Show i i i i i i I 1 i i l TRAINING OF CHILDREN the following a extract is copied from recreations of a country parson 12 1 I have said that almost every human being has some intellectual peculiarity some moral twist away from the moral standard of righteousness let it be added that it is little wonder that the fact should be aa as it is I 1 do not think merely of a certain unhappy warping of an old original wrench which A human nature long abo aeo received and from which it never has recovered I 1 am not writing as a theologian and so I 1 do not suggest the grave consideration that human nature being fallen n need not be expected tobe to be the right working machinery that it might have been before it fell feil but I 1 may at least say bay look how most people are educated consider the kind of training they get and the incompetent hands that triin tran them what chance have they of being anything but screws ah my reader it if horses mere were A ere broken by the people as unfit for their work as most of the people who form human minds there would not be a horse in the world that would not be dead lame you do not trust your thoroughbred thorough bred colt thero hitherto tn tharo to any one who is not understood to have a thorough knowledge of the characteristics and education of horses bat but in number numberless loss instances even in the better classes of society a thing which needs to be guarded against a thousand wro wrong agten tendencies den cles cies and trained up to a thousand shousan d right ight aings from which it is ready to shrink the most sensitive and complicated thing in nature the human soul is left to have its guar acter formed by hands handa as hopelessly unfit for the task as the lord chancellor ls 13 to prepare the winner of the nex next st lege r you find parents and guardians systematically following follo a course of treatment calculated calculate to t b bring out the very worst tendencies of the In mind fUrIni and heart that are latent in the little things given to their care it if a young horse has a tendency to shy bow how b ow careful carefully fY the trainer seeks to win him away from the habit but hut ut if a poor little boy has a hasty temper you may find his mother taking the greatest pa ns to irritate that temper if it the little wuie fellow hansome has some physical or mental defects you have seen parents who never miss an opportunity of throwing itin it in the boys toys face parens parents who seem to exult in it th the e thought that they know a place where a touch ou c li will ivill always cause to wince the sensitive unprotected point where the dart of malignity will never fail rall ail to get home if a child has said or done some wrong or foolish thing you will find parents who are constantly raking up the remembrance of it for the pure pleasure li leasure of giving pain would any kindly man who knows that his bis horse has just fallen down arld and cut himself take pains whenever he came to a b bit it of freshly macadamized road to bring down the poor horse on the sharp stones again with his bleeding knees and even where you do rot find positive malignity in those in trusted with the training of human minds you find hopeless b incompetency exhibited in many other ways outrageous silliness and vanity want of honesty and ind utter titter want of sense I 1 say it deliberately instead of wondering that most minds are such screws I 1 wonder with indescribable surprise that hat they are not a thousand times worse for they are like filia trees pruned and trained into ugliness and barrenness they are like horses carefully tutored to 10 shy kick rear and bite it says sa something hopeful as to wb what at may yet be made of human beings that most of them are DO no worse than they are some parents fancying too that they are educating their children on christian principles educate them in such a fashion that the only wonder is that the children do not end at the gallows 22 |