an observation often made by philosophic observers of our social organization is that the tremendous importance of primary teachers is ridiculously underestimated. the success or failure of the teachers of little children may not perhaps determine the amount of information acquired later in its educative career by each generation, but no one can deny that it determines to a considerable extent the character of the next generation, and character determines practically everything worth considering in the world of men. yet the mind of the average community admits this but haltingly. the teachers of small children are paid more than they were, but still far less than the importance of their work deserves, and they are still regarded by the unenlightened majority as insignificant compared to those who impart information to older children and adolescents, a class of pupils which, in the nature of things, is vastly more able to protect its own individuality from the character of the teacher.
but is there a thoughtful parent living who has not[2] quailed at the haphazard way in which fate has pitchforked him into a profession greatly more important and enormously more difficult? for it is not quite fair to us to say that we chose the profession of parent with our eyes open when we repeated the words of the marriage service. it cannot be denied that every pair of fiancés know that probably they will have children, but this knowledge has about the same degree of first-hand vividness in their minds that the knowledge of ultimate certain death has in the mind of the average healthy young person: there is as little conscious preparation for the coming event in the one case as in the other. no, we have some right on our side, under the prevailing conditions of education about the facts of life, in claiming that we are tossed headlong by a force stronger than ourselves into a profession and a terrifying responsibility which many of us would never have had the presumption to undertake in cold blood. we might conceivably have undertaken to build railway bridges, even though the lives of multitudes depended on them; we might have become lawyers and settled people’s material affairs for them or even, as doctors, settled the matter of their physical life or death; but to be responsible to god, to society, and to the soul in question for the health, happiness, moral growth, and usefulness of a human soul, what reflective parent among the whole army of us has not had moments of heartsick terror at the realization of what he has been set to do?
i say “moments” advisedly, for it must be admitted[3] that most of us manage to forget pretty continually the alarming possibilities of our situation. in this we are imitating the curious actual indifference to peril which, from time immemorial, has been observed among those who are exposed to any danger which is very long continued. the incapacity of human nature to feel any strong emotion for a considerable length of time, even one connected with the supposedly sacrosanct instinct for self-preservation, is to be observed in the well-worn examples of people living on the sides of volcanoes, and of workers among machinery, who will not take the most elementary precautions against accidents if the precautions consume much time or thought. consequently it is not surprising that, as a whole, parents are not only not stricken to the earth by the responsibilities of their situation, but as a class are singularly blind to their duties, and oddly difficult to move to any serious, continued consideration of the task before them. this attitude bears a close relation to the axiom which has only to be stated to win instant recognition from any self-analyzing human being, “we would rather lie down and die than think!” we cannot, as a rule, be forced to think really, seriously, connectedly, logically about the form of our government, about our social organization, about how we spend our lives, even about the sort of clothes we wear or the food we eat,—questions affecting our comfort so cruelly that they would make us reflect if anything could. but we ourselves are the only ones to[4] suffer from our refusal to use our minds fully and freely on such subjects. it is intolerable that our callous indifference and incurable triviality should wreak themselves upon the helpless children committed to our care. the least we can do, if we will not do our own thinking, is to accept, with all gratitude, the thinking that someone else has done for us.
for there is one loop-hole of escape in our modern world from this self-imprisonment in shiftless ways of mental life, and that is the creation and wide diffusion of the scientific spirit. there is apparently in human nature, along with this invincible repugnance to use reason on matters closely connected with our daily life, a considerable pleasure in ratiocination if it is exercised on subjects sufficiently removed from our personal sphere. the man who will eat hot mince-pie and rarebit at two in the morning and cry out upon the fates as responsible for the inevitable sequence of suffering, may be, often is, in his chemical laboratory, or his surgical practice, or his biological research, an investigator of the strictest integrity of reasoning.
reflection on this curious trait of human nature may bring some restoration of self-respect to parents in the face of the apparently astounding fact that most of the great educators have been by no means parents of large families, and a large proportion of them have been childless. this but follows the usual eccentric route taken by discoveries leading to the amelioration of conditions surrounding man. it was[5] not an inhabitant of a malarial district, driven to desperation by the state of things, who discovered the crime of the mosquito. that discovery was made by men working in laboratories not in the least incommoded by malaria. hundreds of generations of devoted mothers, ready and willing to give the last drop of their blood for their children’s welfare, never discovered that unscalded milk-bottles are like prussic acid to babies. childless workers in white laboratory aprons, standing over test-tubes, have revolutionized the physical hygiene of infancy and brought down the death-rate of babies beyond anything ever dreamed of by our parents.
but let it be remembered as comfort, exhortation, and warning to us that the greatest army of laboratory workers ever financed by a twentieth-century millionaire, would have been of no avail if the parents of the babies of the world had not taken to scalding the milk-bottles. let us insist upon the recognition of our merit, such as it is. we will not, apparently we cannot, do the hard, consecutive, logical, investigating thinking which is the only thing necessary in many cases to better the conditions of our daily life; but we are not entirely impervious to reason, inasmuch as the world has seen us in this instance following, with the most praiseworthy docility, the teachings of those who have thought for us. the milk-bottles in by far the majority of american homes are really being scalded to-day; and “cholera morbus,” “second summers,” “teething fevers,” and[6] the like are becoming as out-of-date as “fever ’n’ ague,” “galloping consumption,” and the like.
the lessened death-rate among babies is not only the most heartening spectacle for lovers of babies, but for hopers and believers in the general advancement of the race. this miraculous revolution in the care of infants under a year of age has taken place in less than a human generation. the grandparents of our children are still with us to pooh-pooh our sterilizings, and to look on with bewilderment while we treat our babies as intelligently as stock-breeders treat their animals. let us take heart of grace. if scientific methods of physical hygiene in the care of children can be thus quickly inculcated, it is certainly worth while to storm the age-old redoubts sheltering the no less hoary abuses of their intellectual and spiritual treatment.
a scientist of another race, taking advantage of the works of all the other investigators along the same line (works which nothing could have induced us to study), laboring in a laboratory of her own invention, has been doing our hard, consecutive, logical, investigating thinking for us. let us have the grace to take advantage of her discoveries, many of which have been stumbled upon from time to time in a haphazard, unformulated way by the instinctive wisdom of experience, but the synthesis of which into a coherent, usable system, with a consistent philosophical foundation, has been left to a childless scientific investigator.
