United States or Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It will be especially our purpose to show how school instruction can be brought into the direct service of character-building. This is the point upon which most teachers are skeptical. Not much effort has been made of late to put the best moral materials into the school course.
At the institution at which I now was, I found that a large portion of the students by some means had their personal expenses paid for them. At Hampton the student was constantly making the effort through the industries to help himself, and that very effort was of immense value in character-building. The students at the other school seemed to be less self-dependent.
And how simplified, when we realize that it is merely the thought of the present hour, and the next when it comes, and the next, and the next! so life, destiny, on the one hand, the thoughts of the present hour, on the other. This is the secret of character-building. How wonderfully simple, though what vigilance it demands! What, shall we ask, is the place, what the value, of prayer?
To find one's centre, to become centred in the Infinite, is the first great essential of every satisfactory life; and then to go out, thinking, speaking, working, loving, living, from this centre. In the highest character-building, such as we have been considering, there are those who feel they are handicapped by what we term heredity.
It is just because the modern home is so devoid of the opportunities for carrying on these character-building activities that provision must be made in that other great educational institution, the school.
Lines marked his face with the record of their character-building, even as his rapid pen traced on white paper the all but completing history of the new world whereat he had been laboring so long. Through the open window, where the midsummer breeze swayed the silken curtains, drifted a hum from the long file of bee-hives in the garden.
The formation of a higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and doing right, is the basis of character-building. The moral character is based on knowing the best, choosing the best, and doing the best. It cannot be built up on imitation. By imitation, suggestion, and conventionality the masses are formed and controlled.
The process of Character-building is so delightfully simple that its importance is apt to be overlooked by the majority of persons who are made acquainted with it. It is only by actual practice and the experiencing of results that its wonderful possibilities are borne home to one.
Although we have taken up the question of punishment and the manner of dealing with various childish iniquities before the question of character-building, it has only been done in order to clear the mind of some current misconceptions.
But this, quite obviously, is mind-moulding and character-building, with the emphasis laid upon the teaching of the pupil rather than the subject.
Word Of The Day