Euthenics, the science of controllable environment Part 6

When human beings and families rationally subordinate their own interests as perfectly to the welfare of future generations as do animals under the control of instinct, the world will have a more enduring type of family life than exists at present. This can only be accomplished by the development of controlling ideals which are supported not only by reason and intelligence but by ethical impulse and religious motive.

The home should be considered the place where are to be developed and conveyed the precious qualities which are so vital to the continuity of the race and the progress of human society and civilization.

Those factors which are of a more material or physical nature, such as shelter, food, dress, and personal health, are to be estimated in their relation to mind, character, and effective conduct.

In the confusion of relative values human health as one of the essential means to many worthy ends is usually neglected. Man is the most highly developed of all species of animals. He is, to some degree at least, civilized, and yet human beings are of all animals the sickliest, and this in spite of the fact that human health is more important to man and to the world than the health of any other creature.

And by health I do not mean simply existence, freedom from pain, or absence of disease, but rather organic power and efficiency, the maximum vital ability possible to the individual for the doing of all that seems most worth while in life.

_Dr. Thomas D. Wood, Lake Placid Conference, 1902._

CHAPTER V

RESPONSIBILITY

The ideal of "home" is protection from dangers from _within_--bad habits, bad food, bad air, dirt and abuse,--shelter, in fact, from all stunting agencies, just as the gardener protects his tender plants until they become strong enough to stand by themselves. The child's home environment is certainly a potent factor in his future efficiency.

But more than physical protection is that education in all that goes to make up profitable living, acquired by following the mother or nurse in her daily round and in having legitimate questions answered.

Imitation is the first step in good habits, as in learning to walk or to read. That which is set before the child should be worthy its imitation, and be of value when fixed as a habit. Habits of health, correct position, deep breathing, clean ways, distaste for dirt in one's person or in one's vicinity, liking for fresh air, for simple food, good habits of exercise, of reading, and the thousand and one trifles that go to make up the efficient worker in adult years, all belong to the well-ordered home, where, as one author puts it, the child is the business of the day.

But the State cannot risk its property too far.

When mothers become so careless or ignorant that half their children fail to reach their first birthday, and of those that live to be three years old a majority are defrauded of their birthright of health, some agency must step in.

If the State is to have good citizens it must provide for the teaching of the essentials to a generation that will become the wiser mothers and fathers of the next. Therefore, even if we regard this as only a temporary expedient, we must begin to teach the children in our schools, and begin at once, that which we see they are no longer learning in the home. "The achievement at Huddersfield, England, is especially noteworthy. The average annual number of deaths of infants for ten years had been 310. By a systematic education of mothers the number was in 1907 reduced to 212. The cost of saving these ninety-eight lives was about $2,000."[11]

[11] Dr. Charles H. Chapin.

One university has established a course in the care of children, much to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the press. The United States Commissioner of Education has, however, been a responsible mover in the idea.

But real progress by means of family education means the stable family and the permanent dwelling. Where is the family in the permanent dwelling today? Among any cla.s.s, except the agricultural, where is the stable family?

Since industry has taken woman's work from her, and she has to follow it out into the world, the means of education for the child has gone from the home. Its atmosphere is artificial, if the attempt is made.

To work exclusively on the family, for the sake of the child, is a very slow process. As in all American life, the quicker method appeals most strongly. The school is today the quickest means of reaching both child and home; the present home through the child, and the future homes through the children when they grow up.

And time presses! A whole generation has been lost because the machine ran wild without guidance, and all attempt at improvement was met by futile resistance.

It is very difficult to present the socionomist's view of the child in the home so that it may appeal to the two extremes of opinion. There are those who still apply mediaeval rules to twentieth century living; those who believe, honestly, that the ideal life was found in the days when the mother was the manufacturer in her own home and the children were her helpers in all the varied processes. "There was never any artificial teaching devised so good for children as the daily helping in the household tasks." The inference is made that therefore the same restriction for the mother and the children leads to an ideal life today. Such persons fail to realize that the twentieth century is practically a new world. The old rules which related to material things hardly hold more closely than they would on the planet Mars.

The fundamental moral principles of reverence, obedience, love, and unselfish sacrifice must be worked in on a new background.

To keep the eighteenth century habit, so carefully taught the girl, of courtesying as she stepped aside to allow the rider or the ox cart to pa.s.s, in these days of the swift automobile, which would be out of sight before the knee could bend, is no more ridiculous than to expect the average young mother to follow the methods of her grandmother. Her mother's ways are now p.r.o.nounced all wrong, not necessarily because they were wrong then, but because conditions have changed, knowledge has been gained, and it is clearly a waste of human life, of money, of physical and mental power for people to be sick and die because the caretaker does not use the knowledge in circulation.

If the young mother can learn how better to fulfill her duties by going out of the house to lectures or cla.s.ses, why not?

Tracts are not always successful as an incentive to conduct. It is obviously impossible to pa.s.s a blue law compelling parents to conform to--what ideal? The school is fast taking the place of the home, not because it wishes to do so, but because the home does not fulfill its function, and so far has not been made to, and the lack must be supplied. The personal point of view, inculcated now by modern conditions of strife for money, just as surely as it must have been by barbarian struggle in pre-civilized days, must be supplanted by the broad view of majority welfare. The extreme of the personal point of view, expressed in such phrases as "The world owes me a living;" "My child is mine to treat as I please;" "It is n.o.body's business how I spend my money;" "I have a right to all the pleasure I can get out of life," is well shown in Mr. H. G. Wells's a.n.a.logy[12]: "A cat's standpoint is probably strictly individualistic. She sees the whole universe as a scheme of more or less useful, pleasurable, and interesting things concentrated upon her sensitive and interesting personality. With a sinuous determination she evades disagreeables and pursues delights. Life is to her quite clearly and simply a succession of pleasures, sensations, and interests, among which interests there happen to be--kittens."

[12] Mankind in the Making.

This unsuspicious ignorance of the real nature of life is by no means confined to animals and savages; it would seem to be the common view of many young people today. At least they take as little care of the homes to which they bring children, and they follow the cat's example in boxing the children's ears and turning them out to fend for themselves.

The last generation seemed to become disciples of Schopenhauer in his pa.s.sionate rebellion against the fate that deferred all the pleasure of the present to the needs of the future generation. Evolution has revealed the necessity for this subordination of the individual lot to the destiny of the race, if progress is to be made. The man who a.s.serts himself as free from race trammels is snuffed out as a factor--a blighted blossom fallen to earth and trodden under foot. To the student of biological evolution, the individual is as a mere pin point on the chart of community advance, for surely society grows according to evolutionary law. "As certainly as Nature gives the poor child its chance of a good life, so certainly do the circ.u.mstances of slum environment rob it forthwith of its birthright--it is not uncommon to find more than half the children of three years of age hanging on to life with marks of disease and undergrowth firmly implanted on their tender frames. Yet, practically, none of this is inherited in the true sense; it is the victory of evil human devices in their endeavor to cheat Nature of her own. If ever there was a mission in the world worthy of the most strenuous service, it is to wrest back this victory, be it out of pity for suffering children or for the very welfare and existence of the nation.

"The schools have made their beginning; the _homes_ have not yet started; they wait the impulse from without. It is for voluntary, intelligent opinion to get to work on the home, and never to relax until a race of parents has arisen which knows no other duty to the state than to rear with heart and brain the children which have been given to them. Then we shall hear no more about physical degeneracy."[13]

[13] Dr. H. M. Eichholz, Inspector of Schools. Paper before Conference of Women Workers, London, 1904.

Hope for the future is to be found in the conclusions of the immigration commission, that in one generation certain marked changes in stature and in head measurements have taken place in the children of immigrants of various nationalities, such changes as have hitherto been considered as the result of centuries. The commissioners credit the better environment and larger opportunities with these indications of increasing intellectuality and mental force.

Most human efficiency is the result of habits rather than of innate ability. These habits of mind, as well as of body, are developed by the home life at an early age. The home is responsible for the upbringing of healthy, intelligent children. Here is the place for fostering the valuable and suppressing the harmful traits. The school can never take the place of the home in this. With the large cla.s.ses of the public schools, the teacher should not be asked to undertake this individual work. Moreover, correcting a child for personal habits can hardly be effective before fifty or sixty pairs of critical eyes.

The office of the home must be to teach habits of right living and daily action, and a joy and pride in life as well as responsibility for life. It is not fair that the parents should sit back and shift to the school the whole responsibility for the future citizen.

The little modifications can best be made in the home, permanent foundations can be laid and braced with habits so good and strong that nothing can shake them. Most powers are the result of habits. Let the furrows be plowed deeply enough while the brain cells are plastic, then human energies will result in efficiency and the line of least resistance will be the right line. Everything, therefore, which influences the child must be the best known to science. The houses of the land must be regulated by the scientific laws of right living. To the woman, the home worker, we say: "You must have the will power, for the sake of your child, to bring to his service all that has been discovered for the promotion of human efficiency, so that he may have the habit, the _technique_."

To pay a tax today for the benefit of one's children is a principle of insurance, of benefit a.s.sociation. This feeling of obligation means present sacrifice of ease and inclination, and it has been increasingly shirked, so that it is not surprising that a tax to insure one against future loss by disease is an unwelcome proposition.

The whole question of the child in the home is one of ethics, as the writers on social conditions have been trying to convince the world.

If the swarms of dwellers in the busy hives of industry have no sense of their humanity, if they do not use the human power of looking ahead, that power which differentiates man from animals, what better are they than animals?

No one can be sorry that there are no children in thousands of homes one knows. It is better that children should not have been born than to come into an inheritance of suffering and mental and moral dwarfing. Social uplift will not be possible while parents take the view of cats, or even of a well-to-do mother who said, "I did not have my baby to discipline her; I had her to play with."

No state can thrive while its citizens waste their resources of health, bodily energy, time, and brain power, any more than a nation may prosper which wastes its natural resources.

America today is wasting its human possibilities even more prodigally than its material wealth. The latter deficiency is being brought to a halt. Shall the human side receive less attention? A sharply divided line between home and school is no longer clearly drawn. Parents'

a.s.sociations are being formed and are cooperating with the school-teacher. To what end? To the better moral and intellectual atmosphere of the home. Physical education has had its vogue, but too much as an endeavor apart, not as a necessary element in the whole.

The pedagogical world is now becoming convinced that physical defects are more often than not the basis of mental incompetence, and this leads logically to the teaching of the laws of right living in a practical way, not merely as lessons from books, but as daily practice. This practice must eventually go into the home, where the most of the child's hours are spent. It is as useless to expect good health from unsanitary houses as good English from two hours' school training diluted by twelve hours of slovenly language. Hence the imperative need of such teaching and example as can be put into practice; and since immediate house to house renovation and change of view are impossible, the school must provide for teaching how to live wisely and sanely, as well as for clear thinking and aesthetic appreciation. Practical hygiene, food, cleanliness, sanitation, all must eventually be exemplified by the schoolhouse and taught as a part of a general education to all pupils, boys and girls.

If this sounds like socialism, let us not be afraid, but educate for five or ten years all children, so that homes may be better managed, and then it is to be hoped there will be no need for such school training. To live economically in the broad sense of wise use of time, money, and bodily strength is the great need of the twentieth century.

This is practical economics. This is something which cannot today, except in rare instances, be learned at home, for conditions change so rapidly that grown people may not keep up with them. Mothers' ways are superseded before the children are grown.

The school, if it is maintained as a progressive inst.i.tution and a defense against predatory ideas, is the people's safeguard from being crushed by the irresistible car of progress. I repeat, standards may be set by the school which will reach and influence the community in a few months. Such standards should be a means of safeguarding the people, and this leads to the most important service which a teacher of domestic economy can render to the people in giving them a sense of control over their environment, than which nothing is so conducive to stability of ideas.

To feel one's self in command of a situation robs it of its terror. A great danger in America today is the loss of this feeling of self-confidence with which the pioneer was abundantly furnished. A certain helpless dependence is creeping over the land because of the peculiar development of resources, which must be replaced by a sense of power over one's environment.

_Home Ideals_

There is no n.o.ble life without a n.o.ble aim.

The watchword of the future is the welfare and security of the child.

Love of home and of what the home stands for converts the drudgery of daily routine into a high order of social service.