The Crown of Wild Olive, John Ruskin.
"Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning—the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind.... The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.... If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow."
Lord Avebury.
DECEMBER 10
"A happy childhood is one of the best gifts that parents have it in their power to bestow; second only to implanting the habit of obedience which puts the child in training for the habit of obeying himself, later on."
Diana Tempest, Mary Cholmondeley.
"The main duty of those who care for the young is to secure their wholesome, their entire growth; for health is just the development of the whole nature in its due sequences and proportions: first the blade—then the ear—then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, 'not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge.' If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you, its guardian, of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all three. It is not easy to keep this always before one's mind, that the young 'idea' is in a young body, and that healthy growth and harmless passing of the time are more to be cared for than what is vainly called accomplishment."
Dr. John Brown.