Chapter 5 4. Education begins when a child is born

Children are born with the ability to learn, but at birth they know nothing and have no judgment.Babies’ minds are bound in imperfect and immature organs, and they don’t even feel their own existence. Their cries and movements are mechanical behaviors that are not controlled by consciousness, without any personal will in them. I want to reiterate that a child's education begins when he is born, before he can speak and understand others.Experience precedes education, and the child already has much experience when he knows his nurse. A person's knowledge consists of two parts, one part is known to most people, and the other part is only mastered by a few experts and scholars.Of course, the latter is very small compared with the former.

Such shared knowledge, however, is not valued commensurately, because it is acquired unconsciously, with little effort, whereas scholarship is valued. Babies' senses are all sensual, and the only things they can feel are pleasure and pain.Because they have no mobility, it is very difficult for them to form a representative feeling of foreign objects. As those objects appear and disappear, change shape or size, those representative sensations in turn keep them under the sway of habit. Babies are always accustomed to directing their eyes towards the sun. If the light always comes in from one direction, their eyes will be biased in the same direction for a long time.In order to prevent them from becoming squinted, we must take measures to make them back to the sun.Also, they have to get used to the dark as soon as possible, otherwise they will start crying when the lights are turned off.

If we always let them eat and sleep regularly, then they will eat or sleep every certain time.But they're not really hungry or sleepy, they're just doing it out of habit. In other words, they have only natural needs, but habit has added a new need to them, and we must prevent this from happening. The only habit a child should have is to not acquire any.We can't always hold him with the same arm, we can't always let him use the same hand to hold things, we can't let him want to eat and sleep when the time comes, but let him freely control his body, when he has his own will After that, act on your own will.

When a child has his own judgment, we can't let him touch everything.Curiosity is a child's nature, but because he is too weak, all new things will scare him.As long as he develops the habit of not being affected by external things, this fear will be eliminated. If a child has never seen a spider, he is likely to be frightened by this animal, and even when he grows up, this shadow will not disappear.I never met anyone in the country, man, woman, or child, who was afraid of spiders. What we choose to expose a child to will determine whether he will be a coward or a brave man in the future.For this reason, we want to educate him before he learns to speak or obey.

We need to expose him to new things, ugly or ugly and all other weird animals, but don't put these things in front of him at first, but let him look at them from a distance first, because this It takes a process of getting used to. Children seem to have an innate fear of masks.When I helped Emile overcome his fear of masks, I first chose a better-looking mask to show him, and then asked someone to put the mask on in front of Emile, and then I laughed, and the other people present also laughed. Laughing, Emile also laughed when seeing this. Then, I showed Emile the uglier mask, and when he got used to it, I showed him the more vicious and ugly mask.I thought, if I arranged it right, Emile would laugh when he saw the hideous mask, and I wouldn't have to worry about someone wearing a mask to frighten him.

When Hector parted from Andromark, the plume on his helmet terrified his son Astanax the Younger, so that he did not recognize his father, and wept He plunged into the arms of the wet nurse, and his mother looked at him dumbfoundedly. In order to dispel his son's fear, Hector took this measure: He took off his helmet and put it on the ground, and then went to coax him. When he slowly calmed down, Hector picked up his helmet again and fiddled with it. Hold the feathers on it and ask him to come and play with him.Seeing this, the nurse came over with a smile, took the helmet from Hector and put it on her head.

I have also found that children are generally not afraid of thunder if it is not very loud or damaging to their ears, only when they feel that the thunder is actually a danger to their safety . Once such a situation occurs, we must use the power of habit to help them eliminate their fear.As long as we have enough patience in raising children, they will no longer be afraid of anything like adults. In the initial state of life, children's memory and imagination have not yet developed, and only those things that stimulate their senses can attract their attention. All their knowledge comes from their senses, so we have to gradually expose them to things in the outside world. This process helps to cultivate their memory until one day they can rationally remember the order in which these things appear.Since children only have feelings, all we have to do is tell them what kind of things this feeling is brought about.

Out of curiosity, they want to touch everything they see, and they don't stop for a moment. We must not stop them at this time. Because only through personal experience and making full use of their sense of sight and touch, can they gradually learn to distinguish between hot and cold, soft and hard, weight, size, shape and all other properties that can be perceived with the senses. Only through their own practice, children will know that some things are not one with themselves, but far or close to themselves.At first, children have no concept of distance in their minds, so they will reach out for everything they see, no matter whether it is beside him or far away from him.

He stretched out his arm vigorously, as if ordering that thing to come to him, or ordering you to help him get it.In fact, this is not the case, he just can't tell the distance. In order to solve this problem, we don't let children stay in one place often, but let them go out frequently so that they can feel the change of location and the existence of distance. When they have a sense of distance, where they want to go can no longer be decided by them, but by us, because as long as they feel that they are right, they will act according to their feelings. Because the baby's body is weaker and the situation is more difficult, they always use crying to express their emotions.They cannot meet their own needs, so they cry for help from others.

They cry when they are hungry and thirsty; they cry when they are hot or cold; they cry when they want to move but cannot move; they cry when they want to sleep but cannot.Whenever they feel uncomfortable, they will cry. Because their organs are so imperfectly developed, they do not yet have the ability to distinguish between different feelings, and for them, everything that does not go their way brings them pain. We seldom pay attention to the crying of babies, but their initial relationship with this society is produced in crying.If social order is a long chain, then this is the starting point of its first link.

When a child feels uncomfortable, he cries.We have to try to find out what is not satisfying them.As long as we meet his needs, they will be quiet. But if we can't figure out why, they cry.So we had to put them to sleep, rock them slowly, pat them, and sing them lullabies. If that doesn't work, we lose patience and start yelling at them and even hitting them.This kind of education is very weird, but it is taken for granted by us. We must not take this irritable character lightly.At first, the crying of children expresses a kind of request. Once it is not satisfied, the request will become an order.In this way, their dependence on others due to their weak bodies turned into domination and command over others in the end. The reason why they have such an idea is not out of their own needs, but because of our service.We found that the influence of morality does not originate from human nature, so from the moment children are born, we must pay special attention to the appeals expressed by their different expressions or different cries. If a child reaches for something far away, if he is silent, it is probably because he cannot tell the distance between himself and the object.But if he's crying and fussing, that's commanding the thing to come, or asking us to fetch it for him. If it is the first case, we can pick him up and take him to get that thing.If it is the second situation, we should ignore him, and if he cries harder, we should ignore him even more. This will let him know that he is no one's master, and has no right to order anyone or anything.If a child sees something, or someone else gives him something, if he wants it, we don't give it to him, but pick him up and take it.The purpose of this is to inspire him, and the method of enlightening him is also appropriate for his age.