Farm Boys and Girls Part 29

Vocational Training for Girls. Isabelle McGlaufin.

_Education_, April, 1911.

A Healthy Race; Woman's Vocation. C. M. Hill. _Westminster Review_, January, 1910.

Social Adjustment. S. Nearing. Pages 128-148, "Dependence of Women." Macmillan.

Purposes of Women. F. W. Saleeby, M.D. _Forum_, January, 1911.

Does the College rob the Cradle? H. Boice. _Delineator_, March, 1911.

The College Woman as a Home Maker. M. E. Wooley. _Ladies'

Home Journal_, Oct. 1, 1910.

The American Woman and her Home. Symposium. _Outlook_, April 17, 1910.

Teaching the Girl to Save. Home-Training Bulletin No. 7. 2 cents. Wm. A. McKeever, Manhattan, Kan.

CHAPTER XX

_CONCLUSION, AND FUTURE OUTLOOK_

In concluding this volume we wish again to remind parents of the necessity of working for specific results in the rearing of their children. Modern man, unlike his ancestor, who roamed over the earth, is a creature of complex and highly refined make-up which no primitive or natural environment could possibly produce. The forces that work upon his character development are so radically different from those which formed the life of his remote forbears as possibly to account for the contrasts in the two forms of finished personality.

Although there is evidence to support the theory that man belongs to the general evolutionary scheme of animal life, the progress of the race has been so very slow that a thousand years of time can show no very distinct improvement either in physical form or mental quality. While the human young is exceedingly plastic as an individual,--yielding easily from one side of his inherent activities to another,--the race is relatively fixed and stable.

STRIVE FOR PRECONCEIVED RESULTS

Parents and other instructors of the young must therefore accept their charges as made up of very complex potentialities of learning and achievement--each a bundle of latent characters transmitted to him from the ancestral line. Many of these inherited characters are too weak in any given individual ever to show in his life conduct; many others will come to the surface only in response to proper stimuli and practice; still others will break out and show a predominance almost in defiance of any training intended to counteract them.

But the teacher and trainer of the infant child may accept the theory that the latter, if taken in time, can be bent and modified many ways in his character formation; that such plasticity is, however, always subject to the relative strength or weakness of the many inherited apt.i.tudes and activities latent within the individual.

There is no good reason, therefore, why the parent should not begin early to build up the character of his child in accordance with a preconceived plan; provided such plan do no violence to any of nature's stubborn and inexorable laws. The parent may also accept this task as a long and tedious undertaking, and expect to get results in proportion as he works intelligently for them. The farmer does not even think of producing good crop results from his land without hard work and much thought; then, why should he expect so delicate a plant as the human young to reach satisfactory maturity without much care and consideration? By far the greatest sin against the child is neglect of his training.

CONSULT EXPERT ADVICE

We must not be unmindful of the necessity of a balanced schedule of activities for the child. The vegetable plant must have air, sunlight, moisture, nitrogen, and so on, to support its growth. If one of these essential elements be lacking, the result is fatal to the fruitage. So with the child. If the best character results are to be expected, certain essential elements must be put into use. We have named them as play, work, recreation, and social experience. But as one approaches the individual problem of child training it does not prove so simple and easy as these terms imply. When and how to give each of these necessary exercises, how much of each to furnish, the means thereof, and the like--these and many other such questions begin to arise.

When the parent reaches the point of perplexity in dealing with his child, it is a fairly good indication that his interest is aroused, at least. But what is to be done? Simply the same thing he would do at the point of perplexity in the wheat propagation, _consult an expert_. If one of the work mules becomes lame or reveals a bad disposition, should the owner take it to an electrician for advice? If the family cow becomes locoed or shows an unusual result in her milk product, should one consult a piano tuner? Yet, strange to say, parents are often known to do similarly in dealing with the perplexing problems of child-rearing. Consult the popular magazines and the book shelves any day and you will find many lengthy dissertations on the boy and the girl, written not infrequently by persons who have spent a lifetime studying _something else_. But they are very fond of children and they mistake this fondness for knowledge of an expert kind; and worst of all, they offer it as such.

The farm parents who wish to receive expert advice in the treatment of their children must learn to consult directly or through literature only those who have made a long and intensive study of child problems. And in the latter case they need not expect to obtain all necessary help from one source alone. Usually the child-study expert is a specialist in only one certain part of the field. For example, at the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Lightner Witmer, there has been made a specialty of the sub-normal child. We should probably obtain from that source more expert help in that one phase of child welfare than from any other source in America. If one wishes reliable help on the subject of diseases of children, he should naturally expect to obtain it from some medical authority, from one Who has spent long years practicing in a general hospital for children. One of the very few great sources of information on the general psychology of child development is Clark University, where many child-welfare problems have been worked out by experts under the able direction of Dr. G. Stanley Hall.

MEET EACH AWAKENING INTEREST

A very reliable general rule of guidance for the parent child trainer is to strive to furnish intensive practice for each and every childish and juvenile interest at the time of its awakening. As stated in Chapter II the most predominant interests in the young emerge in response to the unfoldment of instincts and the development of organic growths within.

Perhaps all do so. But the point of importance for the parent is to meet each of these awakenings at the time of its highest activity with intensive training. The instinct to play, to fight, to steal, to run away, to work (?), to fall in love, to engage in some occupation, to marry and make a home, to have children--these have been named as especially important by virtue of their awakening successively the individual's interests in matters of great consequence to character development.

But instincts are blind. Their possessor does not foresee the way they point. They come suddenly and catch the subject unprepared to direct their force in what we call intelligent ways. Hence, the extreme necessity of there being present at the side of the child, at the time of his instinctive awakening, some mature and intelligent person who has been through the experiences the former is about to begin, and who will sympathetically point the right way and insist that it be followed.

WORK FOR SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

One can scarcely become deeply interested in the future of his own child without coming intimately into touch with the child welfare problems at large. Even country parents, isolated though they may be, will discover that serious study of the matter of bringing up a family of good children will require that they study the lives of other human young.

Moreover, they will need the use of other children as "laboratory"

material for training their own. All this will gradually lead the way to a fuller social sympathy in such parents and to the inculcation of more wholesome social ideals in the minds of their offspring.

Finally, the rural parents who are seeking a full and adequate development of the young members of their own family will most probably see their way clear to a.s.sume a helpful leadership of the young people of the neighborhood as advocated in Chapter X of this volume.

While many agencies for the betterment of rural youth have been discussed,--such as the County Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scout Movement, and the Social and Economic Clubs,--the neighborhood which has at least one of these agencies intensively at work may be considered fortunate. And it may be said that such a neighborhood is well on the way to economic improvement as well as social improvement.

THE OUTLOOK VERY PROMISING

Throughout the United States there is being manifested a general tendency to accept the theory that our human stock is relatively sound.

While there are seemingly large numbers of the criminal, delinquent, and dependent cla.s.ses, they are in reality comparatively few in proportion to the entire population. And when we accept the estimate of the experts that about ninety per cent of the cases included in the cla.s.ses just named are preventable through wise foresight and training, the outlook for a better race of human beings becomes most cheering.

"The proper study of mankind is man," says the poet. But for many generations we have regarded this statement as mere poetry and not necessarily truth. Our policy up to the recent past has been rather this: The proper study of mankind is everything _except_ man, leaving the all-important problems of child-rearing to the decisions of wise old grand-mothers and debating societies. But a radical change has come, and that within this present generation. Men and women highly trained in the colleges and universities are now applying their scientific methods to the study of man with no less zeal and earnestness than that which has characterized the student of the non-human problems for many generations of time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE. x.x.xII.

FIG. 39.--Sowing the seed, all by herself.

FIG. 40.--Thinning the vegetables.

New York Scenes.]

Through the able conclusions of the painstaking expert the so-called inst.i.tutional life has been especially improved. The industrial (reform) schools are now practicing a system of balanced activities--of study, work, play, and the like--such as the findings of these investigators have warranted. The method of paroling the delinquent child, after he has spent a term of preparation, was proved most helpful through the careful tests of a large number of cases. Recently the parole system has been effectively applied to certain cla.s.ses of penitentiary convicts. A most productive agency for good now in use in many of the prisons and all the industrial schools is that of building up the waste places in the individual life through specific training and instruction. The first question raised in such cases is, What is the particular moral defect of the individual? second, What are the causes?

third, What will reconstruct his character and give permanent relief?

That is, the expert psychologist and the expert sociologist are being called into service with the expert alienist and physician. The purpose is to save and reconstruct the whole man. Compulsory education and trade schooling are now very common in state prisons.

In the care and protection of the insane and the feeble-minded our country can boast of but slow progress. Many of the members of these cla.s.ses are permitted to run at large and even to marry and beget their kind. Now, while our human stock is in its ma.s.s very sound and sane, there are constantly being thrown off from it these mentally defective cla.s.ses. The complete obliteration of all such cla.s.ses to-day would not result in their complete disappearance from the race. Others would be born as variants from normal parentage. But the evil of it all lies in the fact that we are still permitting many of these defectives to multiply, and that in the face of the fact that a normal child has never been reported among the offspring of two feeble-minded parents.

THE MODERN SERVICE TRAINING

Of all the inst.i.tutions contributing to the direct improvement of the race there is perhaps none surpa.s.sing in importance the modern training school for social workers. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St.

Louis, and other large cities such may be found usually affiliated with some university or college. The general purpose is that of training men and women to go into the field of social service and apply the methods and conclusions worked out by the research student. Hitherto, much of the social work has been conducted by persons possessing merely religious zeal and enthusiasm. Their efforts were praiseworthy, but they lacked the training necessary for coping with modern educational and economic problems. The distinctive feature of the new methods is that it is based on scientific and business principles. That is, the social worker is trained in the same methodical way as the prospective lawyer or school teacher, and is also paid reasonably for his services.

The modern social worker not only proceeds with a well-defined plan, but he usually makes or requires a survey of his newly-opened field. The social survey--now becoming more common as a means of beginning a campaign of improvement in the cities--has revealed some most interesting, as well as distressing, situations in the submerged districts. The housing situation, sanitary conditions, wages and incomes of different cla.s.ses, sweat-shop employment, the protection of workmen in shops and factories, child-labor conditions, and so on--these are examples of the problems of the investigator, while his tabulated reports serve to guide the social worker. Now, the duties of the latter are many, but in general they lie in the direction of improvement of the conditions as found. Among the undertakings that often fall to his lot are: establishing new social centers in congested districts, providing for new parks and playgrounds, locating reading and recreation rooms, organizing self-help and home-improvement clubs among the lower cla.s.ses, conducting cooking and sewing schools, and the like.

Of special interest to the rural dweller is the fact that the modern methods of first making surveys and then applying remedial agencies is now being extended into the country districts, giving many marked results already and promising greater ones for the future.