Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/231

Rh If the mind be curbed and bumbled too much in children, if their spirits be abased and broken much by too strict a hand over them, they lose all their vigor and industry. For extravagant young fellows that have liveliness and spirit come sometimes to be set right, and so make able and great men. But dejected minds, timorous and tame, and low spirits, are hardly ever to be raised, and very seldom attain to anything.

Again, when a child does well, Locke advises his father and mother to show pleasure, and, upon his doing ill, to show a cold, neglectful countenance, and this, he says, "if constantly observed, I doubt not but will of itself work more than threats or blows, which lose their force when once grown common, and are of no use when shame does not attend them." With regard to the early teaching of children, it should be remembered that a young child is always learning, and therefore parents should not be in too great a hurry to begin that branch of education popularly known as "lessons"; and lessons themselves must not be looked upon as an end, but as a means, or as tools put into the hands of a child to enable him to shape his own life and discover its uses and beauty.

We do not want to manufacture little prigs, who have swallowed a mass of facts never to be digested, but we want children who can take an intelligent interest in all that is going on around them. They will learn much if their mothers will only take the trouble to answer questions in an intelligent manner: it is either laziness or stupidity to repulse a child with "Don't ask questions."

A mother who conscientiously answers questions will find that she too has profited as well as her children, and if there are some questions the right answers to which it would be impossible for children to understand, let them be told so honestly and not put off with evasive answers. Nothing is better for young children than to be sent to a good Kindergarten: they learn to be obedient when they find obedience is expected as a matter of course; they learn to be observant, which is of great use to them in after-life; and they are made to take a pleasure in all they do, as all they learn is made interesting to them. The Kindergarten principles may, however, be carried out in all home teaching, when pleasure in learning will be found one of the greatest aids to mental digestion.

I should begin the teaching of a child as a favor, not as a task; if he is inattentive, I should by no means insist upon the lesson being done, and so give it the air of a task. It is far better to say: "I really can not waste my time in teaching you. I have other matters to do, and if you can not give me a little attention you may go away." With the natural perversity of human nature, the child immediately becomes anxious to learn, and feels at once that you are doing him a favor, not he, you. If a child seems dull, never force it to learn. If the dullness proceeds from