The First Year
The new-born infant has reflexes and instincts, but no habits. If the habits acquired early on are good, endless trouble is saved later. Moreover, habits acquired very early feel, in later life, just like instincts. For example, infants are far more cunning than adults are inclined to suppose; if they find that crying produces agreeable results, they will cry. When the same habit of complaining is continued into adulthood, it causes them to be disliked instead of petted, and so they feel surprised and resentful. Moral training can begin from birth; at any later time, it will have to fight against contrary habits, and will consequently be met with resentful indignation. In addition to not giving the infant an inflated sense of self-importance, Russell argues for spontaneous activities to be encouraged and demands upon others to be discouraged.
At the age of around two to three months, the child learns to smile and to have feelings about persons which are different from its feelings about things. Very soon a desire for praise and approval emerges, a most useful development for the educator. Blame should not be employed at all during the first year; praise is less harmful and rather, beneficial, but only if it is not used so much as to become devalued. When a child has mastered a difficulty after persistent efforts, praise is certainly a proper reward. Regularity and routine are of the utmost importance in early childhood, and regular habits for sleep, food and evacuation should be formed from the start. A combination of love and knowledge from the educator are necessary to produce the desired results, treating even the youngest baby with respect.
Fear
The second year of life sees great accomplishments from the child: walking and talking bring a sense of freedom and power. However, with the greater independence of walking, a new timidity emerges, especially towards loud noises and the sensation of falling. The third year of life typically brings many additional fears, such as fear of certain animals, the sea, unfamiliar forms and generally that which might be considered “mysterious”, however, Russell argues that these fears, although traditionally considered instinctive, are likely acquired and inherited from adults. An irrational fear should never be let alone, but should be gradually overcome by familiarity with its fainter forms, and it is undesirable that a grown up in charge of children should feel fear.
Russell asserts, as others have done, that the secret to moral education is the formation of good habits, rather than, as previously believed, through self-control and will-power. Courage due to the will produces nervous disorders, of which “shell-shock” afforded numerous instances. Freud and others have demonstrated how fears which are forcibly repressed have ways of making it to the surface in ways which are not recognisable to introspection. Training in physical courage, which is important, should be taught by learning to manipulate or control matter, not by means of bodily contests with other children, the form of courage which is required in such activities as flying a plane, navigating a ship in dangerous waters, or mountaineering. Aside from specific fears, children may also suffer from diffused anxiety, often caused by repression by their parents, nagging, and constant instruction in manners. Shyness is a form of timidity which can be overcome by socialisation, interacting with strangers from a young age without restraint. Russell recommends that children from the age of three should understand that parents also have their own rights, and should learn to play quietly on their own for periods of time, respecting the freedom of others.
Play and Fancy
Play and pretence are a vital need of childhood, and must be facilitated. There is no good reason to doubt the biological premise that play’s utility lies in rehearsing and practising the activities which will have to be performed in earnest later on. Children love to imitate any work they have been watching, such as building and digging, and they enjoy those activities which give new muscular facilities such as jumping, climbing, or walking up a narrow plank. Russell argues that play embodies the will to power of the child. Oftentimes, the child will indulge in pretences of being a giant, a lion or a train, a far more commonly observed game than pretending to be a mouse or an ant.
Whilst many educationalists value only the the sort of play that consists in acquiring new aptitudes, Russell values both this form and the form of play that consists in fantasy, an element which is discouraged somewhat by Montessori education, for example. Imagination should be encouraged, since imagination itself gives children hope and confidence that they are able to change their own reality, rather than just participate in it.
Constructiveness
The raw material of instinct is ethically neutral, and can be shaped towards good or evil by the environment. Construction and destruction alike satisfy the will to power, but construction is more difficult as a rule, and therefore gives more satisfaction to the person who can achieve it. With destruction being easier, a child’s games usually begin with it, and only pass on to construction at a later stage: when a child has bricks, it likes to destroy towers built by its elders, but when it has learnt to build for itself, it becomes inordinately proud, and new skill has changed the activity resulting from the impulse.
The elimination of thoughtless cruelty is to be effected most easily by developing an interest in construction and growth. The boy who has a garden will not trample on other people’s flower-beds, and the boy who has pets can be taught to respect animal life. When speaking of constructiveness, Russell refers not only to material construction. Such occupations as acting and choral singing involve co-operative non-material construction. In education, wherever avoidance of error is the chief thing aimed at, education tends to prove a rather uninspiring experience, devoid of constructiveness, and more analogous to say, the acquisition of good manners. In the classroom, children can, for example, feel the value of life by watching its development, and feel the value of hard work and co-operation through creative and constructive long-term projects.
Selfishness and Property
A human ego, like a gas, will always expand unless restrained by external pressure. The object of education, in this respect, is to let the external pressure take the form of habits, ideas and sympathies in the child’s own mind. The idea which is needed is that of justice, not self-sacrifice, since a child should not be made to feel wicked for standing up for what is due to him.
The desire for property is deep-seated and should not be thwarted. Property cultivates carefulness and curbs the impulse of destruction. Especially useful is property in anything that the child has made himself, as this additionally fosters an inclination towards constructiveness. Among toys, some should be private and some common. Some toys can be equally enjoyed by all, but only by one at a time. If a toy wants careful handling which an older child has learnt to give, it is fair that a younger child should not be allowed to get hold of it lest he spoil it. Snatching must be discouraged, as should the wanton enjoyment of preventing another child’s enjoyment. Excessive dependence on private property can lead to selfishness and unhappy social relations.
Truthfulness
Truthfulness, according to Russell, should be one of the major aims of moral education, not just in speech but also in thought. Lying with full consciousness of what one is doing is, he argues, is less bad than he who first subconsciously deceives himself before others, believing that he is being virtuous or truthful. There are, Russell argues, some and very few cases in which lying is justifiable, with untruthfulness being generally speaking, a product of fear.
One must be careful in judging whether children are being truthful, since children’s memories are faulty, and they often do not know the answer. When a child does clearly lie, however, the educator should deal with this by removing the causes of the lie, and explaining to the child why it is better to not lie. Punishment is liable to increase fear, and therefore increase the motive to lie. Educators who lie themselves but teach the child that lying is a sin, naturally lose moral authority. Another form of lying which is harmful to the child’s education is when the educator threatens punishments they do not mean to inflict. Threats such as being locked up by the policeman or being carried off by the bogeyman can first produce a nervous state of terror, before a complete scepticism as to all statements and threats made by grown-up people. Invariable truthfulness to the child reaps its reward in increased trust.
Punishment
Russell argues that punishment has a certain minor place in education, and should hardly ever be severe. He asserts that the children educated by old-fashioned disciplinarians were far more naughty than the modern child, and that reasonable educators produce reasonable children. When a child persistently interferes with other children or spoils their pleasures, banishment is the obvious penalty. Making the child feel guilty is not useful to the educator; rather, it is much more to the purpose to make him feel that he is missing pleasures that others are enjoying.
Praise and blame are an important form of rewards and punishment, but should be used with a certain degree of caution. First, neither should be comparative, that is to say, a child should not be told that he is better or worse than some other child or that some other child is never naughty. The first produces contempt, the second hatred. Second, blame should be given more sparingly than praise, and should never be continued after it has produced its effect. Third, praise should never be given for a matter of course. To be praised for a difficult achievement is a joyous incentive for a child and the desire for this is quite proper as an added incentive to the interest in the matter itself.
Importance of Other Children
In the first year of life other children are not important at all, however, a child of three years is a better model for a child of one year, both because the things that it does are more similar to what a younger child would wish to do, and because its powers do not seem so superhuman. Eldest children suffer a disadvantage in this respect and often learn to walk and talk slower than those children who have elder siblings. Most children prefer to play with children slightly older than them, because it makes them feel “grand”; a child will be cheerfully submissive to an older brother or sister, in a way which would be impossible towards an adult, and indeed the lesson of cooperation in a subordinate role is best learnt from older children.
Younger children also have their uses for older children, especially where moral education is concerned, for example in learning not to take things by force from a younger brother or sister, or that rough handling can cause a junior to be easily hurt. Such lessons should be taught in a concrete way, as situations arise; a child who has seen his parent behaving with kindness and consideration tries to copy them in this respect.
Although both older and younger children are important, contemporaries are yet more so; especially since older children rarely wish to play with younger ones, children overwhelmingly play with their contemporaries. In youth, age makes a hierarchy which is not artificial; games of all kinds are better among equals, and so is school competition. Self-respect without tyranny, consideration without submission can be best learnt in dealing with equals, and this is mostly provided for by schools. There are cases, however, in which some children are not suited to school life. If for example, a boy has abnormal mental powers in some direction, combined with poor physique and great nervousness, he may suffer an intolerable persecution, a lack of an appropriate social life, or may find school either overly challenging or not challenging enough.
Affection and Sympathy
Russell argues that love and knowledge are the two main requisites for right action, and that the right sort of love should be the natural fruit resulting from the proper treatment of the growing child, rather than something consciously aimed at throughout the various stages.
Love cannot exist as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents is wholly counter-productive; rather parents who wish to be loved must behave so as to elicit love. If parents have the right kind of love for their children, the children’s response will be just what the parents desire: they will be pleased when their parents come, and sorry when they go, unless they are absorbed in some agreeable pursuit; they will look to their parents for help in any trouble, physical or mental, that may arise; they will dare to be adventurous, because they rely upon their parents’ protection in the background-but this feeling will be hardly conscious except in moments of peril. One should be careful to separate and not confuse different forms of affection: the affection of husband and wife, that of parents for children, and that of children for parents. Russell’s view of Freud’s theories in this regard is highly skeptical, asserting that Freud does not recognise the instinctive differences between these three types of affection.
There is no possible method of compelling a child to feel sympathy or affection; the only possible method is to observe the conditions under which these feelings arise spontaneously, and then endeavour to produce the conditions. Sympathy has a partly instinctive basis: children are worried when their brothers or sisters cry and often cry too; they will take vehemently against the grown-ups when disagreeable things are being done to them. This is the basis upon which more elaborate forms of sympathy must be built.
It is a difficult question how and when to make a child aware of the evil in the world. It is impossible to grow up ignorant of wars and massacres and poverty and preventable disease which is not prevented. At some stage the child must know of these things, and should combine the knowledge with a firm conviction that it is a dreadful thing to inflict or permit. Dreadful things should not be known to young people until they are old enough to face them with a certain poise. This moment will come sooner with some children than with others. The child should always be taught to feel that evil can be combated, and results from ignorance, lack of self-control and bad education.
Affection, as different to sympathy, can only be liberated; it cannot be created. There is a kind of affection which is partly rooted in fear; in childhood affections of this sort are natural, but in later life they are undesirable. Affection as to an equal, which is the best kind, is much more likely to exist where there is happiness and absence of fear and envy. Children who are surrounded with kindness tend to become happy and free. A trustful affectionate disposition justifies itself because it gives irresistible charm, and creates the response which it expects.
Sex Education
Puberty remains an important emotional crisis, thrust into the middle of intellectual education, and causing disturbances which raise difficult problems for the educator, however Russell proposes that some form of sex education occur in primary education, since sexual curiosity usually arises in the third year.
The child should understand that men and women have different bodies and that people have feelings about nudity. Further details need not be imparted, yet any questions the child may present should be answered just as any questions on other topics would be answered. The educator (in this case the parent) should answer all questions truthfully, in a scientific spirit, without solemnity, and without imparting any sense of embarrassment or disgust, since these emotions can lead the child to think ill of the behaviour which led to his own existence. Questions about such matters may, quite helpfully, lead on to questions about what it means to be born, and what existed in the world before his own birth. The age at which parents first discuss the topic of sex with their children of course should vary depending on the inquisitiveness of the child, but in any case should occur before ten years of age to prevent it first being told by others in a negative way.
The topic of sexual morality differs hugely depending on the family and the culture they are from. Russell does not write further on this topic, but does mention some matters which should be imparted to children, and which can be considered to be of universal importance: first, hygiene, second the significant undertaking that it is to have a child, and third that love cannot be a duty, rather it is a gift from heaven and the greatest that heaven has to bestow.