Good Breeding

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

THE struggle between right and wrong occurs in most of us because our feelings are opposed to our duty or our reason, and it could be in large part transferred to a wider sphere, if we had been properly trained in small matters.

It is pitiable to find a child of ten or eleven years constantly disciplined for slight discourtesies, for indiscriminate eating at meals and between meals, and for cruelty to weak things. His moral struggles at this age should come in the resistance of temptation to active wrongdoing. Such a condition is usually the fault of the parent, who neglected these matters when the child was little. From the very beginning of life, only courteous tones, gestures, and acts should surround the child, and be expected of him, as a matter of course. Good breeding, which includes all the lesser moralities, should be so habitual as to be unconscious. Then a child can turn his attention entirely to the more serious moral questions that each of us must some time decide.

In the decision of these questions, a child's greatest safe-guard, especially between ten and eighteen years of age, lies in close friendship with some older person, parent, teacher or friend. Such a friendship brings about naturally the free discussion of serious moral problems and allows a child to receive with an open mind the opinions of his elders. Both for the prevention and the correction of evil tendencies such a relation is of the greatest value. Parents should, therefore, make every effort to retain the confidence of their Raising Children, and teachers should consider the securing of that confidence as important as their class teachings.

The influence of good books, music, and pictures must not be omitted, although probably they have not as much influence upon most of us as our friendships. All these means, it must be understood, are but subsidiary to the great end of developing high ideals and noble ambitions in the child by precept and example. A morality that is merely habitual is better than none, but is only the basis of a morality that is shaped and modeled by the power of a living, glorious devotion to the highest aims. The parent or the teacher who can by any means inspire a child with a love of the good, the beautiful, and the true, with the ability to see them in the lives about him, and with a willingness to sacrifice himself for their attainment in however humble a form, has done the utmost that one human being can do for another.