Training Young Children in Betting
It is easy to become confused as to the lines between harmless and thoroly evil practises; but it is a perilous thing to do. An earnest mother in Montreal is under pressure to sanction an amusement that is far from right: Should I permit or forbid my children playing marbles "for keeps"? Is the principle wrong? I find other children would not care to give, or have given to them, the same marbles at the finish of the game as they had at the start. Yet one mother of my acquaintance does not allow her children to play for keeps. The children say there is no "fun" playing at all if made to give back, yet they are quite willing to play fair. In a child of selfish disposition it seems to develop a willingness-to-lose idea which otherwise (that is, on the give-back principle) he would never have learned. I am a teacher of a mothers' class; what my children do is looked upon by some as a guide to what their children should do. I object to the saying that marbles is the same principle as cards, for it seems to me marbles is a game of skill, with no chance element. Betting does not depend upon chance as over against skill; there is much betting of heavy stakes upon games or events of pure skill. The unhealthy excitement and demoralization of a bet or wager is due to the fact that it rests upon the vicious principle of getting something for nothing; that is, every winning is the result of another's loss. That principle is absolutely contrary to decency, humanity, and Christianity. A child into whose life it is permitted to enter is deliberately being trained in the practise of a principle that wrecks honor, character, and life. Playing marbles "for keeps" is straight-out betting. It is exactly the same kind of betting as that which the owners of thorobred horses indulge in when they enter their favorites in races of pure skill and place some thousands of dollars on the results. The race-track horse-owners relieve each other of their money; the children relieve each other of the marbles they were playing with — and the marbles cost money. And betting on events of skill and gambling on events of chance, as one grows older, never stay long apart. So the practise would seem to be rather a costly way of teaching a child unselfishness, even if there were any unselfishness in it at all, which there is not. Unselfishness is the giving up of something that we do not have to give up, not something that we do have to give up. But no child lives of whom it is true that "he would never have learned" how to give up freely unless he had played marbles for keeps. If any parents and teachers suppose so, it is they who need to learn some of the simplest lessons in what unselfishness really is, and how to take advantage of the thousand opportunities in child life to teach it. If the children complain that there is no fun in a game without material winnings or losings, this shows that their practise is already destroying their normal sense of enjoyment in a real game. A game ceases to be a game when its chief interest is other than relaxation or recreation through amusement or the healthy exercise of skill. The moment the interest turns on what one is going to "get" out of it, the game value is gone. These children need to be taught what a real game is. They will not learn while they are allowed to bet and gamble. — Sunday School Times.