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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 82. The Home University.
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The Home University.
Then there's the planned training. The home should be thought of as a school, with father and mother as joint principals. The child should have the best mental training it is possible to give him. And it is entirely possible for the humblest home to provide the foundation of a liberal education. Three simple things go a long way toward a liberal education: ability to use one's own language clearly and forcibly, acquaintance with a few good classics of the English tongue, and some general knowledge of history and of the world of affairs.
The books may be few, but they can be chosen, and be choice. The father and mother-teachers may have hard work holding the roof over their heads, and getting meal from the mill, but the purpose of the life will decide the conduct of both life and home. They can live with their children in their studies. They can piece in spare moments, to keep ahead of the children. They can take bits of time to read with the children and talk over what is read. Many a strong leader of thought among men has had the foundation of his education laid in just such a home, and by such love-wise parents.
There is no finer mental training that can be done than to teach the child the reading habit, a good intelligent book-reading habit. It is astonishing how rare the reading habit is. To the thousands books are sealed treasures. They can listen to men talk if they talk simply enough, but they can't get information out of a book, though they can pronounce the words easily enough. The crowd stands deaf and blind before a book; because they haven't acquired the reading habit while young.
And that is true not simply of the ignorant, but of thousands who are reckoned intelligent, and who are intelligent, in making money, and in discussing the common affairs of life. The book-reading world is a very small one. It's a very difficult task to write a book that many people will read. The paper-reading, and magazine-reading world is much larger. But the reading is pretty much of a very shallow sort.
Papers and magazines are of great value, if one has learned how to read them. They should have only a small proportion of a man's reading time. With thousands they make shallow reading, and shallower thinking, and tongues loose at both ends. To teach a child to read a book though-fully is one of the greatest services that can be rendered. The thoughtful mastering of one good book will frequently train and transform the whole life. And, more, it fixes the reading habit which makes all books your helpers and servants.
Then the child's bent of mind should be studied. His natural gifts should be keenly observed. So we may be wisely guided in deciding upon his life occupation. The old passage, so much quoted from Proverbs, "train up a child in the way he should go," (Pro_22:6 <http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Pr+22:6>.) might better be read, "train him up in the way he is inclined by natural gift to go." It seems to refer not to the moral training, but to the training of his native gifts, that so he may be led into the occupation to which he is best suited by natural gift. And as he grows older he won't need to change his work, as is so often done.
And the child should be taught early to know God, and to recognize His inner voice. Samuel's ear was trained very early to recognize God's voice. God speaks to the child. He may be taught very early to recognize that voice. And this will lead very naturally to the decision we call conversion. It is natural for the child, as he is taught of God and of His love, to want to please Him. This is the natural thing.
To do wrong, and sin wilfully, and then have to repent, and go through a more or less violent experience of breaking away from sin and coming to God—this is not the natural order. It has become the necessary order, because of lack of self-training and lack of child-training by parents.
But to lead the child to. know God, and to desire to please Him, and never to disobey, nor fail to obey, and so gradually come by almost imperceptible steps and decisions into the maturing Christian life,—this is the true natural order. But the parents must live that way themselves if they are to lead the child that way. What a prod the child is to pure holy living, and stern self-discipline!