Family education

“ The family has an essentially educational function. Bearing in mind that "educational" means the orderly development of the powers of the life, we can think of our families as existing for this purpose and to be tested by their ability to do this work, especially by their ability to develop persons, young lives, that have the power, the vision, the acquired habits and experience to live as more than animals. The family is an educational institution dealing with child-life for its full growth and its self-realization, especially on character levels. ”

“ Parents or other guardians shall develop a sense of responsibility that the family is the first school and the parents are the first teachers for minors, bear the primary responsibility for minors' family education, and foster their integrity, moral conducts and habits with a fine philosophy, good methods and deeds. ”

“ EDUCATION AND THE FAMILY.—Far more fundamental than legislation on marriage and divorce is the training of young people toward a fuller appreciation of the responsibilities of home-making. In the problem of family instability, laws reach symptoms, while education attacks causes. By education is here meant not merely formal training in the school, but character-building of every type. This includes training in the home, in the school, and in the church. Only when boys and girls are accorded sound training by these various agencies will they be properly prepared to make homes. ”

“ The training of the child by the parent, both as a necessary element in the formation of its character and as a preparation for its education in the schools, was then considered the only branch of family instruction and discipline to which the thought and the assistance of workers in social reform should be given. ”

“ Education of young people in the importance of the family as a social institution and in the responsibility which every individual member should feel to make and keep the family pure and strong as a bulwark of social stability, is the surest means of preventing altogether its dissolution. ”

“ And we have worked hard for parents to make the dream of a college education for their sons and daughters a reality—with new HOPE scholarships, more work-study opportunities, higher Pell grants, and more affordable student loans.
Parenting is a lifetime commitment and a lifetime challenge—it involves balancing the demands of family, friends, career, and community. Yet parenting is also one of life's greatest gifts. ”

“ And let it be allowed to me to add, that, if a loving temper in parents and children be requisite for effecting the purposes of home education, hardly less can be affirmed of the conjugal affection. In a family not blessed with this first element of felicity, every difficulty of the domestic system of training is vastly enhanced, or is rendered insuperable. There can be no need the truism, that the undisguised dissonance of parents is totally incompatible with methods of culture, and with a general course such as we have now in view. ”

“ Family duties necessarily precede those of society. As the "formation of the mind must be begun very early, and the temper, in particular, requires the most judicious attention," a child's training should be undertaken, not from the time it is sent to school, but almost from the moment of its birth. Therefore a few words as to the relations between parents and children are an indispensable introduction to the larger subject of education, properly so called, which prepares the young for social life. ”

“ Now it is not only idle, but cruel, to say that the place and provision for such Christian instruction and formation is under the roof of the parents' home; that the best school is the family. This is indeed true of the early formation by affection, influence, example, by which fathers and mothers fashion the first outlines of character, and mature them while the education of their children is advancing. ”

“ He considers, as do we, that by far the most valuable part of education is carried on in the family, because of the union of all the members under a common parentage, of the feeling of dependence upon a head, of the very intimate knowledge to be gained of the younger members. ”

“ Let us take as a typical family a mother and three daughters, two of them grown up and one still a child—a by no means uncommon instance. The men and boys may be many or few, it makes little difference to our example.
Probably the mother is not so strong as the grown-up daughters. She might make choice of the needlework department, or the teaching, supposing her own education to have been good ”

“ The individual family arrangements confining the child to the limited number of ideas among them—to their early deep impressions in favor of family interests and supposed rights—to the narrow and partial experience of a family and its usual small connections, are equally destructive of a good sound practical education or well-training of children. ”

“ The first great element to be preserved in all family life is that of the power of the small group for purposes of character development. The infant's earliest world is the mother's arms. In order to grow into a man fitted for the wider world of social living, he must learn to live in a world within his comprehension. A child's life moves through the widening circles of mother-care, family group, neighborhood, school, city, state,29 and nation into world-living. ”

“ Our actual family circle is most often very imperfect; so few families can give, or know how to give, a healthy, physical, moral, and intellectual education to the child, that in this domain large encroachments of the State, whether small or great, are probable, even desirable. ”

“ Ideally, both parents are equally bound to decide all questions concerning the formal education of their children within the limits of personal choice made possible by the public provisions of which all parents may now take advantage. In some favored families this really occurs. Actually, however, in most families the mother has more leisure to learn of possible opportunities, to influence possible improvement, and, above all, to help to wise 65individual choice in the use by the family of these socially provided educational facilities than has the father. ”

“ For this reason both fathers and mothers must carefully watch over their little daughters and have them thoroughly taught in the schools by highly qualified women teachers, so that they may familiarize themselves with all the sciences and arts and become acquainted with and reared in all that is necessary for human living, and will provide a family with comfort and joy. ”

“ The home education was practical and by imitation. The example of the family nucleus was basic, starting with the parents. Parents taught their sons, at an early age, to comply with all the male obligations with the household and the community. In addition to incorporating them into the work made by the father, such as agriculture, ceramic, hunting and fishing, etc., plus community activities, such as collective agricultural work, construction and repair of temples, public buildings, canals, roads, bridges, etc. Mothers disciplined their daughters in household chores. ”

“ The very organization of the home must prepare for civic duty by laying upon all appropriate duties and activities. It ought to be an ideal type of community. But that can never be until we take the training of parents seriously in hand; until we cease to delegate the pedagogy of courtship, marriage, and home-founding to the comic supplements of the Sunday papers and to the joke columns. Parents must themselves be trained for the business of the organization of homes as educational agencies. ”

“ Much that has been said so far has had in mind only the problems of dealing with younger children in the life of the home. Indeed, almost all literature on education in the family is devoted to the years prior to adolescence. But older boys and girls need the family and the family needs them. Many of the more serious problems of youth with which society is attempting to deal are due to the fact that from the age of thirteen on boys have no home life and girls, especially in the cities, are deprived of the home influences. ”

“ For such young persons it is proposed to provide, not a prison for their restraint and correction, but a family school, where, under the firm but kind discipline of a judicious home, they shall be carefully instructed in all the branches of a good education; their moral affections be developed and cultivated by the example and affectionate care of one who shall hold the relation of a mother to them; be instructed in useful and appropriate forms of female industry ”

“ Indeed, the more we study the capabilities of the family in each of its varied aspects, the more potent we perceive its influence to be, the greater the national importance of maintaining the family in its proper power and dignity. This natural grouping of boys and girls is Nature’s indication of the right method of education, and the time will undoubtedly come when the present monastic system of general education may be given up without incurring grave disadvantages. ”

“ The family is society's most important institution, and its impact on human potential is unmatched by any other influence that government, education, or even community can wield. We must promote strong families. ”

“ The process of mediation expands well further. Family life becomes the subject of practical experiences involving family planning, health, psychology, socialized expectations of education, the right to die. The private family owned their offspring and educated it to the level of its own education, or to the level it deemed advantageous, consistent with the progress of literacy. To the extent that this family was involved in other experiences, such as religion, sport, art, or the military, children grew up partaking in them. ”

“ In its social training lie the solutions of more problems in social adjustment and development than we are willing to admit. The family is the soil of society, central to all its problems and possibilities.
Before church or school the family stands potent for character. We are what we are, not by the24 ideals held before us for thirty minutes a week or once a month in a church, nor by the instructions given in the classroom; we are what parents, kin, and all the circumstances that have touched us daily and hourly for years have determined we should be. ”

“ It is equally adapted for the thoughtful study of the father and mother who are seeking help in the moral and religious development of their own family, and for classes in churches, institutes, and neighborhoods, where the important problems of the family are to be studied and discussed. ”

“ FORTY or fifty years ago, when the middle-aged and old people of the present day were children or young people, the parent occupied a position in the family so entirely different from that in which we find him to-day, that the subject of his training was not perhaps of sufficient importance to receive attention from those engaged in the promotion of education. ”

“ Without the work of the head of the family, the common subsistence would, therefore, be imperiled.
If we now consider the education of the children, it is beyond doubt that the maternal education is insufficient. The mother represents in the family, love, solicitude, serviceableness. ”

“ The education of the children will always remain the holiest and highest of all family duties. The welfare, civilisation, and culture of a people depend essentially upon the degree of success that attends the education in the homes. ”

“ Things are important in the education of man in proportion to the intimacies of social relations into which man enters.” For this reason family life is the center of education, and, in a way, furnishes the model for every educational institution. ”

“ From the important part which the mind acts in the great drama of human life and destiny, we think that no intelligent parent would presume to repudiate its education.
Home-education must be moral. The family should develop the moral nature of the child. The will should be educated ”

“ What was good in the old domestic training for individual life-work we are trying to put into the school, and what is needed for skill and leadership in the modern industrial order we are trying to put into the college and university. This means not only that the family rule is less deferred to in the education of even the youngest child, it also means that if we would save the family influence in education we must bring the parents and teachers together in council and in united control as never before. ”

“ This week, we also reiterate the vital importance of family involvement in education. Whether that means checking homework, setting high expectations, or establishing healthy evening and morning routines, schools rely on families to accelerate student achievement. ”

“ Children catch the spirit of social love and idealism in the family. Where men and women are deeply concerned with all that makes the world better for lives, better for babies and mothers, for workers, and, above all, for the values of the spirit gained through leisure, opportunities, and higher incentives; where the family is more concerned with folks than with furniture ”

“ Those also who are working through the formal education of the schools for the insertion of study and practice along lines of home-making are making a complementary and valuable contribution toward the inner unity and the outer success of the family. ”

“ Family life may be marked by exclusiveness, suspicion, and jealousy as to those without, and yet be a model of amity and mutual aid within. Any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group. ”