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UPBRINGING
The future of every individual
is closely related to the impressions and influences experienced
during childhood and youth. If children and young people are
brought up in a climate where their enthusiasm is stimulated
with higher feelings, they will have vigorous minds and display
good morals and virtues.
Little attention and importance is given to teaching cultural
values, although they are essential to education. When we
give them their deserved importance, we shall have reached
a major objective.
Improving a community is possible only by elevating the young
generations to the rank of humanity, not by obliterating the
bad ones. Unless a seed composed of religion, tradition, and
historical consciousness is germinated throughout the country,
new evil elements will appear and grow in the place of each
eradicated bad one.
Children’s literature, whether prose or verse, must impart
resolution to the spirit, soundness to the mind, and strength
to hopes so that we may raise generations with strong wills
and sound ideas.
Educators who have not been apprenticed to a master and have
not received a sound education are like blind people trying
to light the way of others with lanterns. A child’s mischief
and impudence arises from the atmosphere in which he or she
has been raised. A dysfunctional family life increasingly
is reflected upon the spirit of the child, and therefore upon
the society.
In schools, good manners should be considered just as important
as other subjects. If they are not, how can children grow
up with sound characters? Education is different from teaching.
Most people can be teachers, but the number of educators is
severely limited.
Good manners are a virtue and are greatly appreciated in whomever
they are found. Those with good manners are liked, even if
they are uneducated. Communities devoid of culture and education
are like rude individuals, for one cannot find in them any
loyalty in friendship or consistency in enmity. Those who
trust such people are always disappointed, and those who depend
upon them are left, sooner or later, without support.
Although it is fundamental that girls be brought up to be
delicate like flowers and mild and affectionate educators
of children, due attention must be given to making them inflexible
defenders of truth. Otherwise, we shall have transformed them
into poor, impotent beings for the sake of delicacy and mildness.
We must not forget that female lions are still lions.
Our humanity is directly proportional to the purity of our
emotions. Although those who are full of bad feelings and
whose souls are influenced by egoism look like human beings,
whether they really are human is doubtful. Almost everyone
can train their bodies, but few people can educate their minds
and feelings. The former training produces strong bodies,
while the latter produces spiritual people.
The first school for children, whose souls are as bright as
mirrors and as quick to record as cameras, are their homes.
Their first educators are their mothers. Thus it is fundamental
for a nation’s existence and stability that mothers be brought
up and educated to be good educators for their children.
 
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