Training is ‘dreadfully defective’

“The training of children,” says Mr Herbert Spencer – “physical, moral, and intellectual – is dreadfully defective.  And in great measure it is so, because parents are devoid of that knowledge by which this training can alone be rightly guided.  What is to be expected when one of the most intricate of problems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought to the principle on which its solution depends?  For shoemaking or housebuilding, for the management of a ship or of a locomotive engine, a long apprenticeship is needful.  Is it, then, that the unfolding of a human being in body and mind is so comparatively simple a process that any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation whatever?  If not – if the process is, with one exception, more complex than any in Nature and the task of ministering to it one of surpassing difficulty – is it not madness to make no provision for such a task?  Better sacrifice accomplishments than omit this all-essential instruction. . . . Some acquaintance with the first principles of physiology and the elementary truths of psychology is indispensable for the right bringing-up of children. . . . Here are the indisputable facts:  that the development of children in mind and body follows certain laws; that unless these laws are in some degree conformed to by parents, death is inevitable; that unless they are in a great degree conformed to, there must result serious physical and mental defects; and that only when they are completely conformed to, can a perfect maturity be reached.  Judge, then, whether all who may one day be parents should not strive with some anxiety to learn what these laws are.”[1]