Part 5

If the full necessary security is to be given to the practice of adoption there must clearly be a complete passing over of the duties and rights of the natural-parents to the adopting parents. Adoption ought to be undertaken only solemnly and with due understanding of all the difficulties, and the necessary precautions. The closest enquiries, in every case, need to be made as to the bona fide intentions and complete suitability of the adopting parents: guarantees must be given of their intentions and ability to bring up and care for the child. It would also be equally necessary, except in exceptional cases of proved cruelty and unfit parentage, to ascertain the reasons why the parents—or parent in the case of an illegitimately born child—desired to give up their rights of guardianship. But when once this has been done, and any order of adoption made, the parental relationship ought to be transferred completely from the natural to the adopting parents.

And in the interests of the child, I would have this transference carried out with the severest restrictions. I would not allow a parent, or parents, who once gave up the guardianship of the child any rights of visitation. Such visits, even under the happiest circumstances cause disturbance, remind the child unceasingly of its difficult position as an adopted child. They tend to create confusion, with feelings of dissatisfaction and jealousy; comparison between the old home and the new home; conflicts between the affection for the adopted-parents and the very possible drawing back of natural affection for the real parents.

All ways adoption must be difficult.

Science has shewn us how terribly the future of the child depends on its early relationships in the home; its relation to its mother, on whom it depends for the first childish satisfactions, its relations to its father, to its brothers and sisters. The adopted relationships can never be quite the same as the natural relationships. We now know how easily jealousy and unhappiness can arise in the heart of even the youngest child, and what havoc to the after life these feelings may bring. If we remember this, we shall realise better the disturbing emotions likely to be aroused when one parent is lost and replaced by another. That is why everything possible needs to be done to give to adopted parenthood the strongest stability. The adoption of a child ought never to be undertaken lightly. It is, perhaps, the most binding and the most solemn, and the most fatefully responsible of any human relationship.

A righteous law of adoption needs to guard the adopted child so that the voluntary relationship is as binding in every way and as permanent as the natural relationship. For this reason the adopted child should, in my opinion, have the same rights of inheritance as all other children. Nothing short of this can do justice to the adopted child.

We talk a great deal to-day about children and their rights, but very few of us realise at all practically and fully the change of attitude, in particular in connection with property and the rights of inheritances, that are likely to be necessary, if, in all circumstances, our theories are to be expressed in our daily conduct.

The whole question is complicated and very difficult, there is, indeed, no easy way out.

LET US PENSION THE MOTHERS.

I was attending a conference to consider the best steps to be taken to aid mothers and to stop the sacrifice of the lives and health of little children. All kinds of suggestions were made. We talked much, we proposed and discussed, but none of us seemed able to agree what ought to be done.

Then a strong man, an observant lawyer, rose. He spoke with the biting American twang. His words were few: “Why don’t you pay poor mothers?”

The brilliant simplicity of this question stirred at once our powers of understanding.

It was Judge Neil who spoke. In brief phrases he told us what had been done in America. Mother’s pensions, which are in reality children’s pensions, have been established in most of the forty-eight States of the Union. They are granted until the children are fourteen, or, in the case of delicate children, until sixteen. State-appointed supervisors watch over the welfare of the children to ensure that the money given is well spent by the mother.

As Judge Neil placed the facts before us, this plan of paying mothers instead of forcing them to go out as workers, possibly at “sweated” wages, and then paying other people in an institution to do their work, seemed so simple that I was filled with wonder that we had not long ago thought of so easy and obvious a reform. It is strange that it is so often the most simple things that we never think of doing. I believe it is because we think of reforms intellectually; we are not human enough to feel.

Now, it is just Judge Neil’s humanity that set his feet upon the right way. Listen to the story of how first he came to think of mother’s pensions:—

In 1911, a poor widow, broken by the burden of supporting her family, was condemned to have all her five children taken from her.

“Better to shoot her than take away her children.” said Judge Neil. He then asked how much it would cost to maintain the children in a State institution.

“The country pays the institution 10 dollars a month for each child,” was the answer.

“Why not give the 10 dollars to the mother and let her keep her children?”

Such was Judge Neil’s humane and practical solution of the problem. Thus the scheme for pensioning mothers was born.

The responsibility of the State for children ill-cared-for is admitted in most countries. It is, therefore, a question of ways and means, not a question of high principle, how best to carry out this intention and prevent child poverty.

Surely grants to good mothers are better than grants to institutions. Even the best Poor Law schools must have the faults that are inherent in institutions.

I can hardly express too strongly my own want of faith in “expert child-trainers.” I have found always that they regard the child mainly, if not entirely, as something to be improved and instructed on a definite plan. The “expert” is never human, and a child has need of all the human treatment it can get.

Every child has absolute need of its mother. All experience shows us that the home, with its sympathetic relationships of mother and child, sisters and brothers, cannot be replaced. We must insist on reforms that will make home life possible.

The child has to accept the arrangements we make; that is why this question is of such immense importance. If the matter could be fixed by the will of the children I should have no fear. The child has not lost the true values of life.

There is another fact to consider—one that will appeal to ratepayers. Grants to mothers are cheaper than grants to institutions. In the United States the payment made to a mother works out at about one-third the cost of maintaining a child in an institution. So we can do the best thing for the child and its mother and at the same time save our pockets.

BOY AND GIRL OFFENDERS, AND ADULT MISUNDERSTANDING

Much disturbing evidence on such a grave question as the bad behaviour and consequent punishment of boys and girls, in institutions, and in prisons, is made public, from time to time, to rouse the consciousness of all those who have concern for the welfare of the young. Sometimes the events recorded are of a more serious character. The attempted suicides and continued escapes of young prisoners certainly afford a rather tragic witness of some failure in our reformative efforts. Even under the Borstal system of prison life—a system that is primarily intended to be humane and educative, and not brutal and primitive, the results obtained are far from being satisfactory. We cannot feel that we are achieving anything like what ought to be done in the difficult, but necessary, duty of reclaiming these young lives that, for one cause or another, have fallen to disaster.

If we believe, as believe we must, that the old are responsible for the young—that the one generation must stand as guardian to the next—this problem of delinquency is one that we may not thrust aside. It is bigger than its immediate application in connection with reclaiming the individual boy or the individual girl: it touches the very deepest of our duties—our duty to the future. It is for us to ask many questions of ourselves, and of all those who are in any way connected with the young; questions to which it is not easy always to find satisfactory answers.

It is obvious that something is wrong.

I do not wish to harrow you with painful statistics, or by reminding you of unfortunate incidents in connection with young prisoners that _you ought not to have forgotten. You would not have forgotten if you had cared as you ought to care._

I do not deny that “much is being done; that conditions are better far than they were in the past.” But this does not cover our failures or lessen our responsibilities. I plead for greater attention to, and more understanding of, the delinquent child. It is not, and never can be, a question that can be fixed or finally decided: the child is an individual; and, in each case, the problem of dealing with him must be a separate problem. This is certain—only by understanding the child who fails, _his own difficulties and his own failure_—can we advance. By this way only can we give aid to these young offenders, who, with a burden of ancient instincts and uncontrolled impulses, come into a world filled with undesirable examples, where they have to face manifold temptations.

Let us try, then, to consider the delinquent boy and girl, bearing these truths in our thoughts. And first we must acknowledge the complexity and terrible difficulty of the problem. Delinquency in the young cannot be explained by obvious superficial causes. The motivating impulse to naughtiness and bad conduct always lies outside of consciousness. I mean that the boy or girl who continuously does wrong, fails altogether in good conduct, whether in a reformatory, in a prison, or a Borstal institution is acting in this way from a reason which is deeply hidden, and which they do not themselves understand; while further, the present misbehaviour is connected with some experience of the past that now they have forgotten. _They are driven by this inward urge into rebellion and insubordinate conduct._ And the help they ought to have is one of re-education, by clearing up what was wrong in the past, and this help must be given to them by those who are specially trained to understand.

They cannot, unaided, help themselves. The things they do wrong—the breaking of rules, the failures in work, the violent conduct, the attempted escapes—in the vast majority of cases, are a defence against unhappiness that stalks as a deadly shadow, following their young lives.

_Their treatment is a medical as well as a social and ethical problem. The young do wrong because their souls are sick._ Such a statement is not fantastic, it is seriously true. To understand the meaning of the present bad conduct of anyone, but especially of the delinquent boy or girl, it is absolutely necessary to find out the motive which makes them want to behave badly. Always we have to search to find “a reason why.” To discover, as far as we are able, what it is causing the rebellion or the bad conduct, we must have wisdom to give up the old ignorant ideas as to its being possible to cure bad conduct, in any way that matters, by scoldings, by punishments or, indeed, any kind of direct attack.

The fault that distresses those in authority in the present must be regarded as the sign of a hidden conflict that has distressed the child in the past. It is this conflict, then, that must be discovered and dealt with. Never in any case can the lazy adult view be accepted that the delinquent child does wrong because of original sin.

The young do wrong when they suffer, usually through the blunders of those who are supposed to train them; their faults in behaviour are a relief for pain they find too intolerable to bear. If the boy or girl is happy in harmony with his or her world, then that boy or girl is good.

To find the real cure for this unhappiness of soul is, of course, a most difficult task. It can be accomplished completely only by those specially trained in understanding and analysing the child mind. But much good, and a return to healthy happiness can often be gained, by a little helpful understanding of the special problems of the individual boy or girl. It is the educator’s duty to try to pour daylight on the hidden plague spots of the soul.

This can never be done by cruelty or any form of coercive treatment which arouses fear—the most deadly enemy to right conduct. The way to educate the abnormal, the difficult boy or girl, is not to be shocked or to punish them, but to show them sympathy, directed by knowledge.

Teach these girls and boys that they have failed in good conduct, not because they are bad or different really from other more fortunate young people, but because they have been unhappy—ill with feelings of insecurity, of deficiency, of loneliness, of failure; help them to understand the causes that have brought about this condition, why they have felt inferior, been unhappy; and then build up their characters by giving them new opportunities of finding happiness in their work and in their play, providing new interests and creating opportunities for new responsibilities. These young people want kindness and to be taught to be sociable. Moral conduct is never easy. We all want what we do want. We surrender our wishes only because we find we satisfy other desires by so doing. We are praised and rewarded for good conduct and for preferring to give up to others what we want to do ourselves. And a very practical lesson in our training of delinquents depends upon this. The educators must take the greatest possible care that bad conduct does not give greater pleasure than good conduct. Doing wrong so often opens for the young the widest and easiest door to gain excitement. If boys and girls in Borstal institutions and in reformatories are left unnoticed and never praised when good they quickly feel neglected. And though they do not recognise these disappointed feelings they act very strongly in setting them to seek for some kind of relief. And if allowed to enjoy power when they become rebellious, through the notice that is bestowed upon them and the upsetting of the usual regime of the school or the prison workshop, they will continue to indulge in bad conduct whenever they are bored or, for any reason, crave some form of emotional relief.

Bad conduct is primitive, infantile conduct, and one of its strongest characteristics is the tendency to proceed more directly, more unthinkingly, and more selfishly to the goal of the wishes than is usually done by the reasonable adult.

The little child wants something, grabs at it, and when it does not at once get it, screams and breaks into a passion.

Now this is just what is done by the delinquent boy or girl, whose conduct must be regarded as infantile, frankly selfish, and regulated only by doing what one wants and getting what one wants. Such conduct points to a condition of retarded growth; and usually can be traced back to some mistake in the early training, which has prevented an adaptation of the character to grown-up conditions, so that the boy or girl of seventeen or eighteen acts still like the young child of four or five years of age.

Every child, who is to grow into a successful and happy adult, has to grow out of this primitive behaviour and to learn social standards of conduct—to think what other people want and to measure their own conduct in its relation to others.

Thus the real problem of the education of the delinquent boy or girl is to help them to grow up. And the very first step is to teach them to stop thinking about themselves. They have to learn to turn outwards towards others and away from their own wishes and hidden desires, that are the real cause of their unhappiness and bad conduct.

And for this reason, even if for no other, there could be no possible form of treatment as harmful, and also I may add so silly, as that adopted (as still so often it is) in reformatory institutions of placing insubordinate prisoners in solitary confinement, even sometimes with the use of irons. No other form of punishment could be more disastrous to a boy or girl. To permit this cruelty is assuredly to increase the faults of character that are the cause of the bad conduct. By such insane punishment the young offenders are separated from their companions, perhaps bound, and left without occupation to sit alone, brooding over their unhappiness; their thoughts necessarily fixed upon themselves. They cannot fail by means of this unhealthy process to be sent more backwards into childish and bad behaviour—driven further away from adult and social conduct.

Few of us, I think, understand sufficiently how continuous and almost unspeakably hard, are the efforts that the delinquent has to make in order to achieve re-education. He is overwhelmingly conscious (however much he may seem to be indifferent) of his own inferiority. All such boys or girls, who frequently become aggressive and insubordinate, need to be treated in such a way as will increase their confidence in themselves. This may seem contradictory, but it is true. If the young offenders are punished and discouraged the trouble from which they suffer is sure to increase by making stronger the sense of self-depreciation. Too often the devastating feelings are driven back into the obscure places of the mind—the unseen office of the directing forces that in secret issue the supreme commands that control conduct. It is in order the better to overcome the truths that would stab him about himself if he recognised them, that such a wrong-doer becomes aggressively self-assertive, indulges in foolish acts and marked insubordination. Such boys and girls are without courage, and all their pride boils up behind a maimed and timid character.

The important thing to remember is that, though bad conduct comes from what seems insubordination, “the characteristics of bad conduct” arise from the state of the boy’s or girl’s mind, and that state depends very much on the treatment he (or she) receives.

If you cure the particular fault for which the punishment was inflicted, and the boy or girl loses his (or her) soul, you have done more harm than good. But the real position is worse than that, for if you hurt the young soul, you give up for ever the opportunity of re-educating the boy or girl for good conduct.

NEW WAYS OF TEACHING CHILDREN

UNBOUNDED FREEDOM AND SOME DRAWBACKS

I remember once seeing in “Punch” a picture that has always retained in my memory the vividness of the first impression. It is a long time ago, yet I can see it now exactly as I saw it then. A father, at a children’s Christmas party, was personating a bear. Filled with the adult’s joy of being allowed to be a child, he was roaring loudly, as he crawled upon the floor covered with a woolly hearth-rug. So much for the father. Certainly he was enjoying it. But what about the children. What was their view of this performance?

They were all looking bored. Even the tiny ones shewed no enthusiasm. In the corner of the room as far withdraw as space permitted was a group of young school boys, very stiffly correct in Etons and immense white collars. They were disgusted. One, who had ostentatiously turned his back on the performing father, was plainly angry. Even his back was eloquent of disapproval and gloom surrounded him. His companion, standing next to him, attempted to cheer him in this way: “Never mind, Brown major, you know its not _your_ fault if your pater is a blooming fool!”

It is, indeed, a different aspect of the situation. The son ashamed of the father! The young generation condemning the old! It is fitting that we should take notice and remember the lesson that is taught.

For this picture of appraising youth carries a very real moral that should be considered by those modern educational enthusiasts, who are always talking about amusing the child—as if that were the one thing which mattered. There is no subject, I believe, on which greater nonsense is talked than on this one of interesting children. Personally I am sceptical whether children are ever greatly interested in the entertainments that the adult provides for their amusement. What they find interesting are the things they provide for themselves. That is one reason why there must be so great an element of falsity in modern educational theories, which aim at making lessons so interesting that they become like play.

It cannot be done.

Much of this kind of talk sounds admirable from the point of view of the adult, but what I always want to know is the view taken by the child—by the boy or the girl. I do not think they are quite _so fond of being amused_ as we are apt to believe. Nor do I think they can be, or indeed, ought to be, _interested_ (which is the same really as being amused) _to adult orders_. I _mean_ that to be truly effective and liberating to the child, this interest must be dependent on what he has to do for himself. The work cannot be done for him. That is why I am afraid of the incursion into the schoolroom of the too anxious and amusement-providing spirit of the home. It causes too much indirect interference. It supplies too many appliances. It is over-occupied with arrangements and the smoothing away of difficulties. In a word it does not leave the child sufficiently to himself to learn his own lessons, to satisfy his own needs in his own way.

_It proposes, of course, to do this, but it is just here that enormous mistakes occur._

I can fancy a group of boys and girls who, if they said what they really felt about their own education and our ceaseless experiments and efforts to make their lessons interesting and more acceptable to them, would pity us as fools.

The point of view of the child (also of the boy and the girl, but especially, I think, of the boy) is always so utterly different from the point of view of the adult. You see they are judging the situation personally, while we are judging it vicariously and ethically.

The ever-pressing idea of the educationalist to-day is to give the child freedom. But what is freedom? That is a question to which we have not yet found an answer. Do we consider sufficiently, if what means freedom to us, really gives freedom to the young? And a second question—Are we not, perhaps, in our nervous over-anxiety, imposing upon them something they do not want?

There is a great deal said about self-development and the necessity of the teacher respecting the child’s individuality. We are continually hearing of interesting experiments made in free schools and are told of children who, even when quite young, if left to choose their own tasks, will be so interested in writing, in reading, and also in arithmetic, that they will not want to give up their work even when school-hours are over!

Still I am unconvinced. I would rather have the boy or the girl waiting in eagerness for the bell to ring to free them from the school.

We are apt to over-estimate our grown-up power. We do this because we like to do it. It flatters adult egotism. We find a delicious sense of power in realising ourselves in so many new ways as potters to mould the clay of the child’s mind. I often feel that we worry about this question of education much more to please ourselves than to help the young.