Boris Sidis

“ If we wish to have a strong, healthy, happy race of men, we should lay a good foundation in the education of early childhood. We should avoid all means of brutal, slavish training which cripple man's individuality, freedom, and happiness. We should not use violence and fear. We should be careful to remove from the children all that is brutal, ugly, vicious, and fearsome. We should surround our young with the graceful, the true, the beautiful, the good, the kind, the lovely, and the loving. ”

“ These traits of character, acquired in early childhood, due to training by rod, fist, intimidation, and fear, become often ingrained in the very soul of the child to last him his life long. Seared by the rod, the scourge and the fist the child often emerges a moral and intellectual cripple. Cowered and terrorized by the awakening and cultivation of the most powerful of impulses, the impulse of self-preservation and the most uncontrollable of all instincts, the fear instinct, the child can never fully rid himself of all the distressing, morbid consequences. ”

“ According to this great critic of all dogmatism, education should be directed by a sweet-severe mildness. Children should be treated not by fear and cruelty, but with kindness and gentleness. Nothing so much degrades and bastardises a young nature as violence and compulsion. ”

“ It is not the nature of free men to be always seeking after the useful. Education and study should be with a view of the enjoyment of leisure. A state is not a community of living beings only (not for the sake of business, occupation, and exchange of products) , but it is a community of equals, aiming at the best life possible. In a good harmonious education Nature, Habit, and Reason must be in harmony. Now in men Reason and Mind are the end to which nature strives, so that the education of the citizen should be with a view to that end, namely the cultivation of Reason and Mind. ”

“ The child is ruled by fear. Our young generation is trained by fear into discipline and obedience. We thus suppress the natural genius and originality of the child, we favor and raise mediocrity, and cultivate the philistine, the product of education, ruled by rod, not by thought. ”

“ The cultivation of credulity, the absence of critical judgment and the lack of recognition of good and evil, with consequent increase of suggestibility make man an easy prey to all kinds of social delusions, mental epidemics, religious crazes, financial manias, patriotic wars, enthusiastic parades, resulting in slaughter and plagues which have been the baleful pests of aggregate humanity in all ages, and more specially in our times when the wave of social suggestibility of the worst type spreads like wild fire throughout the world. ”

“ No wonder with such views of the child's nature, the little ones are advised to be treated by punishments, by corrections, by the rod, the whip, and the stick, generally by fear and by violence, a training unfit even for dogs. And still when we turn to the really great thinkers of humanity, we find that the child is considered as free from vice, crime, and sin, that perversions, delinquencies, and vices are impressed on the young by family, companions, and society of adults. ”

“ Insanity can be alleviated,—but much, if not all, of that psychopathic misery known as functional, mental diseases is entirely preventable. For it is the result of our pitiful, wretched, brain-starving, mind-crippling, terrifying and terrorizing system of education. ”

“ Man should be educated not for business, but for leisure. It is peculiarly disgraceful to have such a poor-education as to manifest excellent qualities in work, but in the enjoyment of leisure to be no better than a slave. ”

“ Put the little one in front of you, take him tenderly in your arms, give him your heart's blessings, surround him with the halo of love, all this will ever go to form the eternal image of the greatest of teachers of humanity. ”

“ Permit me again to trespass upon your patience by citing the remarks on education made by the great Stagirite, the master of human thought:
"Education of man should develop the best in man. Happiness is assumed to be the aim men strive after. Happiness, however, is virtuous activity. The active life is the best, both for society and the individual. That society is best in which every man is best, whoever he is, and can act for the best, and live happily (Observe that the modern ideal of training for efficiency of production in quality and quantity is not favored by the great thinker) . ”

“ A patient of mine, a professor in mathematical physics, a man of the highest achievements in this branch of science, writes : "I have always had a great fear of the supernatural when left alone. I am never afraid of robbers when alone at home, or animals when alone in the woods, but I am mortally afraid of the sudden appearance of some mysterious unknown, or of some departed, as, for instance, the ghost of one of my parents. ”

“ An uncultivated personality with a limited mental horizon, with a narrow range of interests, a personality sensitive to fear inhibitions, is a fit subject to all forms of obsessions. The fear instinct, fostered by mysteries, frights, scares, dread of sickness, dread of the moral mind and its shadows and fear of thought-transmission of deadly mortal ghosts of ideas, entertained by superstitious sects known by the pompous name of Christian Scientists, is, a fundamental factor in the causation of abnormal mental states termed psychopathic. ”

“ He always dodges the issue, always in a state of indecision, lacking self-confidence, independence, self determination, and self control. Double dealing, deception, lying, hypocrisy, and an illimitable selfishness form the main traits of his character, the very traits which the wise western editor and educator placed in the souls of the children known to him. The child is by some people, even with a literary turn of mind and having an influence on the community, regarded as a little brute, a little savage, born to deception, to stealing, to crime and vice. ”

“ The education of children is self-perfection." Tolstoy is strongly opposed to the way of education as given by the western editor, by trainer and policeman in public school and police court. Such sources are contaminated. Disease, corruption, and degradation alone can result. "Terrible" he says "is the corruption of the mind which the (educating) authorities subject the children during the course of education. . . . Public education, such as we have at present, is directly and artfully organized for the moral corruption of children. Make all sacrifices to keep children away from school." ”

“ He seems to lose his patience and genial nature when he comes to write of the school. "The school is a very prison of captivated youth," a prison where misdeeds are punished before they are committed. Even old Quintillian was not slow in noticing the fact that imperious authority compulsion, and punishments bring many dangerous consequences. Helpless, defenseless as the child is it should not be treated by a stern and frowning countenance and with hands full of rods. ”

“ One important point claims our attention in the early education of children. We should immunize our children against mental microbes, against superstitions and prejudices, against all forms of harmful beliefs, as we vaccinate our babies against small-pox. The cultivation of critical judgment and the knowledge of good and evil form the powerful constituents for the neutralization of virulent toxins, produced by mental microbes. ”

“ Not that a life of action must necessarily have a relation to other men, as some persons think, nor are those ideas only to be regarded as practical which are pursued for the sake of practical results, but much more the thoughts and contemplation which are free, independent, and complete in themselves. To man the life according to intellect is the most pleasant, intellect constituting the special nature of man. ”

“ The child submits, and dissembles obedience, whilst the fear of the rod hangs over him. Beating them (children) , and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punishments, are not the discipline fit to be used in the education of those we would have wise, good, and ingenuous men. ”

“ We should not at the same time neglect proper conditions of mental hygiene or mental sanitation. We should not people the child's mind with ghastly and ghostly stories, with uncritical beliefs in the supernatural, and with article of creed which under the cloak of love are charged with arrogance, intolerance, and hatred. We must guard the child against all evil fears, force, violence, superstitions, prejudices, and credulity. Plato in his immortal dialogues refers to this point in early education: "What then is the education to be? ”

“ I am truly a crushed and heartbroken woman, and would almost be willing to give up the struggle, were it not for my dear little children "who are dependent on me." Now an examination of the case disclosed the fact of training by fear in the early childhood of the patient's life. The patient had in early life a severe religious training,—an intense faith in mysterious agencies was cultivated in her by the family which had been faithful adherents of Christian Science for years. ”

“ Aristotle follows his great teacher Plato by laying down the fundamental rule of education: "We should be careful what tales or stories the children hear. For the sports of children are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life." "From an earliest age all that is mean and low should be banished from their sight and hearing. ”

“ There are in the United States about half a million insane, while the victims of psychopathic, mental maladies may be counted by millions. Now that the war is over, there will come thousands upon thousands of nervous and mental wrecks, under the name of shell shock or war shock, the unfortunate results of nervous exhaustion and fear shock produced by the war. ”

“ For that is the time when any impression which one may desire to communicate is most readily stamped and taken—Precisely so.—Shall we then permit our children without scruple to hear any fables composed by any authors indiscriminately and so to receive into their minds opinions generally the reverse of those which, when they are grown up to manhood, we shall think they ought to entertain? ”

“ I have also pointed out that a disaggregation of consciousness with an inhibition of the controlling, waking consciousness is one of the important conditions in the causation of subconscious states with their abnormal suggestibility. In other words, the inhibition of the personal self, or even the limitation of the personal self, helps the formation of dissociations which constitute the soil of all psychopathic diseases. ”

“ If we turn to Tolstoy, the great artist and reader of the human heart, we find this attitude, as to the freedom of children from vice and crime, still more emphasized. "There are two important rules in education" writes Tolstoy. " (1) Live well according to the highest moral ideal. (2) Perfect yourself continually, and conceal nothing from your children, especially your faults, mistakes, and shortcomings. Children are much more sensitive morally than are adults. ”

“ Playing and childish actions are to be left perfectly free and unrestrained. . . The right way to teach them (children) is to give them a liking and inclination to what you suppose to them to be learned, and what will engage their industry and application. Children being restrained by their parents only in vicious things (which in their tender years are only a few) things, a look or a nod only ought to correct ”

“ Plato insists that "you must train the children to their studies in a playful manner, and without any air of constraint, with the further object of discerning more readily the natural bent of their characters." Montaigne with his deep insight into human passions and clear understanding of human life declares that vigor and liberty become fully extinct when minds become subjected to caprice authority and phantasies of others. ”

“ It is the natural instinct of the human animal to lie and to steal. Why do we spank them as soon as they are weaned?" "Why is it" mused Fagin, the educator of Oliver Twist, "why is it that children enjoy picking pockets, and old folks are fond of stolen goods?" This birch pedagogy the learned editor regards as good Biology. Then the wise Solomon is cited with his saying: "He that spareth the rod hateth his son." With his sense of western chivalry the editor thinks that girls are better, but he does not say what he would do with the Solomon’s rod in the case of the fair sex. ”

“ It was these subconscious fears of early childhood that were manifested in the stress and worries of fully developed womanhood as states of anxiety of some mysterious impending evil,―the basis of her nervous condition. ”

“ He concludes, however, his educational wisdom which for some reason or other he prefers to dub as biological, whatever he may mean by it, by saying that: "We are not thoroughly convinced that the elimination of the rod as a correctional instrument has served to make the world better or wiser." ”