosom, then the mother’s arms, then the house nurseries, then the outdoor nurseries, and then in the whole community and in the whole world. In this manner its sphere of action is constantly enlarged. It continually acquires more independence, and hence a stronger self-reliance. During all its life it is surrounded by adults and by children of various ages, who teach it by pleasant precepts and examples.
“Our children are taught as early as possible and nearly altogether by the examples of the youths and adults, how to treat their fellowmen; how to be kind; how to give equal rights to all; how to respect the opinions of others; how to lay aside all jealousy and prejudice; how to welcome peace and harmony, and how to avoid discord; how to extinguish all feeling of aggressiveness; how to control their temper; how to keep themselves clean and pure; how to develop their organs by healthful exercise; how to be honest and truthful; how to preserve their health; how to exercise in the open air and sunshine; how to eat and drink properly; how to be orderly and form regular habits; how to dress in accordance with comfort and health; how to honor productive labor and how to make it agreeable; how to despise idleness, and how to value life and health above all other things necessary for the acquisition of the greatest happiness.
“The rudiments of all these facts are taught by the older members of the family and are learned by the child when quite young. In these pleasant schools or play-houses, the teachers and children talk and play, laugh and sing, eat and drink, observe and investigate, promote happiness and avoid pain. One moment the child is in the house, the next moment it is perhaps in the yard, then in the nurseries, from there in the parks, then in the motor-car, then in the garden, field, and orchard; then in the parlors, then in its mother’s private apartment, then in its own private apartment, etc. Everywhere it finds a number of willing and competent teachers. Teachers, too, who do not govern with the rod, but by arousing an agreeable desire for inquiry. All of us, young and old, are always teachers and pupils at the same time. The older ones are studying the nature of infancy and childhood, and daily add to their store of knowledge by observation and experience. The younger ones are kindly advised and then left to follow the conduct of the more mature companions. Knowledge is held in such high esteem with us that we endeavor to acquire all we can at any age, and we also find great pleasure in agreeably imparting our knowledge to others and especially to the young. Our principal aim in education is always to educate ourselves; to practice a course of conduct that we wish our children to imitate. Our children will be all right without any trouble, if we are only all right. The adults make the young what they are. Let us not forget this important fact, this fundamental principle.
“As the Marsites need work only a few hours a day for the acquisition of our material subsistence, we can devote a great deal of our leisure time for mental culture. The child, after its infancy, moves voluntarily about from place to place. It finds advice and practical instruction in the house, on the walks, in the parks, garden, greenhouse, orchard and field. After it grows older it takes lessons in the workshop, in the factory, on the railroad, in the mine, or wherever else it may direct its course. All the adults are its parents, so to speak, its teachers, advisers and protectors when young; but all teach that freedom, independence and self-reliance should be attained as early as possible.”
“When do you begin to teach the alphabet?” asked Rev. Dudley.
“At the age of about three years. (Remember that a Marsian year counts for no more in the age of a child than an earthly year does with you.) We begin to teach the elementary sounds, the forms and the names of the letters of the alphabet by attractive games of object lessons. We have a perfect alphabet, because it contains as many, and no more, letters as we have elementary sounds. We can spell every word correctly when it is pronounced to us, for we have neither silent letters nor substitutes. During all these exercises the child is simply playing, and quits whenever it likes.
“The walls of the nursery near the floor are composed of slate. On these the children first begin to make marks and figures, sometimes before they can stand alone. Children are nearly always very fond of drawing when left to themselves, and practice it a great deal. Large slates for printing, writing, ciphering and drawing are also put up in different parts of the parks and along the walks. By these means our children, by playful practice, learn to print and write at an early age. We always keep plenty of such things as children can use before them, letting them use those things whenever they feel like it, but never compelling a child to use a thing or do an act it finds no pleasure in doing. We endeavor to create the pleasurable desire, and then let the child follow its inclination. All sound-minded children possess a faculty of inquiry which they love to exercise if conditions are right and natural, and if things are presented in a pleasant manner. As long as we cannot do things naturally and present them in an attractive way, the fault lies with the teachers, and not in the child.
“The next thing we teach the child is, how to labor. We believe that labor can become pleasurable only if the habit of laboring is acquired while we are young. One who spends the first half of his life without manual labor must forever, more or less, remain a slave to it in after years. Therefore, as soon as the child is old enough, generally beginning at the age of two and three, it is taught to wash, bathe, dress and undress itself; to keep its hat, mittens and shoes in their respective places; to change clothes and put away its own soiled garments; to brush and put away its own clothes which are not in use, and to be careful and tidy with those that are in use. A parent should never do any work for the child that the child can easily do for itself. After the child grows a little older, we encourage it to do all such easy work in keeping its own apartment clean and tidy as it can easily do. Our aim is to create a pleasurable desire for manual labor in the child while it is young; to inculcate a desire for early self-support, self-reliance, and independence; to develop a keen appreciation for order and regularity. Thus, you see, our children are taught at an early age to do all their work in their own private apartment. This strongly develops the faculties of order, promptness, taste and regularity, which they take with them into life; both public and private. This, we believe, produces the strongest, healthiest and most complete persons physically and mentally. Therefore it is the most useful and practical lesson the child can learn. This lesson, if well learned, rewards every person, during his natural life, with an immense amount of happiness.
“Now we will turn to the financial incentive to labor. I have already remarked that a child, as soon as born, receives a book number and is thereby represented in the commercial department of the family and community. Before birth, as I have already stated elsewhere, the child receives from the community a quantity of green money, with which the mother, father or nurse pays all the child’s bills. At the age of about five or six our children are generally able to write quite well. At this age they also begin to do little, easy chores—such as picking strawberries, currants, weeding small patches of vegetables in the garden and greenhouse, etc.; also performing little jobs of work in the house and elsewhere. All this easy work which children can do is so divided off and paid for by the piece, quart, etc., that a child can do it and receive the same pay for it as a grown person would. This encourages the children to work, because they are paid for it as soon as the money is issued. Children, the same as adults, always like to receive and own money which they can handle to suit themselves. It also encourages them to write, because, under the supervision of the mother, parent, the commercial librarian, or some one else, they keep a record of labor performed in their time-book. It further encourages them to labor, because, at the end of each month, they receive additional money for labor performed. Of course, the money children receive for labor performed is not of a green color, like that which was given them at birth. Children always feel proud of the idea that they are big, that they can support themselves, and that they need not live on green money any longer. To handle a pocket-book and money seems a big thing for a child, and money can be obtained only by productive labor; if the child wants money for itself it has to earn it, for we, as individuals, all make a practice of not giving any money to children, because it tends to make beggars, idlers and dependent beings of them. All we do is to give them plenty of fine opportunity and then let them earn all they want.”
“Do you let young children spend the money they earn just as they wish?” asked Viola.
“Certainly we do,” replied Mr. Midith. “We give them our best advice, our best financial conduct, and then let them do as they see fit. You must not forget that the appetites, and hence the conduct of your children, as a whole, are vastly different from the appetites and conduct of our children. Very likely your children, if they all at once had plenty of money, would at first spend large sums for nicknacks, and many of them get sick from overeating, because their nicknack-appetite has not been properly adjusted. Our children have no particular appetite for nicknacks; they have all they want during their whole life. Further, the conditions for spending money are altogether different with us. They can not buy intoxicating liquor, because we, like thousands of your most thoughtful men, have learned that we are better off without intoxicating liquor as a beverage, and hence have no appetite for it, and do not manufacture it. They can not spend their money in sinful houses, because when money is so plentiful and so easily obtained, nobody will sell the use of her person for dissolute purposes. They can not lose it in option deals, because we have no board of trade, nor speculators of any kind. They do not wish to use it to buy houses and land with, because they have all of them they want, etc.”
“But do you not admonish your children to save their money—to lay up some for old age?” asked Rev. Dudley.
“No, we admonish no one to save money. Our aim is not to grow rich on frugality, but on abundance of production. You esteem frugality as a high virtue, which may perhaps be all right under your perverted financial, social and industrial system. Our aim is to open up natural opportunity and make production by voluntary co-operation and mechanical appliances so abundant that frugality is unnecessary. Under these conditions, we can produce all the material wealth we want in a few hours of labor a day. The American Indian, with his primitive habits, can not grow rich by frugality and his very limited production; but, by a change of habits and by abundant production, he may be able to produce, with an agreeable amount of productive labor, more material wealth than he can judiciously consume. So with the Marsites.
“The principal differences of which we have thus far spoken between our and your system of education are:
“We give the child, in the acquisition of information, complete freedom; you compel it to do certain things which you as adults believe to be right, but which, as a rule, are perhaps nine times out of ten wrong. We believe that the home, field and active society is the best school; you largely cut the child off from these natural means and confine it to the narrow school-house, or prison, we think, where it is not allowed to talk and exercise—the very things you desire it to learn. We endeavor to create a desire for inquiry by pleasant and attractive incentives only; you generally resort to compulsion. Hence, we believe that a child should study only when, where and what it likes; you believe that it must study such a time and such branches, and at such a place, whether it finds pleasure in doing so or not. We believe that a teacher or parent, who must compel a child or pupil to study, does not know how to teach; you believe that the child’s dislike for study is grounded in the perversity of its nature. We teach and inculcate that manual labor is honorable; that one who lives from the labor of others is a social and industrial parasite; that a child should be enticed to establish the habit of manual labor while young. You believe that manual labor is disrespectful, that a washerwoman, as such, is not as good as a senator’s wife, that one who lives from the labor of others by means of profit, interest, rent, and taxes is a good, clever person. You largely teach inequality; we teach complete equality of man, woman and child.
“On the money question our system of education has a great advantage over yours. Our child receives all it earns at the close of each month; your child works for the parent. It receives nothing for a number of years but board, clothing and sometimes a little pocket money. Some of your parents give their children some property when the children become ‘of age;’ some parents give their property to their children, perhaps, because they can not take the property with them when they die; some parents have nothing to give when the child becomes of age nor when the parents die. In a child, in which the ideas of time and space are yet very imperfectly developed, a remote reward is a very feeble incentive to labor. A child or a savage will do a great deal for a penny, if paid immediately, but they will do very little for ten dollars, if they are to be paid five years hence, or even a year hence.
“You say, how can you make your children work if you do not force them; but the secret, you see, all lies in the system. Our system encourages a child to work, while yours encourages it to be idle. We have a short day, easy work and big cash pay; you have a long day, toilsome work, and small pay on ten to forty years’ time.
“You can easily see that we are all teachers and all pupils at the same time. We study our whole lifetime and graduate only at death. We teach each other when we labor and when we play, in the house and in the field. The teachers, as well as the pupils, perform their manual labor daily; for we believe: 1. That a knowledge of manual labor is the most important education we can receive. 2. That a short, easy day’s manual labor like ours, especially if performed in the open air, is healthful, and promotes the development of body and mind; such labor is the most invigorating food that can be taken. 3. That we have more leisure time for teaching and imparting useful knowledge to our children and to each other than we want, besides the short time we daily devote to manual labor. 4. That labor must be made so easy, attractive and agreeable that we do it for the pleasure that is in it; and 5. That no one should be forced to study or learn what he finds no pleasure in. Your school-houses and your methods of teaching are altogether unnatural, ours are natural; that is the reason you are obliged to use force everywhere. Your children are all right, but your school is nearly all wrong. Your school-houses and your methods of teaching are an infraction of the laws of life and health; that is why your children so often rebel against them. That is the reason why so many of your pupils are tardy, absent, sullen and puny. The child’s instinctive knowledge of life and health, when it remonstrates against your school and your methods of teaching, is a better guide than the perverted reasons of your teachers and parents.”