Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-09-06
Coat and Cloth.

THAT you must cut your coat according
to your cloth, is a very old and very true
adage, and in nothing is 1t truer THAN in
the training of children. And in nothing
is it so much disregarded. That coat and
cloth must bear some proportion the one
to the other, is obvious to men in every
other affair. But with child they 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 right basis until we clearly recog-
nize what we can and what we cannot do.
No man is fit to garden who does not
know that, however much he can i'm
prove his pumpkins by proper cultiva-
ton, he cannot change them into water
melons. What he might do with pump
kins by working on Darwinian princi-
pies, if his life were three Methuselahs
long, we cannot tell. But we do know
that not in one season, nor in one life.
time, can such change be made. But
half the mothers and nearly all the
fathers in the country are trying to do
something of this sort-to translate pump
kins to watermelons, to transform ducks
into chickens, to change holyhocks into
lilies.
We have spent two generations now in
praising education and in endeavoring to
outdo one another in our estimates of
what it was possible 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 limita-
tions, the more wisely we shall carry for
ward our work.
Take even the matter of temper. The
child who is quick or violent in his pas
sions 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 subdu-
ing a strong-willed child, of breaking the
force of his will. You may change the
manner of the action Of his will, but you
cannot break the will unless you break
the boy.
And just such hopeless things are un-
dertaken in educational institutions
Boys are sent to college who should have
been sent anywhere else. 1t matters little
that YOU say you will develop deficient
faculties. That can be done within linn
it's. But when you try to turn a boys
whole life in direction in which he is
poorest, you condemn him to failure and
Intellectual penury. Strengthen the weak
side, but let the life-work lie in the direc-
ton of the strong side. If your boy is
mechanic by nature, do not make him q
preacher. Give him large general culture
if he will take it, and then let him lift his
burdens with his strongest arm, his con-
structive faculty.
But shall we give over trying to do
anything for the "high-tempered" child I?
Shall we let his passions run riot? Ger
tainly not. What we insist on is that
they can be regulated, but not eradicated.
There was near city crooked stream
that wandered round and round, obstruct-
ing travel and injuring the value OF
property. Nobody dreamed of drying it
up. But the citizens Strengthened it, and
W lied it in, and embarked against its
overflow, and cleared distractions from
it's bed, and built mills upon its margin.
The unpleasant trait in a child's character
may be walled by habits of self-control,
may be utilized by giving it a right di-
rection, may be made more blessing and
less curse than it would be without
discipline. But it cannot be destroyed.
Education can DO almost anything IN
the sphere of habit 1t can do little in
the sphere of ingrained quality. Power
less over nature, sovereign over second
nature.-Hedrth and Home.