Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/174

 taught what formerly youths were taught. The chord of a child's life is ofttimes snapped asunder in consequence of overeducation: "Screw not the chord too sharply, lest it snap." You should treat a child as you would a young colt. Think only at first of strengthening his body. Let him have a perfectly free, happy life, plenty of food to eat, abundance of air to breathe, and no work to do; there is plenty of time to think of his learning—of giving him brain work. It will come sadly too soon; but do not make him old before his time. 180. At what age do you advise my child to begin his course of education—to have his regular lessons?

In the name of the prophet,—Figs! Fiddlesticks! about courses of education and regular lessons for a child! You may as well ask me when he, a child, is to begin Hebrew, the Sanscrit, and Mathematics! Let him have a course of education in play; let him go through regular lessons in football, bandy, playing at tic, hares and hounds, and such like excellent and really useful and health-giving lessons. Begin his lessons! Begin brain-work, and make an idiot of him! Oh! for shame, ye mothers! You who pretend to love your children so much, and to tax, otherwise to injure, irreparably to injure their brains, and thus their intellects and their health, and to shorten their very days. And all for what? To make prodigies of them! Forsooth! to make fools of them in the end.

181. ''Well, then, as you have such a great objection to a child commencing his education early in life, at what age may he, with safety, commence his lessons? and which do you prefer—home or school education?''

Home is far preferable to a school education for a child. If at home, he is under your own immediate observation, and is not liable to be contaminated by naughty children;