OUR RELATION TO CHILDREN/PART 1

 

It cannot be denied that from the theosophical standpoint the subject of our relation to children is an exceedingly important and practical one. Realizing, as we must, the purpose for which the ego [ relatively permanent self, not the personality ] descends into incarnation, and knowing to how great an extent its attainment of that purpose depends upon the training given to its various vehicles during their childhood and growth, we cannot but feel, if we think at all, that a tremendous responsibility attaches to all of us who are in any way connected with children, whether as parents, elder relatives, or teachers. It is well, therefore, that we should consider what hints Theosophy can give us as to the way in which we can best discharge this responsibility.

 

It may seem presumptuous that a bachelor should venture to offer suggestions to parents upon a subject so especially their own; so I ought, perhaps, to preface such remarks as I wish to make by saying that, though I have none of my own, I have always been fond of children, and in very close relation with them through almost the whole of my life — for many years as a Sunday school teacher, then as a clergyman, school-manager and choir trainer, and as headmaster of a large boys' school. So that I am, at any rate, speaking from long, practical experience, and not merely vaguely theorizing.

 

Before making suggestions, however, I should like to draw attention to the present condition of our relation to children in the midst of European civilization. Our children regard grown-up people (in the mass) with scarcely veiled hostility, or, at the best, with a kind of armed neutrality, and always with deep distrust, as foreigners whose motives are incomprehensible to them, and whose actions are perpetually interfering in the most unwarrantable and apparently malicious manner with their right to enjoy themselves in their own way. I should strongly advise every parent to read Kenneth Grahame's The Golden Age; it puts the children's point of view better than any other book which I know.

 

Many a man, or woman, thinks of children only as noisy, dirty, greedy, clumsy, selfish and generally objectionable; and he never realizes that there may be a good deal of selfishness in this point of view of his, and that if any part of his indictment is true, the fault has been not so much in the children themselves as in the unreasonable way in which they have been brought up; furthermore, that in any case his duty is not to widen the chasm between them and himself by adopting an attitude of dislike and distrust, but rather to endeavour to improve the position of affairs by judicious kindness and hearty, patient friendliness and sympathy.

 

Surely there is something wrong about such unsatisfactory relations; surely some improvement might be brought about in this unfortunate condition of mutual hostility and mistrust. Of course, there are honourable exceptions — there are children who trust their teachers and teachers who trust their students, and I myself have never found any difficulty in winning the confidence of the juveniles by treating them properly; but in a sadly large number of instances the case is as I have described it.

 

In Oriental Countries

 

That it need not be so is shown not only by the exceptions mentioned above, but by the condition of affairs which we find existing in some oriental lands. I have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Japan, but I hear from those who have been there and have made some study of this question, that there is no country in the world where children are so well and so sensibly treated — where their relations with their elders are so completely satisfactory. Harshness, it is said, is entirely unknown, yet the children in no way presume upon the gentleness of the older people. In India and Ceylon also, on the whole, the relations of children and adults are certainly more rational than they usually are in England, though I have occasionally seen instances of undue severity there which show that those countries have not yet attained quite so high a level as Japan in this respect.

 

No doubt this is partly due to the difference of race. The oriental child usually has not the irrepressible animal spirits and the intense physical activity of his English representative, nor has he his pronounced aversion to mental exertion. Strange and incomprehensible as it would sound to the ears of a British schoolboy, the Indian child is really eager to learn, and is always willing to do any amount of work out of school-hours in order that he may make more rapid progress. It is no injustice to the average English boy to say that he regards play as the most important part of his life, and that he looks upon lessons as distinctly a bore to be avoided as far as possible, or perhaps as a kind of game which he has to play against the teacher. If the latter can force him to learn anything, that counts as a score to the side of authority: but if he can anyhow escape without learning a lesson, then he in turn has scored a point. In the East, such a child as this is the exception and not the rule; the majority of them are really anxious to learn, and co-operate intelligently with their teacher instead of offering him ceaseless though passive resistance.

 

Perhaps if I describe a little incident which I have more than once witnessed in Ceylon, it will help my readers to understand how different the position of children really is in an oriental race. Readers of The Arabian Nights will remember how it constantly happens that when some king or great man is sitting in judgement, a casual passer-by — perhaps a porter or beggar — breaks in and offers his opinion on the matter in hand, and is politely listened to, instead of being summarily arrested or ejected for such a breach of the proprieties.

 

Impossible as this seems to us, it was undoubtedly absolutely true to life, and on a smaller scale the same sort of thing occurs today, as I myself have seen. It came in the course of my work to travel about among the villages of Ceylon, trying to induce their residents to appreciate the advantages of education, and to found schools in which their children could be systematically taught their own religion instead of being left either to the rather haphazard instruction of the monks at the pansalas, or to the proselytizing efforts of the Christian missionaries.

 

When I arrived at a village I called upon the headman, and asked him to convoke the inhabitants to hear what I had to say; and after the address the chief people of the place usually held a sort of council, to decide where and how their school should be built and how they could best set about the work. Such a council was generally held in the verandah of the headman's house or under a great tree close by, with the whole village in attendance around the debaters.

 

More than once on such occasions I have seen a small boy of ten or twelve stand up respectfully before the great people of his little world, and suggest, deferentially, that if the school were erected in the place proposed it would make it exceedingly inconvenient for such and such children to attend; and in every case the small boy was treated precisely as an adult would have been, the local grandees listening courteously and patiently, and allowing their due weight to the juvenile's arguments. What would happen if in England an agricultural labourer's child publicly offered a suggestion to the county magnates gathered in solemn assembly, one hardly dares to imagine; probably that child's suppression would be summary and unpleasant; but as a matter of fact the situation is absolutely unthinkable under our present conditions — more is the pity!