From The Complete Works of Shinichi Suzuki, Volume Two: The Evolution of the Suzuki Method.
Ability Is Not Inborn (1951), Part II
Environment and Ability
Let’s Create the Better Environment
When we consider the human brain’s performance as “an act of adaptation,” we find in every individual the fated relationship between environment and man.
I often repeat, “Man is a child of the environment.”
Everyone born in the Stone Age ten thousand years ago adapted to that era’s parents, society and culture, grew with the ability of the Stone Age, and sleeps in history as a Stone Age person. This makes me think deeply of a man and the environment.
We can apply this to today’s human world. Those placed in an inferior environment adapt to that low level, while those growing in a superior environment respond to that environment. Whether in the Stone Age or in the present era, I think that the fundamental nature of newborns is the same. Culture is not hereditary; people create human history while constantly transmitting by heredity the vessel for adaptation.
If a baby is born today, it does not mean that a man of culture is born; it only means that “a human being is born.” However, those who value humanity should think what a wonderful thing is given to us by that birth. Newborns have the inherent ability to grow to today’s height if raised in today’s cultural environment. Hence, even if the culture ten thousand years from now is far higher than today’s, the baby born today will rise to that cultural level if fostered in that culture. For humanity is endowed with basic ability to adapt to limitless height.
All human beings are equal as human beings, and equally worthy. Yet they do not know their own capacity, hurt one another, humiliate one another, and neglect to think about essential human nature. Now, there is a good example that demonstrates how, despite the high nature humans are born with, they can adapt to beastly qualities if placed in the worst environment, depending upon their adaptability. I would like to quote it below so that together we can think about the real nature of humanity.
Kamala Who Was Raised by a Wolf
In 1941 an important record was independently made public by two professors, one at Denver and the other at Yale. It was a record of two Indian children raised by a wolf who were discovered, captured, and raised. It is material for deep reflection on humanity. Reverend Singh, responsible for the capture and education of the children, had sent to the States his journal based on detailed observation in the course of nine years of education, along with some photographs. Following is a summary of the journal.
One of the two human children caught in the wolf’s den was about two years old and the other was about seven, both girls. Reverend Singh named the younger one Amala and the older one Kamala. The children’s chests, shoulders, and heads were thickly covered with long hair. After it was neatly trimmed, however, they looked much more human. (This event occurred in the area inhabited by the Koras in the jungles southwest of Calcutta.) Among certain tribal peoples in India, girls were said to have been abandoned. Probably these two were among the victims of the custom. It is understood that they were picked up by the same she-wolf at different times and were brought up by her in the wolves’ den together with other wolves including the cubs who were their foster siblings for two to seven years. They probably nursed on the mother wolf’s breast during infancy, and later, as they grew, were given meat of birds and beasts she had caught.
In the den, it is recorded, the young children walked on all fours, their eyes were used to activities in the dark like wolves’, and they had a keen sense of smell. On all fours they were as fast as dogs and people couldn’t catch up with them. Hence their shoulders were wide and strong, and their lower limbs were bent at the knees, unable to stretch. Instead of grasping with their hands, they used their mouths to pick up things. When food and water were given, they ate and drank as dogs would.
In Kamala, the bigger one, feral habits were particularly well developed: she not only liked raw meat but took a strong interest in rotten meat. They adjusted well to changes in temperature: they never sweated, but panted like dogs when it was hot with their tongues hanging down. Their skin was smooth but did not get dirty; their palms had calluses from walking on them. Their hair was long and curled up, making their heads look oversized. When they heard a noise, their ears tensed; when they were angry, they growled like dogs, their noses swollen. Kamala loved the dark and feared fire and the sun. She either slept or lay down by day, and started her activities at dusk. Wolves in that area habitually bayed to one another three times during the night, almost precisely at 10pm, 1am and 3am. Kamala and Amala howled in harmony with these bays at the fixed hours. They had no other speech. This habit of nightly howling obstinately continued long after they had been placed under human care. Kamala’s voice was unique; it was hard to identify it either as a human voice or a wolf’s cry.
Given a room in the orphanage in Midnapore, Kamala and Amala were educated with extreme care by the Singhs and the staff, but their development as human children was very slow. They refused to give up their feral habits after entering the orphanage. At night they escaped from their rooms and ran around on all fours so that the people always had a hard time trying to bring them back. After a year and a half, Kamala finally learned to stand erect, but it was quite difficult to teach her how to walk. This seemed due to neurological changes the bones and joints had gone through. After several years Kamala was able to walk skilfully, but she always ran on all fours and never lost her speed. Efforts were made to let her play with other children in the orphanage, but for a long time in vain. No matter what was shown, or given, she simply crouched alone facing the wall, occasionally turning an eye of caution, and when someone came near, she growled baring her teeth. In the orphanage there was a child at the crawling stage, with whom Kamala seemed to feel a certain affinity. However, as the baby approached her, she fiercely bit him, though playfully. Out of fear, he stopped going near her.
For the first two years in the human world, Kamala ate with her mouth directly from a plate placed on the ground, but when she was able to stand erect, for the first time she began to grab rice with her hand and carry it to her mouth. It is said that this was the first sign of becoming less feral. Thereafter Mrs Singh taught her to eat food from table, but Kamala never changed her habit of drinking water like a dog. One day Kamala found a dead chicken in the yard, ran into the woods on all fours carrying it in her mouth, and returned with blood and feathers around the mouth. For a long time she did not abandon her habit of chasing chickens and killing them with her teeth. It took five years before she was taught not to grab and eat raw meat.
While Kamala had been raised by the she-wolf for seven years, Amala had been with the wolf for only one and a half years, so she was much easier to educate than her foster-sister. After two months at the orphanage she pronounced the Bengali word for “water” when she was thirsty. However, after three months, she still disliked the approach of people. Mrs Singh tried to get them used to people by using biscuits as bait, but even after ten months they refused to eat them. It was much later that they began to approach, licking their lips, when Mrs Singh offered them milk. They never tried to eat fruit. They showed greater interest in the dogs and puppies in the orphanage than in children, and gestured their desire to play with those animals.
Amala died one year after she was restored to the human world. Kamala’s grief was great. She is said to have shown tears for the first time then. She would not eat for days, but ran around as if crazed, or called aloud – seeking Amala. She seemed to have recovered her old wolflike ferocity. The Singhs did their best to comfort her. They massaged her legs so they would stretch, and made efforts to eliminate parasites and to give her necessary medication. They also tried to give her friends, but Kamala preferred to play with goats.
Little by little Kamala started to feel closer to Mrs Singh and to take food from her hands. She first watched the orphans at play disinterestedly, but she eventually began to pay attention. She seemed especially attracted to the newly built swing set. Once her interest toward the world was aroused, she gradually became calmer and easier to handle. She started to enjoy going out for a walk with the Singhs and the children. However, whenever she needed to run, she ran on all fours as before.
She learned to speak very slowly. In her second year at the orphanage she uttered some words indicating hunger or thirst, though only to Reverend Singh. In her fourth year at the orphanage she could say six words, and seemed to understand some of what people were saying. Later on, she came to be able to say the names of colors. In the fifth year, her eating habits changed rather markedly and she learned to drink water from a glass. Now she was not only completely toilet-trained but also had the habit of bathing.
In the sixth year in the human world, at age fourteen, she came to be able to walk almost normally, and her expression approached that of a human being. In her seventh year, she could say 45 words, joined others’ conversation, and seemed to understand some of what her friends were saying. In the spring that year, she reached a point where she could speak short phrases and sing songs. At first she had disliked clothes, and they had to be tied to her body, but by then she was willing to dress herself. One could almost say that a little “vanity” started to show. She now detoured in order to avoid the dog she had felt friendly with in the past. Going into the chicken coop, she no longer killed them but sometimes gathered eggs and brought them to Reverend Singh, whose praise she enjoyed. She became truly friendly with the Singhs and the orphanage staff.
She became “so human as to cry” with sorrow, Reverend Singh says in his diary, when she could not succeed in doing what she was told.
In the fall of the seventh year after joining the human world, she contracted a kidney disease. In the ninth year she had uremia and died. Her estimated age was seventeen. She had lived seven years in the wolves’ den, it follows, and nine years in the orphanage. It is regrettable that the development of Kamala’s body and mind was not observed longer. The words she could say in the last stage of her life amounted to only 45, and her intellect and ability were far beneath her age. How much further could she have developed? It cannot be ascertained until other, new examples of scientific observation become available. However, the detailed study of the two children is a more valuable material for discussion than any earlier records of “nature children”.
The above is abridged from Fumio Kida’s article, “Human Children Fostered by Wild Animals,” Child Psychology (vol. 3, no. 9). This extremely valuable document exemplifies what happens to humans if left alone in the worst environment. It also contains much to teach us about the function of the human brain. Further, it makes every parent and educator think seriously about how every happy child (happier than Kamala) who grows among humans can be impaired if raised in a poor environment.
We must not forget that “man is a child of the environment.”
The More Training
Ability always develops where there is training. As plants need the sun’s light and heat and their growth is affected by the sun, ability grows well where the sun shines all day, while it grows poorly where there is no sun. Where the sun’s heat is strong, ability grows better there where weakly heated. Light and heat here correspond to training and enthusiasm.
If you want to foster good ability, it is necessary to give good, proper training.
If clumsy, bad training is repeatedly given, ability will beautifully develop toward the clumsy. Some make efforts to become clumsier; others make efforts to become more refined. This depends on the nature of training. Fine ability does not grow just because efforts are made. Ability develops according to training. It has no will of its own to improve or grow worse. Whether good or bad, skilful or clumsy, beautiful or ugly, ability makes no distinction; it absorbs whatever training is given.
Those who understand this principal naturally train in what is correct, if they are going to make efforts at all. These people are said to have superior ability. On the other hand, those who try hard thoughtlessly and blindly are often reputed to lack ability.
Ability to Be Scolded
Unexpectedly many people raise children by scolding. Ability develops where is training. “Ability to be scolded” develops there with the result that children become callous about being scolded. Therefore, parents have to scold them gradually more strongly. Strongly scolded, the ability to be scolded develops more and more in the child. Eventually, raising the voice, this training loses effect. When this happens, parents give up education. They rage, blue veins swelling, and in the end their hands come into play. This intensifies the “ability education,” so that the ability to be scolded develops even further. As parents take every opportunity to continue the intense education, children’s ability to be scolded achieves outstanding development through the more frequent and more enthusiastic training.
When I pay attention to what parents have to say after having raised their children in this manner, I find that their comments are invariably the same: “how obstinate my child is by birth.” Where there is no training, no ability grows. If this is all, all we need do is to start when we resolve to develop ability. However, what is left alone without training regresses; in other words, essential ability deteriorates.
The instrument that demonstrates ability is alive, thus requiring nourishment for its growth. That nourishment is training. A living thing left alone without nourishment can only trace the single path toward malnutrition and enervation. Parents are serious about children’s physical growth and visible illnesses; yet they remain nonchalant when children’s ability, which is invisible but controls their future happiness, is undernourished or withers from enervation. Ignorance is bliss, as the saying goes. However, we cannot just laugh.
Take for instance Goethe, Beethoven, or Schubert who died at the young age of 31. I always think about the immense amount of their work, which to me means the amount of their training. Others may think that these men “produced so much,” but what impresses me is that they “trained so much”. They were hard workers. Consider Goethe’s literary works, scientific research, and duty as privy councillor of Weimar. It takes diligence just to copy his writings. Schubert who died young, too, left an impressive amount of work. They too had only 24 hours a day like us, and they too had time to enjoy life and to sleep. When did they accomplish so much?
Think of the amount of work as training, and we realize there is no wonder that their ability developed. I think deeply about what great concentration they must have had and how diligently they must have worked when they thought they should. We are simply wasting our time when we complain about how busy we are and spend our days doing nothing. It is crucial to develop concentration. The height of this ability can be considered the barometer of a person’s ability. Each of us should test to see how much concentration we have. How far we can develop our concentration probably determines the limit of our ability.
“Study well, play well” is an instruction for school children, but it may also be appropriate to today’s adults. We should reflect upon ourselves. “While being jostled amidst the waves of humanity at the festival, inhaling dusty air and looking at different faces of people, my life has come to an end, dusk gathering” – isn’t this how our lives are these days? We are restless. Those who lack calm and concentration lack diligence. They even lose the vision to gaze at life.
The higher Instruction, the Higher Teaching Method
The ability of the student develops in proportion to the level of the ability of the instructor (or, in other words, the environment). If the instructor’s level is low, no superior ability will develop in the child. The higher the level the higher the student’s ability.
So long as the instructor has the ability and a skilful approach, children never fail to grow.
In elementary school, for instance, I am afraid that children are not sufficiently assisted in their development despite their ability to develop. It is easy to understand how things work when we think of an example, for instance, of a teacher who loves science, studies hard, and is highly qualified. Children in this homeroom are strong in science. Children in the homeroom of a teacher good at math likewise do well in math. This is a general fact.
Culture is not created by one person. Wherever there is an outstanding creative person, there are people of comparable cultural standards that approach the height of that creativity. One superior leader can raise the general standard of hundreds and thousands of people. The heightened general standard can foster people who will create even higher standards. Creative breakthroughs occur only when practical ability (or talent) is heightened enough to challenge the standard of the period.
Even when education becomes popular and numerous schools are founded, the nation remains at a low cultural standard unless the quality of teachers is heightened. Education facilities are nothing more than garments.
Local cultural standards are said to be lower than in big cities. This is because local areas lack outstanding teachers, not because the ability of local people is fundamentally low. Some refer to the seemingly low ability of aborigines in developing areas as reflecting their low abilities as human beings. This is not so. If their abilities are low, that is only because the level of their teachers and of their environment is low. The better teaching method develops ability with the greater ease. Even if the teacher has strength, if the teaching method is slapdash, he cannot develop ability in students.
At present, as far as I know there is no better teaching method that that in speech. The learning and teaching method of the mother tongue contains every superior condition for instruction. The five conditions for developing ability are all contained within speech education. In fact, I came up with the five conditions from speech education.
Firstly, what impresses me is that no one has toiled. To enumerate further, no one has the chance to love it or hate it: it starts with birth: the training continues without putting up a “closed today” sign on the door. Moreover, the material increases as the learner advances according to his ability. Education which follows the learner’s developing ability is possible here. There are countless fine instructors around the learner. The instructors experience no pain, and so forth and so forth.
Since finding such ideal educational conditions in the situation of speech development, I have tried to apply them as much as possible to violin instruction, violin being my special field of study. The teaching method I put together has fostered many children well. Though naturally under conditions weaker than those in speech training, I have instructed along this line, with many children developing smoothly in the past twenty years of experimentation. Children from ages three or four to twelve or so progressed so much that they startled adults. For example, children who started around age four including Toshiya Eto, Itoko Hoshide, Koji Toyota, Hiroko Ishikawa, Takeshi Kobayashi, Kenji Kobayashi, Yoki Arimatsu, Miyo Ohta, Keiko Yamamoto and Hidetaro Suzuki, developed smoothly due to their diligence and their parents’ dedicated efforts.
The talent education movement, which started as a social movement, has installed a violin class in many local chapters, and today more than 2,000 young people from babies aged two years and one month to children between ages three or four to twelve are studying by this method. They are receiving music education not in order to become musicians but simply to nurture part of their cultural upbringing. Nine or so children who started three years ago, now age eight or nine, all play Handel’s sonatas or the A Minor Concerto by Bach. Five year old children playing Vivaldi’s A minor Concerto in unison can almost make me cry. Recently a concert was held at Matsumoto, Shinshu commemorating the third anniversary of the school. The performances of the two hundred children were truly beautiful. When seventy five and six years old played the Vivaldi together, I was so pleased that I could have cried. They had fine tone; they gave a fine performance. Three years ago no child played violin in this city. Seeing those children who exceeded the cultural levels of Western children in three years, I thought of all the children in the world: “Every child can grow if helped to grow.”
Without parents’ and teachers’ great self-reflection, it is impossible to create a better era for the human race. I feel sad that at present millions of children on earth grow up as deprived human beings, impaired by the lack of awareness on the part of adults.
From Talent Education Journal, No. 25
(Translated by Kyoko Selden)