From: Krasna, Bessarabia
22 August 1912

It may be that my continued essays about the rearing of children are becoming boring for some mothers. I apologize for prolonging this subject in a very comprehensive manner, but it is highly important. I will attempt to be brief, so as to arrive at the moment when the mother, as educator of the children, hands over her tedious work to the schoolmaster.

I further have to emphasize that it is completely wrong when parents think that a child has to be constantly busy, active and attentive in some way. With healthy adults, the body and even the mind want to have their right from time to time to rest or daydream, summarize and digest; how much more does this need prevail in a child? Yet, there are parents who in an unnatural way burden their children way too early with way too many activities. Yes, there are parents who surround their children in cradles with pictures, and likewise cover the walls of the children’s rooms. They demand from the children, age three or four, that during any leisurely walk and every excursion they learn something; know every kind of tree or crop, their usefulness, and know how to carry on a discussion about them. (Something completely different: To bring about the exact opposite is what “Pestalozzi” expresses admiration for the “Appenzeller”; they hang a gilded angel for their children right above the cradle. This entertains the child and captivates its eye to an acme, which because of the situation is attractive.) The results of such mental exhaustion are both bodily and mental weariness and overstrain, or groundless precocity. Children trained as such always appear physically softer and unnaturally highly mentally alert or, worn out and scatterbrained in school. They learn much less and also are usually naughtier than other children. They want to babble about everything and not learn anything thoroughly.

During my employment as a teacher, I had many such experiences. It often happened that as teacher in the village, I visited young married couples whose oldest, five year old boy or girl, were introduced to me, the teacher. Many times such children were put to a test in my presence for me to see what wisdom the five-year-old child already possessed. Now of course I was to give judgment and give the parents some idea about what greatness that these children would achieve once they had the maturity for school. But, dear Lord, such children, 7 years old, came to me in school mentally unnaturally highly developed, strange to all natural training aides, and almost inaccessible. They often sat there in school for weeks without learning the least. Only then such parents would realize that through a one-sided mental development of their child, they made a bad mistake and did personal harm to the child. So then it happens, dear parents that during six years of schooling the child will not achieve what would be expected. Of course, then the whole blame is rolled onto the teacher.

But on the other hand, it is also bad if the child is neglected so that it becomes bored. Let me also say a word about that. It is also a disadvantage for the progress of the child when it is totally neglected and left to boredom. Just as a child will become eccentric and neurasthenic through excessive mental exertion, so it also can be rendered effeminate through neglect. Despite good genes it can never rise to a self-reliant personality, never to a personal independence. Likewise, as a result of boredom a child can completely become stupefied, or invert and grow totally wild. A child, who by nature is already phlegmatic, will become stupefied; a child, who by nature is violent, will grow wild. However, all children will eventually be driven to all sorts of naughty behavior because of boredom. In short intervals, they will look here and there, touch this or that with their fingers, things they were not supposed to touch at all, thereby formally being lead astray to disobedience.

Likewise, it is in a school where the teacher does not allow the pupils a needed rest. In some schools, where I had the honor to be a teacher, I was sorry to notice that the pupils were up to mischief during the absence of the teacher. They did not practice any useful activities, nor did they look for any. They were so afraid of me, that when I entered the classroom they hurled themselves towards their seats, wild and scared. That however, dear parents, is not the way it should be. The children should really have respect and honor for the teacher, but not fear – not menial fear.

In schools where the teacher does not handle this kind of evil, I can only put the blame on teacher and the mother in role of educator for children in age group three to seven years. If a mother wants to raise obedient children, then she has to know exactly what she has to forbid them. But one cannot prohibit them everything. Therefore it is the duty, a sacred duty, for the parents to keep as much as possible those things, which could arouse forbidden attraction and modest disobedience away from the child. This “keeping-away” I count among the main points of a proper method of upbringing. Through continuous forbidding a discord will grow between mother and child. This often works more as a disadvantage than an obvious and direct disobedience. Therefore, there is nothing more harmful than when the mother has to shout at the children all the time, “Leave that alone!” “Leave that lay!”, “Don’t touch that!”, “Don’t stand on the footstool!”, “Don’t climb on the chair!” and so on.

It would be different, had the mother something else to offer the child to get rid of the boredom. Boredom will produce instability, precocity, screaming, cursing, raging, quarrelsomeness, roughness, and unruliness. The skilled teacher must use the same caution and prudence with his students in his school – only then does he earn the title “School Master” with full authority! But now I want to put aside the “School” and continue with my essay in a logical manner. Many children out of boredom will start all kinds of things, but right away stop again and thereby develop a certain inconstancy. Others again who do not know how to keep busy on their own, will, because of boredom, always hang around adults, converse with them, and do what they are doing, and soon become precocious. Because of boredom, the strongest children will scream, insult, rage, beat their arms about, start to quarrel and fight with their peers, and all the time try to get away from the parents or supervisor, grow brutish and unruly, etc. However, who is able to enumerate all the consequences of boredom, and who does not know them? How few people, however, bring these into a clear awareness so that it becomes second nature for them with every opportunity to fight boredom and eliminate its cause? It isn’t as much what the children learn at that age, but much more the supervision and the preservation from boredom. This makes it desirable that the children at age four and five several times a day keep themselves busy with something positive for a half or a quarter hour. The sooner a child gets used to prescribed and orderly activities, or better, the sooner a child learns how to cope with time, the sooner it will learn how to utilize the time – and with that the amount gained is limitless.

(Conclusion to follow.)

P.S. – Since August 17, we have had rain every day, with only brief interruptions. As far as one hears, it is the same throughout the Akkerman County. Because of that, the Welsh corn, instead of ripening, is getting greener every day. One harbors dim hope, that the corn will ripen by the time the frost sets in. The harvest here and in surrounding areas was very poor. But since it is known that in all of Bessarabia, half of the crops are attributed to Welsh corn, then may God send his blessings so that it may fully ripen! Should this happen, then the wounds of other products caused by the weak harvest will at least heal somewhat. A sincere greeting to my children in Morton County, North Dakota, to Ignatz Gross, Eduard Richter along with wives and children, as well as to my old loyal colleague Anton Jochim and the entire reader’s circle of the dear Staats-Anzeiger.

Romuald Dirk.