He that will have his son respect him… – Sunday, June 28, 1959
Last week we closed with a sentence from John Locke on the teaching and training of children, in which he said: “For you must take this for a certain truth, that let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures . . . daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.”1
This impresses the importance of what we do, what we are, as compared with what we say—the words we speak, as compared with what others see in us and feel from us, and as to parents, as to teachers, as to all of us, never should we suppose, that others will do what we say more surely than what they see us do.
“Manners, . . . ” continued John Locke, “about which children are so often perplexed, and have so many goodly exhortations made them . . . are rather to be learnt by example than rules; . . . Having under consideration how great the influence of company is, and how prone we are all, especially children, to imitation, I must here take the liberty to mind parents of this one thing, viz., that he that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son. You must do nothing before him, which you would not have him imitate…. He will be sure to shelter himself under your example, … If you punish him for what he sees you practice yourself, he will . . . be apt to interpret it [as] the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasures he takes himself…. Children (nay, and men too) do most by example. We are all a sort of [chameleons], that still take a tincture from things near us; nor is it to be wonder’d at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear, . . .”1
These are sobering thoughts because of the responsibility they place upon us all. Beyond the mere routine of teaching, beyond the mere saying of sentences, beyond the mere speaking of repetitious truths—beyond all this, to be most effective and most convincing, we have to be—and should be—the living witnesses of the truth of what we teach.
1 John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education
June 28, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,558