PARENTS, EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 31, 1877

PARENTS, EDUCATE YOUR CHILDREN.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Next to good moral and religious training, the best inheritance any man can leave his children is that of a good, thorough education. Feeling the importance of this is what prompts me to write this article, hoping to induce some of our brethren and sisters to do their duty toward their children in this respect, as I know many of them are not doing it.

We have an excellent college at Battle Creek, Mich. There are dozens and scores of young men and women who ought to be there to-day, but parents do not feel enough interested to make the necessary effort to send them. Come, let us reason about this matter. When one of your children is of age you give him a few hundred dollars with which to make a start in life. It may do him good, and it may not. With his inexperience and lack of economy, he may soon spend it, and your hard-earned means are lost. Or you may leave it to them later in life, and there is the same danger. Riches surely take to themselves wings and fly away. We see illustrations of this every day. Nothing is more uncertain than property. A little turn of the wheel, and away it goes. Fire burns it up; the storm destroys it; the drouth consumes it; the floods swallow it up; thieves steal it; knaves swindle you out of it. In fact, it goes here and there ten thousand ways. You leave property to your daughter; she marries a shiftless husband, and it is soon gone.

We ask you, then, my brother, Can you not leave to your children some better inheritance than money or property? Give them good health, teach them good morals, train them in the fear of God, and then embellish such a character with a good, thorough school education, and you have left them the best inheritance the earth affords.

If your children go into the world without an education in these days of learning, they will always have a fearful odds against them,—a thousand channels of profit, of usefulness, and honor closed to them. They must depend solely upon their physical strength for a support. If by any chance they should lose their property, they will labor at great disadvantage. They can do nothing but the hardest physical labor, that which brings the slowest income. They have but a few chances from which to select. They must do just this kind of work or nothing. If they cannot get that, they are out. But if a man or a woman has a good education, he or she will always and everywhere have a great advantage over the uneducated. It leaves them just the same advantages so far as property, manual labor, etc., are concerned. Education does not diminish their ability in these respects. While in these things they have an equal chance with the uneducated, at the same time they have a very great advantage over them in many other respects. They can obtain positions, they can get offices, and they can find employment where the others would utterly fail.

If a person has a complete education, he can turn his attention to almost anything. He is not compelled to choose from so few occupations. Many different ways will open before him. If one fails, he can take another. But more than that,—educated persons are capable of enjoying life better than uneducated ones. They understand and appreciate a thousand things of which the others know nothing. They are much more respected and honored by society in general. They stand on a higher plane. They belong to a more elevated class. More than that, they can be far more useful in life wherever their lot is cast, be it as a mother of a family, or a farmer among his neighbors.

But why need I argue this point? You know it, and you admit the truthfulness of it without any argument. Then I ask you, Why don't you act upon it? Why don't you take steps to bestow this great blessing on your children? I can find many a man worth two thousand dollars and upward, who has one or more children. With a little effort and some sacrifice, he could send these children to our school; but he is doing no such thing. He thinks it costs too much. He cannot afford it. And yet he is calculating by and by to give these very children each of them several hundred dollars, perhaps even a thousand apiece. What foolish calculation that is to withhold the greater blessing and give them the smaller one, and that, too, so uncertain! How much better to use these few hundred dollars now and give your children a good education! Let that be their inheritance. Tell them at the time that this is all you expect to do for them, that the money which you would otherwise give them by and by you will now bestow upon them in their education. This would be a much greater kindness, and a far more enduring possession.

Come, brethren and sisters, act wisely about this matter. Talk it up with your children, get them interested in it, raise a little means somehow, and send them along to our school.

D. M. CANRIGHT.