Parent and Child Vol. III. | Page 7

has preceded. The door is opened through which the capacity for
progress can enter. Horses and dogs, bears and elephants, parrots and
monkeys, are all teachable to some extent, and we have even heard of a

learned pig, and of learned asses there has been no lack in the world.
"But this educability of the higher mammals and birds is, after all, quite
limited. Conservatism still continues in fashion. One generation is
much like another. It would be easy for foxes to learn to climb trees,
and many a fox might have saved his life by so doing; yet quick-witted
as he is, this obvious device has never occurred to him."
The vital problem with parents is how to fill this period of plasticity,
how to provide an educative environment of the right kind.
Luther Burbank, in "The Training of the Human Plant," expresses
complete confidence in the power of the environment through
appropriate training to fashion the normal child, just as he could a plant,
into a most delightful and beautiful specimen of its kind. He says: "Pick
out any trait you want in your child, granted that he is a normal child,
be it honesty, fairness, purity, lovableness, industry, thrift, what not. By
surrounding this child with sunshine from the sky and your own heart,
by giving the closest communion with nature, by feeding this child
well-balanced, nutritious food, by giving it all that is implied in
healthful environmental influences, and by doing all in love, you can
thus cultivate in the child and fix there for all its life all of these traits,
and on the other side, give him foul air to breathe, keep him in a dusty
factory or an unwholesome school-room or a crowded tenement up
under the hot roof; keep him away from the sunshine, take away from
him music and laughter and happy faces; cram his little brains with
so-called knowledge; let him have vicious associates in his hours out of
school, and at the age of ten you have fixed in him the opposite traits.
You have, perhaps, seen a prairie fire sweep through the tall grass
across a plain. Nothing can stand before it, it must burn itself out. That
is what happens when you let weeds grow up in your child's life, and
then set fire to them by wrong environment."
Mr. Burbank is probably over-enthusiastic in his belief that natural
education can do everything for the child; but it is certain that
environment does exercise a powerful influence, during the plastic age,
in determining his character.

LESSON IV
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Compare the helplessness of the infant at birth with the ability of the

young of other animals.
2. At one year of age, what is the comparison?
3. What is the significance of prolonged infancy respecting (a)
possibility of adjustment to environment, (b) possibility of training and
education, (c) possibility of profiting from experience, (d) the relation
to heredity?
4. What advantage is it that man is born with the germs of many
capacities instead of with a few activities that are perfectly developed?
5. What is the chief function of education?
6. What does Burbank say respecting the possibilities of training?
7. What common-sense training should every child be given during this
period?
Good books, for further study on these points, are: "The Care and
Training of the Child," by Kerr, and "Fundamentals of Child Study," by
Kirkpatrick.
If these volumes are in the library or otherwise available, it may be well
to have some member read and give a brief report on one or the other of
them.

THE NEEDS OF THE INFANT
_The Infant's First Needs Are Physical, and May Be Summed up in the
Word Nutrition_
The new-born child differs in nearly all particulars from the adult. It is
very unfortunate that the child in the past has been regarded as a
miniature adult and treated like "a little man."
The structure of muscle and bone and the proportion of various parts of
the body differ materially; the bones of the child for some time are soft
and largely composed of cartilages which may be easily bent out of
shape and permanently injured. The ratio of some of the parts is about
as follows:
* * * * *
Height of head of adult to that of infant--2 to 1 Length of body of adult
to that of infant--3 to 1 Length of arm of adult to that of infant--4 to 1
Length of leg of adult to that of infant--5 to 1
Besides these easily observed differences, there are others of far more
consequence not easily seen, such as differences in the size, structure
and activity of vital organs, and in the almost total lack of nervous

development in the child as