School and the Teacher
157
is that knowledge which enables men to understand the essence of
science.—
Manuscript 45, 1898.
Visual Aids Needed—The use of object lessons, blackboards,
maps, and pictures will be an aid in explaining these [spiritual] lessons
and fixing them in the memory. Parents and teachers should constantly
seek for improved methods.—
Education, 186
(1903).
Avoid Too Great a Variety of Mental Food—God would have
the mental faculties kept pure and clean. But often too great a variety
[195]
of food is given to the mind. It is impossible for this to be properly
taken care of and used. The brain should be relieved of all unnecessary
burden. Only the studies which will be of the most use not only here
but in the future life, which will provide the best instruction for body
and soul, will be carried over into eternity.—
Manuscript 15, 1898.
Study and Practical Life—It is not well to crowd the mind with
a class of studies that require intense application and exertion but that
are not brought into use in the practical life. An education of this kind
will be a loss to the student, for these studies take away his desire
and inclination for the studies which would fit him for usefulness and
enable him to fulfill his appointed responsibilities as laborers together
with God to help those whom he should by precept and example assist
to secure immortality.—
Manuscript 15, 1898.
Need for Practical Training—The study of Latin and Greek is of
far less consequence to ourselves, to the world, and to God than the
thorough study and use of the whole human machinery. It is a sin to
study books to the neglect of how to become familiar with the various
branches of usefulness in practical life. With some, close application
to books is a dissipation. The physical machinery being untaxed leads
to a great amount of activity in the brain. This becomes the devil’s
workshop. Never can the life that is ignorant of the house we live in
be an all-around life.—
Letter 103, 1897
.
Textbooks and Thought Patterns [
See Chapter 13, Food for the
Mind.
]—With solemn voice the Speaker continued: “Do you find with
these [infidel] authors that which you can recommend as essential
to true higher education? Would you dare recommend their study to
students who are ignorant of their true character? Wrong habits of
[196]
thought, when once accepted, become a despotic power that fastens
the mind as in a grasp of steel. If many who have received and read
these books had never seen them but had accepted the words of the