Southport telegraph. [volume] (Southport, W.T. [i.e. Kenosha, Wis.]) 1840-1850, 1847-09-29
THE EDUCATION OF THE HEART.

1--WE commend the subjoined iudicious re
marks, said to be from the LondonQuarterly Review
10 the discriminating attention and regard as wei
Of parents as of teachers. They contain an mpor
tant principle in reference to the education of the
young, and one which cannot be too carefully heed
ed =
It is the vice of the age to substitute learning
for Wisdom-to educate the head and to forget that
there is more important education necessary for
the heart. The reason Is cultivated at an age when
Nature does not furnish the elements necessary to a
success lul cultivation oit; and the child is solicited
to reflection when he is only capable of sensation
and emotion. In infancy the attention and the
memory are only excited strongly bv things which
impress the senses and move the heart, and father
will inst more solid and available u> truction in an
hour spent in the fields, where wisdom and goodness
are cXempliied, seen, and felt than in a month
spent in the study, where they are expounded in
stereotyped aphorsms
No physician doubts that prccocious children.
;sp-G!f tor much tho worse for the
To have been strained and the foundations for nsan-
itv are laid. When the studies OF maturer years
are stuffed into the head OF a child people do not
reflect on the anatomical fact that the brain OF an
infant is not the brain OF man. that the one Is con
irned and can bear eXertion-the other is growing,
abstract facts TO load the memory with chronology
cal and historical or scientific detail-in short, to
EXPECT childs brain TO bear with IMMUNITY the
exertion of a mans is Just as rational as II would
be to hazard the same sort Of experiment on It's
muscles
The first eight or ten years Of life should be de-
voted to the education OF the hear-to the formation
of principles rather than to the requirement OF what
is usually termed knowledge Nature herself points
ont such It course; for the emotions are then the
liycIicst and the most easily moulded being as yet
unalloyed by passion 1t is from this source that
the mass of men are hereafter to draw their sum OF
happiness or misery; the actions of the immense
majority are, under all circumstances, determined
much more by feeling than reflections in truth, Life
presents an iuhnty of occasions where it is essential
to happiness that we should feel rightly; very few
where it is at all necessary that we should think
profoundly.
up 10 the seventh year oflile very great changes
are going on in the structure Of the BRAIN and de-
maud therefore, the utmost attention not to inter
rupt them by improper or over excitement just
that degree OF exercise should be given TO the BRAIN
at this period as is necessary Tor It's health and the
best is oral instruction. eXemplihed by objects that
strike the senses.
Tits perhaps necessary to add that at this pcriot
of lie special attention should be given, both by
parents and teachers, to the physical deyclopmcn
OF the ctild-puFe air and free exercise are indis
pensabe, and wherever either of them is withheld
the consequences will be certain to extend them
selves over the whole future life. The seeds o
protracted and hopeless suffering have, IN immune
rabe instances, been sown in the constitution OF The
child simply through ignorance Of this great iunda
/ mental physca law and the time has come whei
/ tie united voices of these innocent victims shout,
ascend tumI ct tongued, to the cars ofeveTy teach
er in the land GIVE Us tree air and Wholesome eX
ercse; leave to deyejope our expanding energies
accordance with the laws OF our beng and iul
scope ior the elastic and bounding impulses Of ou
young blood!