Proper Education
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Children are in great need of proper education, in order that they
may be of use in the world. But any effort that exalts intellectual
culture above moral training is misdirected. Instructing, cultivating,
polishing, and refining youth and children should be the main burden
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 in many
cases it has had 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. When of a delicate age,
they are frequently crowded into ill-ventilated schoolrooms, where
they sit in wrong positions upon poorly constructed benches, and as the
result the young and tender frames of some have become deformed.
The disposition and habits of youth will be very likely to be mani-
fested in mature manhood. You may bend a young tree into almost any
shape that you choose, and if it remains and grows 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
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carefully and tenderly trained in childhood. They may be trained in
the right direction or in the wrong, and in their future lives they will
pursue the course in which they were directed in youth. The habits
formed in youth will grow with the growth and strengthen with the
strength, and will generally be the same in after life, only continually
growing stronger.
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 molded 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 so trained and educated that they