The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1872-10-26
Coat and Cloth.

That you must "cut your coat according to
your CLOTH" is very old and very trae adage,
and in nothing is it truer than in the training
of children. And in nothing is it so much dis
regarded. That coat and cloth must bear some
proportion, the one to the other, is obvious to
men in every other affair. But with child
hey seem to believe themselves able TO do what
they please. They will make him, not what
they can, but what they will.
The management of children will never be
on a right basis until we clearly recognize what
we can and what we cannot do. No man is fit
to govern who does not know that, however
much he can improve his pumpkins by proper
cultivation, he cannot change them into water
melons. What he might do with pumpkins by
working on Darwinian principles, if his life
were three Methuselas' long, we cannot tell
But we do know that, not in one season, nor i'll
one lifetime, can such change be made. But
half of the mothers, and nearly all the fathers
in the country are trying to do something of
this sort-to translate pumpkins into water
melons to transform ducks into chickens to
change holyhocks into lilies.
We have spent two generations now in prais-
ing education and in endeavoring to outdo one
another in our estimates of what it was posi-
BILE for education to do. But in our enthusiasm
we have overpraised it. There are many things
that the most careful education cannot do.
And the sooner we come to understand our
ward our work.
Take even the matter of temper. The child
who is quick or violent in his passions will
always be so. How many mothers have sunk
down in dependency because they could not
eradicate violent temper You could more
easily make blue eyes black. People talk Of
subduing strong-willed child-of breaking
the force of his will. You may change the
manner of the action of his will, but you can
not break the will unless you break the boy.
And just such hopeless things are undertaken
in educational institutions. Boys are sent to
college who should have been sent anywhere
else. 1t matters little that you will develop
deficient faculties. They can be done within
limits. But when you try to turn boys whole
life in direction in which he is poorest, you
condemn him to failure and intellectual penurv.
Strengthen the weak side, but let the life work
lie in the direction of the strong side. If your
boy is a mechanic by nature, do not make him
preacher. Give him large general culture If
he will take it, and then let him lift his bur-
dens with his strongest arm, his constructive
faculty.
But shall we give over trying to do anything
for the "high tenn pered" child Shall we let
his passions run riot? Certainly not. What
we insist on is that they can be regulated, but
not eradcated. There was near city a crook
ed stream that wandered round and round, OBJ
structing travel and injuring the value of
property. Nobody dreamed of drying it up.
But the citizens Strengthened it, and walled it
in, and embarked against its overflow, and
cleared Instructions from its bed and built
mills upon its margin. The unpleasant trait
in child's character may be walled by habits
of self-control, may be utilized by giving it a
right direction, may be made more a blessing
| and less a curse than it would be without disci-
| pline. But it cannot be destroyed.
Education can do almost anything in the
| sphere of habit. It can do little in the sphere
| Of ofingrained quality. Powerless oyer nature,
sovereign over second nature.-Hearth and
| Home.