Essay No. 15
The Paramount Need of Training in Youth
BY
His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster
No craft, no art was ever learnt without a long and strenuous course of self-discipline. Before even a small measure of useful skill can be attained, there must be fixed purpose, concentration of thought, and repeated practice of eye and muscle continued over many weary weeks and even years. Such effort does not come naturally to anyone. Nature seeks immediate and constantly changing satisfaction, and it is only by appeal to some higher object seen from afar that we can be brought to renounce the immediate baser contentment in pursuit of a distant greater satisfaction.
In early childhood no direct appeal can be made to an ideal of which the infant mind is still unconscious, and yet all the while habits are being instinctively formed that will tell for ultimate virtue or vice. Thus an external aid must be brought t0 bear upon the growing child leading him to accept, before he understands the reason of it, the course
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which an enlightened intelligence knows to be right and true. Training and discipline, which often mean constraint and painful repression, are nowhere more needed than in the all-important art and craft of training man and woman to be fit to play their part in life.
Nothing can be clearer than this to anyone who cares to think, and it is probably because so many think but little, that, at the present day, the enforcing of duty upon children with that gradual training to self-discipline which should accompany every development of their reasoning power no longer holds its rightful place in education. Children are humoured and thereby rendered weak in will ; or they are neglected and left to follow the instinct of the moment, so that they never attain any fixed principle of action.
The evil of this would be manifest even if there were no Revelation and no Christian Dispensation. But the Divine Teacher, enforcing, as He ever does, the teachings of the reason that He has given us, and raising them to a higher plane, has left us in no doubt. The law of the Gospel is a law of self-denial, a law of self-restraint. There can be no attainment of its ideals without the renunciation of many cherished things; and obedience to its precepts is impossible except on the part of those who are prepared to sacrifice their whims and caprices in order to do their duty.
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Thus the Christian parent has a twofold obligation, but at the same time his task is rendered easier in that he can present to his children a severe moral law enforced by a Teacher Whose love of His creatures has made that law both gentler in appearance and easier of fulfilment. And we can scarcely look for a return to stricter discipline in our country, unless there is a fuller and truer conception of the sterner side of the revelation of Jesus Christ. If this be left in shadow and rarely dwelt upon, all other forms of appeal, however eloquently expressed, will have no very lasting effect.
What parents are called upon to accomplish towards their children whose training is primarily in their hands, that the nation may have to do in the interest of its own safety and development. A State is in danger when its inhabitants reek not of its needs, or are unable to stand in its defence, and this must be the case when vast numbers of them grow up with little sense of discipline, and live lives that are quite untrained. Much is said nowadays about the urgent necessity of adequate military defence of our country. Most men shrink from a system of universal conscription as alien to all the traditions of our race, and likely to bring with it the undoubted evils which accompany it elsewhere. Few, on the other hand, are satisfied with our existing state of preparation for possible attack. Might not the problem be largely solved by greater insistence on
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that voluntary self-discipline and self-training which are the groundwork of all Education, leaving harsh compulsion for those alone who resist the gentler appeal ? Doubtless this thought has been in many minds. Already in school life many hours in every day are set aside for sports and games of varying attractiveness and utility. Could not this physical exercise be so arranged as to make it possible for every boy of ordinary health to raise himself, by the time that manhood is attained, to a certain standard of military efficiency, which could be easily developed and maintained until middle life is reached ? Were the demand once made, schools would very soon make the necessary changes needed to meet it.
For those whose educational life is bounded only by the University the needful training would be rendered very easy, by devoting to a more definite purpose some portion of the large space already belonging to amusement. Health would not suffer, the nation would gain immeasurably.
Those, on the other hand, who enter on some definite occupation at an earlier age would be obliged to seek their completer training in their leisure hours, after their daily task of toil was finished; and the State would find a very profitable return for the outlay that such training would necessarily throw on the public funds.
When such an appeal had been made to all men of good will to take up the burden freely, and to fit
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themselves to do their duty to their country, then might it be sternly enacted that all those who have failed to give ear thereto, and who have wilfully neglected to attain the reasonable efficiency demanded of them—that they, and they alone, should, by compulsion of the law, be forced to undergo training under stern military conditions until they place themselves on a level of military preparedness with their more generous self-disciplined fellow-countrymen. If we have faith in our country, we may trust that the neglectful residue would soon be very small.
Where, whether in childhood or in later life, a choice can be given between constraint and willing obedience, constraint is out of place, save in most dire necessity.
May some such course, built up on the foundations of duty and discipline laid in childhood, solve this problem, while it heals many of our other ills.
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