School-Day Influences by Sharlot M. Hall

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 21, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 16.

School-Day Influences

By Sharlot M. Hall

THERE comes a period to all children, from ten to fifteen, when they begin to grow dimly aware of the mystery of life; to restlessly seek its solution, and to realize that the nursery story of the angel bringing little sister is not true. Their playmates drop bits of knowledge, and the mysterious silence preserved by mama only serves to whet their curiosity. Then come school-days and associations, and after a year or two the mother would be much surprised if she could just know what is being talked among her children and their playmates.

I do not wish to speak against our schools, but I know from my own experience that neither teacher nor mother can have any adequate idea of what goes on among the children during play hours. I often wonder how parents can be so blind, so careless of the little notes that pass from hand to hand, and the secrets told with elaborate precaution. Children from all sorts of homes meet and mingle freely, and the stories told and language used is a shock to a thoughtful mind.

Perhaps I have the advantage of inside knowledge, for I went, a shy, quiet girl, from

a lonely country ranch to a town school. The earnest intention to study medicine and make it my life work had given me considerable knowledge at a very early age, and to me the reproduction of life was a holy of holies. Absorbed in my studies, I did not join any class or set, and soon the girls laughed and joked and told their experiences before me as if I had been deaf or blind. They were all nice girls, from the best families; but the things I heard them tell made me resolve that no daughter of mine should ever leave her mother's care without the protection of knowledge.— Sharlot M. Hall.