Your Child: Today and Tomorrow Part 11

What is likely to be the greatest source of grief on the part of the parent is the apparent lapse of the growing boy or girl from standards of honesty and truthfulness with which she has so solicitously tried to imbue him or her. But this lapse during the critical growing period is so widespread, so common among boys and girls who afterward become fine men and women, that special students of the problem have come to believe that semi-criminality is quite normal, at least for boys, at this age. Now, while some children are perhaps by nature incapable of attaining to a satisfactory moral level, most children will, under suitable surroundings, grow away from this state of lying and stealing; but under adverse conditions these distressing features of their behavior may become habitual.

Suitable surroundings and treatment would here consist of the presence of good models and high ideals, sympathetic help in resisting temptation, and not in a harsh denunciation of each unapproved act as evidence of turpitude and perversion. You need not a.s.sume that there _is_ perversion until that is demonstrated beyond any doubt. For, if the child is morally redeemable, he should be treated like one who is weak and who needs help until the difficulties are mastered; otherwise you are likely to encourage in him the feeling that he is hopeless, and he will relax all effort for his own self-mastery.

Along with the emotions related to romantic love there is a rapid development of the religious side of the nature, of a consciousness of the race as a whole, of a spirit of chivalry and disinterestedness-- all emotions that bear a tremendous motive power which needs to be guided into suitable channels. Never before and never again has the individual the endurance and the energy for such self-sacrifice, for such devotion, for such exertion in behalf of the purest of ideals. At the same time, the increased sensitiveness shrinks from every sneer and every evidence of misunderstanding or unsympathetic reproof. It is therefore unwise to tease the girl or boy about the "friend" of the opposite s.e.x; it is cruel to sneer at their ambitions, and it may be positively demoralizing to ridicule their ideals.

A mother of unusual intelligence, who had devoted herself not only to the routine work connected with her household and the care of her children, but had made special efforts to keep informed on what was going on in the world of thought and practical affairs, and who had a busy life of varied activities, was walking along a city street with her youngest son--just fifteen. The adolescent, who was rather free in his comments on what went on around him, made this pretty little speech to his mother:

"Mother, I think you have a very petty mind. Here you fuss around trying to help out that poor V---- family by getting together clothing for the children, and an odd job for the old man once in a while. And you have been trying to raise a fund to complete the education of the W---- boy, and all things of that kind. But all you have done does not help to solve the problem of poverty."

The mother, who had indeed been carrying on these various good works, alongside of many other activities, naturally resented the criticism of her son. But what she minded most was the "inconsistency"

of the boy when, a few minutes later, they pa.s.sed a street preacher with a crowd about him. They could not hear what the man was saying, but the wise young adolescent remarked, "I wish I had some money to help that fellow with."

Now, thinks the mother, what do you know about this man's purposes; what is he working for?

The boy did not know; but he wanted to do something "to help the 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 ill.u.s.trates 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sociation 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 pa.s.s away.

XIV.

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

With special a.s.sistance 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 inst.i.tutions 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed on come to manifest themselves as parts of the character. The parent pa.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 regime 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 apt.i.tudes 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 a.s.sociated 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.s as "average" children, however, may be divided into cla.s.ses 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 repet.i.tion 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 s.e.x 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.