LEARN ABOUT HYPNOSIS

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

As we have just seen in the preceding chapter, the importance of psycho-therapeutics has been nowhere more strikingly shown than in the treatment of bad habits in children, and also of difficulty and backward children, who had resisted all other methods ranging from gentle persuasion to corporal punishment. Such results have opened up a most hopeful outlook for the education of children, especially as regards the possibility of modifying or eradicating hereditary defects. We feel that while many parents are fully alive to their responsibility in this matter, others seem content to provide food, clothing, school education, and a start in life for each child, and trouble themselves but little with the bigger and more vital question of the education and development of each individual character. This chapter has therefore been written for the latter class of parents, in the earnest hope that the value of education may be brought before them in a new light, and that they may be led to interest themselves in it practically, as the biggest and most momentous question of this age and of every age. We feel it confident that education, and education alone, is the only radical way to deal with many questions relating to crime and immorality, which we at present attempt to solve by Acts of Parliament. Acts of Parliament but lop the branched, so to speak; education alone strikes at the root of the tree. Overwhelming then is the responsibility of every mother, since on the mother rests the onus of much of the early education of her children.


Each child is born into the world resembling in outer appearance either one or other parent, or it amy be a near relation or an ancestor, and bearing in itself the elements of the good qualities or the defects of its forbears. Some children start life with a generous dower of good qualities, others heavily handicapped by unlovely hereditary traits. While the same education may be given to any six children it is fully realized that each one of the six children will absorb and utilize it differently, according to the individual drift of its character. To wish to have this otherwise would be to wish to repress and obliterate all originality, which would be a retrograde step. There is however an overwhelming difference between realizing that one cannot have anything approaching to full control in shaping each child's character and, on the other hand, to allow that character to develop the best way it can with no wise guidance. Perhaps fully as harmful as indifference and neglect is the inculcation of a set of hard and fast beliefs and dead precepts which have not the support of a living example. It is possible, even probable, that an education carried out on these lines is responsible for many wrecked lives.

Hypnotism has strikingly brought out the fact that every human being is suggestible to a greater or lesser extent, but at no time more suggestible to a greater or lesser extent, but at no time more suggestible than during childhood, and that for this reason all education given during our earliest years is of untold value. So indelibly indeed are the impressions of childhood stamped upon us that they influence our lives for good or for evil to an extent that is only now being practically realized. In consequence those who have attempted the task of re-educating a warped or twisted character, with or without the help of hypnotic treatment, have been constantly impressed with the necessity for seeking the cause of the warp or the twist in the half-forgotten experiences and memories of childhood.


We therefore urge the fact that this age of extreme suggestibility is the chosen time for deliberately making deep and lasting impressions on a child, that much suffering may be saved if bad hereditary traits be deliberately watched for, and if one set oneself patiently and earnestly to modify them before they acquire a firm hold. Babyhood and childhood are, above all, the time for forming life habits, habits which will in later years ensure happiness to ourselves, and which will in later years ensure happiness to ourselves, and which will to some extent minimize suffering in others.

Those who have set themselves to train a baby have often marveled at the ease with which the average baby learns quite unconsciously the habits of regular feeding, regular sleeping, regular motion of the bowels, etc. These habits are taught as it were by suggestion only, and we would urge the fact that it is similarly possible to instill the elements of control, obedience and consideration for others during the earliest years of a child's life. By a lack of wise influence during these early years much suffering is laid up for the child in after years, when in the hard school of experience it learns slowly and laboriously and with much kicking against the pricks. To a great extent it is true that we must all learn by experience, but how much easier it is to acquire that learning if we have some fundamental principles to guide us. How much easier is our task if we start out into the world realizing that we and our affairs are not the central point of the universe, realizing that the only way to have happiness is to develop it in ourselves, and about all realizing our great responsibility to every soul whose life touches ours.

Having insisted so strongly upon the enormous value of early impressions and early education, we would venture to dwell now upon some points in that education which we feel are not sufficiently emphasized, and which yet are of paramount importance in helping to shape a character to high and useful ends.

No question claims our attention more urgently than the necessity for giving knowledge concerning the functions of the body to growing boys and girls, so that they may realize something of the meaning of manhood and womanhood. It has been found that the elements of this knowledge can be given most easily and naturally by first interesting the child in plants and the method of propagation of plants, and so on through bird life and animal life to human life. It is imperative that such knowledge should be given to every child, preferably by the parents, or, should they feel themselves unequal to the task, by some competent person. Such knowledge wisely given is the greatest protection that a growing boy or girl can have. For lack of it not only has many a sensitive nature suffered terrible distress of mind, but many a life has suffered shipwreck. Triply armed is he who starts out in life with a deep sense of the high purpose of creation, respecting his body as the temple of his soul, accepting his manhood as a sacred gift which he dare not barter for a mess of pottage, but which he holds as dearer than life itself and closely linked in its rise and fall with all womanhood. Degradation of manhood must then mean to him degradation of womanhood, and elevation of manhood must mean elevation of womanhood.

We would next plead that during the suggestible age of youth every effort should be made to stamp a broad and sympathetic religious outlook on children, so that they may realize that unity of purpose is allimportant and that the differences of detail are of the utmost insignificance. The thing of vital importance may surely be regarded as being the attitude of every human soul to Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, as shown, not in any special set of creeds but in all acts, even the most trivial, of daily life and conduct. To love one's fellow-beings in vague theory brings to them no sense of warmth or comfort, and can have no practical value except in so far as that theory translates itself into acts of consideration and kindness.

We feel that it is impossible to set too high a price on truthfulness, sincerity, and high moral courage, as the fairest flowers that any life can show. It surely cannot be too deeply impressed upon a child that never do we display a greater grandeur of soul than when we stand upon our feet to acknowledge our errors and to accept full responsibility for them, nay more, that not to do so is to stunt all moral growth within us. Great need is there also to emphasize the value of having the moral courage to dare to be ourselves, and to regard all deliberate self-deception as a lie, to dare to set aside all conventions which cripple our thoughts and actions, to dare to throw off the dead hand of a false respectability which glosses over wrong-doing, but which dreads any false step which may reveal it to the world.

Above all, in all efforts at early education let us put in the forefront the divine quality of forgiveness, not a grudging and churlish forgiveness, but a forgiveness that "droppeth like the gentle dew from heaven," a forgiveness that we give in good measure pressed down and running over.

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