Proper Education
131
Thus mothers are sowing the seed that will spring up and bear fruit.
The children are not educated to deny their appetites and restrict their
desires. And they become selfish, exacting, disobedient, unthankful,
and unholy. Mothers who are doing this work will reap with bitterness
the fruit of the seed they have sown. They have sinned against Heaven
and against their children, and God will hold them accountable.
Had education for generations back been conducted upon alto-
gether a different plan, the youth of this generation would not now
be so depraved and worthless. The managers and teachers of schools
should have been those who understood physiology and who had an
interest, not only to educate the youth in the sciences, but to teach
[142]
them how to preserve health so that they might use their knowledge
to the best account after they had obtained it. There should have been
connected with the schools, establishments for carrying on various
branches of labor, that the students might have employment and the
necessary exercise out of school hours.
The students’ employment and amusements should have been
regulated with reference to physical law and should have been adapted
to preserve to them the healthy tone of all the powers of body and mind.
Then a practical knowledge of business could have been obtained while
their literary education was being gained. Students at school should
have had their moral sensibilities aroused to see and feel that society
has claims upon them and that they should live in obedience to natural
law so that they can, by their existence and influence, by precept
and example, be an advantage and blessing to society. It should be
impressed upon the youth that all have an influence that is constantly
telling upon society to improve and elevate or to lower and debase.
The first study of the young should be to know themselves and how to
keep their bodies in health.
Many parents keep their children at school nearly the year round.
These children go through the routine of study mechanically, but do
not retain that which they learn. Many of these constant students seem
almost destitute of intellectual life. The monotony of continual study
wearies the mind, and they take but little interest in their lessons; and
to many the application to books becomes painful. They have not an
inward love of thought and an ambition to acquire knowledge. They
do not encourage in themselves habits of reflection and investigation.