The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-06
Education And Discipline Of
 Children
By l.. S. BRADY


 thoughts on subjects near to our hearts that we fele impelled to quote them in toto, with little or no inter- polations and few comments. As an example of such capable reasoning l cite the following passage from a recent book by an English author, Ludovici, called "Woman-a Vindication" (Al- fred A. Knopf, publisher):
 ''The object and province of juve- nile discipline are simply these: To rear a positive human being for social life; to discipline it to selection and rejection without forcing it to scout or to suspect vital functions or vital virtues. It sounds simple enough when stated in a single line; but how many ruined careers, how many bitter, disappointed and ill-adapted adults are not the result of the oppo- site principle, the principle which reads that the positive child should above all be taught to distrust its deepest instincts, its body, and to be suspicious fthe world, the flesh and the devil-the latter meaning very often no more than wanton spirits.
 Sometimes when one sees the kind of people-men and women--into whose gentle bloodless hands, into whose drab, lifeless but well-meaning existences, healthy, helpless children are made to fall, it is difficult not to shudder. How good they are! How sweet is their ideal of what a child ought to be How vigilant they are for any signs of 'wickedness.' Who can submit to their procrusteam method and survive whole, positive being!
 "They know They know what nzI ka aIc n nra is better informed than they on this subject. Honest? No one could be more so than they. Reliable? They could be trusted to stamp the ex- tolerance of a boa constructor. Good? Not Merely good but holy!
 ''Their mild cerulean eyes gaze be- yond the child in their tender care, and toward a wonderful ideal, far away, of perfect childhood-a bright, merry, glowing angel, who, preferably, would have wings on his shoulders and nothing, no, nothing at all, beneath the thorax. His body might end there with advantage. That is their belief, their hope, their ambition. All human beings might end with advantage there; but above all the child, because chii- dren are so pure, so guileless, so sweet; it is such a pith that
 Luckily, robust positiveness has a tenacity and a vigor that frequently survive even the cOntagion of these, toads, with evil consciences. But how few are the survivals compared with the number that go under annually!
 "Boys suffer more often; un- less attacked from the side of the body a females positiveness to life is wholly and utterly unbreakable. Behold the girls that aye turned out annually from convent schools or strict ly Puritanical high schools. If their tremendous positiveness had not been secret, concealed, subcutaneous, un- conscious, how could it possibly have survived?"
 Ludovici has hit upon one of the most pernicious evils of our era; the intrusting of the discipline of our youth to the denatured man and the negative woman who so often find q long-term berth in our schools because of our reluctance to grapple with the traditional but nevertheless fallamcious end vicious belief that mere intellect" is a compensation and substitute for other more vital, robust and virile qualities.
 Character is moulded less by direct command than by example, association, suggestion, imitation; and the present fashion of exalting mere "brains," the glorificatiOn of the insipid by those ''whose minds are merely instruments for seeking justifications for their bodies inferiority," bids fair to put premium on physical frailty and neu- rasthenia. What is to become of our respect fo rthat vigorous and stout hearted pioneer stock if such spineless dovility is further encouraged?
 The plain and obvious fact to every parent who ever gives this matter of education a second thought, is that more care must be expressed in choos- ing the mentors from whom our chll- dren ara going to receive not merely their knowledge of two and two, but of human values all the way from re- liglous prejudices designed to deprive these little bundles of energy of that eager delight in living which consti- tutes their most precious birtrright.
 What are you going to do about it?
 As I have suggested in previous articles, that eager curosity, that spon- taneous enthusiasm, that joy of living which tastes fully of life and finds it good, must not be repressed and thwarted and villified by any person or any system.
 But at the present somehow expect parents and teachers who are blind to open the eyes of the little ones to the