Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 274, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1914 — PROPER FREEDOM OF CHILD [ARTICLE]

PROPER FREEDOM OF CHILD

Writer In the Atlantic Finds Some Fault With the Modern System of Training Him. An exceedingly complex subject, this question of the freedom of the child, writes Simeon* Strunsky in the Atlantic. I am not sure that I understand it. Neither am I sure that the militant advocates of the freedom of the child understand it. At any rate, in so many arguments about the rights of the child, I find a lurking argument for the rights of the parents as against the ehild. The great, implication seems to be that the modern way for a mother to love her children is to have the teacher love them for her. The modern way to train the child is to deny him the indulgences which the child, as the victim 1 of several tens of thousands of years of foolish practice, has learned to expect from his parents. The freedom of the child seems to demand that he shall be restrained, in his desire for personal communion with_his parents which may the latter’s freedom to realize*fhemselves in their own adult interests, whereas at school the child must not be restrained in going about the serious, business of his life. There must be method Amd discipline in the matter of a child's sitting up after supper to wait for father from the office. But he must be allowed the utmost freedom in learning to read numbers up to 1,000 and Roman numerals to XX. No fetters must be imposed upon Harold’s,personality when he'is studying the date of the discovery of America, but there are rigorous limitations on the number of minutes he is to frolic with me in bed or to interrupt me at the typewriter when I am engaged in rapping out copy which the world could spare much, more, easily than Harold’s soul can spare a half-hour of communion with me.