Moral Education

Moral education can be given better by parents at home, than by schoolmasters and professors in schools and colleges. Parents have numberless opportunities of guiding their children by pre¬cept and example, opportunities denied to the teacher.
Who generally meets his pupils in large classes, and seldom has the means of becoming intimately acquainted with their several char¬acters and the faults, other than intellectual faults, to which each of them is particularly prone.
The first point of importance to notice with regard to moral instruction is that, in the words of the proverb, example is better than precept. This is too often forgotten by parents, especially in the case of young children. Many parents are emphatic in incul-cating truthfulness, but, on very slight occasion think it advisable to escape the importunity or curiosity of children by deception, if not by actual falsehood. They fondly hope that the deceit will pass unnoticed; but children are keener observers than they are generally supposed to be, and very quick to detect any discrep¬ancy between preaching and practice on the part of their elders. It is therefore imperative that parents in all cases should them¬selves act up to the moral precepts that they inculcate upon their children.
Another important point in the home training of children is careful selection of associates of their own age who will not teach them bad habits. For the same reason, especially in rich houses, great care must be taken that the servants do not exert an evil influence on their moral character.
Bad servants teach a child to be deceitful and disobedient by secretly helping him to enjoy forbidden pleasures, which of course they warn him he must on no account mention to his parents. They may also render a child rude and overbearing by servile submission to his caprices and bad temper.
If we now pass from home to school life, we see that the first great disadvantage that the school-master labours under is that it is very