Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized, narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of the character.
Our instruction should be integral, rational, and mixed.
Integral—Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a complete, free ensemble, equally progressive in all knowledge, intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the earliest age.
Rational—Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the abolition of the fiction God, the eternal and absolute cause of subjection.
Mixed—Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant, fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to the character of their manners a special earnestness.
To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship, instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small importance.
To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the pros and cons of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.
That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly.
