“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 seventy percent 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 groundwork 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 anyone 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 childcare. 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
