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Education
the great reformatory movements, and see how often these principles,
though despised and hated, their advocates brought to the dungeon
and the scaffold, have through these very sacrifices triumphed.
Such study will give broad, comprehensive views of life. It will
help the youth to understand something of its relations and dependen-
cies, how wonderfully we are bound together in the great brotherhood
of society and nations, and to how great an extent the oppression or
degradation of one member means loss to all.
In the study of figures the work should be made practical. Let
every youth and every child be taught, not merely to solve imaginary
problems, but to keep an accurate account of his own income and
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outgoes. Let him learn the right use of money by using it. Whether
supplied by their parents or by their own earnings, let boys and girls
learn to select and purchase their own clothing, their books, and other
necessities; and by keeping an account of their expenses they will
learn, as they could learn in no other way, the value and the use of
money. This training will help them to distinguish true economy from
niggardliness on the one hand and prodigality on the other. Rightly
directed it will encourage habits of benevolence. It will aid the youth
in learning to give, not from the mere impulse of the moment, as their
feelings are stirred, but regularly and systematically.
In this way every study may become an aid in the solution of that
greatest of all problems, the training of men and women for the best
discharge of life’s responsibilities.
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