Who teaches early… – Sunday June 21, 1959
Last week we recalled some sentences on self-control and some thoughts concerning those who leave home, for school, for employment, for other purposes, and cited this significant sentence: “Every man must sometime or other be trusted to himself.”1
Pursuing further this thought and theme, we would share some observations as to fathers and sons, as to parents and children, and as to the urgent need for the earliest possible teaching and training: “Would you have your son obedient to you when past a child”; asked John Locke, “be sure then to . . . imprint it in his infancy; … so shall you have him . . . obedient . . . whilst he is a child, and your affectionate friend when he is a man…. For the time must come, when [he] will be past the rod and correction; … and he that is a good, a virtuous, and able man, must be made so within. And therefore, what he is to receive from education, what is to sway and influence his life, must be something put into him betimes; habits woven into the very principles of his nature, . . . The little, or almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies, have very important and lasting consequences.”1
There is an old Greek proverb, often quoted, which says in substance: “He gives twice who gives quickly.” It could be paraphrased to say, “He teaches twice who teaches early”—not when it is convenient only, not at some too long delayed a time, but when they are young, when they are with us and not by what we tell them only, but by the living impressions we leave upon their lives—impressions they cannot and will not forget whether they are with us or away.
This closing sentence from John Locke, also suggests next week’s subject: “For you must take this for a certain truth, that let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures … daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.”1
1 John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education
June 21, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,557