Proper Education
11
with both parents and teachers. Close reasoners and logical thinkers are
few, for the reason that false influences have checked the development
of the intellect. The supposition of parents and teachers that continual
study would strengthen the intellect has proved erroneous; for it has
had in many cases the opposite effect.
In the early education of children, many parents and teachers fail to
understand that the greatest attention needs to be given to the physical
constitution, that a healthy condition of body and brain may be secured.
It has been the custom to encourage children to attend school when
they are mere babies, needing a mother’s care. Children of a delicate
age are frequently crowded into ill-ventilated school-rooms, to sit upon
poorly-constructed benches; and the young and tender frames have,
through sitting in wrong positions, become deformed.
The disposition and habits of youth will be very likely to be mani-
fested in the matured man. You may bend a young tree to almost any
form that you may choose, and if you let it remain and grow as you
have bent it, it will be a deformed tree, and will ever tell of the injury
and abuse received at your hand. You may, after years of growth, try
to straighten the tree, but all your efforts will prove unavailing. It
will ever be a crooked tree. This is the case with the minds of youth.
They should be carefully and tenderly trained in childhood. They may
be trained in the right direction or the wrong, and they will in their
future life pursue the course in which they were directed in youth.
The habits formed in youth will grow with their growth and strengthen
with their strength; and they will generally be the same in after life,
only continuing to grow stronger.
[14]
We are living in an age when almost everything is superficial.
There is but little stability and firmness of character, because the
training and education of children from their cradle is superficial.
Their characters are built upon sliding sand. Self-denial and self-
control have not been moulded into their characters. They have been
petted and indulged until they are spoiled for practical life. The love
of pleasure controls minds, and children are flattered and indulged
to their ruin. Children should be trained and educated so that they
may expect to meet with difficulties, as well as with temptations and
dangers. They should be taught to have control over themselves, and
to overcome difficulties nobly; and if they do not willfully rush into
danger, and needlessly place themselves in the way of temptation; if