1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

and "felt needs" has been the sloWing down
of the child's intellectual development and
the speeding up of his social growth by
means of dancing lessons, social adjustment,
and so forth.
The remedy, of course, is to teach youth
the way he should be
taught, by returning
to the basic essentials
and enforcing discipline
and requiring
obedience. It is indeed
of interest that in
times past such text-
COMING IN THE NEXT ISSUE
• Christian Worship-Emotional Dr
Rational and Scriptural?
• The Art at Cooking.
• Friendly Bermuda.
• Is Gambling Right for Christians?
books as McGuffey's readers featured Bible
history and Bible principles.
The Parent8' Responsibility
Before parents become too indignant at
the folly and at the waste of youthful time
and energies and the parents' money­
"progressive education" costs far more
than traditional education-it would be
well for parents themselves to do a little
soul searching.
Could countless thousands of pupils be
many classes behind in their reading skill
if their parents really cared? Does it not
concern you when your son in the tenth
grade has only a fourth-grade reading
ability? Are you not concerned with what
he is learning, how he is being taught and
what progress he is making? True, modern
report cards do not help you much, but
they are no excuse for parental indifference.
And there is widespread parental
indifference.
A survey in England in 1961 revealed
that "people's views of education, even
where it touches them closely, are based to
a disturbing extent upon lack of interest
rather than knowledge." And says a late
1963 report, published in the New York
Times? September 1, 1963, regarding -a
United States study: "Parents' interest in
the activities of their children appears to
diminish after their
first child. It is frequently
the second
child, the study
found, who watches·
television eleven or
more hours a week,
dislikes reading for
pleasure, is 'passive' in musical interests
and-as a result of all this-receives average
or below average grades in school."
The same report went on to show that
where parents were very strict their children
got above average grades.
'We used to go to school to learn arithmetic
and our parents took us to the zoo,
but now teachers take the children to the
zoo and parents teach them arithmetic,' is
the way one wit put it. But how unfortunate
is the child who is not taught arithmetic
by either parent or the schoolteacher,
nor reading and writing either! True,
parents cannot assume the responsibility
of teaching their children all school subjects,
but they can see to it that they become
skilled in the most basic one of all,
reading, for upon it all other education depends.
More than that, by instilling habits
of lndustry, conscientiousness, a thirst for
knowledge and a respect for authority,
parents can largely counteract the deleterious
effects of modern "progressive education."
SUFFICIENTLY EQUIPPED
It is well known that an octopus has eight arms, but did you know
that an octopus has 2,OOO-odd suckers on those arms? The suction
cups on the tentacles help the octopus trap small creatures.
FEBRUARY lee, 1964 11