The trained nurse and the trained kindergartner have assumed duties which in the ordinary family were for merly universally performed by parents. It is recognized that maternal affection is less potent than training and professional skill even in such delicate tasks as those which are now frequently transferred for a consideration to the nurse in illness and to the kindergartner in the period at the beginning of elementary instruction. There is a similar place which must be filled by some efficient representative of the community in the development and oversight and care of dependent children. The assumption that this care can best be given by childless married couples who have a great variety of reasons for desiring to adopt children, or by families in which, whatever the number of children, there is felt to be room for one or more foster-children in addition, is an assumption which requires for its success ful support experience on a large scale and through an ex tended period. The probabilities would appear to lie in the other direction. It would seem as if in an institution where experiences can be more readily compared and de ductions made from the observation of a large number of children, there could be developed that trained skill and scientific grasp of the subject that are essential. The family in which parents are rearing and caring for their own offspring is the natural social unit. The relation between foster-parent and placed-out child, when this rela tion is established by a third individual or a society organ ized for the purpose, is a less natural one, and there is little argument by analogy in its behalf based upon the normal family. The community is compelled, under modern con ditions, to face, practically as if it were a new problem, the task of fitting the dependent child into his place as a self-supporting and self-respecting member of the indus trial and social organization. If the institutions for the maintenance and education of children have not been of a character to perform this task with complete satisfaction in the past, it is, in view of the considerations that have last been urged, a duty to consider whether they cannot be so modified and improved as to fit them more ade quately to perform it. It will simplify the problem if it be granted that what can reasonably be expected is not the production of geniuses or of exceptionally endowed indi viduals, save in rare instances for which no plan can be consciously devised, but rather the bringing of those who are thrown upon charity fairly into the ranks of self-sup porting citizens. We may hope to bring them to a place where they are no longer social debtors, but may be con tent, if, by accomplishing so much as this, the actual pauperism existing in the community is so far reduced, as well as the number who are likely to become criminals, and thus a double burden upon the community measurably reduced.
In reply to this objection it may be urged that those who are engaged in placing out children, and especially such as supplement their free homes by a system of board ing homes for wayward children and for those who are later to be returned to their parents, are, equally with institutions, developing special skill and expert knowledge. While there is much truth in this it can hardly be claimed that the foster-parents, who are the ones that are most continuously in contact with the children, can be expected to devote their energies exclusively to the problems in volved in the care of children, as do even the subordinate employees of institutions. The officers and agents of the placing-out society may well become experts, but after all the direct responsibility for training and caring for the children does not fall upon them.
Institutionalism has also its pronounced evils. Aside from its tendency to abnormal growth and the danger of resorting to it in demonstrably unsuitable cases, both of which dangers may be guarded against, there are inherent dangers in institutional life even for those who are prop erly accepted as charges upon the state or upon private philanthropy. Institutionalism is defined by R. R. Reeder, superintendent of the New York Orphan Asylum, as " a combination of rote, routine, and dead levelism " ; as "law and coercion, without liberty or individual initiative." Mr.' Reeder's ironical advice to those in charge of institu
tions is " to employ people who have had experience in institutionalism, for they are more certain to have studied the best methods of properly suppressing the child, so that he will give a minimum of trouble " ; and to remember that " the more the child is suppressed the less dynamic he is .and the less liable to break through your well-articu lated and grooved system." The mere fact that this sys tematic suppression and reliance upon routine methods is dubbed institutionalism is an indication that institutions have a tendency to err in these directions. Indeed, it is freely charged by those who have had exceptionally good opportunities for observation, that it is almost impossible to conduct an institution of any considerable size on any other plan. The superintendent of one large institution casually remarked, in answer to a question as to what he did with boys who were about to leave the institution after an average stay of five or six years, that he then began to study their individual tastes and inclinations, that, in fact, it was "really necessary when a boy got to he fourteen or fifteen years of age that he should be individualized." This implies, of course, that the thousands of children passing through this particular institution are not indi vidualized until this stage, unless the superintendent did himself and his institution a grave injustice ; that thou sands of children are treated en masse until the problem arises of fitting them into some position on their discharge. There is obviously a wide and deep gulf between such a system and the sense of responsibility felt by a conscien tious father for the development of the personality of his sons and daughters, or the love of a mother for her indi vidual children.
It is said that children come out of institutions almost wholly unfamiliar with the thousand proficiencies and ac complishments which the boy at home, on the street, or in an ordinary school picks up as a matter of course. The institutional child does not learn how to handle matches with safety, because the electric light or the gas is always adjusted by some employee of the institution who is assigned to this duty. He does not learn the value of money, because purchases are made by steward or superin tendent, and the procedure is wholly removed from the personal knowledge of the inmates. There is no analogy between the transactions of the institution and those of the ordinary wage-earning family, and the children have no means of becoming acquainted with either. Protection from fire, from accident, and from illness are matters which concern the authorities of the institution, whereas in an ordinary family the responsibility for such things is shared to some extent by the different members of the family, and increasingly by the children as they grow older. A manager of one comparatively small institution relates that when a group of boys from the institution was skating on an ice pond, and one of them being separated from the others broke through and was in danger of drowning, his associates were helpless, being confronted by a situation which had no analogy in their previous ex periences, and, incredible as it appears, turned their backs to walk toward the institution ; while some boys of the neighboring village, no older than those from the institu tion, seeing from a distance what had happened, ran to the spot and rescued the drowning boy. A dentist who had a considerable practice in a large institution was struck by the comparative docility of those children and their ready submission to whatever pain his operations made neces. sary, and this he attributed to their drill in accepting quietly whatever experiences came to them and the sense of futility of resistance which had been implanted. The suppression of exceptional characteristics because of the trouble which they cause, the failure to awaken any sense of responsibility or power of exercising rational indepen dent choice or of forming sound judgment, and the absence of opportunity to acquire those fundamental conceptions which together enable one to play his part naturally and easily in association with his fellow-men, are, then, the gravest objections which have been urged against institu tions for children.