SCHOOLING KIDS PROPERLY

SCHOOLING KIDS PROPERLY

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

Perhaps there is no Proverb in all the collection which has been more frequently quoted than this; and perhaps also none has been more persistently misunderstood and misrepresented. It is a brief and complete revelation of the TRUE METHOD WITH A CHILD. In order to a correct apprehension, everything depends upon the real meaning of the words "in the way he should go." That is by no means an inaccurate rendering, but the question arising is: What is the way in which a child should go? A more literal rendering of the Hebrew at once answers this question. Such translation would be: “Train up a child according to his way." In every child there are special and peculiar powers. The true business of training a child, therefore, is that of DISCOVERING what those powers are, and DEVELOPING them. It is a disaster to prepare a program for a child without consulting the particular and peculiar life of that child, and then to endeavor to compel the child to conform to that ideal, to live by that program. In all training of children the first business of those responsible must be that of considering the children themselves. Herein is revealed the need for individual work. No two children are alike. They cannot be trained in groups, in standards, in grades, in classes. They may thus be dealt with for the impartation of general information, but when the real work of training them according to their ways is undertaken, they must be taken one by one. This is one reason why the school which approximates to the family ideal is most successful. Our methods of training children have hardly begun to reach the Divine ideal. The schools today have become politicized and are destroying kids in great numbers.