Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

Children and Child Mentality,

CHILDREN are often found to be very cruel to animals. Why is it so? Their treatment of birds especially is notorious. To seek out nests and pull them down, to capture nestlings and put them to all kinds of torture, to pick up eggs and dash them to pieces are for children most interesting games. They seem to take particular delight in varying and enhancing as much as possible the torture they can inflict. One reason that can be adduced for the callousness of a child's sensibility is his self-centredness: he is wholly himself, isolated from others, has not yet learnt the social needs and virtues. All he does and feels is for himself, for his own pleasure and free self-assertion. His growing individuality, in order to grow, cuts itself aloof from others and loses the sense of others having the same value as itself. Being self-regarding, to that extent he ceases to be other-regarding. Fellow-feeling is a sentiment that grows later on, as the result of shocks in mutual interchange. Real sympathy is a movement of mature consciousness.

The inquisitiveness that so strongly possesses a child is also the drive of an awakening and growing consciousness. He indulges in breaking, tearing, ripping because of this curiosity, this keen edge of a developing and experimenting conscious­ness. It seems to be hard and unfeeling, even an aberration, precisely because of the egocentric nature of the child cons­ciousness yet unfamiliar with values normal to age and experience.

But if it is nature to a certain extent that makes the child so apathetic, self-regarding and cruel, it is not the only cause and it is not the whole story. There are other very active factors in life that affect and mould the child's consciousness from the very beginning.

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The child, we can take, comes into the world with a more or less clean slate to record the reactions of life. In the early period he is still nearer his psychic being which is not yet thrown back or covered over by the impacts and impressions of the world. The first conscious contacts with the world are not generally happy for the child. He meets things all around that go against the grain of his still sensitive psychic cons­ciousness. The first quarrel he witnesses between his parents, the first rough behaviour or movement of an elder that shakes his attention, the first lie that he hears uttered by his teacher, act almost as shellshocks to his nerves. And as he grows, lessons like these are showered upon him from all sides and no wonder if his consciousness very soon gets warped and twisted, he too begins his own game in the line he observes and experiences. Only, not being guided or controlled by reason and experience, he overdoes the thing, and because of his age, what in an adult is a matter of course, trivial and insignificant, looms large and ominous in his case. The sur­roundings in which a child lives and grows form the atmosphere which he breathes in at every moment and if there is poison in it, he inhales and imbibes the poison which becomes part of his substance and nature. A pure environment is needed for a pure life impulse to shape an develop itself.

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What is the very central character of the child conscious­ness? It is confidence in life, the surety that nothing can baulk the fulfilment of life's purpose, the trust that overrides all set-backs and stumbles, gaily passes through dangers and difficulties. This confidence, this assurance the very body shares in and impels it to movements of daring and adventure. It is this that is the cause of the body's growth, and so long as it is maintained, keeps the body young. So the poet says:

A – A simple child

That lightly draws its breath,

And feels its life in every limb,

What should it know of death ?¹

¹ Wordsworth: "We Are Seven"

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Age sets in precisely when there is a fall in this self-confidence and assurance of the body consciousness, when the body begins to fear, becomes too cautious and apprehensive. A wound, a cut, even a broken limb would not stop a child normally to go forward with the same dash and carelessness. And that character is the source not only of his physical fitness and growth, but also that of a mental alacrity and soundness which is an inestimable possession of the child consciousness. The wisest teacher is he who does not teach too much the wisdom of prudence and moderation, but encourages this élan vital, the life urge, in the child and yet seeks to organise and canalise it, as an efficient instrument of high ideals and purposes.

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There are two failings which a teacher must guard against – to which he is usually prone – if he wishes to secure respect and obedience and trust from children: (I) telling a lie and (2) losing temper. A child can easily find out whether you are spinning a long yarn or not. He is inquisitive, irrepressively curious and, above all, he has his own manner and angle of looking at things. He puts questions about all things and subjects and in all ways that seem queer to an adult view. His answers too to questions, his solutions of problems are very unorthodox, bizarre. But it is all the more the task of the elder not only to put up with all these vagaries, but also with great sympathy and patience to appreciate and understand what the child attempts to express. If you get irritated or angry and try to snub or brush him away, it would mean the end of all cordial relation between you and him. Or, again, if you try to hoodwink him, give a false answer to hide your ignorance, in that case too the child will not be deceived, he will find you out and lose all respect for you. It is far better to own your ignorance, saying you do not know than to pose as a knowing man; although that may affect to some extent his sense of hero-worship and he may not entertain any longer the unspoilt awe and esteem with which he was accustomed to look up to you, still you will not lose his affection and confidence. Infinite patience and a temper that is never frayed or ruffled are demanded of the teacher and the parent

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who wish to guide and control successfully and happily a child. With that you can mould in the end the most refrac­tory child, without that you will fail even with a child of goodwill.

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