CHAPTER XI.
EXTENT OF HOME TRAINING.
1. As little plants after they have grown up from their seed are transplanted into orchards, in order to their more growth and to their bearing fruit, so it is expedient that children, cherished in the maternal bosom, having now acquired strength of mind and body, should be delivered to the care of teachers, so that they may grow up more successfully. Young trees when transplanted always grow tall, and garden fruit has always a richer flavor than forest fruit. But when and how is this to be done? I do not advise that children should be removed from the mother and delivered to teachers before their sixth year, for the following reasons:[1]—
2. First, the infantile age requires more watchfulness and care than a teacher, having a number of children under him, is able to afford; it is therefore better that children should continue under the direction of the mother.[2]
- ↑ Professor Rein of Jena observes: ‘‘In the education of the home there is a concentration of all the educative activities within the limits of a single circle of life. This circle is the result of a natural union based upon a common parentage.”
- ↑ “The mother,” says Pestalozzi, “is qualified by the Creator Himself to become the principal agent in the development of the child. God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature; but the grand point remains undecided—how shall this heart, this head, these hands, be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated?” Again: “Maternal love is the first agent in education.”
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