Essay No. 7
The Value of a Certain " Hardness " in Education
BY
Mrs. Arthur Philip
(Reprinted by leave of the Editor of "Mothers in Council.")
I WANT to begin my paper to-day with one or two incidental remarks. First, I want to say that I feel sure the word "hardness" will provoke controversy, however clearly I may be able to put my meaning ; and, indeed, I hope that it will, since, if we are to get all the good we may do out of these meetings of "Mothers in Council," we want to get different and opposing ways of looking at the great truths which underlie all educational problems and methods, plainly stated and argued out.
Secondly, I want all who hear me to understand that the necessary "hardness" of a good education is more hard for the mother than the child. It is far pleasanter and easier to make pets and playthings of our children than to train them to be good and useful men and women. Then, too, I find it is necessary to guard against being misunderstood as to the absolute need of happiness in a child's life for healthy development. Plants cannot grow and fruits cannot
65
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
66
ripen without warmth and sunshine any more than they can without wind and rain ; and, although perpetual tropical heat produces a showy but unstable growth, out of which little of permanent use can be made, in contrast to the "hearts of oak," which are the product of a climate of mingled cloud and shine, the oak itself would grow dwarfed and stunted without its share of genial warmth. And I have always felt and known that one cannot make one's children too happy, provided the happiness is consistent with order, discipline, and unselfishness, and is real genuine happiness found in the shelter of home, or in those healthy country pursuits which are the very breath of a happy childhood; and not in outside excitements and indulgences, which can early destroy a taste for pure pleasures and create cravings and wants fatal to all true future happiness. I believe, although I stand here to-day as the advocate of a "certain hardness," that it is every mother's duty, as far as lies in her power, to let her children start in the world with the memory of a happy childhood, with a great fund of joy in their memory to which they can go back in darker, less fortunate days; and which shall give them, whatever their lot in life may be, so sure a hold on the truth that God wishes us to be happy, that the belief in a future which will be all happiness is not very difficult to them on the dreariest and gloomiest days. Make a child really happy and you have gone a long way towards making
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
67
him good. I found this thought so beautifully expressed by a popular author the other day that I will venture to quote it. "The evil days, the troubles and the disappointments, the doubts and the fears, come soon enough ; keep them out of child life as long as possible ! Let the lives of the children be such that, however deep be the troubles when they come, however bitter the disappointments, however grave the doubts, however crushing the fears, they may always be lightened and cheered by the radiance of the past. Let the children's faith in father's justice and patience, in mother's tenderness and truth, be so strong that they may stand as bright beacons to guide them from one end of life to the other."
I first began consciously to realise the value of hardness, or, may I put it negatively and say the "evil of softness," in education when I heard a wise old lady, herself a grandmother, who was gifted with a rhetorical style of speaking which, had she been a man, would have made her famous in the pulpit or at the bar, startle a room full of mothers, to whom she was speaking of their duties, by saying, "Don't be fond of your children ! " and, after an effective pause, go on to explain that fondness and foolishness were etymologically identical, that the mother who was "fond"of her children spoiled them by foolish indulgence, thought of their present enjoyment and not of their future happiness, and in her selfish delight in giving them pleasure and sparing them
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
68
trouble, too often laid the foundation of undisciplined, unsatisfactory lives; while the mother who truly "loved " her children had strength to deny them and herself pleasures, and helps, and enjoyments which she knew must sow the seeds of future self-indulgence and form habits which were fatal to future strength of character.
What she said that day set me and many others thinking whether, for our children, WE were "fond and foolish," whether we were choosing present joys at the expense of future happiness, possibly of their eternal welfare; and the more one thinks of the great, the everlasting responsibility of one's motherhood, the more will the truth of that warning, "Don't be fond of your children," strike home to each one of us. We all need it, for the temptation comes in such attractive guise, the desire to sacrifice our own comfort and happiness to our little ones seems so right, so meritorious, that it needs perpetual watching, deep - nd earnest thought, and the strength and wisdom which alone come from above, to meet this, perhaps the greatest temptation of our motherhood.
Surely, with mothers of all classes, the "evil that is wrought with young lives " is wrought mainly "by want of thought and not by want of heart." Most mothers, as far as they see it, desire their children's good, and if they knew, if they saw clearly that they were constantly setting their child's pleasure of the
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
69
moment before its happiness through life and the long ages of eternity, they would not hesitate a moment in putting the true before the seeming "good." It is our fatal habit of living in the present, of not realising how our every act helps to irrevocably shape the future, that makes us choose present ease and indulgence at so heavy a cost, not only for ourselves, but, alas ! for our children also. Like Guinevere, we recognise the beauty of the spiritual too late, and if we do not wake to the truth ere our opportunities are over and past, we may have to say of ourselves as mothers—
"It was my duty to have loved the Highest !
It surely was my profit had I known !
It would have been my pleasure had I seen."
It is this fact that if we only knew, nothing would weigh with us against our children's real good that makes our failure to secure it so infinitely pathetic. For is not our desire for their good, as far as we realise it, the ruling passion of our lives ? Think for a moment how any one of us here would unhesitatingly, gladly put ourselves in the place of one of our children to shield them from death, or danger, or even physical pain. We know how we would give all we possess, all we hope for for ourselves of future happiness, to secure their welfare and think it lightly bought; but with all our love—all our yearn-ing-our passionate desire for their well-being, there is so little we can do ! They so soon cease to be our
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
70
nest-birds : our little ones over whom we fancy, in our self-satisfaction, that we can watch so as to avert all evil. And then comes the unknown future ; that future of which we can tell nothing certainly, but of which we can surely say : Be our child's lot the most fortunate that earth can give, that it will contain much physical pain, much mental trouble, and that if he is to rise to any height of goodness or heroism, such as we surely desire for him, then struggle, effort, self-denial, and self-sacrifice are inevitable.
And when those hard and dark days come to our children, which we dare not, if we truly love them, even wish to avert ; when in distant parts of the earth, or in far-away days, when our hands have long been folded in eternal rest and our active work for them is long done for good or ill ; when the golden locks have turned to grey, and those bright little faces, now the light of our homes and hearts, have become the careworn, weary, saddened faces of the men and women who have taken our places in the "Battle of Life "; who are for themselves or others bearing it heavy burdens, trying to stem its torrents of evil an following the calls of duty into earth's darkest places ; which will have been best trained and fitted to fight fierce temptations, to conquer sin, to bear and vanquish trouble and sorrow, pain and death (those inevitable heritages of humanity !) the boys and girls who have been shielded from every wind that blows; sheltered, cared for and tended like hothouse plants;
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
71
accustomed to an atmosphere of pleasure and excitement; taught by inference to make happiness and not duty their aim in life; those from whom the consequences of their own foolish actions have been so warded off that they have failed to realise God's law —taught alike by nature and revelation—that as we sow we shall surely reap; or those to whom wise early training has given endurance, courage, self-reliance, self-control, and wisdom ? Surely for our children, as for ourselves, "the path of duty is the road to glory."
"He that walks it, only thirsting
"For the right, and learns to deaden
"Love of self, before his journey closes,
"He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
"Into glossy purples, which outredden
"All voluptuous garden roses.
"Not once or twice in our fair island story,
"The path of duty was the way to glory :
"He, that ever following her commands
"On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
"Thro' the long gorge to the far light, has won
"His path upward, and prevail'd,
"Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
"Are close upon the shining table-lands
"To which our God Himself is moon and sun."
And if we ever wish to see our children attain to those "shining table-lands " we must teach the little feet early to tread the upward path, and not plant habits which will hide those "toppling crags" and quicken instead of "deaden " that "love of self "
And may I stay here to go back for a moment to
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
72
that averting of consequences which so distorts a child's true view of life, that perpetual making of excuses for ourselves and others which is partly "the defect of the virtue " of toleration that so distinguishes our end of the century that it is in danger of becoming its bane. Like " unselfishness " in a mother, it is a temptation that comes in charming guise, that appeals to our better nature. We all despise the person who makes excuses for himself ; who, instead of confessing and repenting a fault, tries to justify himself ! Yet we admire the one who is always trying to excuse his neighbour, who can find a dozen reasons, in heredity or environment, which caused his folly or his crime. And so, alas ! we lower the standard of virtue ; we make wickedness seem excusable, sometimes even attractive ; we make it appear an impossible thing to scale the height of righteousness; and too often, alas ! we take away the belief of some feeble one that faults can be mended, temptations resisted, and sin conquered ! We cloud the clear sight, we lower the moral atmosphere, and if we countenance such a lowered standard in our homes our children start in life without that clear perception of good and evil which is one of the most essential equipments for treading its difficult paths in safety
We little think when we excuse fretfulness on the score of fatigue, untruthfulness on that of imagination, or roughness on that of " high spirits "—I mean excuse it in words before the children—how much
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
73
more difficult we are making it to control the temper which all life long will have to battle with fatigue and weariness, to curb the imagination which runs away with its owner and makes it so easy and tempting to tell a graphic story at the expense of strict veracity, or to check the reckless disregard of the feelings of others, and habit of enjoying himself at the expense of another, which are among a young man's greatest temptations.
Such making of excuses and averting consequences is not God's way of educating us, and to be true parents should we not strive to imitate the ways of our Father in Heaven, which we know to be those of infinite Wisdom as well as infinite Love ? Although we long ago learned that no passionate remorse, no plea of extenuating circumstances can avert the consequences of evil done in thoughtlessness or even in ignorance; that the man who takes poison by accident dies just as surely as he who takes it by design, and that the girl who is betrayed and deceived by falsehoods is ruined equally with the one who recklessly throws away her virtue. We have learnt our own lesson, we should in all fairness let our children learn it early. Let your little girl know from the first that temper must he held down and conquered, however tried she may be; and your boy that he must not indulge his animal spirits and nature at the cost of discomfort and suffering to others ; and do not listen to or make excuses for deviation from
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
74
truth, however amusing or trivial. It may seem and feel "hard " to ignore such excuses and keep to such a standard, but such hardness is only another name for truth and gentleness and self-control in preference to falsehood and weakness and selfishness.
This brings us back to our word "hardness." And here I should like to say a few words in defence of it; I know it is not usually considered a "nice" or pleasant word, and so, in face of the fact that "qui s'excuse s'accuse," I want to say something in its favour. It is not well that good should be evil spoken of because it is at first sight lacking in the attractiveness which attaches to many worthless things, and I maintain that at the right place and time "hardness" is an invaluable quality. Let me ask you first to put away all associations connected with it which damage it and credit it with evil not inherent in itself. "Hard-hearted," "hard-headed." They are not lovable epithets; and they distort the word from its original meaning and bring unmerited contempt on it, just as the word strong is damaged by association in the epithet used in contempt of a "strong-minded " woman. Look for a moment at the reverse, and the unfairness is obvious, for surely the most indignant repudiator of the term would not dub herself "weak-minded " I It seems to me unfair to pervert words from their original meaning, and then reproach them for what we ourselves have thrust on them.
Let us take our word "hardness," then, pure and
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
75
simple, and look at its origin and derivation and true meaning, as Mrs. Haycroft did with "fondness." It comes from another Anglo-Saxon word, very slightly modified, and it means the quality of being hard; and hard (Anglo-Saxon heard) means " firm ; solid ; not easily pressed, penetrated, or broken " ; and so on to appropriate meanings, some good, some bad —as " exacting " and " severe " on one side, " diligently " and " earnestly " on the other, the simple meaning remaining as above, " firm; solid ; not easily pressed, penetrated, or broken." Consulting our dictionary once more, and finding that education means " the bringing up of a child; instruction ; the training that goes to cultivate the powers and form the character " (that education is emphatically not cramming the mind with undigested facts), who can deny that there is, indeed, a certain value or worth of " hardness in education " ? Was ever any " training " or " bringing up " good that was not " firm " ?—any " instruction " worth having that was not "solid "?—any forming of character of value unless founded on a system "not easily pressed, penetrated, or broken " ? It is impossible to have a training worth the name without strength, consistency, and firmness, and of all these hardness is an essential part. We know full well that the type of national character which is our ideal, the stuff of which our heroes and prophets have been made, is the outcome of such a training—the
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
76
product of struggle with difficulties and character inured to hardship. It is the spirit which has given us our great men, and of which Kingsley sang, when, in praise of the north-east wind, he said :
"Let the luscious south wind
Breathe in lovers' sighs,
While the lazy gallants
Bask in the ladies' eyes.
What does he but soften
Heart alike and pen ?
'Tis the hard grey weather
Breeds hard Englishmen.
"Come and strong within us
Stir the Viking's blood,
Bracing brain and sinew;
Blow, thou wind of God "
Kingsley realised that there was no strength of muscle or soul without a certain hardness, and uses it as a term of approbation, and if we value permanency, and justice, and strength, so must we.
There is no time to-day to go into special appli cations of the principle as affecting moral training, beyond the little I said about excuses and averted consequences, and the contrast between true love and fondness, especially as I am sure anyone who will think it quietly over will admit the value of "firmness " and of a thing "not easily broken "—in theory, at least. It is only in practice that we fail. What we see clearly for ourselves we cannot, in our tenderness for our children, accept and act on for them. Who among us will deny the good she has gained
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
77
from conquering difficulties—the strength that has come to her from struggles ? And who does not know that what is best in her intellectually, morally, and spiritually has come to her hardest ? Who would dare to ask for herself a future all ease, and pleasure, and amusement ? And yet, consciously or unconsciously, too many of us try to do so for our children.
We must avoid creating a false idea in the minds of children that pleasure and happiness are the ultimate end of life, the one thing to seek and pursue, in distinct contradiction to our Lord's doctrine that they who seek their life shall lose it ; and to the teaching of all experience, that they who pursue happiness choose a fleeting shadow which ever eludes their grasp; while to those who forget it, and are guided by duty and right, it comes unasked, walking ever with them, a welcome and blessed, though unsought, companion.
Such false ideas are even formulated by parents, whom one cannot but feel are something worse than "fond and foolish." Not long ago I heard of a cultivated, educated woman who dared to say openly that she made and intended to make her only child's life utterly happy—that it was to be one long, unclouded summer's day, undimmed by sorrow, untouched by difficulty ; and who, before twelve months had passed, was called away from this world, to leave her little one motherless and alone. I only mention
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
78
this to show it is no phantom danger I am pointing out, for though few would boldly put into words what that poor, misguided mother did, hundreds act as if it were their guiding principle. Do we not talk of Spartan mothers half in derision, as if their spirit were something unnatural and wrong ? And yet, what did they do but bid their sons "come back with honour or never come back at all," and refuse them a welcome if they returned shamed and disgraced through cowardice and sloth. And if we want our sons to do the best for themselves, to realise the high ideal of their manhood, should we not teach them the same, and teach ourselves to feel it, that we would rather see them dead than dishonoured ? That, whatever calling they choose, they must, as Ruskin says in "Unto this Last," live by it and for it nobly and straightforwardly, and, if need be, die for it, rather than not serve its utmost claim in absolute truth and honesty.
There is a story in the Apocrypha of a mother who stood by and saw her seven sons, from her firstborn down to her youngest darling, cruelly tortured and martyred one by one, knowing that apostasy would have saved them, yet encouraging them through all the ghastly, terrible ordeal not to deny their God and their faith. Think of such a mother of heroes, whose eye could pierce beyond the clouds, and know that for her boys future happiness and glory were well bought at the price of present
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
79
tribulation, who could nerve her loving heart tc endure the awful agony of seeing their sufferings; and think how little, in contrast, is asked of us ! Only that we will remember that, " as gold must be tried by fire, so a heart must be tried by pain " ; that the diamond can only be polished by hardness; and that, if the spirit is to trample on the brute in our children's double nature, we must not teach them by example and precept to choose sloth and luxury, and enervate them by overmuch ease and pleasure.
I must stay to suggest one special side of this question, the value of hardness and of overcoming difficulties in intellectual work, Now that the system of competitive examinations rules our children's lives, this is a truth that we specially need to remember. There is a supposed imperative necessity that, by a given age, their minds shall be crammed with certain facts, and their attainments brought up to a given point, and, to make this possible, a fashion of making things easy has come up, and we are but too familiar with the words "crib " and "cram " and "coach," and the processes they imply and suggest. I do not want to deny the excellence of many modern methods, but I do emphatically say that knowledge to which you are helped and guided at every point along a royal road to learning, will never train your intellect or store your mind like knowledge you have puzzled over and struggled and laboured for; that so well-developed and strong an intellect cannot be
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
80
produced by cramming with ready digested food, a by a healthy and natural process of feeding and assimilation. Look at modern translation books-- every idiom explained in a footnote, every hard passage made easy, and a glossary at the end to save the trouble of reaching down a dictionary I And remember the amount of personal explanation the average child of to-day claims in its home preparation, so that the mother (or, in many cases, a paid teacher) devotes hours in the evening to helping the preparation of school lessons. We are often told that the value of classics and mathematics as studies lies in the mental discipline and exact training they give. How can this be realised by scrambling through as much as possible with all sorts of props and helps ? And if all these easy methods of learning do not strengthen, but rather force and finally enfeeble the intellect, what is the effect on the moral nature ? Self-reliance and the grand old spirit of dogged determination to conquer hard tasks is done away with entirely. Children feel they have a right to be helped, and that, if they fail, they can lay the blame on the parents, or elder brothers and sisters, or governess, who failed to make smooth their path. If the time of education is really a preparation for the work of life, a time to learn how to learn, to develop every faculty to its utmost, this system of annotated books, and perpetual explanation, and coaches and cramming, must be fatal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
81
It is a wide and difficult subject, but well worth our careful thought and consideration, since it is only too evident that our present educational system is not perfect, that young minds are being forced into premature attainments, and the originality, which would often come with slower and more personal development, lost. The chance of thorough mental training we should like for our children is injured by the fact that they cannot, except in rare instances, do what is required of them without spe-
cial help. It would be far better t0 let them do
much less, but do it perfectly and without artificial aids.
May I conclude by recurring to what I said in beginning, that the "hardness " of a good training is as much—nay, more for the mother than the child. I am pleading for what I know is a mother's most difficult work. It is so hard to seem "hard," to deny our children what appears in itself a harmless pleasure at the time. But here the very strength of our love, when once our eyes are open, should help us—help us to bear being even misunderstood by our children. Is it not often the penalty of the highest, most clear-sighted love to be so misjudged? Does not the true lover often plead in vain to a lower nature, "I could not love thee, dear, so well, loved I not honour
more ? "
Such hardship, such misunderstanding is, indeed, sooner or later the inevitable price of motherhood.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
82
In one of her marvellous intuitions of an experience she had never tasted, George Eliot says : *
"The mother's love is at first an absorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities; it is an expansion of the animal existence; it enlarges the imagined sphere for self to move in; but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love—that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another."
"Of living in the experience of another ! " so that when the experience of our child's soul is that which welcomes toil, and labour, and hardship, and even death, for the Master's sake, we may not stretch out a weak hand to hold him back, nor utter a wailing word to make his difficult choice harder ; for can we ever forget that the cost of the highest, most blessed motherhood the world has ever known was foretold in that prophecy fulfilled to the uttermost at the foot of the Cross, "Yea, a sword shall pierce thine own soul also " ?* Felix Holt, Chap. L
---oOo---
