The Tragedies of Modern Education

Sound insights in criticism of modern education, worth pausing over — by Miss A. Saab.

Joseph de Maistre wrote: "We have never yet seen woman compose an Iliad or an Aeneid, nor has she devised any theory worth mentioning in algebra or geometry. But she has created, and goes on creating, something more important than all of that. Upon her knees is reared and grows that being for whose sake everything was created good — the human being, male or female... The virtue of mothers, all their virtue, consists in ordering the home, in making the husband happy, and in rearing the children... And how many a girl whose upbringing, refinement, and guidance were well tended went on in her turn to rear, after her own example, sons who became among the greatest masterpieces history has immortalized."

It is truly regrettable to see so many mothers disappointing the hope of history and depriving society of good, strong elements, since they are ignorant — or feign ignorance — of the mission of motherhood and of the rights and obligations of upbringing, and so shirk the shouldering of its responsibilities and its direction, as an effective means, in a logical and well-ordered way toward the loftiest goal. Our sorrow grows worse when we watch painful tragedies being played out upon the stages of home education because of mothers heedless of grasping the first rules that must be taken as the point of departure in all discipline, guidance, and direction — so that the work of education may come not as the product of tyranny and coercion, nor as the grievous outcome of reckless liberties and high-flying whims, but as the result of an enlightened interplay between the methods of the mother-educator and the psychology of her child. For the work of education is nothing but the provision of material and moral support that assures the child a well-rounded growth, so that he grows up a strong human being, free of disturbance and deviation. On this the scholars of education are agreed when they say: our task consists in guiding the child toward what he does not know and helping him in what he does, and — while continuing to give him our affection, our love, and our tenderness — in making him, at the earliest possible moment, able to do without us, our intervention no longer always necessary for the running of his affairs, so that one day he may manage them by his own powers and cut his own road in the struggle of life. The means of reaching this end is practice in conscious obedience and gradual independence. Indeed, if mothers were to count how many warnings and admonitions they have been forced to address to a son or daughter in the course of a meal, an outing, or a lesson, they would be astounded, and despair would creep over them at how little their negative remarks avail in reforming the child. Whereas if a mother took care to pierce straight to the child's core and understand the windings of his soul, and set about training him to will this thing, or to refrain from that, of his own accord, she would be able — by this positive method, built upon trial — to reach satisfying results in which her conscience could rest and her parental heart find comfort. But it is rare in our surroundings to find a mother who adopts this method, because of the unbroken toil it demands in watching over the child's every motion and stillness, his inclinations and his qualities. It is easier for her to say to him "Don't do that!" than to set him a task and say "Do this!" — and yet the latter is the sounder course, for the child has a logic that differs from the logic of grown-ups: he is too small to grasp the meaning of life, or what he wants and how he wants it.

Among the manifestations of mental laziness in mothers is their proclaiming of their perplexity and helplessness before the stubbornness of children, until the question of obedience has become for them one of those intractable problems whose crises they face daily. But the source of this problem is often not the child but the mother herself. For there are mothers to whom motherhood seems a throne from whose height they issue commands and prohibitions with violence and hauteur, without rule or reflection, taking in hand the child's every motion and stillness without regard for his feelings, his being, or his free will — which they would have be a deaf machine, to be governed at their whim and for their own benefit, even should the child come to harm thereby. If this method proves anything, it proves the short-sightedness of whoever embraces it. For wills that are governed by pressure and intimidation are not long in falling prey to paralysis, sluggishness, and failure in the exercise of free acts; and when one day it becomes possible for them to slip free of surveillance, they prove unable to recover their accustomed vitality — or they become a hotbed of intellectual revolt and moral chaos.

We know that motherhood is a throne — but let the mother occupy it with vigilance, with love, and with a feeling for the sanctity of the mission. Obedience is not an end in itself, but a means of attaining the aims of that mission. It is therefore a duty, before imposing obedience upon the child, to define its object, its manner, and the legitimacy of the commanding authority, for not every obedience is a good one. Before a mother asks how she may make herself obeyed, she must know how to make of obedience a moral act and a good habit — in a word, how to make of it a virtue that her son or her daughter loves, and takes up with affection and conviction.

The charter of the rights of man, which granted parents "the prior right to choose the kind of education and instruction for their children," did not neglect to enjoin upon them "that they aim in education at the full development of the human personality, and at strengthening respect for the rights of man and the fundamental freedoms" (Article 23). But this respect does not mean obliging parents to renounce their right to command and to forbid, leaving the child free rein to do whatever deeds please him, without check or restraint.

Nor is it incumbent upon parents merely to watch over the child's motions and stillnesses; the scope of this watchfulness must widen until it embraces his whole environment. For everything he witnesses in his life at home and outside it leaves its mark upon him; he interacts powerfully with the conditions of the environment around him, and this has its consequences for his future life. The impressions that take root in his mind become a goad that leads him, without his knowing it, toward a happy life or an inescapable fate. Parents must therefore observe exactness in their movements, simplicity in their lives, purity in their thoughts, discernment in their words, and reserve in their conjugal relations; and they must attend to the conduct of their son or daughter and keep watch over their goings-out and their evenings, over their companions and their intimates, over the books they read and the magazines they leaf through, over the clubs they frequent, the theaters they haunt, and the films upon which their eyes remain riveted for long hours. Hence it is necessary for mothers to keep hold of the rights of upbringing and not surrender them to a hired governess, out of a miser's grip upon hours they spend in the cause of their own pleasure, their ease, and their private occupations, deserting the holiest thing God has entrusted to them, and forswearing the joy of motherhood and the rapture of tenderness in exchange for evenings passed in haunts of amusement, in the movie houses, or at the green table — so that the child grows up deprived of a mother's affection, ignorant of her care, a stranger to her tenderness, stirred by no feeling and no gratitude. Let the mother not forget that her becoming a mother is an embarking upon grave responsibilities and the beginning of a life beset with pains and hardships. And out of those trials which she accepts and bears with patience will come forth the soul of her son or her daughter — a beautiful lily and a ripe fruit, and at the last a deep-rooted glory for her, for her house, and for the homeland.

How often it befalls a mother to see her son or her daughter, the fruit of her heart, the prey of a grave illness! She spends the day and keeps vigil through the night, sleepless, her eyes wet with tears, her life embittered. A bitter pain... Yet there is a trial harder still and more grievous, one that strikes her to the quick, and over which she has seldom grieved or pitied herself: that she herself should be the cause of her son's or her daughter's ills. Yes — the mother-educator, by her idle example and her flagrant neglect. As when she leaves evils and corruptions to ravage her child's soul and morals and pays no heed, until danger overwhelms her and she tastes the bitterness of the accomplished fact, and bursts into tears, and curses the hour in which it was said that a human child was born. Or when she is lax about his moral upbringing and indulges him in sundry vices, to ward off a decline in his health and to perfect the strength of his body — ignorant that he is compounded of body and soul, that the soul has the first claim to care, and that its training admits neither slackness nor indulgence. Or when she shuts her eyes to the requirements of manners and morals in order to leave the field wide open before him for the acquisition of learning — her aim in his success being perhaps purely material: to profit by him in the future. Wealth, health, and school diplomas are all fine things which every boy or girl ought to seek — but not before he has enjoyed an upbringing, a direction, and a correction that assure him the conduct to be desired, in accordance with the divine and civil laws. For the child counts for nothing if he is not a human being dignified in himself, good in his morals, worthy of God and of his homeland. Nor is his soul so cheap that we should gamble with it, or exploit it by the easiest road.

And is anything more painful than a family atmosphere in which the views of father and mother diverge, and which becomes the arena of their squabbles and their disagreements, in full view and hearing of their children? Often these disputes turn into disgraceful talk, ugly criticisms, scandalous expressions, and stinging insults — all of them deadly examples whose germs are not long in seeping into the recesses of young souls, overwhelming the noble filial feelings and stripping from them all regard and honor toward the parents, who in their turn will one day reap the results in pain and grief.

In vain shall we try, from this day on, to limit the child's openness to all the events and talk that go on around him; and in vain shall we attempt to shut him away from society. What we can do is provide him with pure airs upon which to open, and a wholesome society whose door he may enter, so that he does not come out upon the fray a raw and tender planting. Rather let him mingle with his generation in its games and its responsibilities, share its joys and its toils, and compete with his peers for first place and for reaching the goal — so that one day he may belong to his society in its very heart, and stand among its foremost figures.