Having tried to show how important the teaching of the love of beauty is to children, and how important it is during the early development of the brain to keep all that is bad and repulsive away, and only present the good and the beautiful, it may not be out of place to say a little on the subject as to the difficulty of getting teachers who have ever given these ideas a thought, and if asked to carry out one’s wishes on this subject simply regard one as a harmless lunatic. A few are conscientious enough to make efforts, but even these are a hopeless failure, and for this reason, if no thought has been given during the years of training as to the necessity of keeping ugliness, physical and mental, from children, it is almost impossible, unless unusually gifted in self-control, to restrain one’s self a hundred times an hour from doing or saying something ugly before children; also, with the best endeavours in the world, the deplorable fact remains that the great majority do not know what is ugly and what is beautiful.
Nine years ago, I started with a light heart and a happy mind to educate my eldest son in the way in which I considered all children ought to be educated: in other words only pure and good thoughts were to be instilled into his mind, and he was never to have the ugly and grotesque forced on his notice. My difficulties began with my first nurse, and they have gone on increasing through a series of nurses and governesses. That they should not understand one’s ideas on the subject was not surprising, as their upbringing made these ideas a closed book to them; but what was so heart-breaking was that after hours of explaining and reasoning, and eventually in despair almost extorting promises that they should endeavour to speak only what was truthful and good, and that they should refrain from ugly tales and dirty ideas, it began to dawn on me that most of these people who take charge of children do not know the difference between what is good and what is bad for children to see and hear, and all the explaining in the world could not teach them: proving that unless the study of these things is undertaken in youth, it is of little use later in life to try and learn it. Some of them really tried, they genuinely wished to please me, but it was hopeless from my point of view; in fact, I was talking a strange tongue to them, and with the best endeavours they could not understand a language they had never learnt. It is certainly not my wish to decry the faithful service that nurses have given to their charges, a good deal more faithful than many mothers. But what I do want to point out is that the training of nurses and teachers is as a rule far from what it ought to be, and until this training is most thoroughly altered it is worse than useless to try and raise the education of children to a higher and purer level. First of all, it must be recognised that these people on whom the future of our young so largely depends ought to be the most respected and honoured amongst people, and this feeling of responsibility and honour ought to be ingrained in the minds of those who intend to enter the vocations of nursing or teaching. Not, as so often is the case, that teaching is taken up when a failure is made at other professions, and when you find in rich houses that the teachers or nurses of the children are paid considerably less than the cook or butler. Until teaching is put upon its proper pedestal and regarded as the most honoured of professions, and one not to be entered into lightly, so will education remain at its present low level.
It is constantly being said that there are so many clever women leaving our colleges each year, and finding it difficult to earn a livelihood: surely teaching ought to give many of them a profession in life; but until the profession is regarded rightly, as one of the most high and sacred callings, clever men and women will consider it beneath them, or only to be used as a step towards something better. Certainly, latterly, there has been some improvement in the methods of imparting knowledge to the young, but I am afraid that these methods have not always been used for the good only of the child. Too many good teachers are given to cramming infants’ minds to an extent extremely harmful, only caring to produce on examination days tiny children who can repeat pages of verse and prose—in other words, at the expense of the child’s health and mind, they nurture their own vanity, showing that their idea of responsibility is as lax as their knowledge of the delicate structure they undertake to build up. The ignorance of the people to whom children are entrusted on the science of Pedagogy is truly amazing. They know nothing about the body, and still less about the working of a child’s brain. They do not know what is harmful physically, or what effect body has on brain, or vice-versa; they have a smattering of Physical Culture and this is used indiscriminately, and they cannot be blamed, as they have never been taught even the rudiments of a science which they ought to know thoroughly before they essay to teach. For it is, I am certain, this entire lack of knowledge as to the brain and body and the effect of one on the other, that leads to so much distress and sin, and that is such a handicap in any efforts that are made to fill the mind with only what is worth while. Excellent methods such as Dr. Montessori’s are terribly hampered by the difficulty of finding people in any quantity capable of carrying out ideas which require careful observation and a real knowledge of the child’s mind and body. They may earnestly strive, but they will fail, and consequently many good methods brought forward by clever trained people go to the wall and are labelled as useless, simply because the teachers are quite incompetent to either grasp or carry out any method which requires a real and not a superficial knowledge of Pedagogy.
Now this is all rather dreadful, and the only way to improve matters and give children a chance of starting life with a healthy and pure outlook is for all parents to band themselves together and insist that the people who volunteer to take charge of and educate children, shall have received a proper training both mentally and physically. If this was done, in one generation, education in the highest sense of the word would have a bright outlook, as people who have received a sane and clean education themselves will most certainly see that their children receive and benefit by the same. I do not think that parents can often give much thought as to the unlimited amount of harm done in their nurseries. The conversations that are carried on before young children, between nurse and nursery-maids, are five times out of six harmful, I am certain; and any observing mother can tell, from the way children behave and the things they talk about, the sort of influence that is unconsciously wielded by the nurses in charge. Looking back at my nursery days, and my memory of them is very distinct, I can easily remember the kind of topics that were discussed before me: every sort of gossip on the latest scandals, the latest murder, horrors of war, &c., all in their most gruesome details. I was, I suppose, about four or five years of age, and those conversations are clear in my memory to this day. My nurse was the dearest and most faithful of old Scotch servants, and would have given her life gladly for any of her charges, but she had never been taught herself as to what was harmful and what was not for children to see and hear, and had the uneducated person’s general idea that children up to the age of about ten years are deaf, dumb, and blind. Many and many an evil growth and crooked outlook on life is gained in those early nursery days, and they cling steadily through life. In these days of heavy doings and light thinkings, the children of the well-to-do are more and more left in the charge of others than their parents, and it seems that this would become more so than less in the future. So, surely, a giant effort should be made towards establishing a training college, or improving the ones at present in existence, and insisting that nurses and teachers are trained so as to have considerably higher ideals than they have at present, and a far deeper knowledge of the mind and body, before they are allowed to play havoc with the lives of the young.
Most certainly there are many young people who love children, and have themselves been brought up in a clean, though perhaps limited manner: opportunities should be given to them to train so as to become able to take charge of children and to fully understand the tremendous responsibilities they undertake when children are given into their charge.
A man would be considered a great fool if he placed a valuable racehorse in the hands of an ordinary stable-man to be trained for a great race, and the horse would stand little chance to win unless handled by an experienced trainer who had made it his business for years to learn all there was to know on the subject of handling valuable animals. He would give hours of observation and thought, he would know to a hair’s weight what the animal could stand physically, any mental idiosyncrasies would be studied and sought to be overcome. But the average person who has charge of children as a rule not only does not know even the anatomy of the child, but the formation of its mind and the proper way of training that mind, and bringing it to a full and perfect development, is often not even considered a matter of importance. I do not wish to imply that these people are purposely negligent of their duties, I merely wish to point out that the large majority do not realise or understand, from their imperfect training, either duties or responsibilities, the idea being very often that children will turn out good or bad men or women quite independently of their upbringing and the influence brought to bear on them during the early years of their development.