Home education

“ Thus home-education means a drawing out and also a bringing up,—a training for man, and a bringing up for God; a training and nurture for the family, the state, and the church,—for time and for eternity. These must be done together; they involve but one process, and are conditioned by each other. We cannot separate a secular from a religious education, neither can we separate a training from a bringing up. While those faculties of the child which exist in a state of mere involution, are being developed, its nature must be supplied with appropriate food ”

“ Every habit there formed, and every action there performed, imply a principle which shall enter as an element into the future character of the child.
What is home-education? It is the physical, mental, moral, and religious development of the child. To educate means to draw out as well as to instil in. It means the evolution of our nature as well as the communication of facts and principles to us. ”

“ TRAINING IN THE HOME Certain Phases of Training and Education Can Be Best Accomplished by the Home
There are four great agencies or factors concerned in the training and education of the child: these are, the home, the school, the church, and the state, or society. Of these, the home ought to be the most helpful since it is the most important. The child is a part of the flesh and blood of the parents; he belongs to them in a vital way that transcends his relationship to everything else in the world. ”

“ The home training does not, therefore, consist of simple information, but is a nurture of body, mind and spirit. From this we may infer the frequent mistakes of parents, in substituting mere book-learning for a training up and nurture, dealing with their children as if they had no faculties, and making the entire education of their children mechanical and empirical. Home training involves the development of all their faculties as a unit and in their living relation, causing the body to move right, the mind to think right, the heart to feel right, and the soul to love right ”

“ This race has never neglected the home education, even when it became necessary to establish the school. The family was the nursery of education, and only when diversified duties made it no longer possible to train the children properly in the home was the school established. Even then the purpose of the school was but to give expression to demands which the home created. The spirit and purpose of the education of a people can be understood only when the discipline, the ideals, and the religion of the home are understood. ”

“ Home education is, after all, the great fact, whether it awakens or whether it quenches the young minds exposed to it, and it becomes a momentous question whether our exaggerated estimate and desperate cultivation of schoolhouses and public education are not at the expense of the far more important domestic influences by which the characters of children are formed. ”

“ This transformation can be helped by the training of the present, by casting aside the withered foliage which now covers the budding possibilities of life.
The house must once more become a home for the souls of children, not for their bodies alone. For such homes to be formed, that in their turn will mould children, the children must be given back to the home. Instead of the study preparation at home for the school taking up, as it now does, the best part of a child's life, the school must get the smaller part, the home the larger part. ”

“ In the home project a new educational principle has been discovered, which has far-reaching significance: for in it the school and the home coöperate, the school outlining, standardizing, and interpreting, while the home furnishes supervision, advice, and encouragement. Thus, the home is stimulated to perform those educational functions in which it is superior, through a definite effort upon the part of the school to strengthen them. The same principle is being applied to education in hygiene. ”

“ A Science of Education.—​Allow me to say once more, that I venture to write upon subjects bearing on home education with the greatest deference to mothers; believing, that in virtue of their peculiar insight into the dispositions of their own children, they are blest with both knowledge and power in the management of them which lookers-on can only admire from afar. ”

“ It is a large subject that we have to treat;—that of household education; for the main part of every process of education is carried on at home, except in the instance of boarding-schools, where a few years are spent by a small number of the youth of our country. The queen was brought up under a method of household education ”

“ Of course it is urged as another advantage of the school that the school child becomes a member of a small community where he learns social duties. But the home is the natural community where the child, in full seriousness, learns the real social duties of readiness to help, and readiness to act, while the present-day school artificially re [Pg 247] places that domestic social education, of which the child is now robbed by studies at school and preparation at home. The real value of school life among companions can be had from the home school without its ordinary dangers. ”

“ Education at home by a tutor or governess is in certain respects superior, and in other respects inferior, to that obtainable at the public elementary school. The advantages of home instruction are, first, that it has a more individual character, since the tutor or governess is more intimately acquainted with the child, and each individual child receives a comparatively larger share of the teacher’s attention ”

“ But the foundation for the school as for the life career must be laid at home, and much as the teacher can do, he can never supply deficiencies resulting from the want of a well-ordered home or of a healthy home training. Never, save under necessity, should the parent yield up his sacred duty to another, at least during the tender years of childhood.
The education of the heart and of the affections, is as essential as the school education, and these can never be so well cultivated as under the influence of home. All must be developed in order to maintain the true equilibrium. ”

“ Whatever also strikes the senses in a forcible manner, makes a vivid impression upon the mind, so as to be long remembered. From this principle the method of teaching as at present pursued in infant-schools, derives its power and efficacy; and from the same principle it is, that home-education possesses in many respects so decided a superiority over that of schools. ”

“ In a word, the conservation of the home is simply a program of beginning today ourselves to set first things first, to conserve the human factors that will make homes, to make education everywhere in school and church and home count first of all for character. And that broader education we ourselves must test first of all by this, whether it makes youth competent to live aright, cultivates the love of worthy ideals, and makes him willing and able to pay the price of a trained life consecrated to the service of his world, to the love of his fellows, and to the making of a new world. ”

“ Education for homemaking necessarily implies teachers who are trained for homemaking instruction; and we may pause here to notice that no homemaking course in normal school or college can be sufficient to give the teacher true knowledge of ideal homes. She must have seen such homes, or those which approximate the ideal. Perhaps she has grown up in such a home. More probably she has not. If not, it must then necessarily follow that the lower have been the ideals in the home where the teacher had her training, the more she should see of other homes, and especially of good homes. ”

“ Education is the highest object of home, but education in the widest sense,—education of the parents no less than of the children. In a true home the man and the woman receive, through their cares, their watchings, their hospitality, their charity, the last and highest finish that earth can put upon them. ”

“ The home is the God-appointed educator of the young. We have educational institutions, colleges, schools, but the real school where the lessons of life are indelibly impressed upon the mind is the home. We write and talk of the higher education. There is no higher education than that taught in a well regulated home presided over by God-fearing, man-loving parents whose lives are a sacrifice to create a future for their children. ”

“ The school-room at home is always the school-room, it has no higher moods, no sentiment of its own.
There are diversities of gifts for school and for home education; for impressiveness a large school has the advantage. ”

“ And so it is in a well ordered household. The parents sacrifice their immediate interest in what they are about; and so must the children. And so they will, and with ease, when the thing is made an invariable habit, from the earliest time they can remember.
It is this punctuality, this undeviating regularity which is the greatest advantage that school has over home education, in regard to study. In a large family, where there is much business of living and few servants, it really is very difficult to secure quiet and regularity for the children's [Pg 303] lessons. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If there be not, in the natural dispositions of parents and children, enough kindly warmth of feeling to effect implicit obedience by the means of the gentle affections, and without frequent recurrence to measures of severity, home education had better not be attempted. Children may be governed at school by motives of fear, without entirely depraving their sentiments; because school is not their all and they have still a home, and a sphere of love to think of. ”

“ Make diligent use of those great auxiliaries to home-education, which the church has instituted, such as Sabbath schools, bible classes and catechisation.
Home-education does not imply a system of parental training isolated from the educational ministrations of the church; but is churchly in its spirit and in all its parts, and should in all respects be connected with the church. Home training is a duty you owe to the church. By virtue of your relation to her, she has the authority to demand of you such a training of your child ”

“ By-and-by they will find that it is possible to finish lessons in time to secure a pleasant evening afterwards, and the lessons will be much the better done for the fact that concentrated attention has been bestowed on them. At the same time the custom of giving home-work, at any rate to children under fourteen, is greatly to be deprecated. The gain of a combination of home and school life is lost to the [Pg 148] children ”

“ The plan of state education for infants to replace home education is advocated by some on the ground that professional kindergartners and teachers are more competent to train the budding human mind than unpedagogical fathers and mothers. ”

“ A school giving credit for work it does not see may put a premium upon quantity rather than quality. The teacher who asks her little pupils to wash the home dishes according to school methods may encounter adverse comment from certain parents who are quick to resent outside "management." Nevertheless, home practice in accordance with school theory is the ideal of any coöperative education in the mechanics of housekeeping ”

“ The home is so mighty as a school because, requiring little time for formal instruction, it enlists its scholars so largely in informal activities. It trains for life by living; it trains as an institution, by a group of activities, a series of duties, a set of habits. If the home is to prepare for social living it will be most of all and best of all by its organization and conduct as a social institution. ”

“ This, and the editor's comments, bear directly on our side, that is to say, the culture side. The editor says it is inevitable "that the medium in which the child is habitually immersed, and by which it is continually and unconsciously impressed, should have much greater value in the formation of mental character than the mere lesson experiences of school. Home education is, after all, the great fact ”

“ 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 ”

“ Children are a Public Trust.—​Now, that work which is of most importance to society is the bringing-up and instruction of the children—in the school, certainly, but far more in the home, because it is more than anything else the home influences brought to bear upon the child that determine the character and career of the future man or woman. ”

“ A satisfactory proportion of their students return to home life convinced of its scope and importance, and satisfied to perform the duties which there present themselves, instead of seeking outside occupations and divorcing themselves from family interests. The King’s College Course for 274 graduate students in Home Science and Household Economics bids fair to exercise an influence of as satisfactory, though naturally of a slightly variant, character. ”