Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

But what is the teaching of physiology on this matter? Through one of its greatest writers, thus it speaks:

"If young children are compelled to sit quietly while their minds are urged to undue action, we take from them the noblest part of their strength, and consume it in the function of thinking. Thus growth is retarded, the limbs imperfectly developed, the digestion (and thus the blood) becomes bad, scrofula perhaps appears, and then ensues a great predominance of the nervous system. Any unequal development of our faculties is injurious. It is certain that mental exertions weaken the more they are unaccompanied by bodily movements. Those who, between mental occupations, take bodily exercise, can do more than those who neglect this exercise."

The grand evils of our present modes of education are, not that too much intellectual training is bestowed, but that physical, social, and domestic training are neglected. The result is a universal decay of national vigor and health. Other causes, such as the use of stoves and unventilated houses, improper diet and dress, with excess in other modes of stimulating, have had a large share in the evil, but there can be no doubt that mistaken modes of education are the chief causes of the acknowledged fact that our national health is perishing at a frightful rate.

There are facts that prove the Anglo-Saxon race, as developed in America under the best circumstances, is the most perfect race on earth as it respects size, strength, and beauty. The mountain regions of Kentucky and Tennessee, where the climate allows all to live in pure air night and day, with the simple food and habit of forest life, send out sons that, appearing in foreign lands, are followed by admiring crowds as specimen giants. General Washington's staff, though not picked men, were most of them over six feet in height, with size and muscle to correspond. The vigorous mothers and stalwart sons that achieved our Revolution have given place to sickly mothers with a delicate and puny offspring.

The Greeks, though they educated the mind, took even more pains to train the body, and thus they became the wisest, strongest, and most powerful people on earth. We might do the same, and with far greater facilities; but, should our present rate of deterioration proceed, two or more generations would bring us out a race of deformed and unhealthy pigmies. For facts to sustain such a prediction, the author begs leave to refer to her Letters to the People on Health and Happiness.

The great point now urged is that woman should be trained, not, as some would urge, to enter the professions of men, but for her own proper business, in educating mind in developing the body of infancy and childhood, and in conducting the economy of an orderly, happy, and well-regulated home. These arduous and complicated duties demand able assistance, and here is the calling of the female educator; not to carry off children from their parents and home, but rather to aid these parents in education in all departments.

It is manifestly the Divine intention that parents should be the chief educators of the race, and all plans consistent with this will succeed, and all counter to it will fail. The boarding-school is not in consonance with this Heaven-appointed plan, and the evils multiply around it so fast that a nation of so much common sense as ours must soon forsake it for the true method.

Again: in the grand object of educating humanity for an eternal existence, the questions as to how ordination or baptism shall be administered, or whether it shall be church elders or church committees that rule, are to be made secondary, and the followers of Christ are to unite for the education of the race, not as sects, but as Christians.

These views present the principles on which is organized the American Woman's Educational Association.

Its main features are, that it unites all sects in education; that it spends its funds, not for great buildings to deprive the young of parents and homes, but to provide well-trained educators to assist parents in their homes; and, finally, its leading aim is to prepare woman for her distinctive duties as educator, nurse, and fountain of home sympathies for the race.