Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  To go on, to get farther, higher, to do something better and more interesting, this was in the atmosphere; growth, exercise, and joy.

  I watched and studied, and grew happy as I did so; which I could see was a gratification to Nellie.

  “Aren’t they ever naughty?” I demanded one day.

  “Why should they be?” she answered. “How could they be? What we used to call ‘naughtiness’ was only the misfit. The poor little things were in the wrong place — and nobody knew how to make them happy. Here there is nothing they can hurt, and nothing that can hurt them. They have earth, air, fire, and water to play with.”

  “Fire?” I interrupted.

  “Yes, indeed. All children love fire, of course. As soon as they can move about they are taught fire.”

  “How many burn themselves up?”

  “None. Never any more. Did you never hear ‘a burnt child dreads the fire’? We said that, but we never had sense enough to use it. No proverb ever said ‘a whipped child dreads the fire’! We never safe-guarded them, and the poor little things were always getting burned to death in our barbarous ‘homes’!”

  “Do you arbitrarily burn them all?” I asked. “Have an annual ‘branding’?”

  “Oh, no; but we allow them to burn themselves — within reason. Come and see.”

  She showed me a set of youngsters learning Heat and Cold, with basins of water, a row of them; eagerly experimenting with cautious little fingers — very cold, cold, cool, tepid, warm, hot, very hot. They could hardly say the words plain, but learned them all, even when they all had to shut their eyes and the basins were changed about.

  Straying from house to house, from garden to garden, I watched them grow and learn. On the long walls about them were painted an endless panorama of human progress. When they noticed and asked questions they were told, without emphasis, that people used to live that way; and grew to this — and this.

  I found that as the children grew older they all had a year of travel; each human being knew his world. And when I questioned as to expense, as I always did, Nellie would flatten me with things like this:

  “Remember that we used to spend 70 per cent, of our national income on the expenses of war, past and present. If we women had done no more than save that, it would have paid for all you see.”

  Or she would remind me again of the immense sums we used to spend on hospitals and prisons; or refer to the general change in economics, that inevitable socialization of industry, which had checked waste and increased productivity so much.

  “We are a rich people, John,” she repeated. “So are other nations, for that matter; the world’s richer. We have increased our output and lowered our expenses at the same time. One of our big present problems is what to do with our big surplus; we quarrel roundly over that. But meanwhile it is a very poor nation indeed that does not provide full education for its children.”

  I found that the differences in education were both subtle and profound. The babies’ experience of group life, as well as the daily return to family life, gave a sure ground-work for the understanding of civics. Their first impressions included other babies; no child grew up with the intensified self-consciousness we used to almost force upon them.

  In all the early years learning was ceaseless and unconscious. They grew among such carefully chosen surroundings as made it impossible not to learn what was really necessary; and to learn it as squirrels learn the trees — by playing and working in them. They learned the simple beginnings of the world’s great trades, led by natural interest and desire, gathering by imitation and asked instruction.

  I saw nowhere the enforced task; everywhere the eager attention of real interest.

  “Are they never taught to apply themselves? To concentrate?” I asked. And for answer she showed me the absorbed, breathless concentration of fresh young minds and busy hands.

  “But they soon tire of these things and want to do something else, do they not?”

  “Of course. That is natural to childhood. And there is always something else for them to do.”

  “But they are only doing what they like to do — that is no preparation for a life work surely.”

  “We find it an excellent preparation for life work. You see, we all work at what we like now. That is one reason we do so much better work.”

  I had talked on this line before with those who explained the workings of industrial socialism.

  “Still, as a matter of education,” I urged, “is it not necessary for a child to learn to compel himself to work?”

  “Oh, no,” they told me; and, to say truth, convincingly showed me. “Children like to work. If any one does not, we know he is sick.”

  And as I saw more and more of the child-gardens, and sat silently watching for well-spent hours, I found how true this was.

  The children had around them the carefully planned stimuli of a genuinely educational environment. The work of the world was there, in words of one syllable, as it were; and among wise, courteous, pleasant people, themselves actually doing something, yet always ready to give information when asked.

  First the natural appetite of the young brain, then every imaginable convenience for learning, then the cautiously used accessories to encourage further effort; and then these marvellous teachers — who seemed to like their work, too. The majority were women, and of them nearly all were mothers. It appeared that children had not lost their mothers, as at first one assumed, but that each child kept his own and gained others. And these teaching mothers were somehow more motherly than the average.

  Nellie was so pleased when I noticed this. She liked to see me “going to school” so regularly. I was not alone in it, either. There seemed to be numbers of people who cared enough for children to enjoy watching them and playing with them. Nobody was worn out with child care. The parents were not — the nurses and teachers had short shifts — it seemed to be considered a pleasure and an honor to be allowed with the little ones.

  And in all this widespread, costly, elaborate, and yet perfectly simple and lovely environment, these little New Persons grew and blossomed with that divine unconsciousness which belongs to children.

  They did not know that the best intellects were devoted to their service, they never dreamed what thought and love and labor made these wide gardens, these bright playing-places, these endlessly interesting shops where they could learn to make things as soon as they were old enough. They took it all as life — just Life, as a child must take his first environment.

  “And don’t you think, John,” Nellie said, when I spoke of this, “don’t you really think this is a more normal environment for a young human soul than a kitchen? Or a parlor? Or even a nursery?”

  I had to admit that it had its advantages. As they grew older there was every chance for specialization. In the first years they gathered the rudiments of general knowledge, and of general activity, of both hand and brain, and from infancy each child was studied, and his growth — or hers — carefully recorded; not by adoring, intimately related love, but by that larger, wiser tenderness of these great child-lovers who had had hundreds of them to study.

  They were observed intelligently. Notes were made, the mother and father contributed theirs; in freedom and unconsciousness the young nature developed, never realizing how its environment was altered to fit its special needs.

  As the cool, spacious, flower-starred, fruitful forests of this time differed from the tangled underbrush, with crooked, crowded, imperfect trees struggling for growth, that I remembered as “woods,” or from clipped and twisted products of the forcing and pruning process; so did the new child-gardens differ from the old schools.

  No wonder children wore so different an aspect. They had the fresh, insatiable thirst for knowledge which has been wisely slaked, but never given the water-torture. As I recalled my own youth, and thought of all those young minds set in rows, fixed open as with a stick between the teeth, and forced to drink, drink, drink till all desire was turned to loathin
g, I felt a sudden wish to be born again — now! — and begin over.

  As an adult observer, I found this re-arranged world jarring and displeasing in many ways; but as I sat among the children, played with them, talked with them, became somewhat acquainted with their views of things, I began to see that to them the new world was both natural and pleasant.

  When they learned that I was a “left-over” from what to them seemed past ages, I became extremely popular. There was a rush to get near me, and eager requests to tell them about old times — checked somewhat by politeness, yet always eager.

  But the cheerful pride with which I began to describe the world as I knew it was considerably dashed by their comments. What I had considered as necessary evils, or as no evils at all, to them appeared as silly and disgraceful as cannibalism; and there grew among them an attitude of chivalrous pity for my unfortunate upbringing which was pretty to see.

  “I see no child in glasses!” I suddenly remarked one day.

  “Of course not,” answered the teacher I stood by. “We use books very little, you see. Education no longer impairs our machinery.”

  I recalled the Boston school children and the myopic victims of Germany’s archaic letter-press; and freely admitted that this was advance. Much of the instruction was oral — much, very much, came through games and exercises; books, I found, were regarded rather as things to consult, like a dictionary, or as instruments of high enjoyment.

  “School books”— “text books” — scarcely existed, at least for children. The older ones, some of them, plunged into study with passion; but their eyes were good and their brains were strong; also their general health. There was no “breakdown from overstudy;” that slow, cruel, crippling injury — sometimes death, which we, wise and loving parents of past days, so frequently forced upon our helpless children.

  Naturally happy, busy, self-respecting, these grew up; with a wide capacity for action, a breadth of general knowledge which was almost incredible, a high standard of courtesy, and vigorous, well-exercised minds. They were trained to think, I found; to question, discuss, decide; they could reason.

  And they faced life with such loving enthusiasm! Such pride in the new accomplishments of the world! Such a noble, boundless ambition to do things, to make things, to help the world still further.

  And from infancy to adolescence — all through these years of happy growing — there was nothing whatever to differentiate the boys from the girls! As a rule, they could not be distinguished.

  Chapter 10

  IT was this new growth of humanity which made continuing social progress so rapid and so sure.

  These young minds had no rubbish in them. They had a vivid sense of the world as a whole, quite beyond their family “relations.” They were marvelously reasonable, free from prejudice, able to see and willing to do. And this spreading tide of hope and courage flowed back into the older minds, as well as forward into the new

  I found that peopled ideas of youth and age had altered materially. Nellie said it was due to the change in women — but then she laid most things to that. She reminded me that women used to be considered only as females, and were “old” when no longer available in that capacity; but that as soon as they recognized themselves as human beings they put “Grandma” into the background, and “Mother” too; and simply went on working and growing and enjoying life up into the lively eighties — even nineties, sometimes.

  “Brains do not cease to function at fifty,” she said. “Just because a woman is no longer an object to ‘fall in love’ with, it does not follow that life has no charms for her. Women today have all that they ever had before, all that was good in it; and more, a thousand times more. When the lives of half the world widen like that it widens the other half too.”

  This quite evidently had happened.

  The average mental standard was higher, the outlook broader. I found many very ordinary people, of course; some whose only attitude toward this wonderful new world was to enjoy its advantages; and even some who grumbled. These were either old persons with bad digestions or new immigrants from very backward countries.

  I traveled about, visiting different places, consulting all manner of authorities, making notes, registering objections. It was all interesting, and grew more so as it seemed less strange. My sense of theatrical unreality gave way to a growing appreciation of the universal beauty about me.

  Art, I found, held a very different position from what it used to hold. It had joined hands with life again, was common, familiar, used in all things. There were pictures, many and beautiful, but the great word Art was no longer so closely confined to its pictorial form. It was not narrow, expensive, requiring a special education, but part of the atmosphere in which all children grew, all people lived.

  For instance the theatre, which I remember as a two-dollar affair, and mainly vulgar and narrow, was now the daily companion and teacher. The historic instinct with which nearly every child is born was cultivated without check. The little ones played through all their first years of instruction, played the old stone age (most natural to them!) the new stone age, the first stages of industry. Older children learned history that way; and as they reached years of appreciation, special dramas were written for them, in which psychology and sociology were learned without hearing their names.

  Those happy, busy, eager young things played gaily through wide ranges of human experience; and when these emotions touched them in later years, they were not strange and awful, but easy to understand.

  In every smallest village there was a playhouse, not only in the child-gardens, but for the older people. They each had their dramatic company, as some used to have their bands; had their musical companies too, and better ones.

  Out of this universal use of the drama rose freely those of special talent who made it the major business of their lives; and the higher average everywhere gave to these greater ones the atmosphere of real appreciation which a growing art must have.

  I asked Nellie how the people managed who lived in the real country — remote and alone.

  “We don’t live that way any more,” she said. “Only some stubborn old people, like Uncle Jake and Aunt Dorcas. You see the women decided that they must live in groups to have proper industrial and educational advantages; and they do.”

  “Where do the men live?” I asked grimly.

  “With the women, of course — Where should they? I don’t mean that a person cannot go and live in a hut on a mountain, if he likes; we do that in summer, very largely. It is a rest to be alone part of the time. But living, real human living, requires a larger group than one family. You can see the results.”

  I could and I did; though I would not always admit it to Nellie; and this beautiful commonness of good music, good architecture, good sculpture, good painting, good drama, good dancing, good literature, impressed me increasingly. Instead of those perpendicular peaks of isolated genius we used to have, surrounded by the ignorantly indifferent many, and the excessively admiring few, those geniuses now sloped gently down to the average on long graduated lines of decreasing ability. It gave to the commonest people a possible road of upward development, and to the most developed a path of connection with the commonest people. The geniuses seemed to like it too. They were not so conceited, not so disagreeable, not so lonesome.

  People seemed to have a very good time, even while at work; indeed very many found their work more fun than anything else. . The abundant leisure gave a sort of margin to life which was wholly new, to the majority at least. It was that spare time, and the direct efforts of the government in wholesale educational lines, which had accomplished so much in the first ten years.

  Owen reminded me of the educational vitality even of the years I knew; of the university extension movement, the lectures in the public schools, the push of the popular magazines; the summer schools, the hundreds of thousands of club women, whose main effort seemed to be to improve their minds.

  “And the Press,” I said— �
��our splendid Press.”

  “That was one of our worst obstacles, I’m sorry to say,” he answered.

  I looked at him. “Oh, go ahead, go ahead! You’ll tell me the public schools were an obstacle next.”

  “They would have been — if we hadn’t changed them,” he agreed. “But they were in our hands at least, and we got them re-arranged very promptly. That absurd old despotism which kept the grade of teachers down so low, was very promptly changed. We have about five times as many teachers now, fifty times as good and far better paid, not only in cash, but in public appreciation. Our teachers are ‘leading citizens’ now — we have elected one President from the School Principalship of a state.”

  This was news, and not unpleasant.

  “Have you elected any Editors?”

  “No — but we may soon. They are a new set of men now I can tell you; and women, of course. You remember in our day journalism was frankly treated as a trade; whereas it is visibly one of the most important professions.”

  “And did you so reform those Editors, so that they became as self-sacrificing as country doctors?”

  “Oh, no. But we changed the business conditions. It was the advertising that corrupted the papers — mostly; and the advertisers were only screaming for bread and butter — especially butter. When Socialism reorganized business there was no need to scream.

  “But I find plenty of advertising in the papers and magazines.”

  “Certainly — it is a great convenience. Have you studied it?”

  I had to own that I had not particularly — I never did like advertising.

  “You’ll find it worth reading. In the first place it’s all true.”

  “How do you secure that?”

  “We have made lying to the public ay crime — don’t you remember? Each community has its Board of Standards; there is a constant effort to improve standards you x see, in all products; and expert judgment may always be had, for nothing. If any salesman advertises falsely he loses his job, if he’s an official; and is posted, if he’s selling as a private individual. When the public is told officially that Mr. Jones is a liar it hurts his trade.”