Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose.
Interpretation
Children thrive when given the freedom to learn and grow independently, provided they have a foundation of guidance.
This quote emphasizes the importance of allowing children the space to explore and develop on their own, rather than overwhelming them with constant instructions and restrictions. It suggests that effective education involves equipping children with the right habits and values, after which they should be trusted to navigate their own paths; this fosters their natural growth and autonomy.
In practice
During a parenting seminar, a speaker noted the importance of allowing children to make their own choices.
Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.
As for literature – to introduce children to literature is to install them in a very rich and glorious kingdom, to bring a continual holiday to their doors, to lay before them a feast exquisitely served. But they must learn to know literature by being familiar with it from the very first. A child's intercourse must always be with good books, the best that we can find.
In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.
The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.
We have never been so rich in books. But there has never been a generation when there is so much twaddle in print for children.
We talk of lost ideals, but perhaps they are not lost, only changed; when our ideal for ourselves and for our children becomes limited to prosperity and comfort, we get these, very likely, for ourselves and for them, but we get no more.
When I was born in 1942, World War II was still going. And I began to realize when I became a young adult that if we don't teach our kids a better way of relating to their fellow human beings, the very future of humanity on the planet is in jeopardy.
Good books are for consideration after, too.
True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily "dumbing down."
Mathematics is not a spectator sport!
Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.
One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child.
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