Character and Conduct – 8 December – The Object of Education

WE SHALL be agreed, I assume, that the object of Education is to train for life, and not for a special occupation;  to train the whole man for all life, for life seen and unseen, for the unseen through the seen and in the seen;  to train men in a word and not craftsmen, to train citizens for the Kingdom of God.   As we believe in God and the world to come, these must be master thoughts.

We shall be agreed further that with this object in view, education must be so ordered as to awaken, to call into play, to develop, to direct, to strengthen powers of sense and intellect and spirit, not of one but of all:   to give alertness and accuracy to observation:  to supply fulness and precision to language:  to arouse intelligent sympathy with every form of study and occupation:  to set the many parts and aspects of the world before the growing scholar in their unity:  to open the eyes of the heart to the eternal of which the temporal is the transitory sign.

We shall be agreed again that the elements of restraint alike and of personal development which enter into education will be used to harmonise the social and individual instincts, and to inspire the young, when impressions are most easy and most enduring, with the sense of fellowship and the passion for service.

We shall be agreed once more that the noblest fruit of education is character, and not acquirements:  character which makes the simplest life rich and beneficent, character which for a Christian is determined by a true vision of God, of whom, through whom, unto whom, are all things.

Christian Social Union Addresses, Bishop WESTCOTT

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These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing them here is that readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.