Home Schools

«Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.» — Prov. 22: 6.

Teachers in the home.

«As wise teachers, parents should labor earnestly for their children, leading them to co-operate with God. They should study carefully and prayerfully how to manifest kindness, courtesy, and love, but not blind affection. True Christian parents are teachers in the home . . . . How startling is the proverb, ‘As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.’ This is to be applied to the training of your children. Parents, will you remember that the education of your children from their earliest years is committed to you as a sacred trust?»— P.C., «Study for Time and Eternity.»

Early home training.

«During the first six or seven years of a child’s life, special attention should be given to its physical training, rather than to the intellect. After this period, if the physical constitution is good, the education of both should receive attention. . . Parents, especially mothers, should be the only teachers of such infant minds. They should not educate from books. The children generally will be inquisitive to learn the things of nature. They will ask questions in regard to the things they see and hear, and parents should improve the opportunity to instruct and patiently answer these little inquiries.— Healthful Living, p. 151

Age in the home school.

«The first seven or ten years of a child’s life is the time when lasting impressions for good or for evil are made.»— P.C., May 6, 1897 .

«Parents should be the only teachers of their children until they have reached eight or ten years of age. . . . . Many children have been ruined for life by urging the intellect and neglecting to strengthen the physical powers, Many have died in childhood because of the course pursued by injudicious parents and school-teachers . . . when they were too young to see the inside of a school-room.»— Christian Education .

Every home should be a church.

«Every family in the home life should be a church, a beautiful symbol of the church of God in heaven. If parents realized their responsibility to their children, they would not under any circumstances scold and fret at them.»— P.C., Dec. 15, 1897 .

Effects of home school.

«Make the educational hour one of pleasure and importance, and your confidence will increase in the methods of seeking for the salvation of your children. Your own spiritual growth will be more rapid as you learn to work for them. As you work in a humble way; unbelief will disappear, faith and activity will impart to your experience ardor, assurance, and satisfaction that will increase day by day as you follow on to know the Lord and to make him known. Your prayers will become earnest, you will have some real object for which to pray.»— P.C., Feb. 2, 1895 .

God’s Word and nature.

«The mother . . . should find time to cultivate in herself and in her children a love for the beautiful buds and opening flowers. By calling the attention of her children to their different colors and variety of forms, she can make them acquainted with God, who made all things beautiful, things which attract and delight them. She can lead their minds up to their Creator, and awaken in their young hearts a love for their heavenly Father, who has manifested such great love for them. Parents can associate God with all his created works. The only school-room for children from eight to ten years of age should be in the open air, amid the opening flowers and nature’s beautiful scenery. And their only text-book should be the treasures of nature. These lessons, imprinted upon the minds of young children, amid the pleasant, attractive scenes of nature, will not soon be forgotten.»— C.E., p. 9 .

Home duties.

«The mother should be the teacher, and the home the school where every child receives his first lessons, and these lessons should include habits of industry. Mothers, let the little ones play in the open air; let them listen to the songs of the birds and learn the love of God as expressed in his beautiful works. Teach them simple lessons from the book of nature and the things about them; and as their minds expand, lessons from books may be added and firmly fixed in the memory. But let them also learn, even in their earliest years, to be useful. Train them to think that, as members of the household, they are to act an interested, helpful part in sharing the domestic burdens, and to seek helpful exercise in the performance of necessary home duties.

Duties that educate.

«It is essential for parents to find useful employment for their children, which will involve the bearing of responsibilities as their age and strength will permit. The children should be given something to do that will not only keep them busy, but interest them. The active hands and brains must be employed from the earliest years. If parents neglect to turn their children’s energies into useful channels, they do them great injury; for Satan is ready to find something to do. Shall not the doing be chosen for them, the parents being the instructors?»— Sp. T. on Ed., pp. 37, 38 .

Physiology and hygiene.

«From the first dawn of reason the human mind should become intelligent in regard to the physical structure. We may behold and admire the work of God in the natural world, but the human habitation is the most wonderful. . . . It is therefore of the highest importance that among studies selected for childhood, physiology should occupy the first place. . . . . All children should study it. It should be regarded as the basis of all educational effort. And then parents should see to it that practical hygiene be added.»— Healthful Living, p. 13 .

Voice culture.

«The very best school for voice culture is the home. Study in every way not to annoy, but to cultivate a soft voice, distinct and plain. Thus mothers may become teachers in the home. Mothers should themselves act like Christ, speaking tender, loving words in the home. Then opposite their names in the book of heaven will be written, ‘Ye are laborers together with God.’ . . . . Avoid everything that will be rasping to your children.»— P.C., Sept. 24th., 1898 .

Children should share the burdens with father and mother.

«The approval of God rests with loving assurance upon the children who cheerfully take their part in the duties of domestic life, sharing the burdens of father and mother. They will be rewarded with health of body and peace of mind; and they will enjoy the pleasure of seeing their parents take their share of social enjoyment and healthful recreation, thus prolonging their lives. Children trained to the practical duties of life, will go out from the home to be useful members of society. Their education is far superior to that gained by close confinement in the schoolroom at an early age, when neither the mind nor the body is strong enough to endure the strain.»— Sp. T. on Ed., p. 41 .

«Thousands in their own homes are left almost uneducated. ‘It is so much trouble,’ says the mother. ‘I would rather do these things myself; it is such a trouble; you bother me.'»

«Does not mother remember that she herself had to learn in jots and tittles before she could be helpful? It is a wrong to children to refuse to teach them little by little. Keep these children with you. Let them ask questions, and in patience answer them. Give your little children something to do; and let them have the happiness of supposing they help you. There must be no repulsing of your children when trying to do proper things. If they make mistakes, if accidents happen, and things break do not blame. Their whole future life depends upon the education you give them in their childhood years.»— P.C., Dec. 15, 1897 .

General Culture.

«Regularity should be the rule in all the habits of children.»— C.E., p 163.

«Teach them that money spent for that which they do not need is perverted from its proper use.»— Idem, p. 165 .

Home Discipline.

«Many parents will have to render an awful account at last for their neglect of their children. . . . Children are left to come up instead of being trained up . . . .

«Parents stand in the place of God to their children, and they will have to render an account whether they have been faithful to the little few committed to their care. Parents, some of you are rearing children to be cut down by the destroying angel unless you speedily change your course, and are faithful to them. He can not love unruly children who manifest passion, and he can not save them in the time of trouble. Will you suffer your children to be lost through your neglect? Unfaithful parents, their blood will be upon you, and is not your salvation doubtful with the blood of your children upon you?—children who might have been saved you had filled your place, and done your duty as faithful parents should. . . . . .

«Parents, correct your children. Begin while they are young, when impressions can be more easily made, and their evil tempers subdued before they grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength. . . . You should correct your children in love. Do not let them have their own way until you get angry, and then punish them. Such correction only helps on the evil, instead of remedying it. After you have done your duty faithfully to your children then carry them to God, and ask him to help you. . . . Ask him to temper their dispositions, to make them mild and gentle by his Holy Spirit. He will hear you pray. He will love to answer your prayers. Through his Word he has enjoined it upon you to correct your children, to «spare not for crying,» and his word is to be heeded in these things. . .

«Children are the lawful prey of the enemy, because they are not subjects of grace, have not experienced the cleansing power of Jesus, and the evil angels have access to these children; and some parents are careless, and suffer them to work with but little restraint. Parents have a great work to do in this matter, by correcting and subduing their children, and then bringing them to God and claiming His blessing upon them. By the faithful and untiring efforts of the parents, and the blessing and grace entreated of God on the children, the power of the evil angels will be broken, a sanctifying influence is shed upon the children, and the powers of darkness must give back.»— Review and Herald, March 28, 1893 .

The condition of many homes.

«There has been with many parents a fearful neglect of duty. Like Eli, they fail to exercise proper restraint, and then they send their undisciplined children to college to receive the training which the parents should have given them at home. . . . . If the youth choose the society of the evil-disposed, and go on from bad to worse, then the teachers are censured and the school denounced. In many cases censure justly belongs to the parents. They had the first and most favorable opportunity to control and train their children, when the spirit was teachable and the mind and heart easily impressed. But through the slothfulness of the parents the children are permitted to follow their own will until they become hardened in an evil course.»— Test. 31, p. 25 .

«They (children) gave felt no compunctions of conscience in going about the streets on the Sabbath for their own amusement. Many go where they please, and do what they please, and their parents are so fearful of displeasing them that, imitating the management of Eli, they lay no commands upon them. These youth finally lose all respect for the Sabbath, and have no relish for religious meetings or for sacred and eternal things. . . . Most of the backsliding from God in that place has come in consequence of parents neglecting to train their children to a conscientious religious life. The condition of these children is lamentable. They profess to be Christians, but their parents have not taken upon themselves the burden of teaching them how to be Christians.»— Test. 31, pp. 25-38 .

A sacred trust.

«Every child born into the home is a sacred trust. God says to the parents, ‘Take this child and bring it up for me, that it may be an honor to my name, and a channel through which my blessing shall flow to the world.’ . . . Something more is called for than a partial, onesided education. . . . The first lessons are of great importance. It is customary to send very young children to school.»— Sp. T. on Ed., pp. 36, 37 .

Teachers for isolated homes.

«If parents are not able to send their children to school, let them hire an exemplary religious teacher who will feel it a pleasure to work for the Master in any capacity, who will be willing to cultivate any part of the Lord’s vineyard. Let mothers and fathers co-operate with the teacher, and devote an hour daily to study, becoming learners with the children.»— P. C. Feb. 2, 1895 .