Answering Children's Questions

( Originally Published 1914 )

The love of study is in us the only eternal passion.--- MONTESQUIEU.

SOME day a young woman with a fresh eye for the opportunities of the life about her will open an office, hang out a shingle marked, " Professional Question-Answerer to Children," and she will make her fortune. What's more, she will earn it. But, though she will have to work hard, she need fear no rival in her profession, for unless other young women follow her lead into prosperity, she will find no one else making even a pretense of answering the children's questions. Everybody is too much occupied with other affairs ; fathers are too busy earning a living; mothers are too busy housekeeping; teachers are too busy teaching. Every one of these busy persons feels the panic impulse to turn tail and flee before the relentless and copious catechisings of childhood. The children are quite used to shouting their interrogations after rapidly retreating backs. In the majority of cases the only honest answer to the question, " Who answers the children's questions in your family? " is, " Well, whoever gets caught with them and can't run fast enough to escape."

There is, every mother knows, considerable excuse for this attitude on the part of grown-ups. In the child's voracious appetite for information there is something almost terrifying to the dulled adult ac-quiescence in ignorance. If " terrifying" seems too fantastically exaggerated a word, nobody who has ever experienced a long séance of question-answering will deny that it is thoroughly exhausting. We lay this mental fatigue on our part to a variety of causes, for all of which we hold the children to blame. We say it is excessively hard to explain matters so that childish minds can understand; we claim that their curiosity extends to subjects which are not suitable for their age ; we say that their attention is fitful, that they do not wait for the answers to the questions they propound. But the real reason why we object to their incessant questionings is simply that we don't know the answers. To minister properly to the mental hunger of our children, there is need of a professional question-answerer to come once a day, like a visiting district nurse.

A child asks, with a perfectly natural curiosity, why the sunlight comes in through the window, but not through the wall of the house, and we find it hard to answer him, because when it comes right down to the heart of the matter we don't know why. And, moreover, we are so used to our ignorance in this and a thousand other subjects that there is something disconcerting, almost shocking, in having our mental apathy stirred by a call to action. No one doubts for a moment that a wise, broad-minded professor of physics, who thoroughly understood his subject, could explain why glass is transparent, so that even a child could understand him. In all likelihood his explanation would, be a never-forgotten intellectual epoch to the child. The man with a trained and philosophic grasp on the phenomena of matter would have seized on that query as the opportunity for the child to acquire the beginnings of his acquaintance with the world of molecules. What the child would have acquired from his mother (if she is like the average mother) would have been an added familiarity with a formula, which runs something like this : " Why can you see through glass? What a question ! That's the nature of glass ! "

Now, it is evidently expecting too much of the average mother (or indeed of any mother at all) to ask that she have as profound and philosophic an acquaintance with the various branches of human knowledge as university professors. But, at least for older children, any mother can go with her boys and girls to the sources of information. In these days of cheap books and innumerable public libraries there are few families who have not access to good books of reference in one form or another. The only difficulty is to acquire the habit of using them as constantly, thoroughly, and intelligently as they should be used. It is a habit that is not only an invaluable habit for children to acquire, but an easy one, if prompt advantage is taken of every natural impulse of curiosity on their part ; if every question is regarded as a precious stimulus, rather than a nuisance.

Take the simplest expedient first. It is astonishing how many questions can be answered, how much information acquired, and how alertness of mind can be fostered by the use of a fairly large dictionary. And yet the average family either does not own a good dictionary, or consults it only at rare intervals, to ascertain the spelling of a difficult word. A child hears the main highway spoken of by an elderly person as the " turnpike." " Why is it called the ` turn-pike,' Aunt Sarah? " Aunt Sarah doesn't know, she's sure never thought of it before it just is the turnpike. Mother doesn't know either, but, quickly turning to good account the stirrings of intellectual curiosity of the child, reaches for the dictionary and with the child looks up the word. The result is not only an interesting bit of information acquired, but the historical sense of the little brain has been improved, and (most important of all) the habit of persistence in the search for knowledge has been strengthened and encouraged. Now notice by what simple means this was accomplished. Almost any-body's pocketbook can manage a dictionary, and if not, there is a big one in the nearest library. Almost anybody, even the busiest mother, can find a few minutes in the course of the day to consult it.

Of course, an encyclopedia is a bigger storehouse of knowledge than a dictionary, and, though it costs more, it seems to me that a good encyclopedia is almost as necessary an article of furniture as a dining-room table in a home where children are being brought up. Indeed, it is a sort of dining-room table, on which is spread a bounteous feast, open to all who will give themselves the trouble to sit down and partake. Certainly an encyclopedia of some sort is more necessary for growing children than rugs on the floors or curtains at the windows.

But there is only one variety of encyclopedia that will do. I do not mean a handsomely bound one or a set in twenty volumes I mean a used set! Except in its first newness, a clean, fresh-looking book of reference is a shame to any family. A thumbed, dog's-eared encyclopedia that opens with a meek limpness and lies flat open at any page with broken-back submission is a certificate of honor to any parent.

What Danton cried out more than a century ago, "After bread the first need of the people is education," is as true to-day as then, and we modern Americans are mistaken if we think that our children's "education" is completely or even very largely cared for by their attendance at school. We parents have such an advantage over the teachers! Their hard task at school is to force the children to learn what school-superintendents, principals, and educational experts in general have decided in solemn conclave that children must learn. The fascinatingly easy task of the parent or whoever assumes the role of " professional question-answerer " is to teach the children what they ardently desire to learn, what their vividly active little minds naturally seek. And since the " professional question-answerer" is usually the mother, let her take heed lest she lose the splendid strategic position which is hers by virtue of her close, intimate, and continuous association with the child.

The teacher has the child for a few hours in the morning and a few in the afternoon, and during most of that short time she is tragically hampered by the fact that the child is not allowed to talk freely and ask questions about the subjects which interest him. The mother has the child all the rest of his waking hours. If she will, she can treat every question as so much valuable seed; she can plant it in good ground and by cultivation aid it' to bring forth such rich fruits as a well-informed mind, an alert mentality, and a life-long insurance against boredom. The teacher at exactly half-past ten every morning, rain or shine, no matter what is the state of the child's mind, must try to force some knowledge of geography into his brain. The mother by the mere physical fact of being constantly in the same house with the child is aware of the moment when his brain is awake on the subject of geography and craves information about it.

Suppose her in the kitchen putting away some groceries, which the delivery boy has just dumped down on the table. It may not occur to her as a specially geographic moment, but to the child by her side fingering over the packages and eying the labels with a child's fresh interest, the material suggests world-wanderings. What is he doing but asking for a lesson in geography when he asks : " Say, Mother, what is tapioca, anyhow? " or " What funny things dates are, and what awfully tall trees they grow on, if they're like the pictures. I don't see how they ever get the dates off." The fact that the average mother doesn't know what tapioca is any-how, or how in the world they get dates off the trees, ought to make it more interesting for her to go hand in hand with the child to the source of information.

Of course, it is often impossible for her to do this literally at the instant the child calls attention to the need. She feels, not unreasonably, that she can-not stop putting away the groceries to go and find out how cocoa is manufactured. But she can have in the kitchen, in the dining-room, in every room in the house, a pad of paper and a pencil, on which to note down such questions, and after supper either she or father can take them up. One can imagine a " question-answering " father sitting down before the book-shelves and reaching for the dictionary as he asks cheerfully : " Well, what is the grist of questions for to-day? " One can imagine a question answering mother being proud of the length of the list of intelligent questions asked by the children instead of quailing before them.

Of course, as the child grows and has constantly before him the example of considering questions seriously, he will not wait for his mother's leisure moments or his father's return before slaking his thirst for information. Instead of letting his intellectual curiosity evaporate, as we are all too apt to do, in idle wonderings and " guesses," he will instinctively turn to some reliable source of information and drink deep. Then let his parents beware lest he very soon has a better education than they!

Though books are precious mines of information, they are not the only, or even the best, educational material available for the question-answerer at home. There is much talk nowadays about " nature-study " and the value of going straight with the child to original sources for such study. This is all true. The excellence of studying trees, flowers, and insects at first hand can scarcely be exaggerated. But it has been so long and so insistently brought to our attention that everyone is aware of its necessity and feasibility. What we do not realize is that many other objects as diverse as anatomy and physics, mechanics and chemistry, may be studied in the average home by the simple expedient of honestly answering the questions which naturally rise in the mind of an ordinarily bright child.

A working knowledge of the essential elements of anatomy may be better obtained through repeated observations (intelligently directed) of the dressing of the chicken for the family's Sunday dinner than from long poring over colored charts and physiology books. And a child is beginning of its own accord the study of physics when he asks, as he turns on the hot-water faucet : " What makes the hot wáter leave the boiler in the kitchen and climb up the pipe here to the bathroom? I thought water always ran downhill." More than a reference to an encyclopedia is needed to answer that question. He needs, in the first place, a plain exposition (it can be done by a bit of rubber tubing and two water-glasses) of the invincible zeal of water to mount to a point as high as its source. Not only he, but his mother as well, will find a visit to a house in process of construction a fascinating revelation of what lies under the floors and behind the walls of his own home. There are few plumbers who, approached tactfully, will not allow a mother and a group of children to examine his work, just as there are few blacksmiths or carpenters or glaziers or painters who would not be flattered to have their work made the subject of admiring attention.

The principle of question-answering as a means of education applies to nearly all the elements of everyday life. Instead of breathing a sigh of relief when a child's question can be stifled and silenced by the blanket-answer, " Oh, that's the nature of it," his mother ought to regard each query as an-other thread in the clew which, held firmly in his little hand, will lead him through the labyrinth of indifference and mental sloth to conquer and slay the monster Ignorance.

Does the child say, looking at the trimming on his mother's dress : " I wonder how they get the stripes into cloth ! " or "However can they make velvet? " If his mother is quick witted she sees another clew. Perhaps she buys a little handloom (such as can be purchased for a small sum in any shop dealing in kindergarten wares). Perhaps, if she lives in the country, she takes the child to visit an old-fashioned loom and a weaver of rag carpet. Perhaps, if she is a city-dweller, she makes a trip to a cotton or woolen mill.

Another clew is indicated by the child who, wandering about the kitchen, remarks : "How different corn-meal and flour are ! What makes one so coarse and the other so fine? " The alert mother begins investigations as to the whereabouts of the nearest milling establishment. Or if he says, thumbing over his book, "What makes printing, anyway? " better than any verbal explanation is a visit to a printing press.

There are several delightful by-products to this system of question-answering. One is that the aver-age mother will find it almost as satisfactory as the child to gain a knowledge of the genesis of many of the articles she so commonly uses and about which she is so ignorant. Another is the growth on the child's part of a disposition to use his holidays and leisure time in a rational way, which will give him lasting satisfaction, instead of always turning instinctively to the idle, exciting, and profitless frequenting of so-called places of amusement. Still another is the habit of steady and purposeful observation, which is insensibly acquired by attention given at once to any chance phenomenon.