CHAPTER XII.
PREPARATION FOR THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
1. All human affairs, to be properly transacted, require due reflection and preparation. This is noticed by the son of Sirach: “Preparation is demanded before prayer, before passing judgment, and before uttering a word, even though the question be quite obvious”; and certainly it is proper, that a creature who is a participator of reason should do nothing without reason and judgment, without prudence and circumspection, so as to reflect beforehand why he does certain things, and what may be the result or what may follow if done in this or any other way. Parents, therefore, ought not to hand over their children inconsiderately for instruction in schools, before they themselves seriously reflect what is suitable to be done in this matter, and thus to open the eyes of their children to look forward to the same.[1]
2. Parents act imprudently who, with no preparation, lead their children to schools, as calves to market, or flocks to the herd.[2] Afterwards the schoolmaster becomes har-
- ↑ “The home,” declared Pestalozzi, “is the basis of the education of humanity.”
“In the home,” said Fröbel, “the child grows up to boyhood and school age; therefore the school should grow out of and join itself on to the home. To-day the first and most indispensable demand of human training—complete or tending toward completeness—is union of instruction with life—union of home and school life.”
- ↑ Miss Emma Marwedel, in her Conscious Motherhood (Boston,
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