HOME PAGE HEALTH
LIBRARY CATALOG
CHAPTER XXV
CHILD EDUCATION
We are frequently reminded that this is a difficult age for
youth to grow up in. And so it is. From infancy up our children are overstimulated
and under-nourished. From the first day of their extra-uterine life, they are subjected
to unnatural influences and conditions which mar their natural unfoldment. Dire poverty
on the one hand and gross luxury on the other is an unhealthy condition for any nation
to get into.
So long as the highest ideal which we hold up to our young
people is that of securing, by any possible means, social and economic advantages
over their fellow men and using those advantages to squeeze everything out of their
fellowmen that they can, we are going to have our troubles. A white-collar ideal
of work, a civilization of lazy, money-mad, thrill-fed, stimulant-driven people cannot
be expected to offer growing, expanding youth an ideal place to grow up in.
Most of our children grow up in the cities--yet the cities
are not for children. Cities are for adults and for commerce. Cities are the centers
of the ceaseless adult struggle for place, power and pelf. In the city there is no
place for children to play; there is not enough sunshine; the children are divorced
from nature. The streets are dangerous; the mental atmosphere even more so.
The cities have divorced the child from nature. Contact with
nature is essential to the normal unfolding of the child's mind. In the larger cities
children spend their lives in apartment houses. Where they have advantage of the
infrequent city playgrounds, it is always canned play. Spontaneous, self-directed
play is an urgent need of our children.
"What sense is there in making a success in business
but missing the one big thing that makes a success worth while?" This pertinent
question was asked by Dr. Henry Neuman, of the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture,
in a lecture before the annual spring conference of the Metropolitan District of
the New York State Congress of Parents and Teachers, held in the Hotel Commodore,
April 16, 1927.
Dr. Newman was discussing the relations of parents to their
children and to their homes. "A home," he said, "is a place where
young and old live together." He advised parents to do more than merely work
for their children. They should "live with them, play with them, read, laugh,
discuss, and think and work with them." These things may all be done in the
home "where old and young live together."
It is in the home that parents and their children meet and
mingle. If the home influences are good, it will require an awful lot of unfavorable
influence outside the home to counteract these. The value of advice and suggestion
is in direct proportion to the faith the receiver has in the giver. Children quite
naturally have great faith in their parents. It is quite natural for every child
to regard his own father as the best, the greatest, the strongest and the wisest
man in the world. Every father is a hero to his children. And these things are just
as true of the relations of mothers to their children. No woman can take the place
of mother in the heart of the child. But these things are only true if the child
knows his parents and associates with them and draws his mental and moral sustenance
from them.
Dr. Newman says: "In the changing family life of today,
the larger freedom of the young need not lead to moral disaster if the young are
trained to manage their freedom wisely. Persuasion, example and advice will go further
than whippings and scoldings when parents have learned to keep their children's confidence
in them."
Freedom lead to moral disaster! Stiffle the thought! There
can't be any morality without freedom. An action loses every bit of its moral value
when it becomes an act of compulsion. If we are coerced into doing right we are not
moral. Only that is moral which is done of one's own choice and volition.
Punishment cannot make children good. It may make slaves
and puppets--but not moral beings. There are example, persuasion, advice; and the
greatest of these is example. Children pattern after their parents as naturally and
spontaneously as they eat and sleep. This is the reason the right kind of home influences
are so important. The child does what he sees his parents do and says what he hears
his parents say. The parent is the natural teacher of the child. An ounce of parent
is worth a pound of teacher or preacher. See that you are a real parent to your child,
and not merely a boarder at the same house with him.
The Rev. Walter H. Stowe, rector of St. Mary's Church in
Dover, warns the home, school and church about passing the buck. He charges that
these three institutions each pass the buck to the other, in matters relating to
child training and youthful delinquency.
He strikes the vital spot when he declares the home should
be more than a lodging house for the family. He scores another center shot when he
declares the school should not serve as an overparent; that the church should not
serve as a policeman. Our present educational system cannot be defended. It is top
heavy. Its foundations are sometimes rotten. It is often meaningless and purposeless.
Education should prepare one for the battles of life. It does not always do this.
It is supposed to teach students to think. It frequently succeeds in teaching them
to repeat the textbooks. Education should have some relation to life as it is being
lived today. It devotes too much time to the past--not enough to the present.
We stumbled into our educational system blindly. We have
not been able to extricate ourselves from its restrictions. Yet the average parent
has great faith in education. He desires that his children go through the stereotyping
process. He is anxious to have some place to send his child. He wants to get the
child off his hands. He does not want to shoulder the responsibility of rearing the
child. Some women send their children to boarding schools and adopt a pug dog. Such
women are not mothers. They are slackers, moral cowards.
The state claims the child. It takes the child at an early
age. The parent has no choice. The child must go to school and learn all the vices,
or the parent is punished. Parents are responsible for this. The state could not
have confiscated their children had the parents not been all too willing. Children
interfere with the pleasures of parents. They create responsibilities. They are glad
that the state demands to be allowed to serve as parents.
Complaints have come from the police at Coney Island that
many mothers temporarly abandon their children while having a "good time"
at the beaches. It is stated that mothers have been seen drinking and dancing while
their children were crying their eyes out, believing they were lost. Nearly all the
leaders in the feminst movement demand state care of children, this care to commence
before birth and extend to maturity. Feminists especially do not want to be bothered
with children. The children interfere with the glittering careers they seek. Children,
they say, should be brought up by trained nurses plus the cow. The church cannot
and should not usurp the duties of parents. The duty of training a child falls naturally
upon the parents. Moral instruction particularly should be given by the parent. Not
alone by precept, BUT BY EXAMPLE. Character building in the young belongs to the
parent. The chief trouble with the youth of today is their slacker parents. Parents
pass the buck to the institutions. And institutions cannot perform the work of parents.
Two young ladies sat in a restaurant having lunch. They talked
of friends and families. We learned from their conversation that they were both single.
From their appearance and from remarks they made we judge them to be about 23 and
26 years of age. They work in an office in the city. The conversation turned to the
young baby of a friend of theirs. They discussed its name. Then the oldest girl remarked:
"I am going to name my baby Evelyn." The younger one remarked "I am
going to name my baby Doloris." Now, there are more important things to give
a baby than names. The right kind of a baby can make a name for itself. But here
were two prospective mothers--or at least they think they will some day be mothers--who
were only thinking of names for their future babies, providing (and they probably
haven't considered this) that they are to become mothers.
They were both extremely thin--twenty or more pounds under
weight. They carried their complexions in their handbags and put on a new one after
they had finished eating. Their lips were of a deep red hue--but it was rouge. There
was redness of their cheeks which feebly imitated but over-emphasized the pink cheeks
of health--but it was rouge. At so young an age their teeth were defective. One of
them had at least one tooth with a gold filling. Their "eats" could not
be called food-- it consisted of egg on toast and a cup of coffee. The toast, two
layers of it, was of white bread. Into the coffee, one of them put four teaspoonsful
of white sugar, and the other two. One of them smoked two cigarettes during their
short stay at the table. The other felt that she had had enough until later in the
day.
We are beginning to learn something of the influence of poor
nutrition on the germ plasm. We are learning of the influence of food, sunshine,
poisons, etc. Only a properly fed mother can have sound children . She must also
have sunshine. She must not be poisoned. We have learned that so-called hereditary
syphilis is mercurial or arsenical or other poison derived from the mother. It is
time the future mothers and fathers, that are now growing up, were informed of the
evils they are bringing upon their children by their own reckless follies and mad
pursuit of the goddess of false pleasure.
An infant needs more than a name that the mother likes. Give
the child a sound body, and he'll bless you for it to the end of his life.
Some people smother their children with indulgent attention.
They spray them with meaningless education. They raise them in crowded apartments
and feed their growing bodies on denatured foods. They over-stimulate them in a hundred
different ways. They do not give them an opportunity for normal development. Then
they blame the children when they become bob-haired bandits, or youthful gunmen,
or boy murderers, or present other neurotic manifestations. We have to build prisons
and insane asylums to house them later. We have to maintain police forces and courts
to corral and convict them. We sometimes have (?) to electrocute them.
Many parents neglect the moral development of their children.
They bring them up in a social whirlpool. They fail to give them the most vital facts
of life. They grow up amid the strife and greed of business ethics that hark back
to the jungles. They are often taught that they should avoid hard work. They look
for soft jobs at big pay. They are sometimes supplied with a constant round of thrills
and excitement. And the parents who are often to blame, hold their children responsible
for the inevitable results of their own ignorance and folly.
Children are not naturally evil. All life is good. All normal
manifestations of life are good. Under natural conditions life develops naturally.
Body and mind unfold in an orderly and progressive manner. Mentally, physically,
morally and socially, the child tends naturally toward the ideal. Only suppressed
and perverted development is productive of evil.
Give children a chance and they will produce splendid types
of manhood and womanhood. Take them out of the crowded, filthy slums. Give children
a place to play. Give them fresh air and sunshine. Feed them wholesome food. Provide
them with an opportunity to exercise their creative ingenuity and imagination. Give
them a wholesome environment. Stop poisoning their bodies with drugs and serums.
These provisions will give us strong, heartily virile men and women. These provisions
will ultimately empty our prisons and asylums. They will give us workers instead
of shirkers. These children will then grow up well-poised instead of weakly neurotics.
A really cultured and intelligent people will always create the good and beautiful
and not the ugly and immoral.
CHARACTER BUILIDING
This is an age when children are trained instead of being
permitted to develop. Like circus animals, they are trained to go through certain
motions and say certain things without understanding them. The idea is general that
the form is enough--the spirit back of the form is unimportant. Voluntary or spontaneous
activities are not encouraged.
Ellen Key tells of a little boy who had been rude to his
brother and whose mother placed him on a chair to repent of his actions. After a
time she inquired if he was sorry. "Yes," he answered with great emphasis.
The mother, however, detected a mutinous sparkle in his eyes and asked, "Sorry
for what?" "Sorry that I did not call him a liar, besides," came the
quick reply. His mother had made the mistake of forcing him to repent. She demanded
an expression of sorrow. She was transforming her son into a hypocrite and an artful
liar.
Children are frequently compelled to apologize for something
they have done. They go through the motion to avoid difficulty. They make an apology
they do not feel. They are thus made into smooth hypocrites. When a child becomes
truly sorry for something he has done, he shows his sorrow in his own way. Spontaneous
penitence of this kind is full of meaning. There is no pretense about it. There is,
at its base, a real desire for pardon and a desire to make amends.
Artificial or pretended emotions are both worthless and injurious.
Parents should refrain from forcing their children to pretend sorrow and emotions
they do not feel. We have learned that morality cannot be legislated into people.
Do we imagine this applies only to grown-ups? Do we imagine we can force morality
into children? The effort makes hypocrites out of grown-ups. It can but do the same
for children.
An expression of "sorry" should be felt and meant,
not merely made. Children should not be made into diplomatic hypocrites. A forced
apology is no real apology. A forced "I'm sorry" is no expression of real
sorrow. It is an expression of fear or of expediency. It is not sincere. Children
have the same right to be sorry or not to be sorry that adults have. They have the
same right to express their sorrow in their own way as adults have. Their morals
should not be put upon them like a coat. Give them an opportunity to express their
own inner natures.
The well known myth about George Washington cutting down
the cherry three with his hatchet, was once being told to a little boy. That part
of the story was reached where young George escaped a spanking by the remark: "Father,
I cannot tell a lie. I cut it down with my hatchet." The little boy quickly
remarked:--"It is no trouble telling the truth when one has such a kind father."
That remark is full of meaning. Every parent should mentally
digest and assimilate it. Children lie through fear of punishment. A father once
told his young son that if he would always tell him the truth about his activities
he would never whip him. But, he added, if you lie to me and I find it out, I will
whip you all the harder. The boy took the father at his word. He was always honest
and truthful. Instead of cuffings and beatings, the father gave the boy advice and
instruction.
Then, one day the father lost his head, when the boy confessed
to some mischief. He gave the boy a severe whipping. This ended forever the beautiful
relationship between the father and son. The boy no longer trusted him. He feared
him ever after. He feared to tell him the truth. He feared he would receive another
beating. He learned to lie as cleverly as other boys. He found that if he was clever
enough he could avoid another whipping.
He grew to manhood and became a father himself. Remembering
his own experience, he never gave his son a whipping. He treated his son with kindness
and sympathy. He guided and instructed him. He never drove him like slaves are driven.
This beautiful relationship between father and son was never broken until death carried
the father away. The son was always honest and truthful with his father. He honored
and trusted his father and respected his advice and counsel.
Ellen Key asks: "How many untrue confessions have been
forced by fear of blows; how much daring passion for action, spirit of adventure,
play of fancy, and stimulus to discovery has been repressed by this same fear? Even
where blows do not cause lying, they always hinder absolute straightforwardness and
the downright personal courage to show oneself as one is. As long as the word 'blow'
is used at all in a home, no perfect honor will be found in children."
A little boy was telling his mother of some of his troubles
at school. He had been into some boyish mischief. Two or three other boys had also
been into the same mischief. The teacher asked who was guilty. The little boy, above
referred to, admitted his guilt. He was punished. The other boys remained silent.
They went unpunished.
--"You see, son, it does not always pay to be honest.
Had you been dishonest you would have escaped punishment, as did the other boys."
One is forced to wonder what the results of such training will be in this boy. The
school places a premium on dishonesty. His mother encourages him to be honest only
when to be so is immediately advantageous. Such teachings would soon undermine and
wreck society. Human relations can go on only so long as one man may trust another.
If we are to tell the truth only where nothing else will fit, business and social
relations will end.
A teacher went out of the schoolroom. During his absence
three of the boys in the room started a loud noise. They used one hand as a horn,
their desk as a drum and the fist of the other hand as a drum stick. Bedlam reigned
in the schoolroom. The teacher returned and heard the noise as he approached. When
he opened the door everything was as quite as a mouse. He asked who made the noise.
One boy frankly acknowledged his part in the celebration.
The other two boys remained quiet. The boy who told the truth
was suspended from school. The other two remained in school. The teacher found later,
through other sources, who the other two boys were, but as the incident was passed,
did not punish them. He penalized truthfulness. He placed a premium upon dishonesty.
Such procedings encourage dishonesty and deceit in children.
Teachers and parents should stop and think what they are
doing, perhaps unintentionally, to encourage the development of unwanted characters
in children. Surely the development of the character of a child is worthy of as much
and as careful thought as the development of a new variety of peonies or a new color
of roses. Children will choose the right as naturally and spontaneously as water
flows down hill, if they are not encouraged to choose otherwise. We are too often
responsible for ugly characteristics in our children, because we work in a haphazard
and thoughtless manner. There is nothing in this world that requires, or that should
receive more intelligent thought and patient understanding than the developing child.
"PLAGUING" CHILDREN: Dr. Page says: "The man
who would not permit himself, nor anyone else, to 'plague' his colt or young horse
lest it make him vicious, will devote considerable time to harrassing his infant
or three-year-old child to his own and lookers-on infinite amusement, and the destruction
of the child's good temper. I have seen a group of parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins,
amusing themselves at the anger and vexation displayed by a little, eighteen-months-old
girl, whose puzzle had been tampered with so that she could not pull it apart as
she had been accustomed to do. The trap was set again and again by the elders, anyone
of whom would have been incensed at the suggestion that the action was even of questionable
advantage in its influence upon the baby's character and temper."
The average adult is such a superinflated egotist that he
resents advice, however well intentioned the giver may be. If he gets fun out of
the anger, vexation and temper of his or some other person's child, who dares to
suggest to his wisdom that he is an ass and is hurting the child. In a future and
higher civilization adults who "plague" children will be punished in some
appropriate manner.
THE VIRTUE OF SELF-ESTEEM
"If a man," wrote the philosopher, Epictetus, "could
worthily realize this opinion, that we are all in a special sense the children of
God, and that God is the Father both of men and gods, I imagine he would think nothing
mean or vulgar about himself."
The man who thinks life is noble will live nobly. He who
regards life as ignoble will not strive upward. The worthlessness of terrestrial
life, the central dogma of Buddhism, early found its way into the doctrines of the
Christian Church. For ages this doctrine of total depravity--that we are born in
sin and shaped in iniquity--ruled the European mind. Men looked upon themselves a
groveling worms of the dust. They became lower than worms. They regarded their bodies
with contempt. The human body was looked upon as a vile, vulgar and unclean thing.
It was allowed to become vulgar and unclean.
This fatal doctrine caused the human race to sink to the
lowest depths of depravity. How much better the idea that man is always and everywhere
the child of divine love and solicitude?
"You are wrong," asserted Seneca, "if you
think our vices are born with us; they are aftergrowths--Nature accomodates us to
no vice, but brings us forth pure and free." Epictetus thought we are by nature
of noble origin and that we are naturally constituted to do good. We are children
of love--not of wrath. This view lends a dignity and importance to human life and
conduct. It causes a man to respect himself and to hold his head up. Men and women
learn to see the sanctity of life and to reverence its normal manifestations.
How different in its-tendency, is the doctrine of the innate
nobility of man, to that of the buddhist's doctrine, of the worthlessness of terrestrial
life. The first is uplifting--the second is debasing. The one builds a proud reliance
in human nature and sustains a strong belief in its high capacity for virtue. This
belief and reliance serve as powerful incentives to good. They also serve as strong
safeguards against great moral debasement. The habit of mentally dwelling on the
higher and better sides of life and of keeping before the mind the possibility of
higher attainments must have a more uplifting influence than that of always harping
on the sinfulness of man.
The central doctrine of the theology of the past was the
utter worthlessness of terrestrial life. Man's chief duty was to prepare for a postmortem
existence beyond the clouds. Man was said to be "born of evil." Unhappiness
was thought to be his lot in life. The world was regarded as a "vale of tears."
Man was a "lowly worm of the dust." Having decided that these ideas represented
eternal verities, the theology of that day was shaped to insure the evil, unhappiness,
tears and worminess that were man's.
Can there be any wonder we call that time the DARK AGES?
They were indeed dark. Misery and unhappiness were everywhere. Poverty and squalor
abounded. Ignorance and filth went with these. Fears and superstitions made life
burdensome. Life was short. Infant mortality was frightful. Epidemics scourged the
people. When life is regarded as worthless and treated as such, it becomes worthless.
When the human body is looked upon with contempt and treated with abuse it deteriorates
and becomes diseased.
It matters not whether the body is abused in the interest
of the spirit or the mind Whether it is abused for the sake of a life beyond or for
the pursuit of triangular fiction now; its abuse must always be paid for.
ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILD TO REASON
"Don't talk back to me!" Thus scolded in irate
and ignorant mother to her young son. The boy was attemping to make her understand
his view of the matter. Her words to the boy simply said to him: "I don't want
to hear your side." Many parents tyrannize over their children in this manner.
The superior strength or official authority of the older person is used to shut off,
in advance, all argument from the child. He is forced to accept in silence what he
conceives to be a false statement of a case.
The child feels that he is being unjustly treated. He feels
that he is entitled to a hearing. When he does not receive this, a spirit of resentment
and rebellion is kindled in his mind. His whole disposition and temper is affected
by it. To demand a mechanical and unreasoned obedience from a child, where a reason
can be given, is little short of a crime against the child. Those who hold that children
should not be reasoned with, but should be made to obey orders without question or
hesitation would make good slave drivers but poor parents and educators.
Man is a reasoning being. He is capable of understanding
the reason and the necessity for his action. He is intended to control and direct
his own conduct. His own judgment is intended for exercise and to enable man to direct,
himself. There is a principle of freedom that is more fundamental than the autonomy
of small nations, and this is the autonomy of individuals. The highest aim of education,
instruction and training, whether at home or in school, should be to help the child
to attain rational self-control and righteous self-direction.
Such an aim cannot be realized by demanding of children unquestioning
obedience. Give the child a reason why he should not pursue a given line of conduct.
If he is too young to comprehend the reason, make him understand that he cannot understand
now but will later. We want men and women whose conduct is constantly determined
by intelligence and based upon moral principles. To produce such men and women should
be the purpose of the training of home and school. Absolutism should be forever banished
from the home and school. Rejoice that your child wants to know the why of his actions.
Why is one line of conduct superior to another? Your child is entitled to know the
answer to this question. Blind, unreasoning obedience is the mark of slaves, not
of free men and women. Children should not be treated as slaves nor prepared for
slavery.
Children are suffering from too much protection. There is
too much paternalism in our homes and government. People are too prone to ask the
state to do for them things they can do for themselves. This is wrong. It should
be an axiom of sound government that the parents should do for children only those
things they cannot do for themselves. Children should be allowed to use their own
brains. They should be placed upon their own responsibilities. They should be called
upon to exercise their own powers. They should not be taught to depend upon parents
or the state or some organization to shield them from evils from which they can shield
themselves.
It is the duty of every individual to look out for his own
interests. If he fails to do so, he usually pays a heavy penalty for his negligence.
Nature places us on our own feet and bids us walk. She does not permit us to ride
upon the shoulders of others. If we use our own powers, this strengthens them. If
the state exercises our functions for us, our powers are weakened thereby.
Vicarious salvation, like vicarious thinking and exercise
by proxy, is injurious. Protection weakens. It builds weaklings, cowards, dependents.
Too much protection is like compulsion. Compulsion that forces the will of another,
or the ideas, ideals and dogmas of another, or of a group, upon the individual deprives
that individual of the right to live his own life, think his own thoughts and form
his own ideals. Compulsion drives the individual like oxen and does not permit him
to develop and expand. All forms of compulsion are evil. All protection given to
the child by the parent that the child can give to himself is evil. Children should
learn to defend and protect themselves.
SEX INSTRUCTION
Any one can take paint and daub a canvas. It requires a painstaking
artist to produce a work of art. Mind and skill must be mixed with the paint. Any
book can build a chicken-coop. It requires a skilled, painstaking mechanic to build
a cabinet. Brass and glass may be melted together to produce slag by any half-wit.
Skill and intelligence are required to convert these into a microscope. If you do
not put your mind into your work, you can never do good work. If you do not take
care to do the work right, it will not be done right.
It is the same with life. We get out of life all that we
put into it. "As ye give so shall ye receive," as the Master declared.
If we are to live in the highest, we must live intelligently. We should comprehend
the sacredness of life and cease to hold its creative functions in contempt. The
inception of life should not be regarded with contempt or indifference. Parents should
not permit their children to grow up in ignorance of life and sex. The old policy
of lettting children "find out for themselves" is ruinous.
It is not "how long" but "how well" we
live that counts. To live well requires knowledge and intelligence. Any boob can
stumble along through life in a haphazard manner. Even a fool can drift with the
tide or sink into the gutter. An ignoramus can wreck his life. This is no acomplishment.
This requires neither effort, skill nor intelligence.
No training or enlightenment is required to daub the canvas
of life with vari-colored paints. Training for life should be the highest form of
education. It should be the first thought in the minds of parents and educators.
Too often, indeed, it is their last thought. How often do they fail to think of this
highest of the higher educations, until it is too late.
After life has been wrecked on the shoals of ignorance and
misunderstanding, parents and educators sometimes awaken to the realization that
what now passes for education is a miserable distortion of what it should be. The
most vital facts of life are concealed and distorted. The most important forces of
being are treated as though they have no existence. Each generation is forced to
repeat the mistakes of the past, because it is left in ignorance of the vital facts
and forces of life. When are we going to really begin to educate our children?
Between the ages of fifteen to twenty-one is a critical period
in the life of girls, as well as young men. It has been found that a large majority
of the girls who go wrong take the first step in wrong doing during this period.
It is a period of transition. She is passing from girlhood to womanhood. New forces
are becoming active. New powers and desires manifest. It is a dangerous period. It
is dangerous because of lack of experience. Temptations arise which she has never
met before. The fall of most girls, who tread the pathway of vice, is due to seduction.
Pitfalls surround her on every hand during this period and mistakes are often made.
It is a dangerous period, due to ignorance. Ignorance of sex is a poor protection
against temptation. Halftruths or distorted knowledge, gained from questionable sources,
are often worse than no knowledge at all. To be fully informed is to be forearmed.
Many still object to teaching children the truths of sex.
But we do not have to settle the question: Shall they be taught? That question is
settled. The knowledge will be given them. The only question we must decide is who
shall teach them. Shall parents tell their children the truth in all reverence; or
shall they be permitted to get vulgar half-truths, from their acquiantances, where
a sacred subject is tinged with vulgar significance?
This is a dangerous period due to lack of self-control. Girls
at these ages have not learned to control themselves. They have not learned the meaning
of their new emotions and desires. Often, in their ignorance, they cultivate these
for their own sakes. Such emotions and desires are often easily aroused. Erotic novels,
plays, pictures, thoughts and conversations are effective means of arousing them.
But most fruitful of all means is physical contact or association with persons of
the opposite sex. This method is now in general use. Petting parties are indulged
in for no other reason. They arouse emotions, awaken desire. New sensations are experienced.
This is what makes petting a dangerous pastime.
Girls are given more liberty today than ever. They should
be fully armed with knowledge. Today we blindfold them and head them towards the
cliff. Our girls are above temptation. They are innocent and can do no wrong. This
is our attitude. But it is usually the innocent girl that goes wrong. And the descent
from virtue into vice is gradual. One step leads easily to another. Petting parties
will break down a girl's natural reserve. They may arouse emotions that get beyond
control. At any rate, ignorance is never a safeguard. These dangers should be avoided,
by supplying the vital facts of life to every maturing mind.
Knowledge is power. Both girls and boys should be thoroughly
armed with this protective force.
Modern life is a great source of danger to the adolescent
boy or girl. Adolescence is the period of mental and physical unfoldment. Boys become
men. Girls become women. New mental and emotional powers are unfolded. New functions
become active Boys and girls find themselves in a new world. An ardent emotional
life develops. The social qualities of the child unfold and blossom out. The old
landmarks of boyhood and girlhood disappear. They no longer serve. A new attitude
towards life appears. Life takes on now force, new meaning. The desire to get "behind
the scenes" and learn the how and why of things, springs into existence. New
companions are sought. New forms of amusement and indulgences are desired and found.
New likes and dislikes develop. Life at this time is potent with great possibilities.
It is reaching upwards towards its highest goal. Life is unfolding itself. The bud
is opening into a beautiful blossom. Nature is producing her masterpiece. All this
is natural and as it should be.
In a state of nature the natural tendency of life towards
the highest and best would carry the adolescent safely into manhood and womanhood
of the highest type. But we do not live in a state of nature. The groping boys and
girls of today are thrown into an environment that, is wholly out of harmony with
their inner natures. Their instincts relate them to a state of simple nature--their
environment is largely artificial and highly complex. With their changing tastes
and bewildered instincts they often form habits that lead to their undoing. Often
they develop a passionate fondness for stimulants and narcotics. Due to increased
nervous tension and an innate fondness for new and novel experiences, which naturally
develop at this period, the adolescent experiments with life. In a state of simple
nature no danger would accompany this. The normal instincts of life would guide the
adolescent safely manward and womanward; and what psychologists wrongly term "troublesome
vital energy" and "troublesome tendencies" would be seen to be beautiful
and good. The trouble lies not in the normal energies and tendencies of adolescence,
but in the vicious artificial environment in which the unfolding man or woman is
forced to grow up. Some day our educational system will be fitted to the needs of
the child and not to those of the adult, as now.
"Love and marriage can't possibly be clean when childhood
is dirty." Thus declares Prof. Schmalhausen in HUMANIZING EDUCATION. He says:
"The dirty and distorted notions about life and love," "which little
children pick up in gangs on street corners, in bed, by hearsay, on the school premises,
in adult society, in all the twilight alleys of gossip and scandal, are the chameleon
'damaged goods' later refurnished for show and barter at the Bargain Counters of
Life, Love and Marrlage."
Children are a constant source of wonderment and awe. The
wonder is that they ever do as well as they do. They come into a world that is reeking
with moral filth and mental nastiness. There is an adult "conspiracy of silence,"
which denies them the protective truth and helpful knowledge with which they should
be armed. They are forced to gather up bits of information--misinformation and half-truths--from
any source they may be able to get it. The frank curiosity of childhood is regarded
as indecent. Its constant reaching out for more knowledge is considered an evidence
of depravity. Honest questions are answered with myths, fairly tales, lies. What
wonder there are so many shipwrecked children! The only wonder is that there are
not many times more.
Armed with ignorance, and what is worse, misinformation,
they are left to fight life's battles. Bewildered, filled with doubts and fears,
not knowing where to turn, nor whom to go to for advice, they flounder and stagger
along. From all sides and from a thousand sources there pours in upon them the ever
increasing stream of filth and nastiness. That any of them ever survive it, forever
gives the lie to the hideous doctrine of total depravity.
Life to such children is a nightmare--a terror. It is a constant
round of mistakes and regrets. They grow up and get married. And what marriages!
"Love and marriage can't possibly be clean when childhood is dirty." Society
is an Augean stable full of lewd filth. Only by turning the waters of truth from
the river of knowledge into it, can society be purged of its filth and childhood
be given a fair chance and an even break. A moral Hercules, who can arouse this nation
to a realization that its prudery, pruriency and hypocrisy are dragging its children
down to ruin, is the crying need of the times. The children are demanding the truth.
They insist on having the knowledge they have hitherto been denied. Why are we not
co-operating with them in getting it?
PLAY AND WORK
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," runs
the old adage. Play is the life of the child. Its instincts are to play almost incessantly.
Life is growth. Play is essential to normal growth--of body and brain; of moral and
social instincts. Youth requires a stabilizing safety valve and this is supplied
by play. Wholesome play provides a safe channel for the impulses of childhood and
youth.
Jane Adams assures us that "amusement is stronger than
vice and that it alone can stifle the lust for vice." The energies and impulses
of life demand expression. If they are not expressed through wholesome channels they
will be expressed through unwholesome ones. Vice and crime among the young present
a great problem. It must be solved. Our young people must be saved from a life of
vice and come. They must be induced to lead wholesome lives. Methods of the past
have failed. Those of the present are failing. We need to overhaul our training and
educational methods.
There has never been a really constructive effort to make
wholesome living attractive. We have always tried to scare young people into doing
right. Or else we have attempted to bribe them. It is natural for normal beings to
do right. They only need the opportunity. Wholesome amusements will do more to prevent
vice than all the sermons ever preached. Youthful activities and instincts should
not be suppressed. Give them an opportunity for normal expression. Give the children
parks and playgrounds. Encourage them to play. Train them in atheletics. This will
develop strong, healthy bodies, alert, active minds, a spirit of fair play and a
wholesome attitude towards life.
The energies and instincts of youth must express themselves.
They must flow onward to the sea of life. If not suppressed or thwarted, they flow
majestically along, turning neither to vice nor to crime. If suppressed they break
out here and there in misdeeds and injure society.
Life will express itself. If not one way, then another. It
is the duty of parents and educators to see that children are allowed to express
themselves normally. Turn their energies into wholesome channels. Do not seek to
suppress them. Wholesome amusement is stronger than vice. It is also more healthful
than vice. Give the children their play as regularly as their milk or their baths.
Let them laugh and sing and play.
Educators generally consider the segregation of industry,
thus taking from children their natural copies, as from the educational view point,
a grave evil. Those of us now living are too prone to forget that the home was the
original work shop. The segregation of industry and its separation from the home
is a very modern innovation. The natural environment of the child, until within very
recent times, included the occupations of adults. Children learned from the example
of their elders. They learned by watching and imitating, by helping. Every girl liked
to play at "helping mother." Every boy played "helping father."
In their play they imitated the occupations and activities of adult life. Life was
a school and play the means of securing an education. Play related to the future
life of the child.
The Indian boy played at making bows and arrows. He played
at hunting. He played at war. When he reached a definite age he went with his father
to be schooled in the "work of a man." But the work was easily learned,
for he had already performed it hundreds of times in play. Play is the natural method
of education. By it nature trains the mind and the body. It trains the social faculties,
and teaches men to adjust themselves to each other and to varying conditions. By
play, children learn the rules of the game of life. Through play they learn to work
and learn the work they like best. Through play, as one educator says, the child
salts away in his spinal marrow his social inheritance and makes it a part of himself.
Modern life has divorced the child from the parental workshop.
Play tends to become a series of meaningless games of amusement. The educational
value is partly lacking. The child does not see his father work. Often the girl does
not see her mother work. This separation of the child from an essential element in
his environment has imposed a great strain upon our educational system--a strain
that it is not, at present, fitted to bear. The play element in education is too
little considered in our public schools. Indeed, in great cities, play has been largely
eliminated. A radical change is essential.
"The way to keep boys good is to keep them busy."
This expresses a half truth. Boys are always busy--if not at "good" then
at mischief. They will be busy, REGARDLESS. The way to keep boys good is to give
them an opportunity to remain so. Life cannot repudiate itself--it must go right
if allowed to. There are several things boys love to do. They love to play. They
will play at wholesome games if allowed to--they play at the unwholesome games if
denied the others. The point is, they will play, REGARDLESS. They love to work. If
there is one thing a boy loves to do more than he loves to play, it is work. He likes
to do things, to build things. Probably he does not like to do the things his parents
or teachers want him to do. This is one of the greatest evils of our present day
miscalled educational system. Instead of permitting the child to unfold in a normal
manner, it seeks to force him into a prearranged pattern. Instead of allowing him
to express himself in those normal channels, through which his inner nature seeks
expression, it attempts to force him to express what some one else desires expressed,
through channels some one else wants them expressed through.
The child of "spirit" quite naturally rebels. He
is perfectly right in rebelling. It is usually his misfortune, however, that when
he rebels against this tyrannizing over him by the training machine, his parents
and teachers drive him into being a "bad boy." It is not because the boy
is inherently evil, but because ignorance attempts to direct life instead of permitting
life to direct itself, that such a boy becomes bad.
Boys love to explore. They like to find out for themselves.
They explore their environment and, as the environment widens, their exploring work
widens. Nothing affords them a better means of development. They love to test their
strength--not merely against each other but against everything and every one they
contact. This is mother nature's way of teaching them discipline. What they cannot
overcome, they learn to let alone. They pit their powers against the powers around
them and the outcome is discipline.
All that we have said above about boys applies with equal
force and equal truth to girls. Give children an opportunity to express themselves
normally and they will do so. But they will express themselves as surely as the waters
of the river will flow down to the sea. Dam up the river and its waters will creep
out over its banks and lay waste to farm and fireside. Suppress the normal expression
of child-life and it will break out and lay waste to society. The point is, child-life
will express itself, REGARDLESS.
THE EVILS OF TOYS
Toys discourage the child in the normal exercise of its creative
imagination. They teach a child to be wasteful. They teach the child to treat his
possessions with indifference, carelessnes and even with contempt.
The best toys a child can use are those he makes with his
own hands. The toys so freely used today supplant the desire to create with the desire
to buy. Children easily learn covetousness by seeing toy windows, toy shops and the
toys of their playmates. Toys are painted in bright colors to catch the eyes of children.
Toys are made to be active to attract the attention of children. Every means of salesmanship
is employed to sell toys. Every advantage is taken of child psychology in the efforts
to load the child's arms with worthless toys--toys that last but a day and are forgotten.
Many factors in modern child life are unnatural and detrimental
to child development. We do too much for the children. We teach them depenence. They
should learn independence. They should be self-reliant. They should be permitted
to depend on their own ingenuity. Let them build and create for themselves.
The city child is greatly handicapped in this respect. He
has no playhouse, no workshop, no playground. There are no sticks and stones, no
pieces of colored glass, broken crockery, bits of steel and iron for him to experiment
with. Young ducks raised on hard floors, and never allowed in the water, never learn
to swim. Their instinct for swimming is suppressed and, finally, lost altogether.
Young children reared in city apartments never learn to create. Their creative instincts
are suppresed. They need more of nature and less of books--more opportunity to create
and less toys.
Every Christmas, the toy buying season, many children are
overloaded with cheap toys. Fortunately, the toys don't last long. The children will
smash them. Don't give your children toys. Don't teach them wastefulness and spendthriftiness.
We often ruin our children and then blame the children. Prisons and electric chairs
are the penalties they face when they grow up, and the blame should often be shouldered
by the parents.
BABY TALK is talked to babies only by adults with baby minds.
Never talk down to your children; talk up to them at all times. Baby
talk retards their progress in talking, and in learning to correctly pronounce and
enunciate words. However cute it may sound to hear their first imperfect utterances,
never encourage them in these imperfect utterances. Don't dwarf their speech in this
way.
I do not believe in drilling a child in an effort to force
correct expression, but if the child must be drilled, it is better to drill
it in correct expression than in the incorrect expressions that constitute baby-talk.
I have seen adult sisters who never got over their baby talk and who spoke to each
other and to their mother in the crude imperfect way of a prattling child. This is
a mental handicap I urge you not to place upon your child.
Let the child hear chiefly good language, observe good language
and, thereby, cultivate good language. Give him a chance to develop rightly from
the start and you and the school will not have to work so hard later to build him
all over again--a work you are likely to fail in.
EDUCATIONAL SHORTCOMINGS
Education is the from within outward development of the faculties
and talents of the individual. Education is life. Education begins at birth and ends
at the grave. It is peculiarly and wholly individual. This is not the present day
conception of education. We are too prone to regard training as education.
A trainer may train a seal to perform stunts in the circus. Or, he may train children
to perform stunts in the schoolroom. In either case, the product is an automaton.
We think education begins in the kindergarten. It almost ends there. In the kindergarten
training commences. We polish off our "education" in the university. After
this, if we desire proficiency in any of the arts, sciences or professions; we take
special courses and post-graduate courses. This takes twenty-five or more years.
During this time we are being ground and polished and trained. Our individuality
is smothered or suppressed. We have been made into carbon copies of the conventional
pattern. We talk and think and act as we have been trained to talk and think and
act.
Mental automatons, intellectual nonentities, stereotyped
minds --these are the natural products of such miscalled education. The twentieth
century is suffering from mental bankruptcy. Its intellect has been smothered under
a flood of training. Mass training produces mass thinking. Standardized training
produces a standardized mind. Individuality in submerged and destroyed. All true
education is self-education. All real education is founded on truth. Too much of
modern training is based on fallacies ancient forms and rituals, traditions of the
fathers, conventions and commercialism.
An educated man is not he who knows the most about Alexander's
conquests or of Cleopatra's immoralities. The truly educated man is he who knows
how to live in the highest and fullest sense, who knows how to make himself useful
and who is able to control himself for good. The world is as full of trained men
as the circus is of trained animals. But truly educated men are rare indeed. We have
a wealth of engineers, mathematicians and mechanics, but few originators. Much potential
greatness is smothered and lost forever by the training processes now in vogue. Most
of the world's great men are those who have escaped from the spell cast over the
mind by the training process. They have managed to squirm out of the mental strait-jacket
into which the school put them.
We are accustomed to thinking of education as something apart
from life. Something separate and distinct from living. It is detached from life.
We think of education as a preparation for life. This conception of education is
fundamentally wrong. It is pernicious.
Experience is the greatest educational factor in life. Experience
is part and parcel of life. It cannot be separated from life. Every experience prepares
one for a broader, fuller life. Life should be a continuous striving for improvement,
achievement, beauty. True experiences build character, strength, beauty. They spur
one on to higher things. Where a high ideal of beauty is found there is a people
that is climbing upward.
By beauty is meant beautiful bodies, beautiful characters,
beautiful ideals. A beautiful heart and a beautiful intellect are as essential to
true beautiy as strength and beauty of body. Education--life--should be a striving
for an ideal of beauty and greatness. Freedom is essential to beauty, to true education,
to the highest life.
Free experience is life's great teacher. Compulsion is not
education; it is not life. Compulsion does not build character. It builds slaves,
serfs, dependents. The soul can expand only in an atmosphere of freedom. Mind and
body attain their highest and best only in a free environment. The heart can truly
express itself only when it is free to do so.
True freedom is the opened fruit of experience plus intelligence.
In society, our rights are those we dare maintain. We are fitted only for such freedom
as we demand. Those who demand most are fitted for most. Those who demand least are
fitted only for slavery. Freedom is truly the breath of the soul. Without freedom
the soul becomes stunted, dwarfed, gnarled and ugly. Beauty of character and intellect
can only develop where freedom abounds.
Freedom, guided by knowledge and intelligence and held to
a stern self-discipline, will evolve a race of moral and intellectual giants. It
is still true that that is the best government that governs least; the best control,
self-control. Slaves and serfs are controlled by their masters and make no progress.
Free men who control themselves carry the world forward. Ancient civilizations were
wrought by the labor of slaves guided by the intellects of free men. Modern and higher
civilizations are wrought by the labor of free men and guided by these same free
men. More freedom, less bondage, will give us a higher civilization still.
"Education has become the great enemy of enlightenment.
Teachers have become mere salesmen of the intellectual life. School systems are only
department stores of the 'higher learning.' The order of the day is Quick Lunch Counter
Education! Our so-called education is a study in farce and futility." Thus declares
Prof. Schmalhausen, who quotes the following gibe from Mark Twain:--"First God
made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made boards of education."
This is a terrible indictment of our present methods of educating
our children. Our educational system is being attacked from all sides, It pleases
nobody--not even those who conduct it. Least of all does it please teachers and pupils.
Many people maintain that our education does not educate; that it lacks vital meaning,
and is divorced from life. Many of our foremost educational authorities agree with
Henry Adams' declaration that, "The chief wonder of education is that it does
not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught." Padagogues agree that
our system is an accident. It came down to us in its present form from feudalism.
Much of feudalism still remains in it. It is unfitted to modern life. It is in violation
of the best principles of psychology. As Bertrand Russell so truly declares-- "A
certain percentage of children have the habit of thinking; one of the aims of education
is to cure them of this habit."
Now, no one really intends to cure children of the habit
of thinking. But this is often just what we accomplish. The trouble with our educational
system is that it lacks plan and purpose. It is a crazy-quilt affair. No one ever
planned the system we now have. No one ever desired it to be what it now is. No one
ever foresaw what the system would develop into. It has simply grown up in a disorderly
and disjointed manner. Many opposing forces have helped to shape it and distort it.
Every one who has studied the problem agrees that the educational
methods now in vogue are wrong. Modern "education" is often worse than
a failure. Joseph K. Hart, in his Adult Education, declares: "Universal
compulsory schooling at public expense is at once the most generous movement ever
undertaken by society and the most unintelligent--Compulsory schooling has turned
out to be a sort of intellectual canning factory--a factory which cannot, however,
guarantee the contents of the cans."
This is a very able summing up of the present public school
system. It does not turn out thinkers. It does not produce men and women who drag
the world along behind them. Every child is run through the same mold. The mind of
a Shakespeare and the mind of a moron are run through the same process. Both are
expected to learn the same things, do the same things, think the same thoughts and
arrive at the same goal.
Much that is instilled into the school child is trivial,
unimportant and often untrue. There is too much of rote, formula, memorizing, and
not enough constructive and creative thinking. Indeed, the very elements upon which
creative work is grounded are often lacking. There is plenty of painstaking supervision,
an abundance of blueprints and cut-and-dried formulas. There is much imitation, much
copying, but little creating. One must memorize the books and classroom notes if
one wishes to receive passing grades and a diploma. He must conform to the prevailing
fashions in "thought" if he desires to get on well.
Then, too, the school is so often divorced from life. Mr.
Hart rightly contends that it is living and not schooling which educates. Education
begins at birth--it ends at death. The school is a passing incident. It may be helpful.
It frequently only suppresses the budding genius and transforms him into a dotard.
The discipline of the school frequently subdues and, destroys the adventurous, pioneering
spirit that dares to do new things or that does old things in a new and better way.
We are cursed with too much of the discipline of authority and not enough of freedom.
CHAPTER XXVI
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT
When our fathers desired to impress a child with the importance
of doing good they threatened him with hell. Bad little children were supposed to
go to hell in those days. Children were supposed to do right through fear of hell.
To supplement this, they were promised heaven if they were good.
But children were not afraid of hell--at least, not enough
to prevent them from occasionally doing wrong; nor could they be bribed with heaven.
So our fathers added corporal punishment. It was a costly effort to build character
on fear of punishment and on bribery. It did not work very well.
Critics of modern youth exault the youth of yesteryear But
they do so without thinking. Youth has always been the same. It will always be the
same. Youth was ever daring and impetuous. It was ever in need of guidance and instruction.
It needed sympathy and understanding. Youth never liked correction and instruction.
It always wanted its own way--and had it. Each generation has to learn for itself.
Knowledge is never ours until we have lived it.
There are better reasons for being and doing good than few
of Lucifer and his sulphur baths. There are better reasons for being and doing good
than the hope of an eternal residence in Jeovah's Rest Resort. These reasons relate
to the present life, not to a hoped-for future existence.
Teach your children that anything is wrong that lessens their
mental and physical powers and lowers self-respect. The conservation and improvement
of life is the highest aim of Nature. Anything that conflicts with this purpose is
wrong. Anything that accords with it is. We receive our rewards and punishments now.
We are punished by our sins, not for them. Virtue is its own reward. If we do as
we should--if we think and act uprightly--a long life of health, strength, youth,
beauty, joy and efficiency will be ours. If we live the contrary way, a shortened
life, full of disease, weakness, misery and inefficiency will be our punishment.
We should do nothing that weakens the powers of life.
Prince Kropotkin tells us that the barbarians were our superiors
not only in refusing to work their children, but also in scorning to beat them. He
quotes them as saying:
"THE BODY OF THE CHILD REDDENS FROM THE STROKE, BUT
THE FACE OF HIM WHO STRIKES REDDENS FROM SHAME."
Indeed it should bring a blush of shame to the face of him
who strikes a child. The pain is greater than an adult realizes. The tender flesh
of the child is more sensitive than that of an adult.
But the physical pain, which does not last long, anyway,
is the least of the evil effects of this cruelty. Consider, says Alice Park, the
"difference between a parent and a young child. If a giant ten or twelve feet
tall stood over a man or woman and dealt out blows for infractions of giant-made
rules, the parent might realize what he now does to his children. He probably does
not know either the pain, the physical injury, the nervous shock the mental effects,
nor the effects upon the other children of the family. The effect upon the mother
or father is another subject"--but by no means an unimportant one. Beating a
child builds brutality in the parent and actually lessens his or her love for the
child.
The injury to the 'heart" of a child is often permanent.
Feelings of bitterness, hatred and revenge rankle in his bread.
His self-respect is destroyed. No child can ever amount to
any-thing when his self-respect is gone. The fear created in the child is hopelessly
bad. "Children who have been asked how they felt," says Alice Park, "after
being spanked or whipped, have said that it made them want to hit somebody, anybody.
Since they didn't dare hit their mothers and fathers, they had a strong impulse to
hit other children, or to kick the dog or the cat. One boy said: 'it made me feel
ugly all day'." Think of the influence, on the nervous system, it must have
had to create this last effect.
A child is such a tender thing! A harsh word, deed, or look
wounds it more than we are wont to imagine. A harsh word to a sensitive horse will
increase his pulse ten beats a minute. A child is more sensitive than the most sensitive
horse, until persistent harsh treatment has hardened him and made him callous.
Never strike or scold children. The blow injures and bruises
the spirit even more than it does the flesh.
Beating children is not a savage practice. No savage race
is known that has descended so low in the moral and social scale that it beats its
children. Among the American Indians, if an angered parent (and very seldom does
a parent strike a child unless he or she is angry) struck a child, the parent was
punished by some of his or her own kin. Tehan, the "White Indian," who
fifty years ago, was leader of a band of Indian "bandits" in Texas and
Oklahoma, tells of seeing his mother, in a fit of anger, strike her child. The child's
father then chastized the mother.
Indian children were never whipped and they were never disobedient.
They were never thieves--until the white man made them so. They grew in a
natural normal way. Mind, body and soul expanded in a perfectly normal way. Their
instincts and their environment harmonized. Their punishments were the natural and
inevitable results of their deeds. Such punishment bears a natural and obvious connection
with the. deed. The child can see the connection. This is natural discipline,
against which man does not rebel.
Until recent years so-called Christians, who disregard the
warning of Jesus to those who "offend one of these little ones," and his
admonition not to "render evil for evil," and to be "not overcome
of evil, but overcome evil with good," hardly ever thought of training children
except by some means of corporal punishment.
Women, children, slaves, criminals, and dumb brutes were
beaten. It is now against the law to beat women and slaves. Criminals are beaten
only furtively. The Societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals have stopped
much of the beating of animals. But parents have not been reformed. The humane spirit
has not extended to the care of children--except to a limited extent.
Whipping has been prohibited in many public and private schools,
and in some reform schools. One state reform school reported an immediate improvement
in the conduct of its 179 boys, representing all ages, when the no-whipping rule
went into effect.
Family discipline still includes much whipping, slapping,
spanking, threats and blows. Neighbors or the police interfere only where the punishments
are known to be extremely severe, but then only in an insignificant number of such
cases as occur.
Children are beaten with rods, limbs of trees, straps, paddles,
etc., and are slapped and cuffed with open palms. They are 'beaten for wrong doing
when the parents are really to blame. Parents have neglected to properly instruct
their children.
Children learn best in an atmosphere of gentleness and kindness.
They expand best when not repressed by fear of punishment. If their actions are all
determined by fear, they change their actions as soon as they grow up and escape
from fear of punishment. Fear of punishment forms a very unstable and unsatisfactory
basis for conduct. Yet there are many who slap and beat their children almost constantly.
There are some who slap the hands and faces of their children for the most trivial
things. They scold them and nag them almost continuously. Their children live in
a more or less constant state of fear and confusion. This breaks the spirit of many
children and thoroughly conquers them. Their self-reliance, innate initiative, self-assertiveness
and personalities are repressed. Often they never cast off this spell of repression.
Other children, the more wilful and spirited kind, are made
rebellious and unmanageable. They become criminals as a direct result of this cruelty.
If their indomitable and unconquerable spirits are rightly directed and instructed,
they will give us leaders, great men, builders--men who do things.
If you have a child who has a will of his own, who insists
on exercising his own will, don't be anxious to break and subdue that will. Get down
on your knees and thank God that you have a child that dares to be himself. Such
a child must be handled carefully and patiently. But for heaven's sake don't try
to conquer him or subdue him. Don't spoil those splendid qualities that are unfolding
in him.
Don't cause your children to lose their love and respect
(or you. Don't build rebellion in them. Don't teach them to lie and deceive to avoid
punishment.
A young boy, age 17 years, whose father had beaten him severely
at frequent intervals during life said: "I only hope I live long enough, and
grow large enough, that I can pay my father back for some of the blows he has struck
me."
Surely, this is an attitude that no father would desire his
son to have toward him. Yet, this attitude was cultivated by the father. He, and
not the boy, is responsible for this feeling of enmity and resentment. It is the
outcome of the savage practice of beating children when they don't please us. And
this feeling exists to a greater or less degree in the minds of all whose parents
beat them. A few old hypocrites declare that they are thankful for the beatings their
parents gave them.
No child was ever made better by beating. No amount of torture
increases the child's love of and respect for its parent. It builds feat of the parent.
A young mother called her children into the house. "Come in here and sit down,"
she commanded. Commencing with the oldest and going down to the youngest they filed
by her and took their seats. As the youngest child passed her mother, she drew away,
saying, "Mamma, don't hit me. Mamma don't hit me." The obedience of those
children was due to fear and they will continue to obey only so long as they continue
to fear. As soon as they are large enough, that they no longer fear their mother,
they will do as they please and she will have no more control over them. Her weapon
is fear and time will rob her of this.
A household of unruly and disobedient children is the product
of lazy and unintelligent parents. Parents who are too lazy or too ignorant or too
unintelligent to govern their children intelligently, resort to the cruel method
of beating their children.
Bertha Meyer, in her Family Government, says: "A
parent who does not know how to govern a child without whipping it ought to surrender
the care of that child to some wiser person. Sportsmen once thought it necessary
to lash their dogs in training them for the field. They now know that the whip should
never be used. Horsemen once thought it was necessary to whip colts to teach them
to start and stop at the word, and pull steadily. They now know that an apple is
better than a lash and a caress better than a blow. If dogs and horses can be thus
educated without punishment, what is these in our children that makes it necessary
to slap and pound them? Have they less intelligence? Have they colder hearts? Are
they lower in the scale of being?
"We have heard many old people say: 'If we were to bring
up another child we would never whip it.' They are wise, but a little too late. Instead
of God doing so little for little children that they must be whipped into goodness,
He has done so much for them that even whipping can't ruin them--that is, as a rule.
Many children are of such quality that a blow makes them cowardly, or reckless, or
deceitful, or permanently ugly. Whipping makes children lie, Whipping makes them
steal. Whipping breaks their spirit. Whipping makes them hate their parents. Whipping
makes home distasteful; makes the boys run away; makes the girls seek happiness anywhere
and anyhow. Whipping is barbarous Don't whip."
Whipping is not barbarous. No barbaric people was ever guilty
of such crimes against childhood. This crime came into Europe during the middle ages
as a part of the doctrine of total depravity.
There is another very old, very popular and very ruinous
method of scaring children into the desired ruts of conduct. I refer to the methods
of frightening small children with bugaboo stories. The "black man" the
dogs, the booga man, the dark and other things, real or imaginary, are used to frighten
children and force them to obey. "Come back here, or the black man will get
you," "Be quiet or the dogs will get you;"--these and similar threats
destroy the peace of mind of children and injure their health.
When the writer was a small boy he would often jump up suddenly
in bed and let out a scream that would awaken the whole household and sometimes some
of the neighbors. At other times he would pull the covet down over his head and hold
it with both hands while scarcely dating to breathe. The cause of this was frightful
dreams of bears, devils, goblins, booga men and other objects of terror that had
been used during the day to dampen his childish spirits. A fear of the dark was developed
that was not overcome until maturity was reached.
Children thus frightened become clinging cowards and timid
dependents. The natural courage, freedom and independence of normal childhood give
way to cowardice and timidity. They become afraid of the dark, afraid of the slightest
noise at night, are subject to frightful dreams that disturb their sleep and, it
is probable that the shocks to their sensitive nervous system are never fully overcome.
Nervousness, ill-health, and premature death often result from this thoughtless cruelty.
In many ways this form of cruelty is worse for children than whipping. As a means
of frightening children into goodness or morality it is open to the same objections
as all other methods of creating cowards and liars.
I was walking down a certain street in New York City once.
Suddenly I heard a mother command: "Come back here! There comes a cop!"
She repeated this twice. The little boy was running away from her. She sought to
frighten him and, by this means, to force him to return to her. Controlling children
by fright is an exceedingly evil means of control; whether we tell them the cops
will get them or tell them that the dogs, or the bogie man, or the black man will
get them, makes no difference. The effects on the child are the same.
These effects are far reaching and difficult to eradicate.
They effect the body and mind and character of the child. Besides, this is the worst
means of controlling children. Like other means of fright and pressure, it is effective
only so long as the child is young enough to think that perhaps a cop might "get
him." When he learns that the cry of, "there comes a cop" is only
bluff, he boldly goes on doing as he pleases. Fear of a thing controls child or adult
only so long as he fears it.
My oldest boy as a little child, had no fear of the dark.
He went and came at leisure in the dark rooms of the house and gave no thought to
the fact that it was dark. His mother and I may have been three or four rooms away,
but the little fellow felt no concern for his safety. No one had ever scared him.
Then one day a young man visited my office, while little Bernarr was present. While
he was in the outer office, he told the child of ghosts and bogie men. He pictured
them as staying in dark places and as doing vicious deeds. The boy was frightened.
The impression made on his young mind was profound and lasting. His mother and I
worked for a full year before we succeeded in largely eradicating the fear of ghosts
and bogie men from his mind. A crime had been committed against that child. Such
crimes should be punishable. People who scare children, who frighten them with imaginary
and unreal dangers, are usually ignorant and thoughtless, but they should be dealt
with.
Frightening them to control them, as the above mentioned
ignorant mother did, or, frightening them merely for the "fun" of telling
ghost stories, as the above mentioned ignorant young man did--its all the same in
its effects on the mind of the child.
Fear lowers vitality. It paralyzes effort. It shrivels up
every emotion towards good behavior. It injures their health. It makes them nervous.
It impairs their growth. It makes cowards of them. It warps and twists their characters.
It is all evil and never good. The crime of frightening children should not be tolerated
in civilized communities. It will not be tolerated once its enormity is realized.
They were crossing the street--a mother and her little daughter.
The child was about three years old. It had done something to displease the mother.
Her head went down near that of the child and in angry and excited tones and with
a loud voice, she heaped threats and abuse upon the child.
People heard her shrill voice, above the din of traffic,
a half a block away. They crossed the street. The mother repeated her foolish performance.
Then, with her hand, there in the presence of every passer-by she vigorously spanked
the child.
The woman lacked poise and self-control. She lacked intelligence
and training. She lacked sympathy for and understanding of her child. Intellectually
and tempermentally she was unfitted for parentage. Bullying and browbeating and brusing
children in this brutal fashion is not good for them. To treat them thus, habitually,
hardens and coarsens them. Such treatment of children always wounds their tender
spirits more than it does their tender bodies. It makes them cowards. Brutal, harsh,
unintelligent treatment of children does not engender in them any love or respect
for their parents. Had this same woman treated a dog or a horse as she was treating
her child, the S. P. C. A., would have had her punished for cruelty to animals. But
it was "only a child," "her child," which she was abusing, and
nothing was done.
But she will pay. The law of compensation will not miss her.
The daughter will grow up and all of this cruel treatment of her will produce its
harvest. Parents, be kind to yours children. Be sympathetic with them. Strive to
understand them and to guide them with love and instruction and control them with
reason and kindness. Respect them--their persons, their rights, their limitations,
their inexperience, their lack of maturity. Treat them as you would like to be treated.
Brutality does not build in them desirable characters. Give them the best there is
in you--not your worst.
The faults of little children are largely the results of
ignorance, accident, enthusiasm and the forgetfulness of immature minds
Children are not adults, with the experience and point of
view of the adult. Children do not come into the world with a full knowledge of right
and wrong. Their instincts relate them to a state of pure nature. But they are born
into the highly complex and very unnatural conditions we call civilization, with
its artificial standards and rules of conduct. Their faults are, then, largely those
of inheritance--the inheritance of instincts which are out of place in civilization.
To whip a child because of ignorance, accident or a lack
of the adult point of view is certainly wrong. Is it not a fact that children try
much harder to fit themselves into an adult's world than adults try to build a world
for children?
Such little minds and bodies and hearts need patient instruction,
intelligent guidance, sympathetic understanding. They should be taught, instructed,
reasoned with and led.
Children have difficult and nervous days just as adults do.
Be patient with them under these trying conditions. Scolding only adds to their discouragement
and moodiness. Try to dispel the gloomy, disobedient mood by diverting the child's
mind into pleasant channels.
Children are good by nature. They are not vicious and criminal.
They are only ignorant and inexperienced and are born into an unnatural environment.
They need gentle and patient guidance. They need instruction and enlightenment. They
surely do not need cruelty.
A litttle kindness goes a long way with children. Kindness
and gentleness and patience and instruction and a good example are the proper means
of governing children.
The gentle answer turneth away wrath. Make life pleasant
for the child and it will make life easier for you.
Fear of punishment forms a very unstable and unsatisfactory
basis for conduct. Knowledge of the principles of right and wrong are essential to
intelligent conduct. Love of right and hatred of wrong are necessary to genuine morality.
Any morality that is not founded on these--knowledge of the principles of conduct
and love of right and hatred of wrong--is not true morality. All conduct based on
fear is founded on sand. It cannot endure.
Whipping and spanking children begin to diminish when the
children reach the age and size that they can hit back, and can defend themselves.
The offenses of older children are often more serious, more deliberate and grosser
forms of disobedience and more aggravating, and older children are certainly more
responsible for their conduct, but parents are not so apt to beat them. The story
is told of a little boy whose father was certain he had inflicted the right punishment
on him. To make a deeper impression on the boy and make the lesson complete, he asked,
"Do you know why I whipped you?" The little boy answered "Yes; because
you are bigger than I am." Had the child been able to defend himself that parent
would have treated the child with as much respect as he treats Mr. Jones, his neighbor.
A high standard of conduct is best built by example. Alice
Park puts it this way: "How can any parent have the opinion that children may
be taught not to strike or hit others, by being themselves hit? ### How can parents
or teachers who resort to physical violence, hold up the common rule of our so-called
civilized society, 'never hit anybody smaller or weaker than you are, nor any one
who is defenseless?"'
Stop bullying your children. Stop abusing them. Inspire them
to love, trust and confide in you--not to fear you, or dread your approach.
I was walking, one day, along the street in one of New York
City's better sections. A woman suddenly thrust her head out of a third-story window
and shouted: "I'll fix you. You stop that and come in here right now. Do
you hear me?"
Her son had long before learned that this was only an idle
threat. He paid no heed to his mother's voice. He did not even trouble himself to
reply to her. He continued playing and completely ignored the excited mother up in
the window.
The mother became calm and settled down to watch the play.
Her threat having failed to frighten her son, she became apparently satisfied. Her
pretense of anger disappeared and she ceased her unnecessary noise.
This is no means of training children, common though the
method is. It is never wise to threaten a child. There are always better reasons
why children should or should not do things than the fear of threatening parents.
But if you must threaten your children see that you never make idle threats. If you
don't mean them, don't make them. Threats that are only "hot air" soon
come to mean no more than that to a child. He learns that he can disobey and "get
away with it."
The ideal method of rearing children is by education and
not coersion. Neither cruelty nor threats of cruelty have any moralizing or uplifting
influence. Threats of punishment that are never carried out breed "anarchy"
and misbehavior. The psychological effects of threatening and scolding are distinctly
anti- social and more or less ruinous. The child soon forms the idea that he can
safely defy all law and order and "get away with it." It is bad in its
moral tendencies. It were far better to allow the child to, like Topsy, "just
grow up,"
I am taking the liberty of quoting the following by J. W.
McEachron, entitled Just a Boy, published originally in the Farmer
and reproduced in The Household Journal:
"Listen, son, I am saying this to
you as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls
stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few
minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a hot stiffling wave of remorse
swept over me. I could not resist it. Guiltly I came to your bedside.
"These are the things I was thinking of son. I have
been cross to you. I scolded you because you gave your face merely a dab with the
towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when
I found you had thrown some of your things on the floor.
"At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things.
You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too
thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you
turned and waved a little hand and called 'Good-bye, Daddy!' and I frowned, and said
in reply, 'Hold your shoulders back!'
"Then it began all over again in the late afternoon.
As I came up the hill road I spied you, down on your knees playing marbles. There
were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your friends by making you
march ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive--and if you had to buy them
you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! it was such stupid,
silly logic.
"Do you remember, later when I was reading in the library,
how you came in softly, timidly, with a sort of hurt, hunted food in your eyes? When
I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the Interruption, you hesitated at the door,
"What is it you want?' I snapped.
"You said nothing, but ran across, in one tempestuous
plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me again and again, and your
small arms tightened with an affection that God has set blooming in your heart, and
which even neglect could not wither. And you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
"Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper
slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. Suddenly I saw
myself as I really was, in all my selfishness, and I felt sick at heart.
"What has habit been doing to me? The habit of complaining,
of finding fault, or reprimanding--all of these were my rewards to you for being
a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected so much of youth.
I was measuring you by the gauge of my own years.
"It is feeble atonement. I know you would not understand
these things if I told them to you during your waking hours, yet I must say what
I am saying. I must burn sacrificial fires, alone, here in your bedroom, and make
free confession. Tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer
when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh.
And I am passing this 'confession' along to the fathers and
mothers who may be priviliged to read it, and for the benefit of all the 'little
fellers'--the growing earth--blessing little 'Jimmies' and "Billys" and
'Marys' and 'James' of this very good world of ours."
•
"It is not so much what you say,
As the manner in which you say it;
It is not so much the language you use,
As the tones in which you convey it.
"'Come here,' I sharply said,
And the baby cowered and wept;
'Come here,' I cooed; and he looked and smiled
And straight to my lap he crept.
"The words may be mild and fair,
And the tones may pierce like a dart;
The words may be soft as the summer air,
And the tones may break the heart.
"Whether you know it or not,
Whether you mean it or care;
Gentleness, kindness, love and hate,
Envy and anger are there.
"Then would you quarrel avoid,
And in peace and love rejoice,
Keep anger not only out of your words,
But keep it out of your voice."
CHAPTER XXVII
VACCINIA
Vaccinia is an acute infectious disease caused by
vaccination. Vaccination is the inoculation of child or adult, well
or sick, with septic matter (pus) derived from suppurating (festering) sores on the
abdomen of a previously infected cow. I think this definition is incomplete in an
important respect--I should have said that it is a criminal operation.
The disease dates from about the year 1774 when an ignorant
and superstitious English farmer, Benjamin Jesty, vaccinated his wife and three children
with matter taken from sores on cows suffering with "cow-pox," using a
darning needle with which to make the incissions. Jestey believed a superstition,
then prevalent among the milk-maids, that one who had had cowpox was immune to smallpox.
Notes of this daring experiment were made by a doctor Nash
who died in 1785. At his death these notes passed into the hands of Mr. Thomas Nash
who was acquainted with Edward Jenner, a notorious Charlatan, who is credited with
having "discovered" vaccination. In 1789 Jenner inoculated his eighteen
month's old son with swine-pox matter. He followed this with other inoculations of
other children and the filthy practice of vaccination was definitely launched.
An English writer, Arthur Wollaston Hutton, M. A., says of
Jenner's training and qualifications: "But his professional acquirements were
but slender; his medical degree was the outcome of no examination or scientific work,
but merely of a fee of fifteen guineas paid to the University of St. Andrews; while
his other and more important distinction, his Fellowship in the Royal Society, was
obtained by what even Dr. Norman Moore, his latest biographer and apologist, is constrained
to admit was little else than a fraud."
Thus we have a filthy practice, born out of the ignorance
and superstitions of the past and fathered by an ignorant imposter and fraud, palmed
off on the world today as a scientific procedure. It is really remarkable, the number
of instances in the history of medicine, of practices and theories now in vogue,
that owe their origin to ancient customs, traditions and superstitions.
It is not known how remote was the belief among the cow hands
and dairy maids of England in the immunizing potency of cow-pox; but it is thought
to have come out of the practice of inoculation which was introduced into England,
from the East, by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, wife of the British Ambassador to the
Ottoman Court, in 1717. The practice was abolished by act of Parliment in 1840, due
to its evils. In 1754 the Royal College of Physicians issued the following manifesto,
which reads strangely like the statements made by physicians today about vaccination:
"The College, having been informed
that false reports concerning the success of inoculation in England have been published
in foreign countries, think proper to declare their sentiments in the following manner,
viz.: That the arguments which at the commencement of this practice were urged against
it have been refuted by experience; that it is now held by the English in greater
esteem, and practiced among them more extensively than ever it was before, and that
the college thinks it to be highly salutary to the human race."
Despite this evident lie, by this august body, the practice
was not successful; it was not highly salutary; and experience did not refute the
arguments used against it. It was a very damaging practice which caused an increase
in small-pox in England and was finally abolished by law.
Edward Jenner, following Benjamin Jesty, grafted the old
inoculation practice onto the milk-maid's creed and vaccination (from vacca--cow)
was born.
I mentioned that the inoculation practice was introduced
from the east. The date of the origin of this superstitious practice is hidden in
the darkness of pre-history. Savage and Barbaric peoples; in various parts of the
world, practiced inoculation. It is thought to have started in India, where so many
of our superstitions originated, and spread from there to Africa and Europe.
From time immemorial the negroes and Arabs of Nubia practiced
inoculation against small-pox. The Ashantees and the Moorish and Arab tribes in Northern
Africa practiced arm to arm inoculation from ancient times. Savage tribes of the
Upper Congo practiced it to prevent "syphilis." The Baris of Lado inoculated
themselves over the left breast. The negroes in Senegal inoculated their children
on the arms. The Moors and Pouls of Senegambia practiced inoculation against pleuro-pnemonia.
A practice of this kind was in vogue in Berne, Switzerland in the 18th century.
The first record of smallpox seems to be in India, where
also is the first record of inoculation, where the practice was in vogue over three
thousand years ago. Dhanwantari, the Vedic father of medicine, and the earliest known
Hindu physician, supposed to have lived 1500 B. C., is said to have been the first
to practice inoculation and it is also stated that the Hindus employed a vaccine.
For over a thousand years inoculation has been practiced in China.
The practice is so mixed up with the religious superstitions
of various peoples that its origin may not be difficult for students of religious
history to guess. In India, in Malaba and in other sections of the world, inoculation
was mixed up in the worship of the smallpox goddess. Inoculation seems to have been
nothing more than a superstitious rite designed to placate and appease the wrath
of an irrascible deity. People who imagined all their sufferings were sent upon them
because they had offended some of their gods or goddesses originated the filthy rite
to get the goddess into a good humor again.
According to a Mr. Porter, who was English Ambassador at
Constantinople in 1755 (Gentleman's Magazine, Oct. 1755): "It is the
tradition and opinion of the country that a certain angel presides over this disease.
That it is to bespeak his favor and evidence their confidence that the Georgians
take a small portion of variolous matter, and, by means of scarification, introduce
it between the thumb and fore finger of a sound person. The operation is supposed
to never miss its effect. To secure beyond all uncertainty, the good will of the
angel, they hang up scarlet clothes about the bed, that being the favorite color
of the celestial inhabitant they wish to propitiate."
I cannot imagine St. Paul, who refused to eat meat that had
been offered up to idols, baring his arm for pus that is being offered up to the
goddess of smallpox. I cannot imagine Moses, whose Kosher laws, in, most of their
essential particulars, are excellent, commanding the Jews to have this trefe stuff
inoculated into their bodies.
SYMPTOMS: Vaccinia begins after inoculation with slight irritation
at the site of vaccination. On the third or fourth day the eruption appears
in the form of a red papule, surrounded by a red areola. On the fifth
or sixth day the papule becomes a vesicle, being filled with a watery substance
or a clear substance, with a distinct central depression (unbilication). By
the eighth day the vesicle is perfected and is then surrounded by a wide reddened
zone of inflammatory edema, which is the seat of intense itching. By the tenth
day the contents are purulent (pus) and the vesicle has become a pustule.
The surrounding skin is now much inflamed and painful. About this time
the reddened areola begins to fade and dessiccation sets in with the gradual
formation of a thick brown crust or scab, which becomes detached and falls off about
the twenty-first to twenty-fifth day, leaving an ugly scar. The scar is at
first red but gradually becomes paler than the surrounding skin; having a punched-out
appearance and is pitted.
The evolution of this pathology is accompanied with fever
and constitutional symptoms, malaise, and enlargement of the adjacent lymph
nodes or glands.
Notice the symptoms above described (and this description
is gathered from standard medical works) and you will at once realize that we have
been describing an acute disease--really the acute symptoms of septic infection.
Vaccinia will be found classified in medical books as an "acute infectious disease."
The infectious matter is pus taken from pustules on a cow
which has previously had pus from the pustules of a smallpox patient rubbed into
incisions in her skin. It is a morbid product, a Virus, and is not and never was
"lymph from the calf." Vaccine is pus--it is the fluid product of suppuration.
To vaccinate a person is to produce disease in that person.
It is an effort to prevent disease by producing disease. It does not always "run
true to form." The above description of the disease does not fit all cases.
COMPLICATIONS AND SEQUELEA: Irregular and atypical
pocks may form; several vesicles may coalesce, a general pustular rash,
covering the whole arm or large parts of the body, and called generalized vaccinia,
may develop, about the eighth to tenth day.
Abscess, sloughing, cellulitis, erysipelas, general septic
infection, urticarial eruptions, syphilis, leprosy, tuberculosis, actinomycosis (big
jaw), mental disease, tetanus, (lock jaw), paralysis, menengitis, sleeping
sickness, etc., may follow. In rare cases the pock may reappear in the same place
after it is apparently healed. In some instances the abscess that may form refuses
to heal. I saw one case of this kind where the abscess continued to discharge pus
after fourteen years. Speaking of generalized vaccinia, Sir. Wm. Osler says: "In
children the disease may prove fatal." Osler quotes Ackland's arrangements of
the dates on which possible eruptions and complications may be looked for as follows:
"1. During the first three days: Erythema;
urticaria; vesicular and bullous eruptions; invaccinated erysipelas.
"2. After the third day, and until the pock reaches
maturity: Urticaria, linchen urticatus; erythema multiformae; accidental erysipelas.
"3. About the end of the first week: Generalized vaccinia;
impetigo; vaccinal ulceration; glandular abscess; septic infections, gangrene.
"4. After the involution of the pocks: Invaccinated
diseases for example syphilis."
Under the heading "Transmission of Disease by Vaccination,"
Osler says: "Syphilis has undoubtedly been transmited by vaccination."
Under the heading, "Influence of Vaccination upon other Diseases," he says:
"A quiescent malady may be lighted into activity by vaccination. This happens
with congental syphilis, occasionally with tuberculosis. ### At the height of the
vaccination convulsions may occur and be followed by hemiplegia." (Paralysis
of one side of the body.)
It is the medical alibi, when these evils follow vaccination,
and they are far more common than the uninformed may imagine, that they are due to
"carelessness" or to "secondary infections.', Dr. Richard C. Cabot
says: "The other things that bother people is the fact that vaccination sores
get septic, sometimes when the vaccination is clumsily done, and sometimes when it
is correctly done. We need not necessarily blame the doctor because the patient has
a bad arm. In spite of all precautions, if the patient is in a bad condition, the
break in the skin may become septic.
This is only a half truth. The vaccine sore is septic from
the start. Vaccine is septic matter. Vaccination is deliberate and forcible septic
infection. We do blame the physician, because he introduced the septic matter into
the arm.
This picture of vaccination is a black one, but it is by
no means the whole picture. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the evils of this
filthy, superstitious practice and any physician or vaccine propagandist who asserts
that vaccination is harmless is either an ignoramus or a liar. I shall make this
quite clear before I am done with this subject.
"I wish we had known sooner what an awful thing vaccination
is," wrote Mrs. A. Kyles, in a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Times,
of Nov. 1926, after her boy had died of lockjaw following vaccination. He was vaccinated
Oct. 15 and died Nov. 8, 1926; the lockjaw developing about Oct. 31. Thousands of
other fond mothers have cried; "I wish we had known sooner what an awful thing
vaccination is." Why not find out beforehand and not after the child is dead?
Why be so willing to believe the sales-talks of those who make money out of vaccines?
On Oct. 7, 1926, little Elmer Perry, four-years-old son of
Mr. and Mrs. John Perry, of 35 Schalk St., Newark, N. J. was vaccinated by order
of the Health Authorities. Fifteen days later he become sick, and on Oct. 27 they
carried him to the hospital suffering with lockjaw. A few hours later he died.
"They killed my boy, they killed him," cried the
grief stricken father. "They have taken the sunshine from my life" wailed
the frantic mother. This was but one more of thousands of such tragic scenes. Medical
men kill them to save them.
The authorities in this case hastily denied all responsibility
for the boy's death. They blamed the boy. It is a fair sample of the cowardly manner
in which doctors always disclaim responsibility for their deeds. They are the only
class of criminals of which I know who can escape the penalties for their crimes
by placing the blame on their victims.
On June 2O, 1926 little Geraldine Creamer, age 4, 611 John
St., Peekskill, N. Y., died of lockjaw, following vaccination during a cooked up
smallpox scare-- a case of ivy poisoning, having been diagnosed as smallpox.
The culprits in this case explained that the girl, who had
been vaccinated on the leg, received the lockjaw infection from garden soil, while
playing in the garden. In a full page article in the New York Evening Graphic,
I challenged them to give me lockjaw, by wounding me in a dozen places and rubbing
the soil from the garden in every wound. The Commissioner of Health made a weak reply
in the local paper, but ignored my challenge. He did not want his alibi exposed by
a test.
Lockjaw is a comparatively rare disease except where a vaccination
epidemic rages. In his Principles and Practice of Medicine, Sir. Wm. Osler
says of tetanus as a disease transmitted by vaccination: "McFarland collected
95 cases, practically all American. Sixty-three occurred in 19O1, in which R. W.
Wilson demonstrated the tetanus bacillus. Most of these cases occurred about Philadelphia."
The United States Public Health Report, March 20,
1925 says that "several fatal cases of tetanus in vaccinated individuals, have
recently occurred in the United States." The Report for June 26, 1925,
contains accounts, in its first six pages, of eleven cases of tetanus following vaccination.
Boys are more susceptible than girls to post-vaccinal tetanus.
In a letter dated Aug. 9, 1929, and addressed to Senator
Robt. F. Wagner, Dr. Hugh S. Cumming, Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service,
says the figures, which his letter shows are incomplete, for deaths due to post-vaccinal
tetanus are as follow: 1925, 29; 1926, 15; 1927, 17; 1929, 1. As most of these deaths
occur after school opens in September, at which time the great orgie of vaccination
begins, the apparent reduction in 1929 s probably very deceptive.
In the early part of 1925, while the whole of the East was
in the throes of a vaccination epidemic the New York Evening Graphic uncovered
at least two deaths from post-vaccinal tetanus, and many other cases of vaccinal
injury, in Baltimore. After they published the accounts of these cases, the hospitals
in Baltimore established a rigid censorship and suppressed the horrid truth about
this criminal practice.
But a truce with tetanus; the newspapers carry frequent reports
of such deaths and I can only touch the high spots here. Everyone can know of these
cases who cares to investigate.
Within recent years other troubles have been definitely traced
to vaccination. I have already quoted Dr. Osler's statement that "at the height
of vaccination convulsions may occur and be followed by hemiplegia." Paralysis
is a more frequent result of vaccination than has heretofore been suspected. Dr.
Osler says: "Cerebro-spinal meningitis has a curious predilection for soldiers."
Captain Sheffield Neave, of England, says; "meningitis is a disease of soldiers
and babies."
During the recent war there was a great mortality and invalidism
among soldiers due to cerebro-spinal meningitis. Antivaccinationists declared it
to be due to vaccination. This brought vigorous protests and loud denunciations from
the devotees of pus and the smallpox goddess.
In the "Lancet," the leading British medical
Journal, of September 4th, 1926, is set forth accounts of seven cases of encephalo-myelitis
(inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, and their membranes), following vaccination
in two London Hospitals within recent years. Prof H. M. Turnbull and Prof. Jas. McIntosh
who painfully and carefully investigated these cases stated in the British Journal
of Experimental Pathology, from which the "Lancet" quotes, that:
"There can be no doubt that vaccination
was a definite causal factor. "
The Lancet declares that the account in the Journal:
"includes summaries of clinical histories and necropsies and descriptions of
the pathological changes, gross and minute, in the central nervous system as well
as in the vaccinated areas, regional lymphatic glands, and other tissues. Beautifully
clear drawings illustrate the histological lesions found in the spinal cord at lower
levels. The evidence of aetiology (the science of cause) derived from clinical and
histological manifestations is shown to be strong, and is confirmed by the results
of biological experiments (experiment on animals made independently by Dr. Paul Fildes
and Prof. McIntosh). Inoculation of material from the brain and spinal cord of three
of these cases showed the presence of vaccinia virus, no other virus being obtained."
The suspicions of these doctors were first aroused in 1912
when a post-morten on a recently vaccinated boy of 15 years revealed encephalo-myelitis.
In December, 1922, a 9-year-old girl came to necropsy with a diagnosis of tubercular
meningitis. However the microscope revealed, no lesions except recent vaccination
scabs, glandular inflammation in the region of vaccination and slight changes in
the central nervous system. Brain and cord presented the same peculiar changes as
those found in the boy ten years previously.
"Other cases," says the Lancet, "were
now quickly recognized one in a man of 21, and the rest in girls of 7, 12, 15, and
22 respectively. All these patients except one girl died in the course of an acute
attack of encephalo-myelitis complicated by broncho-pneumonia."
As an example of how these seven cases proceeded the case
of the woman 22 years of age will suffice. She was vaccinated while and infant and
again on November 28th, 1922. Seven days thereafter she developed a severe headache
and other symptoms. On the 10th and 12 days she was drowsy and had high fever. On
the 13th day she became semi-comatose and on the 14th day she died.
The Lancet for October 9, 1926, states that in Holland,
during the period from January 1, 1924, to July 1, 1925: "35 cases, of which
15 were fatal, occurred of Encephalitis following vaccination after an interval of
10 to 30 days," had elapsed.
The Lancet further declares in the article previously quoted
from: "Investigation of the possible path of infection gave negative results--Close
examination of the vaccinal areas and regional glands yielded but little information,
since the histological changes appeared to be essentially similar to those in a control
case, a recently vaccinated boy killed in an accident."
This means, reader, that the ordinary and regular course
of mischief pursued by vaccination may easily result in the production of these diseases.
The Lancet further says: "Though the path of infection cannot be traced,
the authors would appear to have ample justification for concluding, in view of the
close resemblance between the clinical histories, the uniformity of the pathological
findings, and the absence of similar cases independent of vaccination, that vaccination
was a definite causal factor and no chance coincidence." (Italics mine.).
In the year 1927 when Mr. Marky and Senator Love debated
on vaccination, we exhibited on the platform, a little girl whose body was frightfully
twisted, greatly emaciated and paralyzed as a result of vaccination. With the smooth
sagacity of the suave politician and with resort to the ancient medical subterfuges
of "secondary infection" and "intercurrent malady," Dr. Love
attempted to make the audience believe the child's troubles were due to something
other than vaccination. But an "intercurrent affection" is mere bunk. It
never existed outside the medical mind. The Lancet had formerly held to the
same theory with regard to such cases as cited above. Referring in its issue of August
1, 1925, to the numerous cases on the continent, it declares: "Experiment and
pathological research have shown that this form of the disease is not due to the
virus of Jenner's vaccine" . . . . "There was a latent infection"
and "vaccination merely hatched it out."
"Latent infection" is another subterfuge that has
long served the blundering medical profession when tuberculosis, syphilis and leprosy
follow vaccination. But the end of this subterfuge is drawing near. The Lancet
has unsaid what it declared in the quotation above. It declares: "Similar cases
independent of vaccination were not observed at the same time nor any other time.
The authors give cogent reasons against the assumption that the post-vaccinal cases
described by them and by workers abroad are merely examples of poliomyelitis, (inflammation
of the gray matter of the spinal cord) or encephalitis lethargica (sleeping sickness),
in which vaccination was an immaterial accident."
It declares that encephalo-myelitis following vaccination
always exhibits more extensive lesions than those of sleeping sickness and that "histologically,
the inflammation in ordinary cases of poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) differs
conspicuously from that following vaccination.
In 1923, 1924 and 1925 great efforts were made in England
to have everybody vaccinated. Thousands of vaccinations were performed. There occurred
a great increase in the cases of Encephalitis-Lethargica. In 1924, there were 6,296
cases of this and similar affections reported in England and Wales, with a population
of 38,746,000; or 162 cases per million of population. In Liverpool, with a population
of 836,000 there was reported 257 such cases; or 306 cases per million of population.
Liverpool was fifty per cent better vaccinated than the average of England and Wales,
and had almost 100% more Encephalitis. I presume this was due to an "intercurrent
affection," or a "latent infection," or to a "secondary infection."
The New York State Journal of Medicine, May 15, 1926,
carried two articles from foreign Journals discussing similar cases on the European
continent. In one of these Carl Leiner, (Vienna) is said to have discussed encephalitis
and meningitis developing in nine to fifteen days after vaccination. He admits that
in a generalized infection, like generalized vaccina, there may be intracranial complications.
The article also states that Dr. Lucksch saw three cases and knew of four more, and
of the seven children, five died. In two autopsies, which he obtained, he was able
to show beyond doubt that "death had been due to encephalitis." Bastianse,
of the Hague, collected notes of 34 similar cases which occurred in Holland during
18 months of 1924--25, with a mortality of forty per cent--"deadlier if anything
than ordinary epidemic encephalitis." "In addition several cases of serious
meningitis have been reported."
Three cases reported, by the author of the article, in Austria,
showed that "not only the encephalon but the cord and peripheral nerves may
be involved, so that the affection may be spoken of broadly as a meningoencephalitis
polyneuritis."
The other article is a brief of an article by Dr. W. F. Winkler,
chief of the University Clinic of Rostock. It says: "Quite recently isolated
cases of cerebral symptoms, suggesting encephalitis, following vaccination have been
reported from Holland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany and from Switzerland there have
been reported two cases of serious meningitis."
The Netherlands, and other countries, for instance, France,
have also reported cases of this kind. In the Journal of the American Medical
Association, July 3, 1926, P. 45, is an article by its Berlin correspondent discussing
"Nervous disturbances and Smallpox Vaccination." In it are these words:
"In regions in which there is no organized vaccination of the population, general
paralysis is rare. In patients with general paralysis he (Dr. Daraskwiewicz), has
never seen smallpox scars, but vaccination scars were always present." It is
noted that, whereas, boys are most susceptible to post-vaccinal tetanus, girls are
most susceptible to post-vaccinal encephalitis.
It would be idle to claim that all cases of local or general
paralysis are due to vaccination. There are cases due to other causes also. But these
other cases must not be made a basis for denying the evil influence of vaccination,
as some vaccine apologists attempt.
How new is the phenomenon? Who Knows? Dr. Pierre Baron, Ancien
Intern of the Hospitaux de Paris, prefaces his work on post-vaccinal encephalitis
(1929), in which his conclusions are based on his own observations, by a case he
found after searching through medical annuals and unearthed a report of a case in
the "Archives tie Medicine des Infants," in 1907. Dr. Combay of
the Medical Society of the Hospitals of Paris, reported a case which had occurred
in his practice in 1905.
Dr. Comby tells of a baby girl, in excellent health when
vaccinated at four months of age, who developed convulsions on the eighth day, followed
by strabismus and other troubles. She did not die but was left with an "important
sequel." She no longer recognized her surroundings; almost forgot how to nurse;
had a vague look; "veritable intellectual obnubilation," developed idiocy
with progressive cerebral sclerosis (hardening of the brain), and nearing her eighteenth
month died. Her death went into medical "statistics" as due to pneumonia--and
old trick in hiding their crimes.
Dr. Baron's book discusses 255 cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis,
avowedly discussed as such in medical works. His list is far from complete, for he
credits the United States with only four cases, all of these before 1927.
Great Britain appointed two committees to investigate this
matter--the Andrews Comittee, appointed Nov. 1923, which made its report May 1925;
and the Rolleston Committee appointed Feb. 1926, which made its report Feb. 1928.
These two committees were composed of eminent medical men all of whom supported vaccination.
The Andrews Committee reported 62 cases of post-vaccinal
encephalitis with 36 deaths--40 females and 22 males; average age 10-1/2 years. Four
cases were under one year, one case fifty years, and forty-eight cases were from
six to sixteen years. Government vaccine had been used in 53 of these cases, of which
30 were fatal.
The Rolleston Committee reported 30 cases with 16 fatalities.
Government vaccine was used in 18 of these with 8 deaths. This committee also reported
the subsequent history of 10 non-fatal cases under 15 years, showing that 4 were
permanently injured in some way--in mind, memory, temper, vigor, relapse.
Since vaccination was made compulsory in England and Wales
one million infants have died of convulsions, tetanus, encephalitis, meningitis,
and other nervous ailments. How many of these were due to vaccination there is now
no means of knowing, but in the light of present facts, we are safe in assuming that
a large proportion of them died from this cause.
In 1924 there were recorded in England and Wales 5,039 cases
of Encephalitis Lethargica, 397 of cerebro-spinal fever, 777 acute poleomyelitis,
83 poleo-encephalitis--a total of 6,296 cases, with 2,200 deaths, 2,520 permanently
injured brains (insane), and 1,575 complete recoveries.
The cases in 1924 were three times as great as the yearly
average for the nine proceeding years. In 1922- 23-24 the doctors of England and
Wales cooked up a number of smallpox scares, causing 288,000 revaccinations. "Extra
vaccination was followed by this extra crop of sleepy sickness."
A case of post-vaccinal encephalitis was reported in Ireland
this year (1930) in a baby boy of 10 months. He was vaccinated on May 3rd and became
ill on May 10th, "being cross and very restless with vomiting. Next day he was
quiet and apathetic, and on admission to the hospital his condition resembled tetanus."
The League of Nations in its Report of Aug. 27, 1928 mentions
139 cases and 41 deaths in Holland. This resulted in Holland stopping compulsory
vaccination during 1920-29. The total number of vaccinations in Holland in the first
half of 1928 was less than one- third of those for the first half of 1927 and the
deaths from Encephalitis were reduced to less than one-third.
Germany is seeking a modification of her compulsory vaccination
law. She is seeking an optional clause, such as the one England has. The International
News Service, Feb. 27, 1930, informs us:
"The change of attitude of some medical
experts towards vaccination in favor of a less rigid enforcement of the law has been
brought about mainly through a considerable number of post-vaccinal diseases observed
in Holland and England and in sporadic cases in Germany.
"Vaccinated people developed a sort of cerebral inflammation,
(encephalitis post-vaccinalis) ### which resulted in a number of deaths and in several
cases of a mild form of mental derangement."
Here is part of an item which appeared in the Journal
of the American Medical Association for April 5, 1930: "Reisch reports that
following the vaccination of 233 children aged between 5 and 10 years, several cases
with encephahtlc symptoms were observed. Two were especially severe and ended fatally.
The necropsy revealed the changes characteristic of encephalomyelitis. Six other
children also developed encephalitic symptoms from six to twelve days after the vaccination."
The Report of the Commission of Smallpox and Vaccination
of the Health Organization of the League of Nations, Geneva, Aug. 27, I9z8, says:
"The post- vaccinal encephalitis with which we are dealing has become a problem
in itself mainly in consequence of the events of the last few years in the Netherlands
and England and Wales. In each of these countries the cases which have occurred have
been sufficiently numerous and similar to require them to be considered collectively.
Their occurrence has led to the realization that a new, or at least a previously
unsuspected or unrecognized, risk attaches to the practice of vaccination."
Now what of America? Do such cases ever occur here? They
do. But they are seldom reported and, it seems, are never investigated.
This very year (1930) Julia Motley, age 12 of Irisburg, Va.,
died of acute infantile paralysis which "seized" her 3 weeks after she
had been vaccinated. Her parents attributed her d