“…Off to School” – Sunday, September 2, 1951
As we send our children off to school to spend a large and important part of their time there, perhaps many, if not most parents are sighing something of a sigh of relief.
We are busy people, we parents, and with the persistent pressure of life upon us some of us may hopefully suppose that when we send the children to school our responsibility for their character and conduct and activities and attitude somewhat ceases.
Another thing that parents may sometimes hopefully suppose is that teaching children some of the vital and essential things can safely be postponed until they are more mature—or until it is more convenient: that it is quite all right to let them grow up in their own way—that wrong tendencies may more easily be corrected when they are older—that, after all, they are only children, and there is no use worrying about important principles too early in life. This is dangerously far from the fact.
This business of being a parent cannot well or safely be shunted or shifted to other shoulders. Parenthood is a long-continuing career of sacrifice and service, of patience, and of painstaking love, and of sound teaching both by our words and our ways. Habits and attitudes and qualities of character show up frighteningly soon and are not readily eradicated. And the man we want must be made in the boy, and the woman we want must begin in the girl and it requires more than food and clothing and shelter and scholastic instruction to instill in them the essential qualities of character.
Helpful and indispensable as they are, and grateful as we are for them, schools were not intended to take the place of parents, and teachers cannot reasonably be expected to do what parents have failed to do. There are many essential things that must come from sound, sincere homes. And there is no real way through any impersonal agency or institution that we as parents can impersonalize the personal responsibility which the Lord God has given us.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, September 2, 1951, 11:00 to 11.30 a.m., Eastern Time. Copyright, 1951
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September 2, 1951
Broadcast Number 1,150