The adult, therefore, fortified by this superiority, feels justified in falling back on the weapon of authority: "You may not _want_ to believe this and to learn it, but you"ve _got_ to."
It is in this way that the adult wins the battle of religious education.
In the deeper and more far-seeing sense he has lost it. Religion has become, not a charming privilege, but a lesson, a lesson about unbelievable things, a meaningless task to be learnt by heart, a drudgery. It may be said that even if that is so, religious lessons merely share the inevitable fate of all subjects which become school tasks. But that is not the case. Every other subject which is likely to become a school task is apt to become intelligible and attractive to some considerable section of the scholars because it is within the range of childish intelligence. But, for the two very definite reasons I have pointed out, this is only to an extremely limited degree true as regards the subject of religion, because the young organism is an instrument not as yet fitted with the notes which religion is most apt to strike.
Of all the school subjects religion thus tends to be the least attractive. Lobsien, at Kiel, found a few years since, in the course of a psychological investigation, that when five hundred children (boys and girls in equal numbers), between the ages of nine and fourteen, were asked which was their favourite lesson hour, only twelve (ten girls and two boys) named the religious lesson.[167] In other words, nearly 98 per cent children (and nearly all the boys) find that religion is either an indifferent or a repugnant subject. I have no reports at hand as regards English children, but there is little reason to suppose that the result would be widely different.[168] Here and there a specially skilful teacher might bring about a result more favourable to religious teaching, but that could only be done by depriving the subject of its most characteristic elements.
This is, however, not by any means the whole of the mischief which, from the religious point of view, is thus perpetrated. It might, on _a priori_ grounds, be plausibly argued that even if there is among healthy young children a certain amount of indifference or even repugnance to religious instruction, that is of very little consequence: they cannot be too early grounded in the principles of the faith they will later be called on to profess; and however incapable they may now be of understanding the teaching that is being inculcated in the school, they will realize its importance when their knowledge and experience increase. But however plausible this may seem, practically it is not what usually happens. The usual effect of constantly imparting to children an instruction they are not yet ready to receive is to deaden their sensibilities to the whole subject of religion.[169] The premature familiarity with religious influences--putting aside the rare cases where it leads to a morbid pre-occupation with religion--induces a reaction of routine which becomes so habitual that it successfully withstands the later influences which on more virgin soil would have evoked vigorous and living response. So far from preparing the way for a more genuine development of religious impulse later on, this precocious scriptural instruction is just adequate to act as an inoculation against deeper and more serious religious interests. The commonplace child in later life accepts the religion it has been inured to so early as part of the conventional routine of life. The more vigorous and original child for the same reason shakes it off, perhaps for ever.
Luther, feeling the need to gain converts to Protestantism as early as possible, was a strong advocate for the religious training of children, and has doubtless had much influence in this matter on the Protestant churches. "The study of religion, of the Bible and the Catechism," says Fiedler, "of course comes first and foremost in his scheme of instruction." He was also quite prepared to adapt it to the childish mind. "Let children be taught," he writes, "that our dear Lord sits in Heaven on a golden throne, that He has a long grey beard and a crown of gold." But Luther quite failed to realize the inevitable psychological reaction in later life against such fairy-tales.
At a later date, Rousseau, who, like Luther, was on the side of religion, realized, as Luther failed to realize, the disastrous results of attempting to teach it to children. In _La Nouvelle Helose_, Saint-Preux writes that Julie had explained to him how she sought to surround her children with good influences without forcing any religious instruction on them: "As to the Catechism, they don"t so much as know what it is." "What! Julie, your children don"t learn their Catechism?"
"No, my friend, my children don"t learn their Catechism." "So pious a mother!" I exclaimed; "I can"t understand. And why don"t your children learn their Catechism?" "In order that they may one day believe it. I wish to make Christians of them."[170]
Since Rousseau"s day this may be said to be the general att.i.tude of nearly all thinkers who have given attention to the question, even though they may not have viewed it psychologically. It is an att.i.tude by no means confined to those who are anxious that children should grow up to be genuine Christians, but is common to all who consider that the main point is that children should grow up to be, at all events, genuine men and women. "I do not think," writes John Stuart Mill, in 1868, "there should be any _authoritative_ teaching at all on such subjects. I think parents ought to point out to their children, when the children begin to question them or to make observations of their own, the various opinions on such subjects, and what the parents themselves think the most powerful reasons for and against. Then, if the parents show a strong feeling of the importance of truth, and also of the difficulty of attaining it, it seems to me that young people"s minds will be sufficiently prepared to regard popular opinion or the opinion of those about them with respectful tolerance, and may be safely left to form definite conclusions in the course of mature life."[171]
There are few among us who have not suffered from too early familiarity with the Bible and the conceptions of religion. Even for a man of really strong and independent intellect it may be many years before the precociously dulled feelings become fresh again, before the fetters of routine fall off, and he is enabled at last to approach the Bible with fresh receptivity and to realize, for the first time in his life, the treasures of art and beauty and divine wisdom it contains. But for most that moment never comes round. For the majority the religious education of the school as effectually seals the Bible for life as the cla.s.sical education of the college seals the great authors of Greece and Rome for life; no man opens his school books again when he has once left school.
Those who read Greek and Latin for love have not usually come out of universities, and there is surely a certain significance in the fact that the children of one"s secularist friends are so often found to become devout church-goers, while, according to the frequent observation, devout parents often have most irreligious offspring, just as the bad boys at school and college are frequently sons of the clergy.
At p.u.b.erty and during adolescence everything begins to be changed. The change, it is important to remember, is a natural change, and tends to come about spontaneously; "where no set forms have been urged, the religious emotion," as Lancaster puts it, "comes forth as naturally as the sun rises."[172] That period, really and psychologically, marks a "new birth." Emotions which are of fundamental importance, not only for the individual"s personal life but for his social and even cosmic relationships, are for the first time born. Not only is the child"s body remoulded in the form of a man or a woman, but the child-soul becomes a man-soul or a woman-soul, and nothing can possibly be as it has been before. The daringly sceptical logician has gone, and so has the imaginative dreamer for whom the world was the automatic magnifying mirror of his own childish form and environment. It has been revealed to him that there are independent personal and impersonal forces outside himself, forces with which he may come into a conscious and fascinatingly exciting relationship. It is a revelation of supreme importance, and with it comes not only the complexly emotional and intellectual realization of personality, but the apt.i.tude to enter into and a.s.similate the traditions of the race.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this is the moment, and the earliest moment, when it becomes desirable to initiate the boy or girl into the mysteries of religion. That it is the best moment is indicated by the well-recognized fact that the immediately post-p.u.b.ertal period of adolescence is the period during which, even spontaneously, the most marked religious phenomena tend to occur.[173] Stanley Hall seems to think that twelve is the age at which the cultivation of the religious consciousness may begin; "the age, signalized by the ancient Greeks as that at which the study of what was comprehensively called music should begin, the age at which Roman guardianship ended, at which boys are confirmed in the modern Greek, Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopal Churches, and at which the Child Jesus entered the Temple, is as early as any child ought consciously to go about his Heavenly Father"s business."[174] But I doubt whether we can fix the age definitely by years, nor is it indeed quite accurate to a.s.sert that so early an age as twelve is generally accepted as the age of initiation; the Anglican Church, for example, usually confirms at the age of fifteen. It is not age with which we ought to be concerned, but a biological epoch of psychic evolution. It is unwise to insist on any particular age, because development takes place within a considerably wide limit of years.
I have spoken of the introduction to religion at p.u.b.erty as the initiation into a mystery. The phrase was deliberately chosen, for it seems to me to be not a metaphor, but the expression of a truth which has always been understood whenever religion has been a reality and not a mere convention. Among savages in nearly all parts of the world the boy or girl at p.u.b.erty is initiated into the mystery of manhood or of womanhood, into the duties and the privileges of the adult members of the tribe. The youth is taken into a solitary place, for a month or more, he is made to suffer pain and hardship, to learn self-restraint, he is taught the lore of the tribe as well as the elementary rules of morality and justice; he is shown the secret things of the tribe and their meaning and significance, which no stranger may know. He is, in short, enabled to find his soul, and he emerges from this discipline a trained and responsible member of his tribe. The girl receives a corresponding training, suited to her s.e.x, also in solitude, at the hands of the older women. A clear and full description of a typical savage initiation into manhood at p.u.b.erty is presented by Dr. Haddon in the fifth volume of the _Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, and Dr. Haddon makes the comment: "It is not easy to conceive of more effectual means for a rapid training."
The ideas of remote savages concerning the proper manner of initiating youth in the religious and other mysteries of life may seem of little personal a.s.sistance to superiorly civilized people like ourselves. But let us turn, therefore, to the Greeks. They also had preserved the idea and the practice of initiation into sacred mysteries, though in a somewhat modified form because religion had ceased to be so intimately blended with all the activities of life. The Eleusinian and other mysteries were initiations into sacred knowledge and insight which, as is now recognized, involved no revelation of obscure secrets, but were mysteries in the sense that all intimate experiences of the soul, the experiences of love quite as much as those of religion, are mysteries, not to be lightly or publicly spoken of. In that feeling the Greek was at one with the Papuan, and it is interesting to observe that the procedure of initiation into the Greek mysteries, as described by Theon of Smyrna and other writers, followed the same course as the p.u.b.ertal initiations of savages; there was the same preliminary purification by water, the same element of doctrinal teaching, the same ceremonial and symbolic rubbing with sand or charcoal or clay, the same conclusion in a joyous feast, even the same custom of wearing wreaths.
In how far the Christian sacraments were consciously moulded after the model of the Greek mysteries is still a disputed point;[175] but the first Christians were seeking the same spiritual initiation, and they necessarily adopted, consciously or unconsciously, methods of procedure which, in essentials, were fundamentally the same as those they were already familiar with. The early Christian Church adopted the rite of Baptism not merely as a symbol of initiation, but as an actual component part of a process of initiation; the purifying ceremony was preceded by long preparation, and when at last completed the baptized were sometimes crowned with garlands. When at a later period in the history of the Church the physical part of the initiation was divorced from the spiritual part, and baptism was performed in infancy and confirmation at p.u.b.erty, a fatal mistake was made, and each part of the rite largely lost its real significance.
But it still remains true that Christianity embodied in its practical system the ancient custom of initiating the young at p.u.b.erty, and that the custom exists in an attenuated form in all the more ancient Christian Churches. The rite of Confirmation has, however, been devitalized, and its immense significance has been almost wholly lost.
Instead of being regarded as a real initiation into the privileges and the responsibilities of a religious communion, of an active fellowship for the realization of a divine life on earth, it has become a mere mechanical corollary of the precedent rite of baptism, a formal condition of partic.i.p.ation in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The splendid and many-sided discipline by which the child of the savage was initiated into the secrets of his own emotional nature and the sacred tradition of his people has been degraded into the learning of a catechism and a few hours" perfunctory instruction in the schoolroom or in the parlour of the curate"s lodgings. The vital kernel of the rite is decayed and only the dead sh.e.l.l is left, while some of the Christian Churches have lost even the sh.e.l.l.
It is extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England will reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction to the young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion which is taking place in all civilized countries.[176] The support which the Secular Education League has found in the most various quarters is without doubt a fact of impressive significance.[177] It is well known also that the working cla.s.ses--the people chiefly concerned in the matter--are distinctly opposed to religious teaching in State schools.
There can be little doubt that before many years have pa.s.sed, in England as elsewhere, the Churches will have to face the question of the best methods of themselves undertaking that task of religious training which they have sought to foist upon the State. If they are to fulfil this duty in a wise and effectual manner they must follow the guidance of biological psychology at the point where it is at one with the teaching of their own most ancient traditions, and develop the merely formal rite of confirmation into a true initiation of the new-born soul at p.u.b.erty into the deepest secrets of life and the highest mysteries of religion.
It must, of course, be remembered that, so far as England is concerned, we live in an empire in which there are 337 millions of people who are not even nominally Christians,[178] and that even among the comparatively small proportion (about 14 per cent) who call themselves "Christians," a very large proportion are practically Secularists, and a considerable number avowedly so. If, however, we a.s.sume the Secularist"s position, the considerations here brought forward still retain their validity. In the first place, the undoubtedly frequent hostility of the Freethinker to Christianity is not so much directed against vital religion as against a dead Church. The Freethinker is prepared to respect the Christian who by free choice and the exercise of thought has attained the position of a Christian, but he resents the so-called Christian who is merely in the Church because he finds himself there, without any effort of his will or his intelligence. The convinced secularist feels respect for the sincere Christian, even though it may only be in the sense that the real saint feels tenderness for the hopeless sinner. And in the second place, as I have sought to point out, the facts we are here concerned with are far too fundamental to concern the Christian alone. They equally concern the secularist, who also is called upon to satisfy the spiritual hunger of the adolescent youth, to furnish him with a discipline for his entry into life, and a satisfying vision of the universe. And if secularists have not always grasped this necessity, we may perhaps find therein one main reason why secularism has not met with so enormous and enthusiastic a reception as the languor and formalism of the churches seemed to render possible.
If the view here set forth is sound,--a view more and more widely held by educationists and by psychologists trained in biology,--the first twelve years must be left untouched by all conceptions of life and the world which transcend immediate experience, for the child whose spiritual virginity has been prematurely tainted will never be able to awake afresh to the full significance of those conceptions when the age of religion at last arrives. But are we, it may be asked, to leave the child"s restless, inquisitive, imaginative brain without any food during all those early years? By no means. Even admitting that, as it has been said, at the early stage religious training is the supreme art of standing out of Nature"s way, it is still not hard to find what, in this matter, the way of Nature is. The life of the individual recapitulates the life of the race, and there can be no better imaginative food for the child than that which was found good in the childhood of the race.
The child who is deprived of fairy tales invents them for himself,--for he must have them for the needs of his psychic growth just as there is reason to believe he must have sugar for his metabolic growth,--but he usually invents them badly.[179] The savage sees the world almost exactly as the civilized child sees it, as the magnified image of himself and his own environment; but he sees it with an added poetic charm, a delightful and accomplished inventiveness which the child is incapable of. The myths and legends of primitive peoples--for instance, those of the British Columbian Indians, so carefully reproduced by Boas in German and Hill Tout in English--are one in their precision and their extravagance with the stories of children, but with a finer inventiveness. It was, I believe, many years ago pointed out by Ziller that fairy-tales ought to play a very important part in the education of young children, and since then B. Hartmann, Stanley Hall and many others of the most conspicuous educational authorities have emphasized the same point. Fairy tales are but the final and transformed versions of primitive myths, creative legends, stories of old G.o.ds. In purer and less transformed versions the myths and legends of primitive peoples are often scarcely less adapted to the child"s mind. Julia Gayley argues that the legends of early Greek civilization, the most perfect of all dreams, should above all be revealed to children; the early traditions of the East and of America yield material that is scarcely less fitted for the child"s imaginative uses. Portions of the Bible, especially of Genesis, are in the strict sense fairy tales, that is legends of early G.o.ds and their deeds which have become stories. In the opinion of many these portions of the Bible may suitably be given to children (though it is curious to observe that a Welsh Education Committee a few years ago prohibited the reading in schools of precisely the most legendary part of Genesis); but it must always be remembered, from the Christian point of view, that nothing should be given at this early age which is to be regarded as essential at a later age, for the youth turns against the tales of his childhood as he turns against its milk-foods. Some day, perhaps, it may be thought worth while to compile a Bible for childhood, not a mere miscellaneous a.s.sortment of stories, but a collection of books as various in origin and nature as are the books of the Hebraic-Christian Bible, so that every kind of child in all his moods and stages of growth might here find fit pasture. Children would not then be left wholly to the mercy of the thin and frothy literature which the contemporary press pours upon them so copiously; they would possess at least one great and essential book which, however fantastic and extravagant it might often be, would yet have sprung from the deepest instincts of the primitive soul, and furnish answers to the most insistent demands of primitive hearts. Such a book, even when finally dropped from the youth"s or girl"s hands, would still leave its vague perfume behind.
It may be pointed out, finally, that the fact that it is impossible to teach children even the elements of adult religion and philosophy, as well as unwise to attempt it, by no means proves that all serious teaching is impossible in childhood. On the imaginative and spiritual side, it is true, the child is re-born and transformed during adolescence, but on the practical and concrete side his life and thought are for the most part but the regular and orderly development of the habits he has already acquired. The elements of ethics on the one hand, as well as of natural science on the other, may alike be taught to children, and indeed they become a necessary part of early education, if the imaginative side of training is to be duly balanced and complemented. The child as much as the adult can be taught, and is indeed apt to learn, the meaning and value of truth and honesty, of justice and pity, of kindness and courtesy; we have wrangled and worried for so long concerning the teaching of religion in schools that we have failed altogether to realize that these fundamental notions of morality are a far more essential part of school training. It must, however, always be remembered that they cannot be adequately treated merely as an isolated subject of instruction, and possibly ought not to be so treated at all. As Harriet Finlay-Johnson wisely says in her _Dramatic Method of Instruction_: "It is impossible to shut away moral teaching into a compartment of the mind. It should be firmly and openly diffused throughout the thoughts, to "leaven the whole of the lump."" She adds the fruitful suggestion: "There is real need for some lessons in which the emotions shall not be ignored. Nature study, properly treated, can touch both senses and emotions."[180]
The child is indeed quite apt to acquire a precise knowledge of the natural objects around him, of flowers and plants and to some extent of animals, objects which to the savage also are of absorbing interest. In this way, under wise guidance, the caprices of his imagination may be indirectly restrained and the lessons of life taught, while at the same time he is thus being directly prepared for the serious studies which must occupy so much of his later youth.
The child, we thus have to realize, is, from the educational point of view of social hygiene, a being of dual nature, who needs ministering to on both sides. On the one hand he demands the key to an imaginative paradise which one day he must leave, bearing away with him, at the best, only a dim and haunting memory of its beauty. On the other hand he possesses eager apt.i.tudes on which may be built up concrete knowledge and the sense of human relationships, to serve as a firm foundation when the period of adolescent development and discipline at length arrives.
FOOTNOTES:
[163] De Quincey in his _Confessions of an Opium Eater_ referred to the power that many, perhaps most, children possess of seeing visions in the dark. The phenomenon has been carefully studied by G.L. Partridge (_Pedagogical Seminary_, April, 1898) in over 800 children. He found that 58.5 of them aged between thirteen and sixteen could see visions or images at night with closed eyes before falling asleep; of those aged six the proportion was higher. There seemed to be a maximum at the age of ten, and probably another maximum at a much earlier age. Among adults this tendency is rudimentary, and only found in a marked form in neurasthenic subjects or at moments of nervous exhaustion. See also Havelock Ellis, _The World of Dreams_, chap. II.
[164] G. Stanley Hall, "The Contents of Children"s Minds on Entering School," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891.
[165] "The mother"s face and voice are the first conscious objects as the infant soul unfolds, and she soon comes to stand in the very place of G.o.d to her child. All the religion of which the child is capable during this by no means brief stage of its development consists of these sentiments--grat.i.tude, trust, dependence, love, etc.--now felt only for her, which are later directed towards G.o.d. The less these are now cultivated towards the mother, who is now their only fitting if not their only possible object, the more feebly they will later be felt towards G.o.d. This, too, adds greatly to the sacredness of the responsibilities of motherhood." (G. Stanley Hall, _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 199).
[166] J. Morse, _American Journal of Religious Psychology_, 1911, p. 247.
[167] Lobsien, "Kinderideale," _Zeitschrift fur Pad. Psychologie_, 1903.
[168] Mr. Edmond Holmes, formerly Chief Inspector of Elementary Education in England, has an instructive remark bearing on this point in his suggestive book, _What Is and What Might be_ (1911, p. 88): "The first forty minutes of the morning session are given in almost every elementary school to what is called _Religious Instruction_. This goes on, morning after morning, and week after week. The fact that the English parent, who must himself have attended from 1500 to 2000 Scripture lessons in his schooldays, is not under any circ.u.mstance to be trusted to give religious instruction to his own children, shows that those who control the religious education of the youthful "ma.s.ses" have but little confidence in the effects of their system on the religious life and faith of the English people." Miss Harriet Finlay-Johnson, a highly original and successful elementary school teacher, speaks (_The Dramatic Method of Teaching_, 1911, p. 170) with equal disapproval of the notion that any moral value attaches to the ordinary school examinations in "Scripture."
[169] If it were not so, England, after sixty years of National Schools, ought to be a devout nation of good Church people. Most of the criminals and outcasts have been taught in Church Schools. A clergyman, who points this out to me, adds: "I am heartily thankful that religion was never forced on me as a child. I do not think I had any religion, in the ethical sense, until p.u.b.erty, or any conscious realization of religion, indeed, until nineteen." "The boy," remarks Holmes (_op. cit._, p. 100), "who, having attended two thousand Scripture lessons, says to himself when he leaves school: "If this is religion I will have no more of it,"
is acting in obedience to a healthy instinct. He is to be honoured rather than blamed for having realized at last that the chaff on which he has so long been fed is not the life-giving grain which, unknown to himself, his inmost soul demands."
[170] _La Nouvelle Helose_, Part V, Letter 3. In more recent times Ellen Key remarks in a suggestive chapter on "Religions Education" in her _Century of the Child_: "Nothing better shows how deeply rooted religion is in human nature than the fact that "religious education" has not been able to tear it out."
[171] J.S. Mill, _Letters_, Vol. II, p. 135.
[172] Lancaster found ("The Psychology and Pedagogy of Adolescence,"
_Pedagogical Seminary_, July, 1897) that among 598 individuals of both s.e.xes in the United States, as many as 518 experienced new religious emotions between the ages of 12 and 20, only 80 having no such emotions at this period, so that more than 5 out of 6 have this experience; it is really even more frequent, for it has no necessary tendency to fall into conventional religious moulds.
[173] Professor Starbuck, in his _Psychology of Religion_, has well brought together and clearly presented much of the evidence showing this intimate a.s.sociation between adolescence and religious manifestations.
He finds (Chap. III) that in females there are two tidal waves of religious awakening, one at about 13, the other at 16, with a less significant period at 18; for males, after a wavelet at 12, the great tidal wave is at 16, followed by another at 18 or 19. Ruediger"s results are fairly concordant ("The Period of Mental Reconstruction," _American Journal of Psychology_, July, 1907); he finds that in women the average age of conversion is 14, in men it is at 13 or 14, and again at 18.
[174] G. Stanley Hall, "The Moral and Religious Training of Children and Adolescents," _Pedagogical Seminary_, June, 1891, p. 207. From the more narrowly religious side the undesirability of attempting to teach religion to children is well set forth by Florence Hayllar (_Independent Review_, Oct., 1906). She considers that thirteen is quite early enough to begin teaching children the lessons of the Gospels, for a child who acted in accordance with the Gospels would be "aggravating," and would generally be regarded as "an insufferable prig." Moreover, she points out, it is dangerous to teach young children the Christian virtues of charity, humility, and self-denial. It is far better that they should first be taught the virtues of justice and courage and self-mastery, and the more Christian virtues later. She also believes that in the case of the clergy who are brought in contact with children a preliminary course of child-study, with the necessary physiology and psychology, should be compulsory.
[175] The varying opinions on this point have been fairly and clearly presented by Cheetham in his Hulsean lectures on the _Mysteries Pagan and Christian_.
[176] Thus at the first Congress of Italian Women held at Rome in 1908--a very representative Congress, by no means made up of "feminists" or anti-clericals, and marked by great moderation and good sense--a resolution was pa.s.sed against religious teaching in primary schools, though a subsequent resolution declared by a very large majority in favour of teaching the history of religions in secondary schools. These resolutions caused much surprise at the time to those persons who still cherish the superst.i.tion that in matters of religion women are blindly prejudiced and unable to think for themselves.
[177] See e.g. an article by Halley Stewart, President of the Secular Education League, on "The Policy of Secular Education," _Nineteenth Century_, April, 1911.
[178] So far as numbers go, the dominant religion of the British Empire, the religion of the majority, is Hinduism; Mohammedanism comes next.
[179] "Not long ago," says Dr. L. Guthrie (_Clinical Journal_, 7th June, 1899), "I heard of a lady who, in her desire that her children should learn nothing but what was true, banished fairy tales from her nursery. But the children evolved from their own imagination fictions which were so appalling that she was glad to divert them with Jack-the-Giant-Killer."
[180] In his interesting study of comparative education (_The Making of Citizens_, 1902, p. 194), Mr. R.E. Hughes, a school inspector, after discussing the methods of settling the difficulties of religious education in England, America, Germany, and France, reasonably concludes: "The solution of the religious problem of the schools of these four peoples lies in the future, but we believe it will be found not to be beyond human ingenuity to devise a scheme of moral and ethical training for little children which will be suitable. It is the moral principles underlying all conduct which the school should teach. Indeed, the school, to justify its existence, dare not neglect them. It will teach them, not dogmatically or by precept, but by example, and by the creation of a n.o.ble atmosphere around the child." Holmes also (_op.
cit._, p. 276) insists that the teaching of patriotism and citizenship must be informal and indirect.
VIII
THE PROBLEM OF s.e.xUAL HYGIENE
The New Movement for giving s.e.xual Instruction to Children--The Need of such a Movement--Contradictions involved by the Ancient Policy of Silence--Errors of the New Policy--The Need of Teaching the Teacher--The Need of Training the Parents--And of Scientifically equipping the Physician--s.e.xual Hygiene and Society--The far-reaching Effects of s.e.xual Hygiene.
It is impossible to doubt the vitality and the vigour of the new movement of s.e.xual hygiene, especially that branch of it concerned with the instruction of children in the essential facts of life.[181] In the eighteenth century the great educationist, Basedow, was almost alone when, by practice and by precept, he sought to establish this branch of instruction in schools.[182] A few years ago, when the German Durer Bund offered prizes for the best essays on the training of the young in matters of s.e.x, as many as five hundred papers were sent in.[183] We may say that during the past ten years more has been done to influence popular feeling on this question than during the whole of the preceding century.