The Flower of the Family : Part 3

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 12 of 20)

Galton estimates two hundred and fifty in a million as in the "distinguished class," If, as Doctor Ward and others think, many more might be able to qualify for that position if favorably situated, then society, which is the loser by every undeveloped person, must learn to know the possibilities of children as indicated by scientific study and lessen the present waste of potential talent. Dr. Carl Kelsey says "Heredity determines what a man may become, but environment determines what he does become." This is not entirely true, perhaps, since many noble and wise have risen from untoward surroundings, but it is largely true.

Social Need to Learn What Children Are. - If society is to really set about the business of getting from the mass of mankind all the intellectual and moral power and all the real leadership that may be available for social uses, then surely we must learn first to know more about all the children in every family. How can this be done? In many cases children are slow in development and may have powers quite unsuspected until the time for most skilful cultivation has passed. In many cases parents are so partial that "all their geese are swans." In other cases the nervous excitability may be such that precocity leads to overstimulation and later there is arrest of development, and the promising bud does not develop into the flower of the family. In any case, the parents alone can not, as a rule, attain full comparison and due balance of judgment even between their own children and certainly not as between their own and the children of other parents.

"Charting Parents." - There is, to be sure, a new plan of "Charting Parents" to find out what they are able to do and what they are actually doing in the moral training and physical care of their children. "The Parents' Score Card," prepared by Dr. Caroline Hedger, of the Elizabeth McCormick Memorial Fund, and published in the Woman's Home Companion of March, 1922, aims to enable fathers and mothers "to size themselves up as parents." The points to be noted and on which parents have a rating as good, bad, or indifferent, comprise those concerning "physical defects attended to," "adequate supervision of athletics and recreation," "regulations concerning the below-weight or nervous child," on "team-work in parents" (whether they pull together or apart in the discipline of the child), and some very drastic examination points on "fault-finding," "lying to child," "punishing when angry." The chart deals, in general, with the character influence of the parent. It is said that only one child in three hundred had a perfect "score card" in an investigation of a large number of children, and hence only a small proportion of parents could be supposed to measure up to all the requirements of the parent's outline of duties.

This new device of putting parents to the test is being adopted in many differing ways by health boards, by school boards, by children's courts, by church committees of investigation, and by the superintendents of charitable agencies. This all means that a standard of child-life is being attained, a measure of the normal, divergence from which is an indication of the abnormal, either in capacity or condition. This is a wholesome movement, although sometimes carried out in unwise and unsympathetic ways. This should enable parents to find out if they have average children and what to do with defects that are remediable. This is also one of the ways by which we measure the social need to help parents who are themselves handicapped in any way to do their duty by their children.

What we need, however, is more than this - we need some definite knowledge of what sort of children we have in one generation with which to build the next generation. We need to be able to take account of our social stock as we go along. To do this the home must be supplemented specifically and adequately by the school. In the school we have opportunity of wide study of varying types, of comparison of differing rates of progress, of getting at actual knowledge of actual quality and capacity in a child as related to the like in other children. This investigative function of the school has been used for the most part to ascertain what children were defective. This is useful. We need, also, to use it with far more ingenuity to ascertain what children are most promising and most likely to dower the race with special gifts.

New Observation Records for Children. - A very important "Observation Record for the Selection of Gifted Children in the Elementary Schools" has been drawn up by Julie A. Badanes, which has been published with an introduction by Dr. Saul Badanes. In this introduction it is well said that "the idea of establishing a norm for every school year" is a new one. The measurement of intelligence by Binet dates only back to 1905. In the treatment of the "Intelligence of Pupils," Meumann declares "that the problem of measuring the intelligence of school children is the basic problem in education." Recently William Stern has dealt at length with "The Selection of Gifted Children in Public Schools" and with related elements of investigation of the intelligence of children. William H. Allen, in his book, Universal Training for American Citizenship, has, as Doctor Badanes notes, given a chapter to the "Training of the Specially Gifted." We are all concerned with growing earnestness in the problem of getting in democracy the leadership which all social organization requires. It is, therefore, of the most intense interest to all thoughtful people how the flower of the family is nurtured and in what manner it is made to bloom.

This "Psychological-pedagogical Observation Record," which has been devised as an aid in finding out if a child is specially gifted, and if so in what way its gifts should be developed and how it should find its way to achievement, is very suggestive. Any parent might well study its itemized outlines for help in effort to understand the child that is unlike the average. The "Record" requires attention to the "general condition of the senses and nerves," to "memory and power of learning," to qualities of "imagination," to strength and expression of "emotions," to facility in "language," to "manner of work," to "relation to home and community life," and in respect to "adaptation to new demands." These things are vital not only to know about and understand as respects one personality but to compare on the same basis a number of personalities in order to get a ranking that is just and useful for guidance in education. Suppose a father and mother feel sure that a child of theirs is one of the exceptional, the gifted, perhaps of great talent, even possibly a genius in the making. They may get much help in arriving at sober judgment by many books and treatises now available. But far clearer would be their own approach to the matter in hand if they could study some such chart as is here alluded to and get a clear direction as to what to look for and how to measure what they find. If such parents, however, would be really assured in their first appreciation of their child they need the coöperative observation and fuller opportunity of comparison which a teacher of a school, who is herself or himself a good psychologist, can place at their service. All of us can see our own children at their best; few can justly estimate what the power of that best may be in a competitive world.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.