What a wonderful difference it would
eventually make in the wholesomeness of the manners and customs of
this entire nation. And that difference would come from giving the
children now a half hour's instruction in the plain common sense of
keeping well rested, and in seeing that such instruction was
entirely and only practical.
It has often seemed to me that the tendency of education in the
present day is more toward giving information than it is in
preparing the mind to receive and use interesting and useful
information of all kinds: that is, in helping the mind to attract
what it needs; to absorb what it attracts, and digest what it
absorbs as thoroughly as any good healthy stomach ever digested the
food it needed to supply the body with strength. The root of such
cultivation, it seems to me, is in teaching the practical use and
application of all that is studied. To be sure, there is much more
of that than there was fifty years ago, but you have only to put to
the test the minds of young graduates to see how much more of such
work is needed, and how much more intelligent the training of the
young mind may be, even now.
Take, for instance, the subject of ethics. How many boys and girls
go home and are more useful in their families, more thoughtful and
considerate for all about them, for their study of ethics in school?
And yet the study of ethics has no other use than this. If the mind
absorbed and digested the true principles of ethics, so that the
heart felt moved to use them, it might--it probably would--make a
great change in the lives of the boys and girls who studied it--a
change that would surprise and delight their parents and friends.
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