With all the modern improvements in methods of dealing with children,—and these improvements are many and great,—it is important to bear in mind that judicious discipline has an important part in the wise training of the young. Discipline is not everything in the sphere of child-training; but discipline is much, in that sphere. Discipline is an important factor in will-training; and will-training is an important factor in wise child-training, although will-breaking is not.

Formerly, discipline was the great feature, if not, indeed, the only feature, in the training of children. There was a time when children were not allowed to sit in the presence of their parents, or to speak to them unless they were first spoken to, or to have[Pg 54] a place with their parents at the home table or in the church pew; when the approved mode of teaching was a primitive and very simple one. “They told a child to learn; and if he did not, they beat him.” The school-days of children were then spoken of as “when they were under the rod.” Even the occasional celebration of a holy day did not bring unalloyed delight to the little ones; as, for instance, “on Innocents’ Day, an old custom of our ancestors was to flog the poor children in their beds, not as a punishment, but to impress on their minds the murder of the innocents.”

But all this is in the long past. For a century or more the progress of interest in and attention to the children has been steady and rapid. And now the best talent of the world is laid under contribution for the little ones. In the provisions of song and story and pictures and toys and games, as well as in school buildings and school appliances and school methods, the place of the children is foremost. At home they certainly do not hesitate to sit down when and where they please,[Pg 55] or to speak without waiting to be spoken to. Indeed, there are parents who wonder if they will ever get a chance to sit down while their children are in the house; or if ever those children will stop asking questions. Meanwhile in secular schools and in Sunday-schools the aim seems to be to make learning as attractive as possible to children, and to relieve study, as far as may be, of all tediousness and discomfort.

Now, that this state of things is, on the whole, a decided improvement over that which it displaced, there is no room for fair doubt. Yet there is always a danger of losing sight of one important truth in the effort to give new and due prominence to another. Hence attention should be given to the value of judicious discipline in the training of children. Children need to learn how to do things which they do not want to do, when those things ought to be done. Older people have to do a great many things from a sense of duty. Unless children are trained to recognize duty as more binding than inclination, they will suffer all their[Pg 56] lives through from their lack of discipline in this direction.

Children ought to be trained to get up in the morning at a proper hour, for some other reason than that this is to be “the maddest, merriest day in all the glad new year.” They ought to learn to go to bed at a fitting time, whether they are sleepy or not. Their hours of eating, and the quality and quantity of their food, ought to be regulated by some other standard than their inclinations. In their daily life there must be a place for tasks as tasks, for times of study under the pressure of stern duty, in the effort to train them to do their right work properly. It is not enough to have children learn only lessons which they enjoy, and this at times and by methods which are peculiarly pleasing to them. President Porter, of Yale, said, in substance, that the chief advantage of the college curriculum is, that it trains a young man to do what he ought to do, when he ought to do it, whether he wants to do it or not. Any course of training for a young person that fails to accom[Pg 57]plish thus much, is part of a sadly imperfect system.

There are few, if any, children who do not need to be trained to apply themselves earnestly to occupations which they dislike. The tastes of some children are very good, and of others very poor; but nearly all children have positive inclinations in one direction or in another. They like playing better than working or reading; or they prefer reading or working to playing. Some prefer to remain indoors; others prefer to be outside. Some want to occupy themselves always in mechanical pursuits; others would always be at games of one sort or another. Some enjoy being with companions; others prefer to be by themselves; yet others would attach themselves to one or two persons only, having little care for the society of anybody else. In their studies, children show, perhaps very early, a decided fancy for geography, or history or mathematics, or the languages, and a pronounced distaste for other branches of learning. Now, whether a child’s tastes are elevated or unre[Pg 58]fined, in the direction of better or more undesirable pursuits, he ought not to be permitted to follow always his own fancies, or to do only that which he really likes to do.

The parent or the teacher must decide what pursuit of activity, or what branch of study, is best for each several child, and must train him to it accordingly. In making this decision, it is important to consider fully the tastes and peculiarities of the particular child under training; but the decision itself must rest with the guardian rather than with the child. Whatever place “elective” studies may properly have in a university curriculum, there is need of positive limitations to the elective system of duties in the nursery and in the home sphere generally.

Hardly anything can be more important in the mental training of a child than the bringing him to do what he ought to do, and to do it in its proper time, whether he enjoys doing it or not. The measure of a child’s ability to do this becomes in the long run, the measure of his practical[Pg 59] efficiency in whatever sphere of life he labors. No man can work always merely in the line of his personal preferences. He must do many things which are distasteful to him. Unless he was trained as a child to do such things persistently, he cannot do them to advantage when they are upon him as a necessity. Nor can any man do his best work as well as he ought to, if he works always and only in one line. A one-sided man is not a well-balanced man, even though his one side be the right side. It is better to use the dextral hand than the sinister, but it is certainly preferable to be ambidextrous.

There is little danger that intelligent Christian parents or teachers will at this day refuse to consider duly a child’s tastes and peculiarities, in their efforts to instruct and train him. While, however, they are making study attractive and life enjoyable to a child, parents should see to it that the child learns to keep quiet at specified times, and to be active at other times; that he studies assigned lessons, does set tasks, denies himself craved indul[Pg 60]gences; that he goes and comes, that he stands or moves, at designated hours,—not because he wants to do these things, but because he must. Now, as of old, “it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.”