The Kansas herald of freedom., 1859-11-12
Tn. Education of III. Heart.

( We commend the subjoined judicious
remarks from the London Quarterly Re.
rieuv, to the discriminating attention and
regard as well of parents as of teachers.
They contain an important principle in
reference to the education of the young,
and one which cannot be too carefully
needed - rra ~ Eftrr
"It is the vice Of the age to substitute
learning for wisdom-to educate the head
and to forget that there is more impor-
tant education necessary for the heart.
The reason is. cultivated at an age when
nature does not furnish the elements nec-
essary to successful cultivation Of it
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 BY
things which impress the senses and move
the heart, and father shall instil more
solid and available instruction in an hour
spent in the fields, where wisdom and
goodness are exemplifed, seen and felt,
than in month spent in the study,
where they are expounded in stereotype
aphorisms.
"No physician doubts that precocious
children, in fifty cases for one, are much
worse for the discipline they have under
gone. The mind seems to have been
strained, and the foundations for insanity
are laid. When the studies of maturer
years are stuffed into the head Of 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 confirmed
and can bear exertion-the other is grow
ing, and requires repose; that to force
the attention to abstract facts-to load the
memory with chronological and historical
or scientific detail-in short, to expect a
child's brain to bear with impunity the
exertion of a mans, is just as rational as it
would be to hazard the same sort of ex-
pertinent on its muscles.
"The first eight or ten years OF life
should be devoted to the education Of the
heart-to the formation of principles rath-
er than to the requirement of what is
usually termed knowledge. Nature her.
self points out such a course for the
emotions are then the liveliest, and most
easily moulded, being as yet unalloyed
by passion. It 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, un-
der all circumstances, determined much
moro by feeling than reflection in truth,
life presents an iDfnity 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 profound
ly. '
"Up to the seventh year of life very
great changes are going on in the struc-
ture of the brain, and demand, therefore,
the utmost attention not to interrupt them
by improper or over-excitement. just
that degree Of exercise should be given
to the brain at this period as is necessary
to its health; and the best is oral instruc-
ton, exemplifed by objects which strike
the senses.
at is perhaps unnecessary to add that
at this period of life, special attention
should be given, both by parents and
teachers, to the physical development of
the child. Pure air and free exercise are
indispensable, and wherever either Of
: these are withheld, the consequences will
be certain to extend themselves over the
whole future life. The seeds of protract-
ed and hopeless sufferings have in innu-
merahle instances, been sown into the con-
: stitution of the child simply through ig-
norance of this great fundamental physi-
cal law; and the time has come when
the united voices of these innocent vic
tins should ascend, trumpet tongued,
to the ears Of every parent and every
teacher in the land Give us free all
and wholesome exercise leave to devel-
ope our expanding energies in accordance
with the laws of our being and full scope
for the elastic and bounding impulses oi
our young Blood"