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Relation of Dress to Education
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At school, the girls, by unsuitable and uncomfortable clothing,
are unfitted either for study or for recreation. Their minds are preoc-
cupied, and the teacher has a difficult task to awaken their interest.
For breaking the spell of fashion, the teacher can often find no
means more effective than contact with nature. Teach students to
enjoy the delights found by river or lake or sea. Let them climb
hills, watch the sunset glory, explore the treasures of wood and field,
and learn the pleasure of cultivating plants and flowers. As they
do this, the importance of following the latest styles will sink into
insignificance.
Lead the young people to see that in dress, as in diet, plain living
is indispensable to high thinking. Help them see the treasures in the
Word of God, in the book of nature, and in the records of noble lives.
Turn their minds toward the suffering that they might relieve.
Help them see that by every dollar squandered in display, the spender
is deprived of means for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and
comforting the sorrowful.
At the same time the young should be taught to recognize the
lesson of nature, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11
. In dress, as in all things else, it is our privilege to
honor our Creator. He desires our clothing to be not only neat and
healthful, but appropriate and becoming.
Dress Reveals Character
The character of a man or woman is judged by their style of
dress. A refined taste, a cultivated mind, will be revealed in the
choice of simple and appropriate attire. Simplicity in dress, when
united with modesty of demeanor, will go far toward surrounding a
young woman with an atmosphere of sacred reserve.
Let girls be taught that the art of dressing well includes the ability
to make their own clothing. This is an ambition that every girl should
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cherish. It will be a means of usefulness and independence.
It is right to love beauty and to desire it, but God wants us to
love and to seek first the highest beauty—that which is imperishable.
The choicest productions of human skill possess no beauty that can
compare with that beauty of character which in His sight is of “great
price.”