Education and the Good Life

do not let it seem that you are doing it as a punishment, but rather as an instruction: “See, that is what you did to your little sister.” When the child protests, you say: “Well, if it was unpleasant, you mustn’t do it to her.” So long as the whole incident is simple and immediate, the child will understand, and will learn that other people’s feelings must be considered. In that case, serious cruelty will never develop. All moral instruction must be immediate and concrete: it must arise out of a situation which has grown up naturally, and must not go beyond what ought to be done in this particular instance. The child himself will apply the moral in other similar cases. It is much easier to grasp a concrete[175] instance, and apply analogous considerations to an analogous instance, than to apprehend a general rule and proceed deductively. Do not say, in a general way, “Be brave, be kind”, but urge him to some particular piece of daring, and then say, “Bravo, you were a brave boy”; get him to let his sister play with his mechanical engine, and when he sees her beaming with delight, say, “That’s right, you were a kind boy.” The same principle applies in dealing with cruelty: Look out for its faint beginnings, and prevent them from developing. If, in spite of all your efforts, grave cruelty develops at a later age, the matter must be taken very seriously, and dealt with like an illness. The boy should be punished in the sense that unpleasant things should happen to him, just as they do when he has measles, but not in the sense that he should be made to feel wicked. He should be isolated for a while from other children and from animals, and it should be explained to him that it is not safe to let him associate with them. He should be made to realize, as far as possible, how he would suffer if he were cruelly treated. He should be made to feel that a great misfortune had befallen him in the shape of an impulse to cruelty, and that his elders were endeavouring to shield him from a similar misfortune in the future. I believe that such methods would be completely[176] successful in all except a few pathological cases. Physical punishment I believe to be never right. In mild forms, it does little harm, though no good; in severe forms, I am convinced that it generates cruelty and brutality. It is true that it often produces no resentment against the person who inflicts it; where it is customary, boys adapt themselves to it and expect it as part of the course of nature. But it accustoms them to the idea that it may be right and proper to inflict physical pain for the purpose of maintaining authority—a peculiarly dangerous lesson to teach to those who are likely to acquire positions of power. And it destroys that relation of open confidence which ought to exist between parents and children, as well as between teachers and pupils. The modern parent wants his children to be as unconstrained in his presence as in his absence; he wants them to feel pleasure when they see him coming; he does not want a fictitious Sabbath calm while he is watching, succeeded by pandemonium as soon as he turns his back. To win the genuine affection of children is a joy as great as any that life has to offer. Our grandfathers did not know of this joy, and therefore did not know that they were missing it. They taught children that it was their “duty” to love their parents, and proceeded to make this duty almost[177] impossible of performance. Caroline, in the verse quoted at the beginning of this chapter, can hardly have been pleased when her father went to her, “to whip her, there’s no doubt”. So long as people persisted in the notion that love could be commanded as a duty, they did nothing to win it as a genuine emotion. Consequently human relations remained stark and harsh and cruel. Punishment was part of this whole conception. It is strange that men who would not have dreamed of raising their hand against a woman were quite willing to inflict physical torture upon a defenceless child. Mercifully, a better conception of the relations of parents and children has gradually won its way during the last hundred years, and with it the whole theory of punishment has been transformed. I hope that the enlightened ideas which begin to prevail in education will gradually spread to other human relations as well, for they are needed there just as much as in our dealings with our children.