Hazrat Inayat Khan

On the education of children depends the future of nations. To consider the education of children is to prepare for future generations. The heart of a child is like a photographic plate without any impressions on it, ready to reflect all that it is exposed to. All the good qualities, which help to fulfill the purpose of life, are the natural inheritance that every soul brings to earth. Almost all the bad traits that mankind shows in its nature are as a rule acquired after birth. This shows that goodness is natural and badness is unnatural. Therefore the child who has not yet had the opportunity of acquiring bad traits in life can, if helped, develop the natural goodness that is in its soul.

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Education is not necessarily a qualification for making one's life successful, nor for safeguarding one's own interests. It is really a qualification for a fuller life, a life of thought for oneself and of consideration for others. Education is that which gradually expands in its length and breadth, horizontally and perpendicularly. We may further explain this as being the knowledge of oneself and one's surroundings; the knowledge of others, both those who are known to us and those who are unknown and away; the knowledge of the conditions of human nature and of life's demands; and the knowledge of cause and effect, which leads in the end to the knowledge of the world within and without.

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No doubt it is difficult to think of vast knowledge of life in connection with a child, but we must remember that as a rule the grown-ups underestimate the capacity of a child's mind, which is very often more eager to understand and more capable of comprehension than that of a grown-up person. Although you cannot start with a deep subject at the beginning of a child's education, you can always keep before you the large design you have in view and wish to reach.

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The reason why the earliest remembrances of childhood have such a peculiarly vivid significance is that we repeat after coming to the earth the same process through which the soul has passed. As the child grows it loses its innocence, so that it seems removed from the world of the angels. Infancy is still expressive of the angelic sphere; childhood expresses the sphere of the jinns; youth is the expression of the human world. And when one goes on one comes closer again to higher spheres.

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The child is more open to perceive, as its mind is free from worries and the excitement of life. The child is more willing to believe, for its mind is free from any pre-conceived idea. The child can look at things rightly, because its mind is not yet fixed on strong likes and dislikes. The child has already an inclination towards friendship, for animosity is unknown to it; and therefore the moral which should be the central theme of education, and which from beginning to end teaches the lesson of friendship, has full scope in the heart of a child.

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The great fault of modern education has been that, with all its advanced methods of training children, it has missed what is most important; namely the lesson of unselfishness. Man thinks that an unselfish person is incapable of guarding his own interests in life; but however much it may appear so it is not so in reality. A selfish person is a disappointment to others, and in the end a disadvantage to himself. Mankind is interdependent, and the happiness of each depends upon the happiness of all, and it is this lesson that humanity has to learn today as the first and the last lesson.

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Music is the basis of the whole of creation. In reality, the whole of creation is music, and what we call music is simply a miniature of the original music, which is creation itself, expressed in tone and rhythm. The Hindus call tone, or sound, Nada Brahma, which means Sound-Creator. No scientist can deny the truth that the entire creation is movement. The nature of movement is expressed in tone and rhythm. There is no movement which is not also a sound, although it may not be audible to the human ear, and there is no movement without rhythm; for there cannot be a movement unless it marks two, just as no straight line can be without two ends. With every movement one counts its first activity as one and the next as two. As the conductor's baton marks time for the orchestra: one-two, one-two, so one can mark the movement of every activity.

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The whole of nature, in the change of seasons and of night and day, expresses rhythm; and the entire cosmic system shows in its working the law of rhythm. The ever-moving sea and the tides are examples of nature's rhythm. The entire universe being created on these two principles, the greatest appeal that can be made to a living creature is by means of tone and rhythm. The whole mechanism of man's body and the pulsation of his heart, all follow rhythm; this proves that every activity of like is an expression of tone and rhythm. Tone and rhythm constitute music; therefore music should be the principal means of perfecting the education of a child.

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The infant begins its first activity in life by making a noise, trying to speak or moving its hands and legs to show a certain rhythm. If the same faculty which every infant shows naturally is taken as the basis of his education, one can educate even an infant. The education given at the earliest age is invaluable to the child, for as the child grows, it acquires certain habits by itself; and once it has become fixed in its way of looking at things and thinking and behaving, these habits are hard to change. It is like letting the rainwater make its own way instead of digging a canal to take the water to the farm or garden. In this way a child's tendency to learn and to act can be used to the best advantage, if the parents only know how. The Indians say that the mother is the first Guru; this should be realized by all parents. Education begins at home, and it is this first education which is the foundation of all that a child may learn in the future.

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Health depends upon the music of one's life. When the mechanism of the body is regular in its rhythm and true in its tone, that is what is called health; and it is irregularity of rhythm and dissonance of tone which is called illness, and which physicians examine by counting the pulse, the beating of the heart, and by sounding the back and listening to the tone. They do these things in their capacity as physicians, not as musicians whose ears are trained to test the rhythm and tone.

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The seer, the deep thinker, the knower of human nature, acts also as a musician by finding in people's actions their tone and rhythm. He notices in an untimely action, caused by ignorance or impatience, the irregularity of the rhythm; and in a word or action that has a harder or softer effect than it should have he sees the false tone, the false note. He also feels consonant or dissonant chords. When two people meet the dissonant chord of their evolution keeps them distant from one another in thought, although they may be sitting near together; and often a third person comes who either harmonizes the dissonant chord or produces disharmony in the consonant chord.

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This shows that the whole of life is music. Wagner said, ' Who knows the sound knows all things.' If music could be the foundation of the training of children, every life would be built on a good foundation. Life is rhythm and life is tone; and so is music. When a child learns music it learns the divine language; whatever be its work later in life if the child has intuition it will express in some way or other what has been the foundation of its character. It is not necessary for every child to be trained as a musician, for many musicians are not an ideal example to humanity, although in the East there was a time when kings chose musicians to be their companions. It was not that they enjoyed only their music, but also what was expressed in their lives, in their feelings, thought, manner and action as an outcome of their constant contemplation of music. Also in the Western world the company of true musicians has always been an attraction.

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Man is the fruit of the whole of creation, the source of which is absolute beauty. The purpose of creation is beauty. Nature in all its various aspects develops towards beauty, and therefore it is plain that the purpose of life is to evolve towards beauty. In giving education to children the first consideration should be that the seeds of beauty are sewn in their hearts. When the plant grows it must be tenderly reared. The thriving of the plant is to the credit of the gardener; so the children's development is in the first instance to the credit of their parents.

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The parents must themselves learn to be examples for their children. No theory has influence without practice. It is natural that parents, however taken up in the wickedness or folly of life, should wish their children to be different and better than themselves. But it is difficult; the child is impressionable and it develops that impression which it first received. Once the child sees in its parents a tendency towards drink or any other form of degeneration, it takes for granted as it grows up that it must be the right or natural thing; for it says, 'If these things were not right my parents would not have done them.' In life the wrong thing attracts quickly, though the seeking of the soul is for what is right.

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Parents are often anxious to collect wealth or property for their children; but there cannot be a greater wealth nor a better property than the impression they have left behind on the hearts of their children. The love and kindness they have spread in their circle of life multiplies in time, like the interest in the bank, and comes to the help of their children when they grow up in the form of love, kindness, and goodness from all sides.

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The first education a child needs is to harmonize its thought, speech and action. All things external have their reaction in one's inner life, and the inner has its reaction on the exterior. Therefore some knowledge of tone and rhythm is essential in the beginning of a child's education. A child should be taught the elements of music with regard to the pitch in which it should get in touch with its friends, with strangers, with its parents, while playing or at the table; in every varying condition it should feel that the pitch is different. The child should be taught how to make its choice of words when speaking to different people, to strangers, to its friends, to its parents, to the servants of the house; making the voice softer or louder must be done with understanding.

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The child is most energetic when it is growing, and every action, sitting, standing, walking, or running, every movement it makes should be corrected and directed towards harmony and beauty. For the nature of life is intoxicating, and every action deepens the intoxication of life in a child, who is still ignorant of the outcome of every action; it knows little of the consequences and is only interested in the action. By nature a child is more enthusiastic and excitable than a grown-up person, and if its actions are not corrected or controlled it will mostly speak and act without consideration of harmony and beauty; for the nature of the child is like water which runs downwards and it needs a fountain to raise it upwards. Education is that fountain.

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A child should be taught to speak and act according to the conditions prevailing at the moment: laughter at the time of laughter, seriousness at the moment when seriousness is required of it. In everything it does it must consider the conditions; it must watch for the opportunity to say and do the things it wishes. For instance if a child makes a noise when the parents are at work or when friends are visiting them, if a child brings its complaints to its parents when it ought to be silent, if it cries or laughs at the wrong moment, it commits a fault against the law of rhythm. Rhythm is the consideration of time and condition, and this is most necessary. It is a great pity that at this present time, when the cry for freedom seems to be so dominant, people often think, 'Why should not the children have their freedom?' But it must be understood that it is not the path of freedom which leads to the goal of freedom. Liberty is not an ideal to begin life with, it is a stage of perfect freedom which must be kept in view in order to arrive at the desired end. Narrow is the way and straight is the gate, says the Bible of the road leading to the goal of freedom.

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Next, a child must be taught to understand the beauty of word and action; which action is agreeable to itself and to others, and which is disagreeable; what word is pleasing and what word is displeasing. This is the true sight-reading and ear-training a child needs. It should be taught to sense its words and the words of others; whether they are graceful or devoid of grace. It must be able to recognize what action is beautiful, which manner is graceful; it must know and feel when its movements or manners are not up to the mark. In short it should be educated to be its own judge and to dislike what is ungraceful in itself; yet it should tolerate the lack of beautiful manner in others by realizing that it is itself subject to errors, and that annoyance on its part would in itself be bad manners.

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If the child does not show interest in beauty it is only because something is closed in it. In every soul, however wicked it might seem, however stupid it might seem, beauty is hidden; and it is trust and confidence that will help us to draw out this beauty. However, the difficulty for everyone is to have patience. The lack of beauty in some people strikes us so hard that we loose patience because of it. In doing so we encourage them to become still worse; but if we could have the patience to endure and trust them, we could dig that beauty out; and some day we will, by the Fatherhood of God.

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By trusting in the goodness of every person we will develop that beauty in ourselves. We do not however, develop that beauty by thinking, 'I have it, but the other one has not!' but by forgetting ourselves and realizing that another person has got beauty in him although we do not always see it. And it is a weakness to turn our back upon anyone, child or grown-up, who seems to be lacking in the beauty that we expect. By opening ourselves to beauty we shall find it coming to life.

Consideration is the greatest of all virtues, for in consideration all virtues are born. Veneration for God, courtesy towards others, respect for those who deserve it, kindness to those who are weak and feeble, sympathy with those who need it, all these come from consideration.

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All complaints that are made by friend about friend, or in the relations between husband and wife, master and servant, or between partners in business, show want of consideration. Everything a man does which is called wrong, evil or sin, is nothing but inconsiderateness. Consideration is a faculty which it is most necessary to develop in the child from the beginning; for once it has become inconsiderate, it is difficult to give it the sense of consideration. Consideration cannot be taught; it must come by itself; but the duty of the parents is to help it to rise in the child. They can very well accomplish this in a pleasant manner, without becoming a bore to the innocent mind of the child, by showing it where consideration is needed in different situations of life.

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It is easy to accuse a child of inconsiderateness, but that does not always profit it. On the contrary, the child will often become annoyed at such accusations and hardened in its faults, defending its actions against the accusations of others, which is a natural human tendency. The way of the wise is to show appreciation whenever that child shows consideration, and to make it conscious of that virtue, so that it may be able to enjoy its beauty. This develops in the child a taste for virtue; it feels happy to act rightly, instead of always being forced to do so. It is on strength of mind that the entire life of the child depends, and strength of mind can be developed in the child by making it self-confident all it thinks, says, or does; it must get to know something instead of being forced to believe it. Faith, which is taught as the most important lesson in may religions, does not necessarily mean faith in what another person says, thinks, or does, but in what one says, thinks, or does oneself. True faith is self-confidence. Every effort should be made to help the child have confidence in itself. This can be done by removing from its nature confusion, indecision, and doubt, for these are the cause of all failure in life. Self-confidence and single-mindedness are the key to all success. The child should be encouraged to think or act not only because it is taught to do so, but because it knows already that it is right to think, speak, or act in a certain way; otherwise it will lonely be a machine which works without knowledge of the purpose or result of the work. The whole tragedy of life is that so many minds work mechanically like machines; only rarely some few act with knowledge, certainty and self-confidence.

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The child's mind is naturally more active than a grown-up person's, for two reasons. Firstly, the child's mind is growing with great energy, which makes it active during its growth. Furthermore, energy is active in its rise and loses power in its descent; it is for this reason that the child is restless in its thought and action. One child in the room can make one feel there are a hundred children. The child is never still it delights in occupying its mental and physical energy in some way or other all the time.

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It must be remembered that no time in man's life is so productive of action, both mental and physical, as childhood; but usually it happens that his most important period of the life man is wasted in play which mostly brings no result. If this activity of mind and body which is exerted in play were used in educating the child without in the least straining its mind or body, it would be of great value in its life. But what we generally find in the world is quite the contrary. People say that early childhood is the time for a child to play. No doubt this is true; but it must be remembered that in every action, work or play, one spends a certain amount of energy; the difference is that work is what one is obliged to do and play what one does for one's pleasure.

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But it is altogether a wrong principle, for children as well as for grown-ups, to divide work and play thus. Play should be useful and should be work at the same time; and work should be made like play, in order that it may not be a tedious task but a pleasure in life. If this idea were worked out well it would solve a great many labor problems which disturb the peace and order of humanity so much today.

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It can be best done by teaching children to play and work at the same time, so that when they are grown-up work and play will continue to be the same. All that one does with pleasure is done well and produces a good effect. Doing depends on the attitude of the mind. When the mind is not in a good state, whatever be the work, however interesting, it will not be well done. To bring about peace and order in the world it is necessary that all work should be made pleasant, and that all pleasure should be turned into work, so that in taking pleasure no work is lost and there is pleasure in working. The central theme in the education of children should be the occupying of every moment of their life in doing quite willfully something which is pleasurable and at the same time useful. Life is a great opportunity, and no moment of life should be lost.

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The great fault of the modern system of education is that it only qualifies a man to obtain what he desires in life; and he tries to obtain this my every means, right or wrong, often with no regard for what losses or pain he causes others. The consequence of this is that life has become full of competition in trade, in the professions, and in the State. In order that one may gain another must surely lose. In this way the shadow changes its position from morning to evening; in the end the shadow must prove to be only a shadow, and one realizes it matters little which direction the shadow takes.

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A child should begin to learn rivalry in goodness and competition in charity. Life is the outcome of reciprocity and reciprocity can be created by changing the attitude from selfish to an unselfish one. The only hope of creating in the future a better spirit in the world, is to teach the ideal of unselfishness to the children, making this the spirit of the coming world.

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The education of children should be considered from five different points of view: physical, mental, moral, social, and spiritual. If one side is developed and not the other sides, naturally the child will show some lack in its education.

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There ought to be a standard of education for everyone in the country, rich or poor. It is the principal thing necessary for the order and peace of the community and the nation. No one, however poor his circumstances, should be deprived of education in his childhood, which is the only opportunity in life for a soul to acquire knowledge. It should be considered that every child is the child of the community. The idea that only the rich can afford to educate their children will not prove satisfactory in this epoch, for it shows the selfishness and negligence of one part of the community towards another part. The neglected part must sooner or later rebel against it, as soon as they realize that they have been kept back by those with means, so that they cannot receive education and be prosperous in their lives. It is this revolt which has brought about a feeling of bitterness and indignation in the people; and this feeling will increase, to the great disadvantage of society, if not sufficient attention is given to public education.

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The State is certainly responsible for the education of the people. It should be arranged that one and the same education be given to the rich and poor alike in a course which consists of the five above-mentioned aspects of knowledge. Once that a course is finished, then the children may take up any profession they like. If they want further education they may receive it from their private means if they can afford it, but the necessary education must be given to every child of the community. The course of education can certainly be compressed and made into a course of general education; the child should not only be taught to read and write but to have an all-round idea of life and how it can best be lived.

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Physical education can be given, even from infancy, with the help of music. An infant should be made to move his hands and feet up and down, and as it grows it should be taught to do it rhythmically. When a child grows up, when it can dance and play different games, gymnastics should be taught, in such a way that the child may benefit by them but that they do not become a tedious work but a recreation.

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Regularity is desirable in the building up of the personality of a child. It is habit which forms nature, but nature has no habit. It is always beneficial for a child to eat when hungry, rest when tired. In this way the child makes its own nature instead of becoming subject to habits. Pure and nourishing food is necessary for a child while it grows. It needs all kinds of food to nourish its growth; also a child must have good long hours of sleep according to the needs of each child. At the same time a certain part of the day must be kept for the child to rest, and it must be done in such a manner that the child, whose natural tendency is to be active, may gladly take this rest. This can be done by telling it a story or giving it some work of art to look at, or by letting the child hear some music.

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It is a popular belief that the childhood diseases most children go through are more or less inevitable. This is not so; they are caused by the artificiality of life.

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A great deal of excitement, crying or laughing naturally upsets the rhythm of a child's body and mind. It is always wise to give the child, for its equilibrium, scope for action and reaction in everything it does. If a child is afraid of something, the best way to help it is to make it acquainted with the thing it is afraid of.

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It is not advisable that the child should be taught always in the house, nor always at school. The study should be divided, partly indoors and partly outdoors. The teaching given to a child indoors should be different than the study given out of doors. The outdoor study should concern all that the child sees; one can then include the practice or the experience of what it has learned indoors. In short, a child's health must be considered as part of its education; study and health go together.

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Together with physical culture, mental training is very necessary for a child. There are two things which ought to be remembered: one is to develop the mental power of the child, the other to give fineness to a child's mentality. Very often the development in a certain direction hinders the progress in some other direction. In the first place, to make its mentality strong, the child should be taught to concentrate its mind through study and play. It should be given some enterprise which takes most of its attention in one direction, making the child single-minded.

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The child must be kept from excitement or passion of any kind, for it is tranquility of mind which gives a child strength, balance, self-control, self-confidence, and determination. It also strengthens the child's mentality, and it is certainly on the strength of mentality that success in life chiefly depends. But strong mentality does not suffice for every purpose of life; besides strength, fineness is necessary. In order to develop this fineness in a child, every help must be given to sharpen its wits. Wit needs and opportunity to develop and that opportunity can be given by training a child to grasp things. A certain amount of encouragement can also be given to stimulate the wits. A child must be helped to perceive keenly what time is suitable for a certain action, what it can say or do at one time and what it should not say and do at another time. Great care should be taken in teaching good manners to a child, so that in time it may become natural to show in its manner the beauty hidden in its soul. Fine mentality can be seen in keen perception, in love of subtlety, and in the gracefulness and refinement of manner which complete mental culture.

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Moral education depends upon three things: the right direction of love, a keen sense of harmony, and the proper understanding of beauty. The child should be taught to make the right use of its emotional and sentimental faculties; and the right use is to show its charity of heart in generous actions, and first to its immediate surroundings. The child must learn that love means sacrifice; also it must know that love is best expressed I service of any kind; that emotion is best used in kind action, and sentiment in creating harmony. A child must understand that love should be shown by being considerate, and its sentiment must teach it respect and consideration for others.

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A child is a growing plant and it needs not only bodily nourishment, but also the nourishment of the heart; and that is best taught by loving the child and by reciprocating its love. And yet it must be taught balance, to keep its emotion within certain bounds and limitations. A child must be taught the use of love through the expression of sweetness in its thought, speech, and action. A wrongly given love spoils the child by making it rude, vain, and indifferent. One must not show all one's love to one's children, especially not in any emotional form. One must have a certain amount of reserve in one's own self, for the child to take example by and follow. An excessive amount of reserve may imply want of love, which is fruitless at times; a balance of love and reserve in dealing with a child is the right thing.

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It is very important to cultivate the spirit of generosity in the child's heart. Generosity does not necessarily mean extravagance or lack of consideration for things one possesses. The real spirit of generosity is best expressed in charity of the heart. Obeying, respecting, serving, learning, responding, all this comes from charity of the heart, and it grows by developing generosity of nature.

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One must protect the child against the inclination to be led astray by others, for a generous child is often subject to misleading influences. Also it must be kept from being generous with other people's things, even with the possessions of its own parents. Generosity on the part of a child is only the opening of the heart. When the heart of a child is closed, the child is deprived of expression; and when once it has started in this way its entire life develops on the same lines. It is the generosity of the heart which is the mystery of genius, for to give expression to art o science, poetry or music, the heart must be opened first; and this can only be accomplished by generosity of the heart. Tolerance, forgiveness, endurance, fortitude, are all the outcome of this virtue.

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A friendly spirit is the natural spirit of the soul. Nothing in the child should be encouraged which forms and obstacle to its friendly tendency; but it is the responsibility of the parents to watch with whom the child wants to be friends, and to keep the child always in the company of desirable children. The guardian must not make the child feel that it is deprived of the choice of its friends, but it should be guided in order to keep it among desirable friends.

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The freedom of the child must always be considered; it should never be forced but only guided gently. One should produce in a child the desire to choose as its friends those whom it feels to be congenial. As soon as the liberty of a child is interfered with, the child begins to feel captive and the lantern of its conscience becomes dim. Therefore the duty of the parents is to guide the child constantly, yet freeing it gradually to make a choice in everything in life. Parents who do not understand this and do not attach sufficient importance to it, very often cause the child to go astray while trying to guide it.

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A child should learn to recognize its relation and duty to all those around it. Once should let it know what is expected of it by its father, mother, brothers, sisters; for the recognition of relationship is the sign of human character which is not seen among animals. A son who has not been a good son to his mother will not be a good husband to his wife, for he has missed his first chance of developing thoughtfulness and the love quality. But as the child grows it must be led to have some idea of the further relationship between human beings. For the world is a family, and the right attitude of a young soul must be to see in every man his brother and in every woman his sister; he must look on aged people as he would on his father or mother.

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The betterment of the world mostly depends upon the development of the coming generation. The ideal of human brotherhood should be taught at home; this does not mean that the child must recognize human brotherhood before recognizing the relationship at with his own brothers and sisters; but the relationship at home must be the first lesson in human brotherhood which the child may reach by realizing the brotherhood of the nation, of the race, of the world. It is a fault when a person does not progress in the path of brotherhood. The child should be taught to picture first its own town as a family, then its nation as a family, and then the entire continent as a family, in order to arrive at the idea that the whole world is a family.

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A child should know the moral of give and take; it must know that it should give to others what it wishes to receive from them. The great fault of humanity today is that everyone seeks to get the better of others, by which one is often caught in one's own net. Fair dealing in business and in a profession and the honoring of one's word are most necessary today. It is the spirit of brotherhood which will solve the problems of business and professions, as of education and politics, which are so difficult to solve at present owing to the absence of brotherly feeling.

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The education of the younger generation needs the spiritual ideal more than anything else. Since the world has become so materialistic man has almost lost sight of the main object of life, which is the spiritual ideal. Spiritual ideal does not mean that children should necessarily be attached to any particular faith, or that any particular Church should be forced upon them. What is needed is simply to give some ideal to the child to look forward to, some high ideal, yet one which the child's mind can conceive. The divine ideal has been given to mankind for spiritual attainment in all periods of the world's history, and humanity will never outgrow that ideal.

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Whatever be the stage of human progress, the divine ideal will be the only ideal which will help both old and young to steer their way through the sea of life. It is the loss of divine ideal which causes the breakdown in the life of individuals and of humanity in general; the cause of paralysis in modern progress is no other than the loss of the divine ideal. Man, revolting against existing religion or religious authority, has naturally forgotten the divine ideal, which is really the one yearning of his soul. A time has come when man has neither his ancestor's religion nor a religion of his own.

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A child must learn that there is some ideal; that towards that ideal the whole world of humanity is unconsciously or consciously progressing. The child must know that it is responsible for all it does, not only to its fellow men, but to someone who watches it constantly and from whom nothing can be hidden. That however much justice may seem to be suffering in the world, there is somewhere the balance of justice which in time must balance things; and that death is only a bridge by which the soul passes from one sphere to another. The child which respects age, which is considerate for the elderly in its surroundings, and which imagines them to be an ideal that is to be followed, shows it has religion in itself.

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Spiritual ideal is the natural inclination of every soul. It needs no great effort to guide a child towards spirituality; it is more difficult to keep a child from it, which many parents do today who are anxious about their child being drawn towards spiritual ideals. No doubt, too much religion is not good for a child; it makes the child fixed in its ideas, and takes away the liquidity that every soul naturally possesses. Giving the child ideas of spirits or ghosts or of heaven and hell is not desirable. The child's imagination should be kept within the range of its reasoning, and yet reason must not be made an obstacle in the way of the child's imagination. For very often, the child's imagination goes further than that of its parents, and it would be cruel to hinder it by limiting the child to one's own religious and material ideas. The principal thing in spirituality is genuineness of life; in other word: sincerity. The child must be taught to say what it means. If it is by nature artistic in its expression, which is often seen in exceptionally intelligent children, then the child must be kept close to reality, in order that it may not be led astray by the art of its intelligent expression.

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Before the child goes to bed, it should be taught, in some form or other, to think gratefully of the One from whom all goodness comes and to whom all is known. The child may also be taught to wish good to all in the name of the One who has created all. What a child should wish for its parents or for others is good health, long life, right guidance from above, prosperity, success, happiness, and love.

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