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While I believe in a wise conservatism as against an unthinking radicalism, I am in no sense of the term a "stand-patter." The individual who has earned this picturesque title, I care not whether in the halls of Congress or in the ranks of the educators, is a foe to progress. A "stand-patter" is such because he is in a rut and either too lazy or too corrupt to get out.
When, then, the missionaries had books to give the people, the people had to learn to read. So the missionaries became educators, and wherever you find the church you find the school.
These holy Manifestations of God are the Educators and Trainers of the world of existence, the Teachers of the world of humanity. They liberate man from the darkness of the world of nature, deliver him from despair, error, ignorance, imperfections and all evil qualities. They clothe him in the garment of perfections and exalted virtues. Men are ignorant; the Manifestations of God make them wise.
But suppose it costs them something; I greatly mistake the meaning of their protestations of devotion, if they are not quite willing to make the sacrifice. Before proceeding farther, I desire to answer a question which wise educators have asked: "Do children require special gymnastic training?" An eminent writer has recently declared his conviction that boys need no studied muscle-culture.
Mountains, authority, and a good selection of books had been excellent educators; he was a very superior and intelligent person, and, without much polish, had laid aside his peasant rusticities, and developed some of the best qualities of a gentleman.
Later I found that besides keeping a careful and accurate account of all we told them, they had a sort of skeleton chart, on which the things we said and the things we palpably avoided saying were all set down and studied. It really was child's play for those profound educators to work out a painfully accurate estimate of our conditions in some lines.
Educators have no doubt vastly overestimated the moral efficiency of the three R's and forgotten that character in infancy is all instinct; that in childhood it is slowly made over into habits; while at adolescence more than at any other period of life, it can be cultivated through ideals.
Ah, indeed! we women thirst for knowledge too, and there are certain branches of learning at least, which it cannot be right to withhold from those who are to be the mothers and educators of the next generation. What can an Attic mother, without knowledge, without experience, give to her daughters? Naught but her own ignorance.
We know that we are in advance of many of the prominent educators of the country when we advocate such a policy, but sooner or later the people whose duty it is to superintend schools will learn that we are right, and they will have to catch up with us or resign.
But even now, and even in the navy, the course given at Annapolis is usually termed a "training" rather than an education. Yet even education, educators tell us, is more a matter of training than a matter of imparting knowledge. This indicates that even for the duties of civil life, the paramount aim of educators is so to train the characters of young men as to fit them for good citizenship.
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