Religious Education in the Family Part 25

But there is another form of lying which is frequently met in some form.

It may be called protective lying. Ask the little fellow with the jam-smeared face, "Have you been in the pantry?" and he is likely to do the same thing that nature does for the birds when she gives them a coat that makes it easier to hide from their enemies. He valiantly answers "No, Mother." He would protect himself from your reproof. There has been awakened before this the desire to seem good in your eyes and he desires your approbation most of all. The moral struggle with him is very brief; he does not yet distinguish between being good and seeming good; if his negative answer will help him to seem good he will give it.

What shall we do? First, stop long enough to remember that appet.i.tes for jam speak louder than your verbal prohibitions. The jam was there and you were not. It can hardly be said that he deliberately chose to do a wrong; he is still in the process of learning how to do things deliberately, just as you still are, for that matter. Consider whether your training of the anti-jam habit has been really conscientious and sufficient to establish the habit in any degree. It were wiser to ask these things of yourself before putting the fateful question to him. It would be better not to ask a small child that question. It demands too much of him. Besides, you are losing a chance to establish a valuable idea in his mind, namely, that acts usually carry evidences along with them. Better say, "I see you've been in the pantry." That will help to establish the habit of expecting our acts to be known. Then would follow with the little child the careful endeavor to train him to recognize the acts that are wrong because harmful, greedy, against the good of others, and against his own good.

Just here parents, especially many religious parents, meet the temptation thoughtlessly to use G.o.d as their ally by reminding the child that, though they could not see him in the pantry, G.o.d was there watching him. In the vivid memory of a childhood clouded by the thought of a police-detective Deity, may one protest against this act of irreverence and blasphemy? True, G.o.d was there; but not as a spy, a reporter of all that is bad, anxious to detect, but cowardly and cruel in silence at all other times! Let the child grow up with the happy feeling that G.o.d is always with him, rejoicing in his play, his well-aimed ball, his successes in school, his constant friend, helper, and confidant. I like better the G.o.d to whom a little fellow in Montana prayed the other day, "O G.o.d, I thank you for helping me to lick Billy Johnson!" The child of the pantry needs to know the G.o.d who will help him to do and know the right.

-- 3. OLDER CHILDREN

But protective lying presents a more serious problem with older children. The school-teacher and parent meet it, just as the judge and the employer meet it in adults. The cure lies early in life.

Truth-telling is as much a habit as lying is. Perhaps it is more easily practiced; its drafts are on the powers of observation and memory rather than on those of imagination. Along with the child's imaginative powers there must be developed the powers of exact observation and description.

Exact observation and description or relation are but parts of the larger general virtue of precision. Help children at every turn of life to be right--right in doing things, right in thinking, in saying, and in execution. Precision at any point in life helps lift the life's whole level. Truth-telling is not a separable virtue. You cannot make a boy truthful in word if you let him lie in deed. You cannot expect he will speak the truth if you do not train him to do the truth, in his play, in ordering his room, in thinking through his school problems, and in thinking through his religious difficulties. Truth-telling is the verbal reaction of the life which habitually holds that nothing is right until it is just right.

Two things would, ordinarily, make sure of a truthful statement, instead of a protective lie, in answer to your question: first, that the young person has been trained to the habit of seeing and stating things as they are--and that you really give him a chance so to state them, and, secondly, that to some degree there has been developed a recognition of considerations or values that are higher than either escape from punishment or the winning of your approbation. He will choose the course that offers what seems to him to be the greater good; he will choose between punishment, with rect.i.tude, a good conscience, a sense of unity with the higher good, of peace with G.o.d his friend, a greater approximation to your ideal, on the one side, and, on the other, escape from punishment.

Everything in that crisis will depend on how real you have made the good to be, how much the sense of the reality of G.o.d and his companionship has brought of joy and friendship, and how high are his values of the actual, the real, the true.

-- 4. AT THE CRISIS

But what shall we do as we meet the lie on the lips of the child? First, as already suggested, do not wait until you meet it. Train the child to the truthful life. Second, be sure you do not make too heavy moral demands. Remember the instinct to protect himself from immediate punishment or disapprobation is stronger than any other just then. Do not ask him to do what the law says the prisoner may not do, incriminate himself. We have no right to put on our children tests harder than they can bear. Often we put those which are harder than we could face. What you will do just then depends on what you have been doing for the training of the child or youth. Do not expect him to solve problems in moral geometry if you have neglected simple addition in that realm.

Punishment by the blow or the immediate sentence will be futile. The offender must know he has trespa.s.sed in a realm beyond your administration and rule; he has done more than commit an offense against you. Whatever consequences follow--such as your hesitation to accept his word--must evidently be a part of the operation of the entire moral law.

Help him to see that lying strikes at the root of all social relations and would make all happy and prosperous living, all friendship, and all business impossible by destroying social confidence.

Facing the crisis, do not demand more than your training gives you a right to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as to guilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question; we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see the values of exact.i.tudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring the events into the light of larger areas of time and circles of life, help him to see them related to all his life and to all mankind and to the very fringes of existence, to G.o.d and the eternal. That cannot be done in a moment; it is part of a habit of our own minds or it is not really done at all. At the moment we can, however, make the deepest impression by insistence on the importance of the actual, the real, the exactly true.

I. References for Study

E.L. Cabot, _Every Day Ethics_, chaps. xix, xx. Holt, $1.25.

W.B. Forbush, _On Truth Telling_. Pamphlet. American Inst.i.tute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.

J. Sully, _Children's Ways_, pp. 124-33. Appleton, $1.25.

II. Further Reading

G.S. Hall, "A Study of Children's Lies," _Educational Problems_, I, chap. vi. Appleton, $2.50.

E.P. St. John, _A Genetic Study of Veracity_. Pamphlet.

J. Sully, _Studies in Childhood_.

E.H. Griggs, _Moral Education_. Huebsch, $1.60.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. Are there degrees of lying?

2. When is a lie not a lie?

3. How can we discriminate among the statements of children?

4. How can we help them to recognize the qualities of truth?

5. In what ways are parents to blame for forcing children to protective lying?

6. What of the relation of the thought of G.o.d to the demands for truth?

7. Would you punish a child for lying and, if so, in what way?

CHAPTER XXII

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Concluded_)

-- 1. DISHONESTY

Many parents appear to think that the child's concepts of property rights and of fair dealing are without importance. Habits of pilfering are permitted to develop and success in cheating wins admiration. Low standards are accepted and religion is divorced from moral questions.

The family att.i.tude practically a.s.sumes that all persons cheat more or less and that it is necessary only to use wisdom to insure freedom from conviction.

Responsibility lies at home. We shall never have an honest generation until we have honest men and women to breed and train it. It is folly to think we can lay on the public schools the burden of the moral education of the young. Much is already being attempted there; yet little seems to be accomplished because the home, having the child before and after school and for a longer period each day, furnishes no adequate basis in habits, ideals, and instruction for the moral work of the school. If parents a.s.sume that one cannot succeed with absolute integrity, that dishonesty in some degree is necessary to prosperity, then children will learn that lesson despite all that may be said elsewhere. Honest children grow where, in answer to the false statement, "You will starve if you do business honestly," parents say, "Then we will starve."

But the very home life itself can be a teacher of dishonesty. Is it largely a matter of sham and pretense for the sake of social glory? Does it prefer a cheap veneer to a slowly acquired genuine article? Is the front appearance that of a dandy while the backyard looks like a slattern? Is the home striving for more than it deserves? Is it trying to get more out of life than it puts in? Evading taxes, avoiding duties, a community parasite, does it commend to children the arts of social cheating and lying? Such homes teach so loudly that no voice could be heard in them.

Given the atmosphere, ideals, and practices of the honest life in the home itself, the problems of conduct, in the realm of these rights, are more than half solved. Here in the home the real training for the life of business takes place. Not for an instant can we afford to lower standards here, nor to lose sight of the life-long power of our ideals, our habits, and our att.i.tudes on the conduct of the next generation. Do parents know that the problems of lying, cheating, quarreling are the great, vital questions for their children, much more important than industrial or professional success in life; that on these all success is predicated? If they do, surely they cannot regard the problems which arise as mere incidents; surely they will provide for the culture of the moral life as definitely as for the culture of the physical or the intellectual!

-- 2. LESSONS IN HONESTY

But children also acquire habits from their playmates. Whenever the act of pilfering appears, the wrong must be made clear. Some sense of property rights is necessary; not the right, as some a.s.sume, to do what you will with a thing because you have it, but the right to enjoy and usefully employ it. Help children to see the difference between mine and thine. Slovenly moral thinking often comes from too great freedom in forgetful borrowing within the family. In this little social group the members must first acquire the habits of respect for the rights of others. Through toys, tools, and books the lesson may be learned so early that it becomes a part of the normal order of things.

Children can learn that the game of life has its rules and that the breach of these rules spoils the game and prevents our own happiness.

They can learn, too, that these are not arbitrary rules; they are like the laws of nature; they are the conditions under which alone it is possible for people to live together and to make life worth while.

Gambling is wrong because it is unsocial; it is the attempt to gain without an equivalent giving. Cheating is wrong, no matter how many practice it, just as surely as cheating is wrong in the game on the playground.

Children are really peculiarly sensitive to the social consciousness. In school under no circ.u.mstances will they do that which the school custom forbids or the older boys condemn. In the home, despite contrary appearances, the opinion of elders, brothers, sisters, and parents is the recognized law. Every small boy wants to be like his big brother.

Children's conduct may be guided by an understanding of the social will outside the school and home. Help them to know that all people everywhere in organized society condemn cheating and dishonesty.[49]

Sentiment and emotional feeling must back up all teaching of conduct.

Your stories and readings should be selected with this in mind. The approbation of parents and of the great Father of all enters as an effectual motive.