Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young

Interest on Balances

One great advantage of the plan of having an account over that of paying cash at stated times is, that it affords an opportunity for the father or mother to allow interest for any balances left from time to time in their hands, so as to initiate the children into a knowledge of the nature and the advantages of productive investments, and familiarize them with the idea that money reserved has within it a principle of increase. The interest allowed should be altogether greater than the regular rate, so as to make the advantage of it in the case of such small sums appreciable to the children—but not too great. Some judgment and discretion must be exercised on this as on all other points connected with the system.

The arrangements for the keeping of an account being made, and the account opened, there is, of course, no necessity, as in the case of payments made simply in cash, that the business should be transacted at stated times. At any time when convenient, the entry may be made of the amount which has become due since the time of the last entry. And when, from time to time, the child wishes for money, the parent will look at his account and see if there is a balance to his credit. If there is, the child will be entitled to receive whatever he desires up to the amount of the balance. Once in a month, or at any other times when convenient, the account can be settled, and the balance, with the accrued interest, carried to a new account.

All this, instead of being a trouble, will only be a source of interest and pleasure to the parent, as well as to the children themselves, and, without occupying any sensible portion of time, will be the means of gradually communicating a great deal of very useful instruction.

Employment of the Money

It will have a great effect in "training up children in the way in which they should go," in respect to the employment of money, if a rule is made for them that a certain portion, one-quarter or one-half, for example, of all the money which comes into their possession, both from their regular allowance and from gratuities, is to be laid aside as a permanent investment, and an account at some Savings Bank be opened, or some other formal mode of placing it be adopted—the bank-book or other documentary evidence of the amount so laid up to be deposited among the child's treasures.

In respect to the other portion of the money—namely, that which is to be employed by the children themselves as spending-money, the disbursement of it should be left entirely at their discretion, subject only to the restriction that they are not to buy any thing that will be injurious or dangerous to themselves, or a means of disturbance or annoyance to others. The mother may give them any information or any counsel in regard to the employment of their money, provided she does not do it in the form of expressing any wish, on her part, in regard to it. For the very object of the whole plan is to bring out into action, and thus to develop and strengthen, the judgment and discretion of the child; and just as children can not learn to walk by always being carried, so they can not learn to be good managers without having the responsibility of actual management, on a scale adapted to their years, thrown really upon them. If a boy wishes to buy a bow and arrow, it may in some cases be right not to give him permission to do it, on account of the danger accompanying the use of such a plaything. But if he wishes to buy a kite which the mother is satisfied is too large for him to manage, or if she thinks there are so many trees about the house that he can not prevent its getting entangled in them, she must not object to it on that account. She can explain these dangers to the boy, if he is inclined to listen, but not in a way to show that she herself wishes him not to buy the kite. "Those are the difficulties which you may meet with," she may say, "but you may buy the kite if you think best."

Then when he meets with the difficulties, when he finds that he can not manage the kite, or that he loses it among the trees, she must not triumph over him, and say, "I told you how it would be. You would not take my advice, and now you see how it is." On the contrary, she must help him, and try to alleviate his disappointment, saying, "Never mind. It is a loss, certainly. But you did what you thought was best at the time, and we all meet with losses sometimes, even when we have done what we thought was best. You will make a great many other mistakes, probably, hereafter in spending money, and meet with losses; and this one will give you an opportunity of learning to bear them like a man."

The most implicit Faith to be kept with Children in Money Transactions

I will not say that a father, if he is a man of business, ought to be as jealous of his credit with his children as he is of his credit at the bank; but I think, if he takes a right view of the subject, he will be extremely sensitive in respect to both. If he is a man of high and honorable sentiments, and especially if he looks forward to future years when his children shall have arrived at maturity, or shall be approaching towards it, and sees how important and how delicate the pecuniary relations between himself and them may be at that time, he will feel the importance of beginning by establishing, at the very commencement, not only by means of precept, but by example, a habit of precise, systematic, and scrupulous exactitude in the fulfillment of every pecuniary obligation. It is not necessary that he should do any thing mean or small in his dealings with them in order to accomplish this end. He may be as liberal and as generous with them in many ways as he pleases, but he must keep his accounts with them correctly. He must always, without any demurring or any excuse, be ready to fulfill his engagements, and teach them to fulfill theirs.

Possible Range of Transactions between Parents and Children

The parent, after having initiated his children into the regular transaction of business by his mode of managing their allowance-fund, may very advantageously extend the benefits of the system by engaging with them from time to time in other affairs, to be regulated in a business-like and systematic manner. For example, if one of his boys has been reserving a portion of his spending-money as a watch-fund, and has already half enough for the purchase, the father may offer to lend him the balance and take a mortgage of the watch, to stand until the boy shall have taken it up out of future savings; and he can make out a mortgage-deed expressing in a few and simple words the fact that the watch is pledged to him as security for the sum advanced, and is not to become the absolute property of the boy till the money for which it is pledged is paid. In the course of years, a great number of transactions in this way may take place between the father or mother and their boy, each of which will not only be a source of interest and enjoyment to both parties, but will afford the best possible means of imparting, not only to the child directly interested in them, but to the other children, a practical knowledge of financial transactions, and of forming in them the habit of conducting all their affairs in a systematic and business-like manner.

The number and variety of such transactions in which the modes of doing business among men may be imitated with children, greatly to their enjoyment and interest, is endless. I could cite an instance when what was called a bank was in operation for many years among a certain number of children, with excellent effect. One was appointed president, another cashier, another paying-teller. There was a ledger under the charge of the cashier, with a list of stockholders, and the number of shares held by each, which was in proportion to the respective ages of the children. The bank building was a little toy secretary, something in the form of a safe, into which there mysteriously appeared, from time to time, small sums of money; the stockholders being as ignorant of the source from which the profits of the bank were derived as most stockholders probably are in the case of larger and more serious institutions. Once in six months, or at other periods, the money was counted, a dividend was declared, and the stockholders were paid in a regular and business-like manner.

The effect of such methods as these is not only to make the years of childhood pass more pleasantly, but also to prepare them to enter, when the time comes, upon the serious business of life with some considerable portion of that practical wisdom in the management of money which is often, when it is deferred to a later period, acquired only by bitter experience and through much suffering.

Indeed, any parent who appreciates and fully enters into the views presented in this chapter will find, in ordinary cases, that his children make so much progress in business capacity that he can extend the system so as to embrace subjects of real and serious importance before the children arrive at maturity. A boy, for instance, who has been trained in this way will be found competent, by the time that he is ten or twelve years old, to take the contract for furnishing himself with caps, or boots and shoes, and, a few years later, with all his clothing, at a specified annual sum. The sum fixed upon in the case of caps, for example, should be intermediate between that which the caps of a boy of ordinary heedlessness would cost, and that which would be sufficient with special care, so that both the father and the son could make money, as it were, by the transaction. Of course, to manage such a system successfully, so that it could afterwards be extended to other classes of expenses, requires tact, skill, system, patience, and steadiness on the part of the father or mother who should attempt it; but when the parent possesses these qualities, the time and attention that would be required would be as nothing compared with the trouble, the vexation, the endless dissatisfaction on both sides, that attend upon the ordinary methods of supplying children's wants—to say nothing of the incalculable benefit to the boy himself of such a training, as a part of his preparation for future life.

Evil Results to be feared

Nor is it merely upon the children themselves, and that after they enter upon the responsibilities of active life, that the evils resulting from their having had no practical training in youth in respect to pecuniary responsibilities and obligations, that evil consequences will fall. The great cities are full of wealthy men whose lives are rendered miserable by the recklessness in respect to money which is displayed by their sons and daughters as they advance towards maturity, and by the utter want, on their part, of all sense of delicacy, and of obligation or of responsibility of any kind towards their parents in respect to their pecuniary transactions. Of course this must, in a vast number of cases, be the result when the boy is brought up from infancy with the idea that the only limit to his supply of money is his ingenuity in devising modes of putting a pressure upon his father. Fifteen or twenty years spent in managing his affairs on this principle must, of course, produce the fruit naturally to be expected from such seed.

The great Difficulty

It would seem, perhaps, at first view, from what has been said in this chapter, that it would be a very simple and easy thing to train up children thus to correct ideas and habits in respect to the use of money; and it would be so—for the principles involved seem to be very plain and simple—were it not that the qualities which it requires in the parent are just those which are most rare. Deliberateness in forming the plan, calmness and quietness in proposing it, inflexible but mild and gentle firmness in carrying it out, perfect honesty in allowing the children to exercise the power and responsibility promised them, and an indulgent spirit in relation to the faults and errors into which they fall in the exercise of it—these and other such qualities are not very easily found. To make an arrangement with a child that he is to receive a certain sum every Saturday, and then after two or three weeks to forget it, and when the boy comes to call for it, to say, petulantly, "Oh, don't come to bother me about that now—I am busy; and besides, I have not got the money now;" or, when a boy has spent all his allowance on the first two or three days of the week, and comes to beg importunately for more, to say, "It was very wrong in you to spend all your money at once, and I have a great mind not to give you any more. I will, however, do it just this time, but I shall not again, you may depend;" or, to borrow money in some sudden emergency out of the fund which a child has accumulated for a special purpose, and then to forget or neglect to repay it—to manage loosely and capriciously in any such ways as these will be sure to make the attempt a total failure; that is to say, such management will be sure to be a failure in respect to teaching the boy to act on right principles in the management of money, and training him to habits of exactness and faithfulness in the fulfillment of his obligations. But in making him a thoughtless, wasteful, teasing, and selfish boy while he remains a boy, and fixing him, when he comes to manhood, in the class of those who are utterly untrustworthy, faithless in the performance of their promises, and wholly unscrupulous in respect to the means by which they obtain money, it may very probably turn out to be a splendid success.

CHAPTER XXI. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

It might, perhaps, be thought that, in a book which professes to show how an efficient government can be established and maintained by gentle measures, the subject of corporal punishment could have no place. It seems important, however, that there should be here introduced a brief though distinct presentation of the light in which, in a philosophical point of view, this instrumentality is to be regarded.

The Teachings of Scripture

The resort to corporal punishment in the training of children seems to be spoken of in many passages contained in the Scriptures as of fundamental necessity. But there can be no doubt that the word rod, as used in those passages, is used simply as the emblem of parental authority. This is in accordance with the ordinary custom of Hebrew writers in those days, and with the idiom of their language, by which a single visible or tangible object was employed as the representative or expression of a general idea—as, for example, the sword is used as the emblem of magisterial authority, and the sun and the rain, which are spoken of as being sent with their genial and fertilizing power upon the evil and the good, denote not specially and exclusively those agencies, but all the beneficent influences of nature which they are employed to represent. The injunctions, therefore, of Solomon in respect to the use of the rod are undoubtedly to be understood as simply enjoining upon parents the necessity of bringing up their children in complete subjection to their authority. No one can imagine that he could wish the rod to be used when complete subjection to the parental authority could be secured by more gentle means. And how this is to be done it is the object precisely of this book to show.

In this sense, therefore—and it is undoubtedly the true sense—namely, that children must be governed by the authority of the parent, the passages in question express a great and most essential truth. It is sometimes said that children must be governed by reason, and this is true, but it is the reason of their parents, and not their own which must hold the control. If children were endowed with the capacity of seeing what is best for them, and with sufficient self-control to pursue what is best against the counter-influences of their animal instincts and propensities, there would be no necessity that the period of subjection to parental authority should be extended over so many years. But so long as their powers are yet too immature to be safely relied upon, they must, of necessity, be subject to the parental will; and the sooner and the more perfectly they are made to understand this, and to yield a willing submission to the necessity, the better it will be, not only for their parents, but also for themselves.

The parental authority must, therefore, be established—by gentle means, if possible—but it must by all means be established, and be firmly maintained. If you can not govern your child without corporal punishment, it is better to resort to it than not to govern him at all. Taking a wide view of the field, I think there may be several cases in which a resort to the infliction of physical pain as the only available means of establishing authority may be the only alternative. There are three cases of this kind that are to be specially considered.

Possible Cases in which it is the only Alternative.—Savages

1. In savage or half-civilized life, and even, perhaps, in so rude a state of society as must have existed in some parts of Judea when the Proverbs of Solomon were written, it is conceivable that many parents, owing to their own ignorance, and low animal condition, would have no other means at their command for establishing their authority over their children than scoldings and blows. It must be so among savages. And it is certainly better, if the mother knows no other way of inducing her boy to keep within her sight, that she should whip him when he runs away, than that he should be bitten by serpents or devoured by bears. She must establish her authority in some way, and if this is the best that she is capable of pursuing, she must use it.

Teachers whose Tasks surpass their Skill

2. A teacher, in entering upon the charge of a large school of boys made unruly by previous mismanagement, may, perhaps, possibly find himself unable to establish submission to his authority without this resource. It is true that if it is so, it is due, in a certain sense, to want of skill on the teacher's part; for there are men, and women too, who will take any company of boys that you can give them, and, by a certain skill, or tact, or knowledge of human nature, or other qualities which seem sometimes to other persons almost magical, will have them all completely under subjection in a week, and that without violence, without scolding, almost without even a frown. The time may, perhaps, come when every teacher, to be considered qualified for his work, must possess this skill. Indeed, the world is evidently making great and rapid progress in this direction. The methods of instruction and the modes by which the teacher gains and holds his influence over his pupils have been wonderfully improved in recent times, so that where there was one teacher, fifty years ago, who was really beloved by his pupils, we have fifty now. In Dr. Johnson's time, which was about a hundred and fifty years ago, it would seem that there was no other mode but that of violent coercion recognized as worthy to be relied upon in imparting instruction, for he said that he knew of no way by which Latin could be taught to boys in his day but "by having it flogged into them."

From such a state of things to that which prevails at the present day there has been an astonishing change. And now, whether a teacher is able to manage an average school of boys without physical force is simply a question of tact, knowledge of the right principles, and skill in applying them on his part. It is, perhaps, yet too soon to expect that all teachers can possess, or can acquire, these qualifications to such a degree as to make it safe to forbid the infliction of bodily pain in any case, but the time for it is rapidly approaching, and in some parts of the country it has, perhaps, already arrived. Until that time comes, every teacher who finds himself under the necessity of beating a boy's body in order to attain certain moral or intellectual ends ought to understand that the reason is the incompleteness of his understanding and skill in dealing directly with his mind; though for this incompleteness he may not himself be personally at all to blame.

Children spoiled by Neglect and Mismanagement

3. I am even willing to admit that one or more boys in a family may reach such a condition of rudeness and insubordination, in consequence of neglect or mismanagement on the part of their parents in their early years, and the present clumsiness and incapacity of the father in dealing with the susceptibilities and impulses of the human soul, that the question will lie between keeping them within some kind of subordination by bodily punishment or not controlling them at all. If a father has been so engrossed in his business that he has neglected his children, has never established any common bond of sympathy between himself and them, has taken no interest in their enjoyments, nor brought them by moral means to an habitual subjection to his will; and if their mother is a weak, irresolute woman, occupying herself with the pursuits and pleasures of fashionable society, and leaving her children to the management of servants, the children will, of course, in general, grow up exacting, turbulent, and ungovernable; and when, with advancing maturity, their increasing strength and vigor makes this turbulence and disorder intolerable in the house, and there is, as of course there usually will be in such a case, no proper knowledge and skill in the management of the young on the part of either parent to remedy the evil by gentle measures, the only alternative in many cases may be either a resort to violent punishment, or the sending away of the unmanageable subjects to school. The latter part of the alternative is the best, and, fortunately, it is the one generally adopted. But where it can not be adopted, it is certainly better that the boys should be governed by the rod than to grow up under no government at all.

Gentle Measures effectual where Rightfully and Faithfully employed

However it may be with respect to the exceptional cases above enumerated, and perhaps some others, there can, I think, be no doubt that parents who should train their children from the beginning on the principles explained in this volume, and upon others analogous to them, would never, in any case, have to strike a blow. They would accomplish the end enjoined by the precepts of Solomon, namely, the complete subjection of their children to their authority, by improved methods not known in his day, or, at least, not so fully developed that they could then be relied upon. They who imagine that parents are bound to use the rod as the instrumentality, because the Scriptures speak of the rod as the means of establishing parental authority best known in those days, instead of employing the more effective methods which the progress of improvement has developed and made available at the present day, ought, in order to be consistent, to insist on the retention of the harp in religious worship, because David enjoins it upon believers to "praise the Lord with harp:" to "sing unto him with psaltery, and an instrument of ten strings." The truth is, that what we are to look at in such injunctions is the end that is to be attained, which is, in this last case, the impressive and reverential exaltation of Almighty God in our minds by the acts of public worship; and if, with the improvements in musical instruments which have been made in modern times, we can do this more satisfactorily by employing in the place of a psaltery or a harp of ten strings an organ of ten or a hundred stops, we are bound to make the substitution. In a word, we must look at the end and not at the means, remembering that in questions of Scripture interpretation the "letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive."

Protracted Contests with Obstinacy

It seems to me, though I am aware that many excellent persons think differently, that it is never wise for the parent to allow himself to be drawn into a contest with a child in attempting to compel him to do something that from ill-temper or obstinacy he refuses to do. If the attempt is successful, and the child yields under a moderate severity of coercion, it is all very well. But there is something mysterious and unaccountable in the strength of the obstinacy sometimes manifested in such cases, and the degree of endurance which it will often inspire, even in children of the most tender age. We observe the same inexplicable fixedness sometimes in the lower animals—in the horse, for example; which is the more unaccountable from the fact that we can not suppose, in his case, that peculiar combination of intelligence and ill-temper which we generally consider the sustaining power of the protracted obstinacy on the part of the child. The degree of persistence which is manifested by children in contests of this kind is something wonderful, and can not easily be explained by any of the ordinary theories in respect to the influence of motives on the human mind. A state of cerebral excitement and exaltation is not unfrequently produced which seems akin to insanity, and instances have been known in which a child has suffered itself to be beaten to death rather than yield obedience to a very simple command. And in vast numbers of instances, the parent, after a protracted contest, gives up in despair, and is compelled to invent some plausible pretext for bringing it to an end.