Our Need to Understand the Child

Development and change are often joined with the idea of mental maturity and social awareness. Perhaps nothing is more exposed to change than educational theories, so much so that their conception today differs greatly from what it was in bygone centuries.

Perhaps the development of life produced various kinds of influence upon this science, so that it kept pace with life in its development... until the twentieth century came and strengthened the child and raised his standing in the home, so that it has rightly been called "the century of the child."

The reactionaries and those of their stripe believe, after the fashion of the ancients, that children are like grown-ups, only in miniature. The modern theory refutes their belief, charging it with flagrant defiance of the child's personality and rights; for the child is distinguished by a special character in his behavior, his thinking, and his feeling, which makes it necessary to study him in a special way. As for modern education's call for understanding the child, its philosophy is drawn from two basic ideas:

First — children, like the other members of society, have the right to be given every possibility for the development of their personality.

Second — since children carry the seed of the new generation, they are the men and the mothers of tomorrow, and therefore it behooves us to understand them.

How greatly the modern theory has stirred our feeling toward children and changed the direction of our treatment of them! We have come to deal gently with them, after it became clear to us that everything that issues from them in the way of conduct, whether approved or condemned, is the result of some cause... it is built upon their previous experience and influenced by their present situation, while their hopes for the future also exert a great influence. And it is no secret that every unseemly behavior is capable of change.

Our understanding of the child holds another great benefit: our accepting him as nature made him, keeping before our eyes the truth of every child's influence upon his society — which makes it necessary to respect the gifts latent within him. Add to this our realization that nature has endowed each child with differing gifts and ways of behaving, which stamp him with a character of his own. The child's individuality grows in importance day by day; and no wonder, since modern education counts it one of its basic pillars. And the future will show!