Chapter 11 4. Be vigilant, do not plant evil seeds in the hearts of children

Here, can I suggest what I think is the most effective and important method of education?My approach is this: take away, not grant.In other words, instead of fighting for time, let time slip away in vain. Dear readers, you must think that this is a weird theory, but what I want to say is that as long as you think about this matter carefully, you will inevitably come to this weird theory.In any case, I'd rather be a eccentric person than be called a prejudiced person. It is generally believed that from birth to 12 years old is the most dangerous period in life.If this age plants a seed of evil in the child's mind, it will soon sprout and grow, and when it takes root it will be very difficult to pull out.

Perhaps this method of education would do well if the child were brought up to the age of reason immediately after birth.But in fact, this is impossible.According to the child's natural growth process, the opposite education method will be more suitable for him. Before his mind has been developed, we should avoid touching their mind, because when the mind is still in a state of ignorance, he will turn a blind eye to the bright torch. Moreover, the field of thought is so vast that it is impossible for them to find a way to reason, and the way is so difficult to discern even the best eye.

The more negative your attitude is in your child's initial education, the better.Don't try to instill all kinds of morality or knowledge into his brain. What you have to do is to prevent sin from polluting his heart and fallacies from occupying his mind. What does it matter if you don't teach him yourself and don't let anyone else teach him, and your student grows up to the age of 12, alive and well, if he can't tell the difference between his left hand and his right hand? At this time, once you give him a little guidance, his wisdom will immediately open, and he will rush towards the rational path.As he is not sullied by prejudice or vice, there is nothing in him that can resist your education.He will soon become a wise and sensible person, such is the miracle of your passive education.

If you take a different approach to education than the average person, you'll almost always be right.Those people don't treat the child as a child at all, they are eager to train him to be a doctor, so they beat him, scold him, frighten him, praise him, encourage him to do this and forbid him to do that. In my opinion, it's better than this: have moderation in everything you do to him, and don't argue with him about anything. What you have to do is to find ways to exercise his physical strength and cultivate his feelings, but avoid letting him engage in mental activities.Because he does not yet have the concept of good and evil, so don't rush him to do good deeds just to prevent the generation of evil thoughts.What can be postponed until tomorrow to teach him is better not taught today.

Judging from the special talents of children, this method is also effective.To find out the method of moral development which best suits him, it is first necessary to fully understand his endowments. People's minds are different, so when you guide him, you have to start from his unique mind.Education can achieve its desired effect only by adopting a unique method adapted to it. It is wise to observe your student first and learn enough about him before instructing him.Don't restrict the child's freedom, let him express himself freely, so that you can basically grasp his personality characteristics.

A competent doctor will never immediately determine what kind of disease he has as soon as he sees a patient, but prescribe medicine after understanding the patient's constitution and condition. Although it will take some time, it will not delay the patient's condition; on the contrary, if you rush to prescribe the medicine, although you save time, it is likely to make the worse and even kill the patient. You may ask, how can children be protected from the influence of their surroundings?Breed him as a robot?Where should he be put?Let him go to the moon, or find him a deserted island?Do you really want to isolate him from the world?Do you really want him to stop seeing his companions?Do you really want to keep him away from his parents, nurse, teacher, servant?But he is not an angel!

There is some truth in this argument, but I have never said that natural education is easy to implement.Admittedly, there will definitely be many insurmountable difficulties, but I believe that as long as we do our best, some problems can still be avoided. People who hold this goal may not be able to achieve this goal, but as long as they can approach this goal infinitely, they will be closer and closer to success. Remember, before you decide and dare to take on the important task of educating others, you must first ensure that you are a real person.When the child's heart and brain are still blank, you have to make sure that everything around him is suitable for him to see and hear.

You must first make yourself a respectable person and try to make the people around you like you so that they can help you when you need it.Only when you control the people around your children can you be qualified to be your child's teacher.Your authority must be based on other people's respect for your morality, otherwise, you cannot fully exert the role of authority. It’s not about being generous and giving away all your money to get approval from others.In fact, even so, it is impossible to get the sincerity of others. Of course, you don't have to be stingy. If you can help others relieve their pain by using your strength, then don't hesitate to do it bravely.

This shows that if you just open your wallet to others without the slightest care and compassion, then other people's hearts will not be opened to you. You have to give, give your time, your energy, your love and even yourself, if you don't do this, but just give money, others will not see money as you. You care about others, which is much better and helps others than giving gifts.For some people who live in poverty or are sick, sincere comfort makes them happier than ruthless charity; for the oppressed, protection has a greater practical effect than money. You have to let others know that you are willing to protect the weak, that your heart is full of justice, and that you are the embodiment of kindness and benevolence.Not only are you willing to help others financially, but you are also willing to care about them.

When you truly love others, others will love and care for you; if you are willing to help others, others will also extend a helping hand to you; if you treat others like family members, others will treat you as relatives. The reason why I took Emile to the country was to keep him away from the rotten and alluring, depraved and attractive city life.Country people may be rougher and more vicious than city people, but they don't hide it, so they are more likely to arouse people's disgust and resistance. In the countryside, the teacher is more able to arrange things for the children according to his own wishes. With his reputation, conversation and behavior, it is easier for him to establish prestige in the countryside and gain the respect of others.

People are grateful to him because he always helps others.In order to gain his respect, people try to behave according to his expectations, especially in front of his students. In this way, if those country people still have many shortcomings, at least they will do less shameful things.This is exactly what we need. Never blame others for your own faults. Children are susceptible to the bad influence of bad environment, but compared with the bad influence of your education, the former is nothing. In order to let your children recognize the good ideas in your heart, you preach all day long, proudly showing off the little knowledge you know.As a result, while you instill so-called good ideas, you also let them absorb useless ideas. Although you have your own thoughts, you don't know what those thoughts will become in your child's head.Do you think that your children have remembered all your high-spirited talk?You thought, they wouldn't comment in their own way?Do you think that they will not sum up a set of remarks in their own favour, in order to refute you? You can educate a child first, and after the lecture is over, you let the child speak freely.He can say what he wants and ask any questions he wants, and you will be surprised to find that the truth you just told him becomes very strange under his understanding. Your originally clear lectures become incoherent and confusing in the child's mouth, and some unexpected rhetorical questions from the child make you unable to answer them. At this time, you have to stop him from continuing to speak. At this moment, you who used to speak eloquently become speechless, what kind of association will this make the child have?If the child is smarter and understands that his rebuttal has been successful, then you will not be able to educate him in the future, and he will continue to challenge your authority. Teacher, please try to restrain your enthusiasm, keep your simplicity, and be cautious in your words and deeds.Throw away, if possible, all those good educational methods, so that the children will not be influenced by harmful ones. Imitation is a child's nature. Since you can't stop your child from imitating other people's appearance, then you should try to make those appearances suitable for children to imitate. If there is a person next to him with an impulsive and manic face, we cannot prevent the child from not paying attention to him, and it is impossible to prevent the child from being influenced by him.Faced with this situation, should the teacher stand up and talk about the truth? The best thing to do is to keep silent and not say a word.What you have to do is call the kids to you, out of curiosity, they will definitely ask you, what happened to that person?Your answer must be simple, you can express your own views on things or behaviors that touch the children's senses, and avoid long speeches. The red-faced, furious, and fierce-eyed man was yelling in front of the child, and all his performance showed that he had lost his mind. At this time, you just have to pretend to be nonchalant and say to the child: "This person is sick, and he may have a fever." Such a simple sentence is much better than Datong's explanation and nagging, and it is more effective for the child's emotions. There are also benefits in the long run. If possible, you can treat a cranky and irritable child as a patient.Shut him up in a room, let him lie quietly in bed, and rule him out of food, so that he'll be terrified of his own shortcomings, and won't see the harsh measures you have to take as punishment for him . If it was impulsive and you failed to keep calm and peaceful, then you have to dare to admit your mistake in front of your child, and frankly blame him in a slightly milder tone: "Look, you made me angry." sick." In addition, you also need to understand that children have simple minds and accept simple concepts, so it is inevitable that they will have some naive ideas.Therefore, you should not talk about his innocence in front of your child, even if you want to talk about it, you must be careful. You know, you may just smile slightly, and it may destroy the educational effect of the previous six months, causing irreparable consequences.I must emphasize again and again that in order to be a competent teacher, you must restrain your words and deeds. I think that when two women were arguing fiercely, Emile would go up to one of the women who had the upper hand, and said sympathetically: "Dear neighbor, are you sick? I am really sad. " I believe that such a caring word from the children will definitely touch them.At this time, I would not blame Emile or praise him, but I would take him away from the scene before he realized the impact of my words, so that he would soon forget about it. It is not my intention to go into the details of the educational process, but to illustrate my principles and, incidentally, tell you how to handle these difficult situations. After all, we live in a society, so it is almost impossible for a child to grow up to the age of 12 without any involvement in interpersonal relationships and human moral issues.We should try to delay instilling these concepts in the child as much as possible, and if it cannot be avoided, tell him the concepts he needs most at that time. There is only one purpose for doing this, and that is to make him realize that he is not the master of everything, and he cannot dominate others or hurt others at will, or even hurt others without knowing it. We have to take responsibility for ourselves first.Our emotions are egocentric, and we act to keep ourselves alive and happy.So, for us, justice does not come from how we treat others, but from how others treat us. When educating children, there is often such a misunderstanding, thinking that the child must understand the responsibilities he shoulders, but not tell him the rights he has. This is putting the cart before the horse: the child knows nothing about what he should know, because the adults didn't tell him; he knows everything about things that have little to do with him or that he doesn't need to know. If you want to educate such a child, I think that even if he can't hit people with his hands, he may throw things; he may show respect to the elders or those who are stronger than him, but he does not cherish other things. Therefore the first idea formed in a child's mind should not be that of liberty, but that of property.In order to cultivate this concept of a child, we must properly let him have some personal things. But simply telling him that the clothes, furniture, and toys belonged to him was no use.Even though he knew they were his, he still didn't know why or how he got them. Even if you explain to him that he can have something because of your gift, I'm afraid you won't make the child really understand the problem.Because, if a person gives something to others, it means that the thing belongs to him, and before it belongs to the child, the thing has another owner. We can explain the principles of property to children. As for the social custom of gifting things, we can temporarily not explain it to children. Children's understanding ability is limited, and it may not be useful to talk about it. Dear readers, if you think about this example carefully, and you can look at thousands of other examples in your life, it is easy to see that if you just instill ideas that he cannot understand, it is not a good way of education. . So, we're going to explore where the property comes from.A child living in the country has a certain understanding of field work, because he has the ability to observe and has a certain amount of time. People of all ages, even children, will have the desire to imitate after seeing others working.When he sees how other people loosen the soil and plant, he will think about doing the same. Since I believe in such a principle, after Emile had such an idea, I did not object.On the contrary, I agree with his decision and work with him. I asked Emile to plant some broad beans in the vegetable garden and watered them every day. When the broad beans grew, I would tell him that the fruits belonged to him. As for the meaning of the word "belongs to", I would explain it to him like this: because you have invested a lot of time, hard work, and your own personality in it, it "belongs" to you. Suddenly one day, the garden owner Robert uprooted his broad beans, because the garden "belongs" to Robert, and he has the right to deal with it according to his own wishes.If he wants to continue planting broad beans here, he needs to get Robert's consent. Later, we asked Robert to give us a small piece of land so that Emile and I could grow things, and promised to give him half of the harvest.Robert said that if we don't destroy the melons he planted at will, he is willing to let us use a small piece of land for free. When using this method to let children accept some primitive ideas, it can be seen that whoever first reclaims the land, the land belongs to him, that is, the property belongs to him.For children, this principle is simple and easy to understand. The thing I'm talking about is easy to say, but it takes up to a year to actually do it.When helping children establish moral values, they should not be eager for success, but must be steady and steady. I would like to make a suggestion to young teachers. When educating children, they should teach by example more, talk less and do more.Children are very forgetful, and it is easy to forget what they said and heard, but if they practice it or see others do it, they will remember it deeply. In fact, every child should receive such an education, sooner or later, according to the child's temperament.The effect of this education is very obvious. For those children who are very destructive, we have to take other ways to let him understand the concept of "property".If there is something in front of the child, he will destroy it, then you have to hold back your anger and try to keep him out of access to these things as much as possible. If he destroys his own furniture, instead of rushing to provide him with new replacements, let him experience the consequences and feel the inconvenience for himself. If he breaks a window in his room, let him be exposed to the cold day and night, and don't rush to repair the window for fear that he will catch the wind.You know, it's better to get a little cold than to be stupid. Try to be as forgiving as possible, not accusing him of his mistakes, but just making him feel the inconvenience.You don't have to talk, you fix the window after he realizes what he's doing is causing trouble. If he continues to break the windows next time, you might as well put him in a windowless room and tell him, "These windows are mine and you have no right to break them." If you do this, there's a good chance he'll be rowdy and throw tantrums around the house.Don't be soft-hearted, let alone pay attention to him.I believe that it won't be long before the noise will gradually decrease, and he may start to complain. If there is a servant at home, you must tell him not to let the child out, even if the child begs.Let the servant tell the child, "I wouldn't be happy if my windows were smashed." Let the child stay in the house until he gets bored, and make it hard on his mind.At this time, you can sign an agreement with the child, you give the child personal freedom, and the child will no longer destroy the window. Afterwards, you hug the baby and let him out of the house.In this way, the content of the agreement will be deeply engraved in his brain, so follow my advice. In this way, he will finally understand what "property" means, and he will never invade other people's things again. Our society is full of all kinds of morality, and correspondingly, evil is everywhere.With social customs and obligations come deceit and lies.As long as a man can do what is forbidden, he can cover up what must be done instead of doing.Since there is no better way, we have to punish the evil deeds. These artificial punishments are unnecessary for children, because nature will punish them with the consequences of doing so. For example, for a child who is lying, we don’t need to accuse him of doing wrong. Sooner or later, others will no longer trust his words. Even if he is telling the truth, he will be pointed at by others. bad thing.For him, this is the punishment for lying. There are two kinds of lies: one lies about something you have done in the past, and the other lies about a responsibility you have not taken. When telling the first type of lie, a person will not admit that he has done something, or he will say that he has not done something, but insists on saying that he has done it, that is, deliberately distorting the truth. In the second type of lie, a person will deliberately make some promises that he himself does not intend to fulfill, that is, deliberately conceal his true intentions and say things that are contrary to his own wishes. Of course, there are times when the two kinds of lies are mixed together.However, I just want to talk about the difference between the two here. We know that if a person thinks that he is inseparable from the help of others, and that he often receives help from someone, he will not think of deceiving others.On the contrary, he will also tell others the truth of the matter very kindly, so as not to hurt others because of himself. It can be seen that children are not born to like to lie, but adults impose too many obligations on them, which makes him have to lie.Obedience to others makes children feel very painful. In order to avoid exposure to this pain, children will obey others. Telling the truth is good for your child's future.However, if the child lies, he can avoid punishment.Present interests move children more than distant ones. It is not the fault of the child, if your education is natural and free, the child has no reason to lie, nor need to hide anything from you.If you don't keep an eye on his mistakes, don't punish him, and don't push him, he'll be willing to tell you what he's done. Children's promises are invalid, and their understanding is limited. Even if they make a promise, they don't understand what their promise means.They lie, or make all kinds of promises, just to get out of their immediate troubles. When kids make promises, they're not lying.However, if they are unwilling to follow through on their promises after the fact, then the previous words are a lie.However, since the consequences cannot be foreseen, even if the promise is not fulfilled, it is in line with their reason. In fact, the children's lying behavior is completely caused by the teacher.They want to teach the child to tell the truth, but because of the wrong way, the child learns to lie. I want my students to learn by doing. I don't care how much knowledge he can acquire, as long as he is honest and kind.But I don't make him tell the truth, lest he begin to lie; nor do I make him swear, lest he break his word. If something bad happens at home while I'm away, and I'm not sure if Emile did it, at this time, I won't ask him rashly: "Did you do it?" If he really did it, and he thinks you know he did it, then he will think: Since you know I did it, why are you questioning me?As a result, he is likely to rise up and resist.If he thinks you don't know if he did it, then he thinks: Why should I admit that I did it?In this way, he will lie to you. In the face of such a stubborn child, I will make an agreement with him.I will not interfere with the content of the agreement, it is entirely up to the child to decide.What I need to do is to make him think that there is a lot to be gained by honoring the agreement and that there is a lot of pain to be caused by lying. However, I don't need to use this method, Emile will have to wait a long time before he knows what lying is, and I think that when he understands this concept, he will think that talking is not at all beneficial. I believe that, as I try to make a good life for him, and keep him free from outside wills, Emile will also see clearly that lying is of no use. If we teach our children without rushing and forcing them to do things, we can make demands that are right for them at the right time.Under such a premise, as long as children are not spoiled, education will surely succeed. However, many teachers are very stupid. Because they don’t understand the true meaning of education, they keep asking their children to do this and that, which makes them very bored and forced to make many promises. Naturally, they don’t understand the importance of commitments, and even It's funny how some kids talk, make promises and then break them. Do you want your children to keep their promises?If the answer is "yes", then you must be cautious when making regulations or requirements for your children. The circumstances of lying which have been enumerated above are also suitable for explaining our behavior in forcing children to fulfill various obligations.There is no point and no effect in imposing some obligations on children. This situation is as if the adults are asking the child to cultivate good moral qualities, but the child falls in love with all kinds of bad qualities; he is clearly forbidden to engage in bad habits, but let the bad habits become an inseparable part of the child. You take him to church in order to cultivate his pious qualities, but what seems so sacred to you is boring to him.If you force him to sit still and pray, he will think that prayer is the worst thing in the world. In order to cultivate a child's kindness, you want him to give alms, but you don't do it yourself, so the child will think that giving is something only a child can do, and he doesn't need to do it when he grows up. Those hypocritical teachers, first let you become upright and kind, set an example for your children to learn from, and find a way to make your own image penetrate into the children's hearts, and let the children willingly imitate you. Don't easily judge whether a child is good or bad, this is the minimum respect for children.For those differences shown in children, we must carefully observe and confirm them before adopting specific training methods for them.In the process of educating children, let nature play its role first, and then you will intervene when the time is right. Time is precious to anyone, so make the most of every second.However, the cost of doing the wrong thing is far greater than the loss of doing nothing.Rather than allowing children to receive the wrong education, it is better to let it develop naturally. Watching your child spend his childhood with nothing to do, you always feel like something is missing.Don't you think it's a waste of time to let him run around, fight, sing and dance all day happily? In the eyes of many people, Plato's is a very serious work, but according to his description, the way he educates children is to integrate them into festivals, dances, songs and other various entertainment activities, let them play acquire knowledge. So let the kids go about their lives with nothing to do.How would you rate a person who spends his entire life improving himself without sleeping or moving? You'd say, "This man is nuts. He seems to be buying time, but he's actually shortening it, because not sleeping is tantamount to hastening death." This principle also applies to children. You must know that childhood is actually a period of rational sleep in life.