The Vitalized School | Page 9

his progenitors,
the schools and hospitals may help him through life in a sorry sort of
fashion, but his condition is evermore a reminder to him of how much
he has missed in comparison with the child of sound body and mind. If
such a child does not imprecate even the memory of the ancestors
whose vitiated blood courses through his stricken body, it will be
because his mind is too weak to reason from effect to cause or because
his affliction has taught him large charity. He will feel that he has been
shamefully cheated in the great game of life, with no hope of restitution.
By reason of this, his gaze is turned backward instead of forward, and
this is a reversal of the rightful attitude of child life. Instead of looking
forward with hope and happiness, he droops through a somber life and
constantly broods upon what might have been.
=Attitude of ancestors.=--Whether he realizes it or not, he reduces the

average of humanity and is a burden upon society both in a negative
and in a positive sense. In him society loses a worker and gains a
dependent. Every taxpayer of the community must contribute to the
support which he is unable to provide for himself. He watches other
children romp and play and laugh; but he neither romps, nor plays, nor
laughs. He is inert. Some ancestor chained him to the rock, and the
vultures of disease and unhappiness are feeding at his vitals. He asks
for bread, and they give him a stone; he asks for life, and they give him
a living death; he asks for a heaven of delight, and they give him a hell
of despair. He has a right to freedom, but, in place of that, he is forced
into slavery of body and soul to pay the debts of his grandfather. Nor
can he pay these debts in full, but must, perforce, pass them on to his
own children. Sad to relate, the father and grandfather look upon such a
child and charge Providence with unjust dealing in burdening them
with such an imperfect scion to uphold the family name. They seem
blind to the patent truth before them; they seem unable to interpret the
law of cause and effect; they charge the Almighty and the child with
their own defections; they acquit themselves of any responsibility for
what is before their eyes.
=Hospitals cited.=--Our hospitals for abnormal and subnormal children,
and our eleemosynary institutions, in general, are a sad commentary
upon our civilization and something of a reflection upon the school as
an exponent of and a teacher of life. If the wards of these institutions,
barring the victims of accidents, are the best we can do in the way of
coming upon a solution of the problem of life, neither society nor the
school has any special warrant for exultation. These defectives did not
just happen. The law of life is neither fortuitous nor capricious. On the
contrary, like begets like, and the law is immutable. With lavish hand,
society provides the pound of cure but gives only superficial
consideration to the ounce of prevention. The title of education will be
cloudy until such time as these institutions have become a thing of the
past. Both pulpit and press extol the efforts of society to build, equip,
and maintain these institutions, and that is well; but, with all that, we
are merely trying to make the best of a bad situation. Education will not
fully come into its own until it takes into the scope of its interests the
child of the future as well as the child of the present; not until it comes

to regard the children of the present as future ancestors as well as future
citizens.
=The child as a future ancestor.=--If the children of the future are to
prove a blessing to society and not a burden, then the children of the
present need to become fully conscious of their responsibilities as
agencies in bringing to pass this desirable condition. If the teacher or
parent can, somehow, cause the boy of to-day to visualize his own
grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and
calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family
blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a
deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in every
human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy will wish to achieve
that sort of immortality. He will not consider with complacency the
possibility of his becoming a pariah in the estimation of his
descendants, and will go far in an effort to avert such a misfortune.
There is no man but will shudder when he