Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1861-05-24
Educa,i ion Of the Heart.

| We command the subjoined judiccus remarks
from the London Quarterly Review, to the dis
eliminating attention and regard as we'll oil
parents az of teachers. They contain an impor'
tant principle In reference to the education of
the young, and one which cannot be too careful.
ly needed: "
1T is the vice of the age to substitute learn
ing for Wisdom-tO educate the head, and for
get that there is O more important education
necessary for the heart. The reason is culti-
vated at an age when nature does not furnish
the elements necessary to successful culti-
walton of IL; and the child is solicited to re-
Election 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 instill more solid and availa'
BILE instruction in an hour spent in the fields
where wisdom and goodness are exempiihed
seen and felt, than in month spent In study
where they are eIpounded in stereotype aphor'
isms.
"No physician doubts that precooious children.
in fifty cases for one, are much worse for the
discipline they have undergone. The mind
seems to have been strained, and the founda'
tions for insanity are laid. When the studies
of maturer years are stuffed into child's head,
people do not reflect on the anatomical fact that
the brain Of an infant 10 not the brain OF man
that the one is confirmed and can bear exertion
the other is growing up, and requires repose;
that TO force the attention to abstract facts-to
load the memory with chronological and his
torical or scientific detail-in short, to expect q
chid's brain to bear the exertion Of mans, Is
lust as rational as Il would be TO hazard the same
sort of experiment on its muscles.
"The frat eight or ten years of life should be
devoted to the education of the heart-to the
formation Of principle rather than to the ac
ourement Of what Ia usually termed knowl'
edge. Nature herself points out such course:
for the emotions are the liveliest, and most
easily moulded, being as yet unalloyed by pas.
sion. II is from this source that the mass OF
men are hereafter to draw their sum OF happi-
ness or misery; the actions of the immense ma.
iority are, under all circumstances, determined
much more by feeling than reflection; In truth,
life presents on infnity of occasions where 1t Ia
essential to happiness that we should feel right
"; very few where it Is at all necessary that we
should think profoundly.
"Up to the seventh year Of life, very great
changes are going on in the structure OF the
brain of the child. and demand, therefore, the
utmost attention not TO interrupt them by i'm,
proper or over-excitement. Just that degree oil
exercise should be given to the brain at this pc
riod as is necessary to it's health, and the best
is oral instruction, exempli6ed by objects which
strike the senses.
"Itis perhaps unnecessary to add that, at this
period OF life, special attention should be giver
both by parents and teachers to the physical de-
velopment of the child. Pure air and free ex-
ercise are indispensable, and wherever either OF
these are withheld, the consequences will be
certain to extend themselves over the whole fu.
ture life. The seeds Of protracted and hopeless
suffering, in innumerable instances, have been
sown into the constitution of the child, simply
through ignorance Of this great fundamental
physical Law; and the time has come when the
united voice of these innocent victims should
ascend, 'trumpet-tongued,' to the ears Of every
parent and very,tescher in the land; "Give VI
| free air and wholesome exerose-leave US to
develop our expanding energies in accordance
with the law Of our being-and give US full
scope for the elastic and bounding impulses o.
our young blood" a,al',