Moral Crises : Older Children

Religious Education in the Family
by Henry F. Cope

(Page 24 of 28)

But protective lying presents a more serious problem with older children. The school-teacher and parent meet it, just as the judge and the employer meet it in adults. The cure lies early in life. Truth-telling is as much a habit as lying is. Perhaps it is more easily practiced; its drafts are on the powers of observation and memory rather than on those of imagination. Along with the child's imaginative powers there must be developed the powers of exact observation and description. Exact observation and description or relation are but parts of the larger general virtue of precision. Help children at every turn of life to be right - right in doing things, right in thinking, in saying, and in execution. Precision at any point in life helps lift the life's whole level. Truth-telling is not a separable virtue. You cannot make a boy truthful in word if you let him lie in deed. You cannot expect he will speak the truth if you do not train him to do the truth, in his play, in ordering his room, in thinking through his school problems, and in thinking through his religious difficulties. Truth-telling is the verbal reaction of the life which habitually holds that nothing is right until it is just right.

Two things would, ordinarily, make sure of a truthful statement, instead of a protective lie, in answer to your question: first, that the young person has been trained to the habit of seeing and stating things as they are - and that you really give him a chance so to state them, and, secondly, that to some degree there has been developed a recognition of considerations or values that are higher than either escape from punishment or the winning of your approbation. He will choose the course that offers what seems to him to be the greater good; he will choose between punishment, with rectitude, a good conscience, a sense of unity with the higher good, of peace with God his friend, a greater approximation to your ideal, on the one side, and, on the other, escape from punishment.

Everything in that crisis will depend on how real you have made the good to be, how much the sense of the reality of God and his companionship has brought of joy and friendship, and how high are his values of the actual, the real, the true.

4. At the Crisis

But what shall we do as we meet the lie on the lips of the child? First, as already suggested, do not wait until you meet it. Train the child to the truthful life. Second, be sure you do not make too heavy moral demands. Remember the instinct to protect himself from immediate punishment or disapprobation is stronger than any other just then. Do not ask him to do what the law says the prisoner may not do, incriminate himself. We have no right to put on our children tests harder than they can bear. Often we put those which are harder than we could face. What you will do just then depends on what you have been doing for the training of the child or youth. Do not expect him to solve problems in moral geometry if you have neglected simple addition in that realm.

Punishment by the blow or the immediate sentence will be futile. The offender must know he has trespassed in a realm beyond your administration and rule; he has done more than commit an offense against you. Whatever consequences follow - such as your hesitation to accept his word - must evidently be a part of the operation of the entire moral law. Help him to see that lying strikes at the root of all social relations and would make all happy and prosperous living, all friendship, and all business impossible by destroying social confidence.

Facing the crisis, do not demand more than your training gives you a right to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as to guilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question; we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see the values of exactitudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring the events into the light of larger areas of time and circles of life, help him to see them related to all his life and to all mankind and to the very fringes of existence, to God and the eternal. That cannot be done in a moment; it is part of a habit of our own minds or it is not really done at all. At the moment we can, however, make the deepest impression by insistence on the importance of the actual, the real, the exactly true.

I. References for Study

E. L. Cabot, Every Day Ethics, chaps. xix, xx. Holt, $1.25.

W. B. Forbush, On Truth Telling. Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.

J. Sully, Children's Ways, pp. 124-33. Appleton, $1.25.

II. Further Reading

G. S. Hall, "A Study of Children's Lies," Educational Problems, I, chap. vi. Appleton, $2.50.

E. P. St. John, A Genetic Study of Veracity. Pamphlet.

J. Sully, Studies in Childhood.

E. H. Griggs, Moral Education. Huebsch, $1.60.

III. Topics for Discussion

1. Are there degrees of lying?

2. When is a lie not a lie?

3. How can we discriminate among the statements of children?

4. How can we help them to recognize the qualities of truth?

5. In what ways are parents to blame for forcing children to protective lying?

6. What of the relation of the thought of God to the demands for truth?

7. Would you punish a child for lying and, if so, in what way?

Copyright 1915 by The University of Chicago