The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1877.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 53, 19 January 1877, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 1877.

Much has been written and talked of the duty of the State to educate the people* Doubtless it is the State's duty to foster and encourage a sound and liberal system of education, which may lie enjoyed by all at a comparatively little expense, But it is not our intention, at present, to enter upon the discussion of this phase of the. education question, but rather to dwell upon another, and in our opinion, a more important one. We mean the moral and mental culture of the young by a well managed system of home training.

Many parents think that they have done their duty if they provide their children with food and raiment, and send them to a place of worship, and to school. Forgetful of the duty which devolves upon them to carry out the precept—" Train up a child in the way he should go," they are content to leave the mental and moral culture of their offspring to the schoolmaster, and the minister of religion ; and they are disposed to blame those useful members of society if their children do not grow up as they would have them to be. Parents of this" class, s>eem to be ignorant that tho foundation of that moral structure which it is the work of the schoolmaster, the Sunday School teacher, and the minister of religion to raise, should be laid at home. Much, very much, of the •first training of a child depends upon the maternal parent, the child is necessarily with her during the first years of his life, and if a mother then neglects to impress upon the mind of her youthful charge those lessons which tend to develope its mental and moral powers, she loses a golden opportunity which can never be replaced. On the other hand, the early lessons of a good mother are invaluable and are never forgotten. Many a man who has risen to eminence has not hesitated to attribute the position he has attained to the teaching of Jiis mother, and even late in life, has looked back with affectionate remembrance to those times, when as a little child, he listened with wonder and delight whilst his mother told him of the skill and industry of the bee, or when reverently kneeling at her knee, he lisped forth " Our Father." It is obvious then how great is the responsibility resting on mothers, and how fearfully those mothers waste their time, who, instead of devoting it to their children's mental and moral culture, spend it in senseless gossip, or weeping over the imaginary sorrows of a heroine in a trashy novel. The father too, although at a later period, has equally as important a part to play. The man who could do so, but who never spends an evening at home with his wife and children, is unworthy of the names of husband and father. He is generally such an one, whose children instead looking for his coming, and greeting his arrival with joyful shouts, regard him with dread, and skulk and hide away from his presence. It is a lamentable thing to tiear a man, who, when his little child asks him a question, exclaims "Oh! don't bother me," and to see him, perhaps repel the little one from him, it

may be, with a blow or an oath. The man who does this will have a terrible account to answer. A really good father will delight in supplementing the mother's teaching, and as the child grows older, he will watch the expansion of the youthful mind with proud thankfulness and joy. But in the case of the father, example is more powerful than precept, and it will,generally be found, that when a father spends his leisure hours in the haunts of dissipation and folly, his sons as they grow up will follow in their father's footsteps. It is true that with the most careful training, some children will grow up bad, and repay their parents' loving care with heartless black ingratitude, but such cases are the exception, and not the rule.

We have thus briefly indicated what we mean by " home training." On a future occasion wo shall treat on another phase of the education question.