36
A Solemn Appeal
and women feel under so little obligation to render obedience to the
law of God. Some parents have not control over themselves. They do
not control their own morbid appetites, or their passionate tempers;
therefore they cannot educate their children in regard to the denial of
their appetite, and teach them self-control.
Errors In Education
Many mothers feel that they have not time to instruct their children,
and in order to get them out of the way, and get rid of their noise and
trouble, they send them to school. The school-room is a hard place for
children who have inherited enfeebled constitutions. School-rooms
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generally have not been constructed in reference to health, but in
regard to cheapness. The rooms have not been arranged so that they
could be ventilated as they should have been, without exposing the
children to severe colds. And the seats have seldom been made so that
the children could sit with ease, and keep their little, growing frames
in a proper posture to insure healthy action of the lungs and heart.
Young children can grow into almost any shape, and can, by habits
of proper exercise and positions of the body, obtain healthy forms. It
is destructive to the health and life of young children for them to sit
in the school-room, upon hard, ill-formed benches, from three to five
hours a day, inhaling the impure air caused by many breaths. The weak
lungs become affected, the brain, from which the nervous energy of
the whole system is derived, becomes enfeebled by being called into
active exercise before the strength of the mental organs is sufficiently
matured to endure fatigue.
In the school-room, the foundation has been too surely laid for
diseases of various kinds. But, more especially, that most delicate of
all organs, the brain, has often been permanently injured by too great
exercise. This has often caused inflammation, then dropsy of the head,
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and convulsions, with their dreaded results. And the lives of many
have been thus sacrificed by ambitious mothers. Of those children
who have apparently had sufficient force of constitution to survive this
treatment, there are very many who carry the effects of it through life.
The nervous energy of the brain becomes so weakened, that after they
come to maturity, it is impossible for them to endure much mental