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Read Ebook: Parents and children by Mason Charlotte M Charlotte Maria
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Ebook has 1063 lines and 132052 words, and 22 pages
BOOK I
PARENTS AS RULERS 12
PARENTS AS INSPIRERS 20
PARENTS AS INSPIRERS 29
PARENTS AS INSPIRERS 39
PARENTS AS INSPIRERS 48
THE PARENT AS SCHOOLMASTER 58
THE CULTURE OF CHARACTER 66
THE CULTURE OF CHARACTER 79
BIBLE LESSONS 88
FAITH AND DUTY 96
FAITH AND DUTY 111
FAITH AND DUTY 122
THE HEROIC IMPULSE 134
IS IT POSSIBLE? 143
DISCIPLINE 160
SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS 169
SENSATIONS AND FEELINGS 181
"WHAT IS TRUTH?" 192
SHOW CAUSE WHY 201
HERBARTIAN PEDAGOGICS 211
THE TEACHING OF THE "PARENTS' NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL UNION" 220
THE TEACHING OF THE "PARENTS' NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL UNION" 228
WHENCE AND WHITHER 242
WHENCE AND WHITHER 250
THE GREAT RECOGNITION 260
THE ETERNAL CHILD 271
BOOK II
THE PHILOSOPHER AT HOME 283
"ATTENTION" 303
AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT 312
DOROTHY ELMORE'S ACHIEVEMENT: A FORECAST 320
CONSEQUENCES 346
MRS. SEDLEY'S TALE 355
ABILITY 367
POOR MRS. JUMEAU! 376
"A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!" 386
PARENTS IN COUNCIL 395
PARENTS IN COUNCIL 405
A HUNDRED YEARS AFTER 413
NOTE 429
BOOK I
PARENTS AND CHILDREN
"The family is the unit of the nation."--F. D. MAURICE.
Whatever extravagance he had seen fit to advance, Rousseau would still have found a following, because he had chanced to touch a spring that opened many hearts. He was one of the few educationalists who made his appeal to the parental instincts. He did not say, "We have no hope of the parents, let us work for the children!" Such are the faint-hearted and pessimistic things we say to-day. What he said was, in effect, "Fathers and mothers, this is your work, and you only can do it. It rests with you, parents of young children, to be the saviours of society unto a thousand generations. Nothing else matters. The avocations about which people weary themselves are as foolish child's play compared with this one serious business of bringing up our children in advance of ourselves."
People listened, as we have seen; the response to his teaching was such a letting out of the waters of parental enthusiasm as has never been known before nor since. And Rousseau, weak and little worthy, was a preacher of righteousness in this, that he turned the hearts of the fathers to the children, and so far made ready a people prepared for the Lord. But alas! having secured the foundation, he had little better than wood, hay, and stubble to offer to the builders.
Rousseau succeeded, as he deserved to succeed, in awaking many parents to the binding character, the vast range, the profound seriousness of parental obligations. He failed, and deserved to fail, as he offered his own crude conceits by way of an educational code. But his success is very cheering. He perceived that God placed the training of every child in the hands of two, a father and a mother; and the response to his teaching proved that, as the waters answer to the drawing of the moon, so do the hearts of parents rise to the idea of the great work committed to them.
Though it is true, no doubt, that every parent is conscious of unwritten laws, more or less definite and noble according to his own status, yet an attempt, however slight, to codify these laws may be interesting to parents.
"The family is the unit of the nation." This pregnant saying suggests some aspects of the parents' calling. From time to time, in all ages of the world, communistic societies have arisen, sometimes for the sake of co-operation in a great work, social or religious, more recently by way of protest against inequalities of condition; but, in every case, the fundamental rule of such societies is, that the members shall have all things in common. We are apt to think, in our careless way, that such attempts at communistic association are foredoomed to failure. But that is not the case. In the United States, perhaps because hired labour is less easy to obtain than it is with us, they appear to have found a congenial soil, and there many well-regulated communistic bodies flourish. There are failures, too, many and disastrous, and it appears that these may usually be traced to one cause, a government enfeebled by the attempt to combine democratic and communistic principles, to dwell together in a common life, while each does what is right in his own eyes. A communistic body can thrive only under a vigorous and absolute rule.
It by no means follows from this communistic view of the family that the domestic policy should be a policy of isolation; on the contrary, it is not too much to say, that a nation is civilised in proportion as it is able to establish close and friendly relations with other nations, and that, not with one or two, but with many; and, conversely, that a nation is barbarous in proportion to its isolation; and does not a family decline in intelligence and virtue when from generation to generation it "keeps itself to itself"?
Again, it is probable that a nation is healthy in proportion as it has its own proper outlets, its colonies and dependencies, which it is ever solicitous to include in the national life. So of the nation in miniature, the family; the struggling families at 'the back,' the orphanage, the mission, the necessitous of our acquaintance, are they not for the sustenance of the family in the higher life?
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