Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students

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Missionary Agencies

I speak to fathers and mothers: You can be educators in your homes; you can be spiritual missionary agencies. Let fathers and mothers feel their need of being home missionaries, the need of keeping the atmosphere of the home free from the influence of unkind and hasty speech, the need of making the home a place where angels of God can come in and bless and give success to the efforts put forth. CT 160.2

Let parents unite in providing a place for the daily instruction of their children, choosing as teacher one who is apt to teach, and who, as a consecrated servant of Christ, will increase in knowledge while imparting instruction. The teacher who has consecrated herself to the service of God will be able to do a definite work in missionary service and will instruct the children in the same lines. CT 160.3

Let fathers and mothers co-operate with the teacher, laboring earnestly for the salvation of their children. If parents will realize the importance of these small educating centers, co-operating to do the work that the Lord desires to have done at this time, the plans of the enemy for our children will be largely frustrated. CT 161.1

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“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6. Children are sometimes tempted to chafe under restraint; but in afterlife they will bless their parents for the faithful care and strict watchfulness that guarded and guided them in their years of inexperience. CT 161.2

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By hasty, unfounded criticism the influence of the faithful, self-sacrificing teacher is often well-nigh destroyed. Many parents whose children have been spoiled by indulgence leave to the teacher the unpleasant task of repairing their neglect; and then by their own course they make his task almost hopeless. Their criticism and censure of the school management encourage insubordination in the children and confirm them in wrong habits. CT 161.3

If criticism or suggestion in regard to the teacher's work becomes necessary, it should be made to him in private. If this proves ineffective, let the matter be referred to those who are responsible for the management of the school. Nothing should be said or done to weaken the children's respect for the one upon whom their well-being in so great degree depends.—Education, 284. CT 161.4

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Parents should keep ever before their minds the object to be gained—the perfection of the characters of their children. Those parents who educate their children aright, weeding from their lives every unruly trait, are fitting them to become missionaries for Christ in truth, in righteousness, in holiness. He who in his childhood does service for God, adding to his “faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity” (2 Peter 1:5-7), is fitting himself to hear and to respond to the call, “Child, come up higher; enter the higher school.” CT 162.1

Do you think we shall not learn anything there? We have not the slightest idea of what will then be opened before us. With Christ we shall walk beside the living waters. He will unfold to us the beauty and glory of nature. He will reveal what He is to us, and what we are to Him. Truth we cannot know now, because of finite limitations, we shall know hereafter. CT 162.2

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Neither the church school nor the college affords the opportunities for establishing a child's character building upon the right foundation that are afforded in the home. CT 162.3