The instinct to learn is as natural to a normal child as the desire for food. True knowledge is as essential to his proper development as pure food. Significant enough is the fact that many laws are made to insure the physical welfare of children, while little or no precaution is taken to prevent the impregnation of thought with seeds of impurity that eventually beget misery and discord. Apparently the sole restriction placed upon teaching is that it shall not contribute directly to crime. Slowly the world is waking to the fact that motives are of more importance than modes, and that correct and consistent thinking will ultimately establish harmonious and uniform living conditions.
The obvious variance of general educational methods with the teachings of Christian Science is a matter of great concern to parents who desire for their children a knowledge of Truth alone. Founded exclusively on materialistic hypotheses the curricula of schools and colleges repudiate by inference the necessity for moral or spiritual training. Inspirational culture is left to the caprice of emotion or to the chance of conspicuous example. Theological and secular educators admit with almost universal unanimity that a knowledge of God, however He may be defined, is requisite to a complete educational attainment; and yet they often do not understand what training is necessary to achieve that result. Educators desire to be progressive, and no doubt strive to be so, yet they sometimes resentfully resist any critical interference from outside their own ranks. While admitting the deficiencies of their systems, they seem to find it difficult to make any radical advance toward more ethical and scientific methods. Modern instructors appear to consider the juvenile consciousness a virgin waste, and approach this barren soil of untrained innocence with various kinds and degrees of mental equipment. They determinedly strive to implant therein the seeds of knowledge which, they have been led to believe, will transform the desert into a garden of happy usefulness. The next step is to set up some system of emotional experience that the fields of thought may be drained or irrigated, as the individual case may require.
It is absurd to consider such methods the sole aim and end of true education. Children can safely be taught the Principle of real being and ways of right thinking from their very first lessons. Definite and practical instruction should be given in the power and possibility of inspiration as contrasted with so-called facts of human knowledge, together with the practicability of the laws of human association found in the Sermon on the Mount. With a vision transcending the apparent hopelessness of the task, Jesus the Christ announced an idealistic system of reasoning, which if followed will transform every condition of limited human activity. His mission was to restore primitive truth and establish a rule for perpetual harmony. False teaching had corrupted the most holy and beautiful religion on earth, and his efforts for reform naturally incurred the enmity and opposition of the teachers. His most significant utterance concerning the learning of his day was a warning to his disciples: "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." His accusation was that they assumed a vast knowledge of worldly affairs, and feigned to understand the secrets of a great religion, while ignoring the essentials that must underlie all true knowledge —compassion, sympathy, and brotherliness.
