cause." What cause, he did not know--and did not care; for him it
was enough that here a man is devoting himself to a cause.

And this incident illustrates nearly everything that makes the
adolescent so puzzling and so exasperating to older people.

First of all, he had gotten hold of a large idea, which he could not
by any possibility understand in all its bearings; and on the basis
of this he criticises the charitable efforts of his mother and,
indeed, of her whole generation. Not only does he criticise the
prevailing, modes of philanthropic effort, but he condemns these
good people as having "petty" minds--because they do not all see
what he has seen, perhaps for as long as a day or two. His attitude
is not reasoned out, but arises from the deepest feelings of
sympathy for the great tragedy of poverty, which he takes in at one
sweep without patience for the details of individual poor people.
Then the preacher on the street corner, exposing himself to the
gibes and sneers of the unsympathetic crowd, appeals to him
instantly as a self-sacrificing champion of some "cause." It is his
religious feelings, his chivalric feelings, that are reached; he
would himself become a missionary, and the missionary is a hero that
appeals especially to the adolescent. There is no inconsistency
between his disapproval of specific acts of charity and his approval
of the preacher of an unknown cause. In both instances he gives
voice to his feelings for the larger, comprehensive ideals that are
just surging to the surface of his consciousness.

This is the period in which you will one day complain that the young
person is giving altogether too much time and thought to details of
dress and fashion, only to remonstrate a few days later about his
careless or even slovenly appearance. On the whole, however, the
interest in dress and appearance will grow, because as the
adolescent boy or girl becomes conscious of his own personality he
thinks more and more of the appearance of his person, and especially
of how it appears to others. There is even the danger that the boy
will become a fop or a dandy, and that the girl will take to
overdressing. Argument is of little avail in such cases. The
association with persons of good taste who will arouse the
admiration or affection of the growing child will do more than hours
of sermons. If the boy can realize that one may be a fine man
without wearing the latest style in collars, or if the girl finds a
thoroughly admirable and lovable woman who does not observe the
customs of fashion too much, neither ridicule nor protest will be
necessary.

In general, the adolescent will give us exercise in patience and in
imagination and in ingenuity. He will puzzle us and perplex us as
well as exasperate us. But if we cannot remember back to our own
golden age, we must try as best we can to believe that even this
will pass away.

XIV.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

With special assistance from
BENJAMIN CHARLES GRUENBERG, Ph.D.

The frequent appearance of the "black sheep" in a flock of tolerably
white sheep, the frequent failure of the best efforts of parents and
teachers to make a fairly decent man out of a promising boy, have
led many to question whether, after all, the pains and effort are
worth while. We have come to question the wisdom of bothering about
"environment"; just as we sometimes question the existence of a
principle called "heredity." Every day some one asks the question,
"Do you believe in heredity?" And many times a day people discuss,
"Which is more important, heredity or environment?"

These are certainly _practical_ questions for parents, since
the answers we receive must influence our practice or conduct in
relation to the children. If we felt quite sure that heredity was
everything and environment nothing, we should reduce our school
appropriations and build larger jails and asylums, or we should
resign ourselves as best we could to letting "nature take her
course." On the other hand, if we felt sure that heredity was
nothing and environment everything, we should proceed at once to
double our school equipment, raise the teachers' salaries, convert
our penal institutions into reformatories and our armories into
recreation centres, and advance the age of compulsory education just
as far as we thought we could afford to.

Those who place the emphasis upon heredity, in the attempt to
discredit the value of thoughtful and painstaking control of the
environment of the developing child, usually remind us that a man
like Lincoln achieved power and distinction in spite of what we
would ordinarily consider serious obstacles to complete development,
whereas thousands of college graduates who have had all the
advantages that trained tutors and guarded surroundings can give
have developed into mediocre men and women--have even developed into
vicious and criminal men and women. They will remind us that from a
class of children that had the same teachers for many years has
emerged a group of very distinct men and women; they will remind us
that brothers and sisters with the identical "environment" turn out
to be so different.

On the other hand, those who see nothing in "heredity" will point to
the same Lincoln and ask confidently why his ancestors and his
descendants do not show the same degree of power and achievement.
They will point to the same family of brothers and sisters who had
the same "heredity" and ask why they all turned out so differently.
The black sheep proves just as much--and just as little--for one
side of the argument as it does for the other.

There are, it is true, many people who say that they "do not
believe" in either heredity or environment. Such people see the
difficulties of the disputants and reject both alternatives. They
prefer to say frankly that they do not understand the situation;
that life is too complex to be solved by puny human intellects. Or
they resort to some equally unintelligible explanation, such as
"Fate" or "Nature"--which is but another way of saying that we never
_can_ understand. On the other side stands the scientist who
refuses to shut his eyes to _any_ established facts, and
insists upon trying to understand as much as possible, though he may
never hope to understand all.

But no one is prepared to say authoritatively that either heredity
or environment is the exclusive or even the predominant factor in
determining the character of the individual. Indeed, the voice of
the scientist, which is the only authoritative voice we have in such
matters, is telling us very plainly that the whole question of
"heredity _or_ environment" is not a real question at all: we
are confronted in every child with a case of heredity _and_
environment, and the practical question is how to control the latter
so as to get the most from the former.

To begin, then, in a modest way to understand what is understandable,
in the faith that understanding will grow with thought and
observation, is the first duty of those who are not content to fold
their hands in resignation or despair. We know that we can control
wherever we have real knowledge. The cook knows that she cannot make
roast duck out of pork chops; but she knows also that she can make
palatable and digestible pork chops by proceeding in one way, and that
she can make tough and sickening pork chops out of the same materials
by changing her procedure. In the same way the scientific approach to
the problem of child training teaches us that, while we cannot make a
"swan out of a goose," we can make the gosling into a better goose or
a poorer goose by the treatment we apply to it.

A frequent source of doubt and misunderstanding is the universal
occurrence of such distinct types among brothers and sisters. The
query at once arises, "Have not these children the same heredity?"
Brothers and sisters have the same ancestors, but not the same
heredity. Recent biological discoveries teach us that the individual
develops from a bundle of units derived from the two parents, but the
units supplied by a parent never represent the totality of the
parents' composition, nor do all the units that are passed on come to
manifest themselves as parts of the character. The parent passes on
sample units from her or his own inheritance, so that no two
combinations are ever exactly alike. It is a commonplace observation
that Johnny may have his maternal grandmother's chin, his paternal
grandmother's eyes, his father's walk, his Uncle George's lips, his
Aunt Mary's sharp tongue, his grandfather's alertness, and his
mother's good judgment. Of course, he has _not_ his grandmother's eyes
or his uncle's lips: these relatives still retain their respective
facial organs, and his father still has his quick temper. What Johnny
has inherited is a something, perhaps in the nature of a ferment,
which _determines_ the color of his eyes, a certain something that
makes his lips develop into that particular shape, a certain something
that causes his brain to respond to annoyance in the same manner as
that of his Aunt Mary's. And the various ancestors and relatives have
received from their parents similar determining factors that have
manifested themselves in similar peculiarities. We do not inherit from
our relatives, or even from our parents: we are built up of the same
elements as those of which our relatives are built, but each one of us
has received his individual combination of factors. Hence, no two
brothers or sisters are exactly alike, although they have the same
parents and the same ancestors.

While it is universally recognized that no two individuals are
exactly alike, we are not at all clear in our minds as to whether
the important differences arise from differences in experience or
_nurture_, or from essential differences in _nature_. We
know that children of the same parents are essentially different
from birth, and that no matter how similar the treatment they
receive afterward they will always remain different, or even become
more different as they become older. It is becoming more clear every
day, as a result of scientific study, that every individual is
absolutely unique, excepting only "true" twins.

If we accept this individuality of the person as a fact, what, then,
is the importance of training or environment? Does not this
admission settle at once the contention of those who see no value at
all in a carefully-controlled environment? If this child is
_born_ without mathematical ability, what is the use of
drumming arithmetic into his head; or, if he is _born_ with
musical genius, why should we bother about teaching him music?--he
will "take" to it naturally.

The answer to these and similar questions is to be found in the
answer to another question, namely, "What is it precisely that the
child is born with?" Surely no child is ever born with the ability
to dance or sing or to do sums in algebra. When we say that a child
has musical genius we mean merely that as he develops we may notice
in him a certain capacity to acquire musical knowledge more readily
than most other children do, or a certain disposition to express
himself in melody, or a certain liking for music in some form, or a
certain readiness to acquire control of musical instruments. In
other words, the child is born with a capacity for acquiring certain
things, from the outside, that is, from the environment--he is born
with certain possibilities, which can become actualities only if the
suitable conditions are provided. In the same way one child is born
with a capacity for exceptional muscular development, and another
for exceptional self-mastery. But in every case practice makes
perfect, the muscles must be properly nourished and exercised, the
will must be trained--and that means suitable environment.

Now, while every individual is unique, not every child is a born
genius. The distinctiveness of each child lies in the fact that he
consists of a _combination_ of capacities and tendencies, each
of which varies in degree when compared with other individuals. For
example, Evelyn has about the same capacity for physical work as
Annie, but she stands lower than the latter in arithmetic and higher
in language work. John shows about the same physical power as Henry,
when measured by running and jumping and chinning; but John can hit
the ball with his bat more times out of a hundred than Henry can,
whereas Henry can hit the bull's-eye with his rifle more times out
of a hundred than John can. In a thousand details any two children
differ from each other, one excelling in nearly half of the points,
the other excelling perhaps in about as many, and the two standing
almost exactly alike in some matters.

A child that excels most of his colleagues in one or a few points is
said to have marked ability in that direction--as the exceptional
athlete, or the child with exceptional literary or moral feeling. On
the other hand, a child that seems to measure well up to the average
in most points, and even to excel in a few, may fall far short in
some matters,--that is, may be deficient. Thus a perfectly good
child in every other way may be unable to master the ordinary
requirements in arithmetic, or a child may have an entirely
satisfactory development in every way and be deficient in musical
discrimination.

Another kind of difference is to be found in what may be called
general capacity. Some children show higher capacity than the
average along nearly every line that can be measured or tested,
without showing a preponderance in any one direction. Such children
are said to be of high grade, or of high "vitality." In the same way
many children are below the average in nearly every line, without
being particularly defective along any one line. They can do one
thing about as well as another, just as the high-grade boys and
girls can do one thing about as well as another; but in the former
there is a limit to the possible development which is exceeded in
the latter. Among both classes of children the full development
depends upon suitable environment, but what is suitable for one may
not be suitable for the other.

From a consideration of these differences in degree and difference
in kind we may see that there is no course of training or treatment,
no method of instruction, no trick for the mother or for the teacher
that will be usable for all children under all circumstances, to
make them all come up to some preconceived uniform standard. On the
other hand, if we consider the differences as worth developing, and
even emphasizing, it must be obvious that the training and the
treatment should be adapted to the individual child so far as
possible. Starting out with essentially different human beings,
uniform treatment will not make them all alike, nor will _any_
treatment make them all alike. But starting out with a particular
human being, we can learn to treat him in such a way as to make him
develop into a more desirable person than he would become if he were
neglected or if he were treated differently. And that is the main
problem, after all.

The relation between heredity and environment may perhaps be made
clear by an extreme illustration from the physical side. Here are
two full-grown men, both five feet and four inches tall. We observe
that they are both short. Now, the shortness of one of them turns
out to be the result of heredity,--that is, he belongs to a strain
of short people. No amount of feeding or of exercise or of special
régime could have made him more than a quarter or half an inch
taller. The other man, however, belongs to a race of rather taller
men and women: his shortness of stature may be traced to
undernutrition, or to overwork, or to sickness during his childhood.
It is quite certain that a different kind of environment would have
resulted in his being as tall as his brothers and sisters.

Now, the problem of training concerns itself practically not so much
with the person who is particularly "long" by nature, nor so much
with the person who is unusually "short" by nature--and we may apply
"long" and "short" to every other trait as well as to stature. The
problem with these extremes is simply to keep the child in good
health. The special efforts of the teacher and of the parent are
devoted to giving the child who appears somewhat below the average
in some particular those special stimulations and exercises and
feedings that will bring him up to the average. We find the
extremely short too discouraging, and the extremely long do not
clamor for our attention; but it is those near the middle-point that
we want to help over to the other side of the dividing line. And
this is just as true of an undesirable character as it is of a
desirable one. We take no trouble to teach honesty to the child that
seems instinctively honest; and we give up in despair with the child
that convinces us of his utter lack of a moral sense: we concentrate
our efforts upon the delinquents whom we catch early, or upon those
who are in danger of sliding down if they are not helped along.

Perhaps one reason for the great confusion on this subject arises out
of the fact that we have become accustomed to making a sharp
distinction between physical characters on the one hand and so-called
mental and moral qualities on the other. Every one recognizes family
resemblances in physical features. A particular shape of nose or a
peculiarity of the hand appears in every member of the family,
sometimes for several successive generations. Facts like these we
accept as evidence of "heredity" without any question. We also
recognize that the Joneses of Centerville always take the measles
"hard," whereas with the Andersons vaccination never "takes." But when
it comes to mental qualities, which we are not accustomed to measure
or to recognize with the same degree of discrimination, most of us
fail to see that heredity is just as common for these as for physical
traits. Moreover, mental qualities take on such a great variety of
forms that their recognition is made doubly difficult. Thus it may be
the same mental traits that make of a certain man a successful lawyer,
of his brother an able scientist, and of their cousin a clever
criminal. No doubt each of these three men has qualities in a degree
lacking in the others; but the point is that they have many qualities
in common which are obscured by the different lines of development
they have followed.

The old parable of the wheat cast upon the ground may help us. That
which falls upon stony ground fails of germination; that which falls
upon poor soil will germinate, but will die of drought or be
scorched by the sun; that which falls upon good soil will develop
into a good plant. The _kind_ of plant that may develop is
determined by the seed, by heredity; _how_ the plant will
develop is determined by the surrounding conditions, by the
environment. On the physical side these facts are so familiar to us
that we never question the connection between development and food,
or between development and exercise, or between development and
other physical conditions. Of course, we say, an undernourished
child will never be strong; of course, an overworked child will
never be strong, of course, drinking and smoking and other
dissipation will prevent healthy development. And yet, do we not
know that of two underfed children, one will show the ill effects
more than the other; that of two overworked children, one will
survive abuse with less permanent injury than the other.

We must, then, have clear in our minds the idea that everything that
happens to a child and that may produce a reaction or an effect is
worth considering from the point of view of its influence upon his
development. Indeed, instead of discussing heredity _versus_
environment, we should try to conceive of the personality of the
child as made up of the effect of a certain heredity responding to a
certain environment. For example, the child inherits the instinct to
handle things. At a certain age this instinct will take the form of
handling objects within reach, and of breaking them. We cannot say
that the child has an instinct for breaking vases or tearing books;
he has simply the instinct to _do_ something with material that
he can handle. Now, it is possible for the child to exercise this
instinct only on material that can be broken or torn; it is also
possible for the child to exercise it on material that can be
manipulated constructively--as blocks for building, clay for
shaping, or, later, tools of various kinds. In one case the child
establishes habits of tearing or breaking; in the other the same
instincts--the same "heredity," that is--issues in habits of
_making_. Or we may take the instinct of curiosity, which every
normal child will manifest at an early stage. This instinct may find
exercise in wondering what is in parcels or closed cupboards; or it
may exercise itself in wondering about the thunder and the flowers
and the things under the earth; or it may be quite suppressed by
discouragement or by unsatisfying indulgence. Thus the same instinct
may lead under different treatments to different results. This does
not mean that every child has the making of an investigator; it
means that a perfectly healthy instinct capable of being turned to
good use is often perverted or crushed out because we have not
learned to cultivate it profitably through control of the growing
child's development.

There is abundant evidence that the mental and moral capacities are
inherited in the same way as the purely physical or physiological
ones. We have, however, much more to learn about how to control the
development of the former than about the control of the latter. Yet
this point should be clear to every parent and teacher; whatever the
child's inheritance may be, the full development of his capacities
is possible only under suitable external conditions. What these
conditions are depends upon the combination of capacities that the
particular child possesses. But to find out what these capacities
are we must give the child an opportunity to show "what's in him."
This we can do by placing him in an environment simple enough for
him to adjust himself to readily, and at the same time complex
enough to give every side of his nature a chance to respond. This is
the significance of modern educational movements that seek to leave
the child untrammelled in his responses to what goes on around him.
We have learned that some children will become tall and that others
will never reach beyond a certain height; we seek merely to keep
them healthy by suitable feeding, exercise, rest, bathing, etc. But
in the matter of mental development we have not yet learned that it
is impossible for all children to reach the same degree of
linguistic or mathematical or artistic development, and we try to
bring all of them up to our preconceived standard of what a child
_should_ do in each line. The thing that we need to find out is
what a particular child _can_ do; and then we must give him the
opportunity and the encouragement to do his best. The things we
encourage him to do will be the basis for the habits which he will
form, for the skill which he will acquire--and so for the activities
that will yield him satisfaction and determine his behavior in
relation to others. That is, the things the child learns to do well
will determine what kind of a person he will be when he grows up.

But it would be a mistake to suppose that every child is born with a
set of special aptitudes that fit him for some particular occupation.
Many children do indeed have rather special types of native ability,
as the child of artistic proclivities, or the "natural born" preacher.
And, on the other hand, many children are born with marked
shortcomings in their makeup, although these "deficiencies" need not
always interfere with their developing into excellent men and women.
For example, a child may be color-blind, or incapable of mastering a
foreign language in school, or awkward in doing work requiring great
skill--and yet capable of doing high-grade work in other lines. Those
children that have strongly-marked proclivities--which usually show
themselves early in life and which are commonly associated with strong
likes and dislikes--will no doubt do the most effective work along the
lines of their native talents. And those with marked deficiencies
should certainly not be directed into occupations wherein the lacking
talents are essential for success. But the great mass of children vary
from each other not so much in the directions along which their
special abilities lie as in the degree to which they are capable of
developing the ordinary abilities which they do have. For such
children the choice of an occupation cannot wisely be made very early
in life, nor should a very special choice be made until there has been
an opportunity to try out a large variety of activities and processes.
Indeed, even for the child of decided genius it is desirable that
there be a chance to try out many kinds of activities, both physical
and mental. This is desirable not so much in the hope of counteracting
his special bent on the theory of supplying exercise for the functions
that are not to his liking as for the purpose of giving him an
opportunity to find out _all_ he can do, and to give us a chance to
find out all he can do well.

Even children who pass as "average" children, however, may be
divided into classes according to the variations in their native
capacities. That is to say, some children, although not exhibiting
any special talents or special deficiencies, are nevertheless more
easily adjusted to doing muscular work than others; some are more
happy in the manipulation of numbers; some show greater patience;
some are more easily fatigued by the repetition of a process; some
cannot stand on their feet for long periods without suffering, and
so on. These differences should certainly be taken into
consideration, first of all, in the treatment accorded them in the
school and at home, in what is required of them, in the selection of
studies, etc. And, in the second place, these facts should be
considered in the choice of general fields of occupation. It would
be the height of cruelty and of injustice to insist upon Walter's
preparing for and entering his father's business--just to keep up
the family tradition--when a little attention to the boy's work in
school and to his play and to his personal preferences and tastes
would show that he was eminently unsuited for the business, and at
the same time well suited for some technical pursuit such as
engineering. Untold misery and failure spring from our negligence in
these matters, no less than from our direction of the child's
development in accordance with the parents' ambitions rather than in
accordance with the child's discoverable abilities and disabilities.

How far short our ordinary training falls of giving our various
capacities their full development is shown by the exquisite
acuteness of touch and of hearing acquired by children who become
blind in infancy. The senses of touch and hearing are here developed
so far beyond what ordinary persons ever attain that the belief is
quite common that one who is defective in one sense has been
compensated by "nature" with special capacity in the other senses.
As a matter of fact, however, the extreme development is not the
result of special endowment or "heredity," but altogether the result
of special training or "environment."

There is a certain sense in which the idea of heredity impresses one
with a paralyzing feeling of inevitableness. When a child is born
his sex is irrevocably fixed; the character of his eyes and of his
hair, the form of his features and the ridges on his finger-tips are
unalterable except through mutilation or disease. But up to a
certain limit the child will grow just in proportion to the nurture
that he receives. And what that limit is we may not know until we
find out through years of patient effort, through endless trying out
in every direction. He will grow farther in some directions than in
others, and the _limit_ in each direction is the element of
destiny supplied by heredity. Very few, however, reach their limit
in many directions, and no person has ever reached his limit in
every direction. The distance we do actually go depends, in
practice, altogether upon the kind of environment that is supplied.
This environment, so far as the growing child is concerned, is
entirely within our control, and we have no right to give up our
efforts and to shift the responsibility to unsatisfactory heredity
until we are quite sure that all has been done that suitable
surroundings and treatment--suitable "environment"--can do. We must
watch and wait, and work hard while we wait and watch.

XV.

FREEDOM AND DISCIPLINE

Is it not strange that "school," which we provide for our beloved
children for their own good, at so great a cost of thought and
money, should be so little appreciated by them? Is it not strange
that "school," which is intended to give power and freedom, should
be looked upon by the children as no better than a prison--a good
place from which to escape?

We grown folks know how valuable school and training and discipline
are. Do we not sometimes sigh that we had not more of these
blessings in our own childhood? Or that we did not take advantage of
the little we had? If the children only knew--perhaps they would not
so eagerly seek to escape into what they vainly imagine to be
"freedom." Perhaps.

Grown folks who have thought about the matter know, of course, that
"freedom" is something different from merely being left alone. They
know that freedom is a state to be attained only through effort.
They know that freedom results from a discipline which makes a
person the master of his impulses, instead of leaving him their
slave. They know that the freedom worth striving for is freedom from
our own caprices and moods, from our blindness and ignorance and
passions. It is for this reason that we value discipline, quite
apart from anything that it may contribute to our ability to live
harmoniously with others, quite apart from anything it may do to
increase our power in an economic sense.

But if discipline is the means for attaining freedom, how does it
come about that in the past (and for most people to-day) discipline
has appeared as a method of _compelling_ children to do the
right thing--"until they have the habit"? How does it come about
that discipline, in the minds of most people, consists so largely of
_restraining_ children from doing undesirable acts--until they
are well started into the safe age of discretion? The reason seems
to be that the need for discipline or training makes itself most
quickly felt where children--or older people--infringe upon the
rights of others, or upon the proprieties. We miss discipline where
a child fails of self-restraint, acts impulsively, or loses his
temper. In short, failure of early training is indicated wherever
there is lack of self-control, or a lack of proper application to
the business in hand. It is therefore natural that discipline should
early take the form of commanding and prohibiting.

It is but a short step from this view of discipline to the
philosophy that what children do spontaneously, what they like to
do, must be wrong. And the complement to this is the feeling that
virtue and character can arise only from doing what is disagreeable
or difficult.

But the newer studies in the psychology of childhood lead to a
totally different theory of character formation. And many
experiments made in schools and institutions confirm these new
theories at every point. Moreover, if we look about, perhaps even in
our own homes, I am sure we can all find abundant support for the
modern view.

The new studies have to do with the relation that our emotions bear
to our activities and especially to the formation of habits. To
learn to do a thing, we have known for ages, we must practise
continuously and uniformly. But we did not know that the state of
feelings connected with the performance of the act had anything to
do with the result. Richard must master the scales in his music
study. These scales can be mastered in only one way--he must play
them over and over and over again, until he just has them. But
suppose Richard does not care to practise the scales over and over
and over again? Suppose that he does not care whether he ever
masters the scales or not. Well, he can be _made_ to practise,
at any rate; and perhaps some day he will thank his elders for
having thus forced upon him the extremely valuable but unappreciated
command of the scales.

But what happens in the course of this forced practise? There is
resentment, and antagonism and a growing hatred of scales, of the
man who first vented scales, of sloping rows of notes on the page of
music. And this resentment is more likely to prevent a real mastery
of the task than the enforced practise is to ensure it. The
antagonism will, at any rate, counteract the value of the practise
to a large degree. The third element in the fixation of habits that
we have heretofore too generally disregarded is that of
_satisfaction_; this is no less important than regularity and
frequency of action.

The absence of satisfaction, to say nothing of the presence of
opposite feelings, is of itself sufficient to prevent effective
learning, whether of knowledge or of skill. And when the opposite
feelings are present, the acquired act or idea tends to be pushed
out of the system at the earliest opportunity. It is in some such
way as this that many specialists in the workings of the human mind
would explain so much of our "forgetting." They say that we forget
either because we really wish to forget--the facts are unpleasant--
or because we do not sufficiently care to remember--the facts are
not sufficiently interesting, they do not sufficiently concern us.

Out of the psychological facts pertaining to the relation of the
feeling state to the learning process and to the habit-forming
process, is developed the doctrine of "interest" in education. The
very name "interest" suggests to many that this must be some plan
for sugar-coating education, or perhaps for giving children only
what they like. And this is quite the opposite of the traditional
view which is expressed by the humorist who said, "It does not
matter much what you teach a boy, so long as he doesn't like it."
But the idea of interest in modern psychology does not mean letting
the child have his own way, any more than discipline means doing
only what is unpleasant or difficult.

We can see the basic truth at the foundation of this view in the
age-long usage of the race, which awards prizes and penalties for
"good" actions and "evil" actions, respectively. If you should be
asked "_Why_ did you reward Maryann," "_Why_ did you punish Henry;"
you would no doubt say something like this: If we reward a child for
doing what we approve, he is more likely to do that sort of thing
again; if we punish, or impose unpleasant consequences, upon acts that
we disapprove, such acts are less likely to be repeated. In other
words, we have known right along that _satisfaction_ somehow leads the
child to repeat the conditions that brought about the satisfaction;
and that suffering somehow leads the child to avoid the conditions
that brought about the suffering.

What the new psychology does here is to unify what we have known. We
say not the performance of an act alone will establish a habit; not
the repetition alone will establish it; not the subsequent
satisfaction alone. All of these factors must take part, and they
must take part in association. The feeling must accompany the act.
It is not sufficient that Richard be assured that some time in the
vague future he will derive deep satisfaction from being master of
the scales; he must somehow be made to feel a present concern either
in what he is doing, or a real interest in the outcome. The time
that is to elapse between the beginning of his "practice" and the
satisfaction he is to receive must not be beyond the child's power
to appreciate.

In our actual dealing with children our experience leads us to make
use of these principles, often without realizing all that is
implied. For example, when the young child by your side shows signs
of weariness, and you still have some distance to go, you try to
stimulate his interest by telling him of the good things to come at
journey's end. If this does not serve your purpose, you draw his
attention to the bird on the tree only a hundred feet away, or you
challenge him to race with you to the next telegraph post. And if
you challenge him to such a race, you are sensible enough to let him
win it, for you know very well that nothing will discourage him so
much as defeat--that is, the unpleasant feeling of failure; and you
know that nothing will stimulate him quite as much as the
satisfaction of defeating you. In other words, you set before him
one goal after another, each but a small fraction of the main
journey, and each within the appreciation of the child, and each
offering a satisfactory conclusion that is readily and eagerly
seized as _worth striving for_, here and now.

Now it may be asked, what discipline is there in doing always what
brings satisfaction? How can the children ever learn to do the
disagreeable but necessary tasks that make up so large a part of
every-day living? Where will they ever learn that some things must
be done, not because we like to do them, but because it is our duty
to do them? And these are indeed serious questions. There are two
sets of answers. One of them consists of the results actually
achieved in dealing with children from the new point of view. The
other is a challenge to make clear just what we mean by discipline
and task and duty.

To take the latter first, is it not true that one part of our object
is in the form of acquired knowledge and acquired skill? Practising
the scales, or studying the multiplication table is not an end in
itself. We require study and practice because we believe that the
knowledge or the skill is worth having. Now it has been shown over
and over again that what is learned with satisfaction sticks; and
what is learned with pain is thrown overboard the first minute the
watchman is off his guard. Are the names of writers with the titles
of their books less well remembered by children who learn them
through the game of "Authors" than they are by children who might be
required to memorize them from a catalog? Are the sums and products
of numbers acquired in keeping scores of games less accurate and
less permanent in the mind of the child than the same sums and
products learned as school exercises? Is the skill acquired in
handling tools--sewing costumes, or making scenery for an amateur
play--any less effective or less lasting than the skill acquired in
sewing yards of stitches or sawing yards of board just for
"exercise" in a class? On the contrary, other things being equal,
arithmetic and authors and sewing and tinkering can be made both
more effective and more lasting when associated with pleasurable
feelings than when performed under strain, compulsion and
resentment. If it is only a question of "learning" this or that,
there is no doubt that the pleasant way is in every respect the
better way.

But, of course, it is not merely a question of learning the specific
skill or knowledge. There is also the need for learning application,
persistence through difficulties, endurance, and the other hardy
virtues that distinguish a disciplined character. And here the
contrast between the old attitude and the new is most marked. We can
certainly force children to do what is disagreeable; we can hold
them to their tasks when they are tempted to abandon the monotonous
and wearisome round of uninteresting drudgery. But is this the only
way to get for the children experience with such necessary, though
unpleasant, work? We are assuming of course that such experience is
necessary, since uninteresting work cannot be separated from most
important undertakings. A typical experience in a school that has
for several years conducted a class along the lines of the newer
psychology can answer our question.

One of the difficulties that had to be overcome was the mastery of
simple addition. Another was the art of writing; and of course
reading is a necessary art of modern life. Instead of the usual
drill and practice and exercises, this class passed through the
drudgery stage without realizing that school was a prison. This was
during the autumn of the Armistice. Food conservation and thrift
were in the air. These children were presented with a quantity of
garden vegetables, but there was more than they could use
themselves, so the suggestion was made that they could have the
surplus for future use. The children, under guidance, did all the
work connected with cold-pack canning of the tomatoes. This work was
not at every point "interesting," in the superficial sense; but the
purpose of the entire project was one that appealed to the children,
so that they were quite satisfied to do the many essential details.
Did they not here learn to clean their dishes and jars as well as
they would have done had the cleaning been a "duty" imposed
arbitrarily from above? Must drudgery be dreaded to be well done?

Let the teacher who had charge of this class describe what happened,
in her own words.

"The success of the first small group in carrying through the
various steps ... led to further work of the same sort, as various
vegetables were given us. The children also dried apples and lima
beans which they gathered themselves at the school farm.

"That the interest in this rather exacting work was sustained for
two months was doubtless due to the fact that the children had a
genuine purpose in canning a large quantity of vegetables. For early
in the work, upon the suggestion of one of the class, it had been
decided to have a sale and use the proceeds to buy milk for a sick
baby. Although I had not thought of this plan myself, I was glad to
lend it my support.

"The final preparation for the sale occupied a large share of the
time for several weeks. The chief consideration from the children's
point of view seemed to be who should take charge of the business of
selling. They had conducted a play store intermittently during the
fall, but, upon testing, it was found that most of the class were
ill prepared to act as salespeople.[A] The children readily
recognized this fact and willingly went to work to drill on addition
and subtraction. The most successful drill was accomplished by means
of a dramatic rehearsal of the forthcoming sale, some children
impersonating the visitors and the others the salesmen. Real money,
correct prices, and the actual jars of vegetables and fruit were
used for this play.

[Footnote A: Remember these were second-grade children--most of them
seven or eight years old.]

"The need of invitations, of price lists, and of bookkeepers the day
of the sale, was also recognized and led to much needed practice in
written English. The prices were determined by a study of the latest
food catalog, a small group with a teacher undertaking this work. It
necessitated the use of an alphabetical index, and in some cases the
calculation of the price of pints, when only quarts were listed, as
we had used both pint and quart jars.

"Further preparation consisted of the making of labels for the jars
and of posters for the room. The art teacher, when called in to
advise, taught the children how to make accurate square letters,
which they used in various sizes for the labels and posters. The
making of fifty or more small labels with half-inch letters proved
irksome to the little people, but they showed much persistence in
completing the task, because of their interest in the sale. The
eight children who made the final large posters did a great deal of
intelligent, painstaking work. From the artistic point of view, the
posters were not noteworthy, but they represented the children's own
suggestions.

"The sale was conducted by the children, who made their own change,
kept records of sales and wrapped up purchases. The various duties
were agreed upon by the class, in accordance with each one's proved
ability to carry them out, and everyone had some share."

In this simple account of an experimental class conducted at the
Ethical Culture School, in New York, under the direction of Miss
Mabel R. Goodlander, are many references to drill and practice. But
throughout all of the work it was possible to maintain the interest
of the children because, apparently, the attention was not on the
drill as an end in itself, but upon the special skill or knowledge
as a means to a more remote end. And this remote end was not the
formal one of "passing," or being promoted, or getting a good mark,
but the vital, urgent purpose of raising money through the sale for
a sick baby's milk. Undoubtedly the "motives" of the several
children in this class were varied and mixed--like the motives of
good citizens who are united in support of a particular candidate,
or a particular platform. But there was enough common purpose to
insure cooperation and persistence and effort from every single
child in proportion to his ability. The learning of stupid sums and
the practice in penmanship are no more attractive to these children
than they are to ordinary children in ordinary schools in all parts
of the country. But they overcame all internal obstacles, went
through with all of the monotony and drudgery, and to that extent
triumphed over any disposition to shirk or to loaf or to dawdle or
to flit from work to sensation.

And how is it with the learning of responsibility, with acquiring a
sense of duty? Many of us have no doubt learned what we have learned
of duty and responsibility, through the constant repetition of "Thou
shalt" and "Thou shalt not" by our elders during our own growing
years. But results at least as valuable have been obtained in the
cases of others through the constant rubbing up against their equals
in a free give-and-take atmosphere. Children learn to live with
others by living with others. They learn to work with others--to
"cooperate"--by working with others. They learn to play the game, to
do teamwork, to play fair, to play in good form, to hit hard only by
playing according to rule, with others, with worthy opponents, under
good supervision. In short, the "discipline" that makes for power
and freedom may be quite as easily obtained through the exercise of
freedom as through external coercion--nay, more easily, and more
effectively.

It is fair to ask whether training for a game is not quite analogous
to our idea of training for life; and whether the methods which are
found to be effective in the former kind of training are not equally
valuable for the latter. Assuming the analogy, would you have a child
learn the rules of such games as baseball or tennis from a book before
allowing him to handle a ball, or before letting him see a game? Would
you expect him to cooperate in teamwork after a long period of
drill upon the _rules_ governing team cooperation? Would you expect
him to hit hard because he has learned the correct answer to the
question, How should a player hit?

This may not seem a fair comparison to some of the "training" that
has actually been tried. Perhaps a more familiar analogy would be in
teaching a child correct movements for the game to be mastered,
separated from any experience with real games. Boys are "practicing"
for a game, and each one is drilling on some special detail,
hitting, catching, running bases, long throws, or what not; each one
of them has in mind as part of his moving purpose not only his
team's success and glory, but his own individual responsibility.
Contrast this with the same boys required to drill at precisely the
same movements on the theory that the "exercise" will do them good,
or that some time in the future they might have to meet a situation
in which a long throw or a swift run would be significant. Do you
expect the same enthusiasm and energy to be developed in both cases?
And if not the same enthusiasm and energy, can we expect the same
results--whether we view the results as so much skill or technic,
whether we view the results as so much "training in drudgery," or
whether we consider the results from the viewpoint of moral values
as so much devotion, self-sacrifice, restraint? The "moral" values
that have been for years attributed to athletics appear after all to
be the effects of intense, enthusiastic, and interested
participation in teamwork--that is, in purposeful and energetic
concern with joint undertakings.

The responsibilities we wish to develop, the sense of duty, no less
than the application and persistence, no less than knowledge and
skill, are types of habits which are best formed under the glow of
satisfying experience. Far from assuming a soft life for the child,
the idea of interest assumes the most strenuous kind of life. And
the experiences of all who have tried it justifies the assumption.
The experimental class already mentioned, similar experiments by
Mrs. Marietta Johnson at Fairhope, Alabama and elsewhere,
experimental classes at the Lincoln School and at the Horace Mann
School, at various "play" schools in this country and in England,
all show more continuous application of the children to whatever
they happen to have in hand, longer periods of intense activity, and
no sign whatever of loafing or shirking. The activities selected by
the children themselves involve just as much "discipline" as
anything that can be selected for them.

In these schools the children never hear the teacher call for
"attention," for although everybody knows that attention is an
essential of effective work, the attention takes care of itself
where the children already feel a genuine concern in the outcome.
And this concern insures satisfactory application, since the
children look forward to satisfying results. This does not mean, of
course, that either the work itself or the result is necessarily
"pleasant," in the ordinary sense. Often, indeed, it is quite the
reverse, as when the racer is exerting every last reserve of his
energy in the final spurt, or when the contestants are in suspense
awaiting the decision of the judges as to which is the best cake.
And the endless grind of practice and preparation is no more
"pleasant" to the child who knows the purpose and approves the
purpose of his efforts (having taken part in selecting the
undertaking) than similar exertion is to the child whose work is all
planned and directed by outsiders; but the satisfactions connected
with the exertions are different in the two cases, and the
corresponding results are correspondingly different.

The principle of interest as a guide to the training of children can
be applied in the home as well as in the school. It means, first of
all, taking into account the interests, tastes, preferences of the
children. As has already been suggested in earlier chapters, there
are many occasions when the child may be consulted or given a choice
of action, of amusements, of purchases, and so on--situations in
which it is a matter of indifference to older people, but in which
the making of a decision or a choice is both satisfying and valuable
to the child. Even where the decision is not an indifferent one, our
own should not be imposed in an arbitrary manner; when it differs
from that of the child, we can get his assent and cooperation, where
an arbitrary choice leaves him cold or even resentful.

The games children play, whether by themselves or with other
children, are only in part manifestations of tastes: they represent
to a degree stages of development. For the reason, therefore, that
interests develop, we shall find that what is a favorable time for
one child is not necessarily a favorable time for another child to
learn a particular thing. This is very well shown by the great
differences found among children, as to learning school subjects
like reading or writing. In some the interest is aroused very early,
and for them this is the best time; with others the interest does
not appear until the third or fourth grade, or even later, and for
such children this is the best time. There is no one period that is
best for all children; by attempting to treat all alike, therefore,
we not only waste a great deal of energy and good feeling, but we
often defeat our purpose by antagonizing the children and thus
making them resist the very things we want them to hug to
themselves. And this is just as true of what we try to do in the
home as it is of school teaching.

To discover the interests of the children requires that they be
given an opportunity to express themselves. This means in most cases
much more freedom than children have heretofore enjoyed. But it
means also constant vigilance on the part of the elders, not so much
to guard against the freedom being abused, as to guard against the
opportunity being wasted. The taste in games or in reading, the
choice of companions or of leisure time occupations must not only
show themselves to be indulged; they must be seized upon by those
who guide the children, as means for giving drive and direction to
further development. A child who devotes too much time to athletics
and too little to literature, may be drawn to reading through books
about athletic contests of the classics, or through modern stories
of college life. On the other hand, the boy who is prone to get his
satisfactions vicariously and to neglect active participation in
games and other activities, must be led through his reading,
properly selected and unostentatiously placed under his nose, to
more direct concern with producing practical effects in his
environment. The interest, once discovered, must be the means for
stimulating to greater exertion and to closer unification of the
child's activities.

One of the things that presents a difficulty in every generation is
the fact that the social and moral ideals change from age to age. We
are thus constantly tempted to put into the characters of our
children those traits that were valued highly by our parents,
without always considering the importance of each item for the days
in which our children will play their parts. Thus it comes about
that many of the virtues that have a traditional value may be
questioned when offered as staples for citizens of to-morrow.
Obedience, for example, is a permanent necessity in a society that
rests upon the assumption that one or a few chosen men represent the
will of the gods on earth, but has only a transitory value in a
democracy. As someone has said, obedience in childhood must be
considered as a scaffold that is useful while the lasting parts of
the structure are being put in place; when the desired structure is
completed, obedience is naturally removed as of no further service.
Now the kind of discipline required in a democracy calls for an
attitude or disposition that makes cooperation with others come as a
matter of course; it calls for the making of decisions, or the
forming of opinions, on the basis of facts; and it calls for the
habit of taking due account of the rights of others. The training
for this class of habits is best obtained through methods that take
full account of children's interests.

Just as the older outlook turned to "discipline" as a means for
obtaining freedom, the new psychology utilizes freedom as a means
for obtaining discipline. In both cases the end is of course the
same--that is, the liberation of the human spirit and the organizing
of the individual's powers to the greatest good. But as our ideas of
human relations and of values have changed, science has given us new
methods for attaining the final goals that we set ourselves.