Chapter 9—Education and Health
For generations the prevailing system of education has been de-
structive to health, and even to life itself. Many parents and teachers
fail to understand that in the child’s early years 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 encour-
age sending children to school when they were mere babies, needing
a mother’s care. In many instances the little ones are crowded into
ill-ventilated school-rooms, where they sit in improper positions, upon
poorly constructed benches, and as the result the young and tender
frames often become deformed. Little children, whose limbs and
muscles are not strong, and whose brains are undeveloped, are kept
confined, to their injury. Many have but a slight hold on life to begin
with, and confinement in school from day to day makes them nervous,
and they become diseased. Their bodies are dwarfed in consequence
of the exhausted condition of the nervous system. Yet when the lamp
of life goes out, parents and teachers do not realize that they were in
any way responsible for quenching the vital spark. Standing by the
grave of their child, the afflicted parents look upon their bereavement
as a special dispensation of Providence, when it was their own inex-
cusably ignorant course that destroyed the young life. Under such
circumstances, to charge the death to Providence savors of blasphemy.
God wants the little ones to live, and receive a right education, that
they may develop a beautiful character, glorify him in this world, and
praise him in the better world.
Parents and teachers take the responsibility of training these chil-
dren, yet how few of them realize their duty before God to become
acquainted with the physical organism, that they may know how to
[82]
preserve the life and health of those who are placed in their charge.
Thousands of children die because of the ignorance of those who care
for them.
Many children have been ruined for life, and some have died, as the
result of the injudicious course of parents and teachers, in forcing the
69