Page 75 - Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students (1913)

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Right Education
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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 teach
them how to preserve health, so that they might use their knowledge
to the best account after they had obtained it....
Regulation of Employment and Amusement
In order for children and youth to have health, cheerfulness,
vivacity, and well-developed muscles and brains, they should be
much in the open air, and have well-regulated employment and
amusement. Children and youth who are kept at school and confined
to books cannot have sound physical constitutions. The exercise of
the brain in study, without corresponding physical exercise, has a
tendency to attract the blood to the brain, and the circulation of the
blood through the system becomes unbalanced. The brain has too
much blood, and the extremities too little. There should be rules
regulating the studies of children and youth to certain hours, and
then a portion of their time should be spent in physical labor. And
if their habits of eating, dressing, and sleeping are in accordance
with physical law, they can obtain an education without sacrificing
physical and mental health....
There should have been connected with the schools, establish-
ments 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
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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 advan-
tage 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