The Family and the School : Part 7

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 21 of 22)

However difficult, we must try by some method to make youth realize what is excellent in those who have lived far enough in the past to inspire reverence and yet keep some connection between those heroes and sages of the older times and the march of human life upward and onward. Especially is this the case in all treatment of the family relation. We need not banish Chaucer's "Griselda" from the collections of poems worthy to live and to be read, but at least we should insert some companion pieces which show wifely fidelity in a more modern form. We may well ask the child's admiration of the craftsman's passion for achievement in "Palissey the Potter," but there might be ethical significance in pointing out that nowadays we sometimes question the right of a man to sacrifice to his art not only himself but his wife, his children, and all related to him. The fact is that although we cannot make use of any cumbersome scheme of historic outlines of social progress nor of any learned history of matrimonial institutions, we must somehow learn to permeate our teaching of history and of literature and our exaltation of examples of human greatness of character with the spirit of those who believe that humanity is learning, and can know how to manage social affairs better and better as the years of life-experience go on.

Moral Training at the Heart of Education. - The right and helpful relation of the school to the family, then, is one that must first of all place moral character, the power to live a good and useful life in all social relations, at the centre. And it is one also that takes account particularly of the development of the family order and of what we must save and of what we may throw away in that order, if we would have a stable inner circle of human rights and duties as a pattern for all relationship in the industrial order and in the state.

Drill to Avert Economic Tragedies. - In view also of the danger of economic tragedies that affect the family, - dangers of unemployment of the father by reason of bad times beyond his control, of his disablement by industrial accident, of his too-early impairment of strength by reason of industrial misuse of his powers in ways he can not prevent, - it may be that education for every boy should include, while he is still under the legal wage-earning age, efficient drill in the simpler arts of agriculture. He who can get from the land the raw material for family comfort is alone, it would seem, able to meet all industrial catastrophes without alarm. In this country, at least, such a man, whatever his failure or misfortune in professional, in clerical, or in manual labor, may make good his father-office in basic essentials of family support. All that has been said about the need of mixing vocational training with preparation for home-making in the case of girls may be said with almost as much, force about the need of giving the average man an economic refuge in case of vocational disaster in the ability to work the land to meet essential family need. This is beginning to be understood as never before. The newest education of all, as has been said, is intent upon providing for girls and boys alike this training for economic safety in some expert use of land for self-support as well as for retranslation of older work interests. In these "schools of tomorrow" the boys as well as the girls, while still very young, are being trained to cook and to do necessary things for household comfort. This is not subversive of inherited divisions of labor in the home. This teaching only adds to the economic security of both sexes and may make the men of the future able to exist comfortably without so much personal service from their womenfolk, and, above all, may make the home a more perfectly coöperative centre of our social order.

A Graduated Scale of Virtues. - In the French Categories of "Moral and Civil Instructions," first outlined in 1882 and perfected and applied in 1900, the children of the Public Schools of that country have their attention called first to the duties related to "Home and Family," going on from that topic to "Companionship, The School, Social Life, Animal Life, Self-respect, Work, Leisure and Pleasure, Nature, Art, Citizenship and Nationality," and ending with a study of the "Past and Future." The latter topic indicates an intent to give in some fashion the idea of human progress and something of its outstanding points of interest and value. Other moral codes aim at some sublimation of history and literature as a finish to courses in ethical instruction. It is for the student of social progress to insist that such study of the past, linked to the study of the present and to some hopeful outline of the future, be not used merely as a capstone but shall be woven in, as warp and woof of all education, as it touches every side of life.

Types of Education. - Dr. Lester Ward, in his Dynamic Sociology, lists the various types of education we must cherish and realize in the common life as follows:

"The Education of Experience;
The Education of Discipline;
The Education of Culture;
The Education of Research;
The Education of Information."

To this list, with which most educators would be in agreement, the believers in the "New Education" might add the Education of Development of Personality.

Experience, discipline, culture, research, and information are, however, the great means by which the personality absorbs the social inheritance and thus finds its own place in the social whole. The early initiation by the family to all these means of personal development is not yet exhausted either in function or in social usefulness. The family still begins the socializing process.

Questions on the Family and the School

1. In child-training, should the general aim be to give as much as possible of that training in the home or as much as possible in the school? or what is a wise and efficient balance between family and society influence in education?

2. Given a necessity in character-development for drill in obedience, stimulus toward self-development, capacity for self-control and for helpful association with others in the interest of the commonweal, what part, if any, can the home play which the school cannot?

3. What is the duty of citizens in respect to tax-supported and compulsory education and how can that duty be effectively done in city and country life?

4. How can educational systems be made to work for the better coördination of family life among the newly arrived immigrants?

5. Outline, in general suggestion, an educational program for boys and for girls which would be likely to directly aid the family in attaining stability and success among all classes, having regard to aim, subject-matter, methods of character-development and form of social provision and control in the school.

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.