Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants

by E. A. Sutherland

Manual training is becoming popular in many of our city schools, but the work offered in a Christian school will differ from that of the worldly school in this,—the latter is training the hand or the eye only, the former is building character by giving a trade that enables the student to be self-supporting and independent. In that the aims are different, the methods must differ, although the matter taught may in many cases be identical.

Healthful diet and dress

Healthful living is receiving attention in many schools. The Christian school, while teaching the same subject, will have as its object a preparation for eternal life. The subject, taught without faith, will bring only increased physical and mental activity. The spiritual nature can be reached alone by that education which is based on faith.

Need of books

Simply a casual investigation of the subject of Christian education reveals the need of books for the guidance of teachers who undertake to direct the growth of the child. With proper study-books, based upon the eternal principles of truth revealed in the Scriptures, the work which is now in its infancy would make much more rapid and substantial progress.

The home school

Parents who sense the responsibility resting upon them in the rearing of children for the kingdom of heaven are anxious to know when and where the principles of Christian education can be carried out. The beauty of the system is nowhere more vividly portrayed than in the recognition which it gives to the home and the duty of parents toward their children in the matter of education.

In spite of the fact that much is said relative to the importance of educating for the state, the words of Herbert Spencer give a clear idea of the home as the center of the true system. He says: “As the family comes before the state in order of time—as the bringing up of children is possible before the state exists, or when it has ceased to be, whereas the state is rendered possible only by the bringing up of children, it follows that the duties of the parent demand closer attention than those of the citizen.” The plan of Christian education goes a little farther, and recognizing the earthly family as a type of the heavenly, places the parents in God’s place to the young children; hence the home should be the only school and “the parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age.”