It is the business of the school to educate, and therefore the children are sent to the nearest school. The experiences of the ordinary school day offer to the children much diversion some of it healthful, much of it undesirable. If parents kept in close touch with the school life, the unwholesome features might be entirely eliminated. And yet you send your child into that environment five days out of every week, for a period of about six hours each day. You are responsible to God that this child, whose training you have undertaken, should have only that environment and those associates best fitted to bring him into his divine inheritance.
Children learn much in the schoolroom besides the prescribed textbook lessons.
Indeed, the most indelible impressions are those that come from the mental atmosphere in which the children live and observe day after day. On page 235 of Science and Health, we find in no uncertain words our Leader's estimate of the qualifications necessary for teachers of the young. The chief difficulty to be encountered lies in the general ignorance or misconception of what constitutes true education. In a broad sense, education is a leading of the human thought out of ignorance into demonstrable knowledge. To train a child to think intelligently, to reason logically, and to clothe his thought properly demands the services of one who himself has learned what mental culture means.