Section 79. (I) General Consideration.
One does not need to have much knowledge of children to know
that as a rule, children are more honest and straightforward than
adults. They are good observers, more disinterested and hence unbiased
in giving evidence, but because of their weakness, more
subject to the influence of other people. Apart from intentional
influences
there is the tremendous influence of selected preconceptions.
If a child is an important witness we can never get the truth from
him until we discover what his ideals are. It is, of course, true that
everybody who has ideals is influenced by them, but it is also true
that children who have adventurous, imaginative tendencies are
so steeped in them that everything they think or do gets color,
tone, and significance from them. What the object of adventure
does is good, what it does not do is bad, what it possesses is beautiful,
and what it asserts is correct. Numerous unexplainable assertions
and actions of children are cleared up by reference to their particular
ideals, if they may be called ideals.
As a rule, we may hold that children have a certain sense of justice,
and that they find it decidedly unpleasant to see anybody treated
otherwise than he deserves. But in this connection it must be considered
that the child has its own views as to what a person's deserts
are, and that these views can rarely be judged by our own. In the
same way it is certain that, lacking things to think or to trouble
about, children are much interested in and remember well what occurs
about them. But, again, we have to bear in mind that the interest
itself develops from the child's standpoint and that his memory constructs
new events in terms of his earlier experiences. As a rule,
we may presuppose in his memory only what is found already in his
occupations. What is new, altogether new, must first find a function,
and that is difficult. If, now, a child remembers something, he will
first try to fit it to some function of memory already present and this
will then absorb the new fact, well or ill, as the case may be. The
frequent oversight of this fact is the reason for many a false
interpretation of what the child said; he is believed to have perceived
falsely and to have made false restatements, when he has only perceived
and restated in his own way.
As children have rarely a proper sense of the value of life, they
observe an undubitable death closely without much fear. This
explains many an unbelievable act of courage or clear observation
in a child in cases where an adult, frightened, can see nothing. It
is, hence, unjust to doubt many a statement of children, because
you doubt their "courage." "Courage" was not in question at
all.
Concerning the difference between boys and girls,
Löbisch[1]
says rightly, that girls remember persons better, and boys, things.
He adds, moreover: "The more silent girl, who is given to observe
what is before her, shows herself more teachable than the spiteful
and also more imaginative boy who understands with difficulty
because he is intended to be better grounded and to go further in
the business of knowing. The girl, all in all, is more curious; the
boy, more eager to know. What he fails in, what he is not spurred to
by love or talent, he throws obstinately aside. While the girl loyally
and trustfully absorbs her teachings, the boy remains unsatisfied
without some insight into the
why or
how, without some proof.
The
boy enters daily more and more into the world of concepts, while
the girl thinks of objects not as members of a class, but as definite
particular things."
[[ id="n79.1"]]
Löbisch: Entwicklungegeschichte der Seele des Kindes. Vienna 1851.