PART I

SOME PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

1. Show that children are a public trust. What follows?

2. What questions does Pestalozzi put to mothers?

3. What is Mr Herbert Spencer’s argument for the study of education?

4. How do parents usually proceed?

5. What is the strenuous part of a parent’s work?

I. A METHOD OF EDUCATION

1. Contrast four or five older theories with later, and perhaps sounder notions.

2. Point out the opposite characters of a system and a method.

3. Why is a system tempting to parents?

II. THE CHILD’S ESTATE

1. What do the Gospel sayings about children indicate?

2. What are the three commandments of the Gospel code of education?

III. OFFENDING THE CHILDREN

1. Distinguish between ‘offending’ and ‘despising’ children.

2. What is to be said of parents whose children have ‘no sense of _ought_’?

3. Trace the steps by which a mother’s ‘no’ comes to be disregarded.

4. Why must parents themselves be law-compelled?

5. Show that parents may offend their children by disregarding the laws of health.

6. By disregarding the laws of the intellectual life.

7. Of the moral life.

IV. DESPISING THE CHILDREN

1. Show that children may be despised in the choice of a nurse.

2. By taking their faults too lightly.

V. HINDERING THE CHILDREN

1. In what ways may parents hinder their children’s access to God?

VI. CONDITIONS OF HEALTHY BRAIN ACTIVITY

1. What is the first condition of successful education?

2. Show that daily efforts, intellectual, moral, and physical, are necessary for children.

3. On what principle is the blood-supply regulated?

4. Show the importance of rest after meals.

5. What is the best time for lessons? Why?

6. On what principle should a time-table be arranged?

7. Show that brain activity is affected by nourishment.

8. Under what conditions does food increase the vital quality of the blood?

9. Why must food be varied?

10. Show that children are spendthrifts of vitality.

11. Give a few useful hints concerning meals.

12. Why should there be talk at meals?

13. Give some rules to secure variety.

14. Show fully that air is as important as food.

15. What have you to say of the children’s daily walk?

16. What is meant by the oxygenation of the blood?

17. Show that oxygen has its limitations.

18. What are the dangers of unchanged air in spacious rooms?

19. ‘I feed Alice on beef-tea.’ Why?

20. What of Alice’s mind?

21. What are the joys of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’?

22. Show the danger of stuffy rooms.

23. What principle must regulate ventilation?

24. Why is night air wholesome?

25. Upon what physical facts does the need of sunshine depend?

26. Show that the skin does much scavenger’s work.

27. Why do persons die of external scalds or burns?

28. Why is a daily bath necessary?

29. Give some instructions for clothing children.

VII. ‘THE REIGN OF LAW’ IN EDUCATION

1. What should be the method of all education?

2. Why are common sense and good intentions not sufficient?

3. How may we meet the danger to religion arising from the blameless lives of some non-religious persons?

4. Account for the superior morality of such non-believers.

5. Show that all observance of law brings its reward.

6. Show that parents should not lay up crucial difficulties for their children.

7. Why should parents study mental and moral science?

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