Evil Teaching | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Feb 22, 1899

Evil Teaching.

Not long ago a book was written, with doubtless good intent, by a writer of note, Mr. Horace Fletcher, which advocated and argued that each child be given a chance, by right training and education, claiming "that the State should provide adequate care for all young children born into the nation." The Kindergarten Magazine, under a department of "Social Quarantine," advocates the same thing. The teaching is evil. By what means is the State fitted to educate the child in its fullness properly? What is there in the State, in its government, in its morality, in its social life, which fits it to become a great big mother of all the children? To do this work would be to simply create another political bureau, in which all sorts of corruption would run riot as it now does in similar institutions. The State is not fitted for that business. It is no better in a republic than the average homes. And, furthermore, the education of the child belongs to the parents. They may try to foist the responsibility upon some one else, but God holds them largely and primarily responsible both here and hereafter. To go back to the State as a great foster-mother is to revert to paganism and to make the human a machine.