Schools

"What I recalled of Sunday School was that the more difficult something became, the more rewarding it was in the end."

"I teach Sunday School, motherfucker."

"I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard — even to vomiting — in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role."

"All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School."

"I went to Sunday School and liked the stories about Christ and the Christmas star. They were beautiful. They made you warm and happy to think about. But I didn't believe them. The Sunday School teacher talked too much in the way our grade school teacher used to when she told us about George Washington. Pleasant, pretty stories, but not true."

"Sunday School: A prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents."

"I associated much of Christian doctrine with children's stories because I grew up in church. My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity."

"In Sunday school, they taught me don't confront, don't argue, even if you're right, turn the other cheek."

"We the Sunday-school workers, what are we but the church at work? The Sunday-school is the church in futuro. Our recruits come almost wholly from the training classes of the Sunday-school. The Bible, the open Bible, the studied Bible, the Bible in the heart is the only hope of our land to-day."

"The hope of the nation and of Christendom, and of the lands called heathen, alike is to be found in the indoctrination of little children in the knowledge of God's truth; for the missionaries will tell you that the adult heathen population of to-day are to die heathen; the minister will tell you that the adult, virtually heathen population of Christian lands to-day are to die in that condition, unless God showers down altogether unprecedented grace — with only such occasional exceptions as confirm this general and terrible law. If this be so, the hope of Christianity is in childhood. Towards childhood must be directed the work of the sappers and miners of the church. Here is the weak point of the enemy's fortress. Here let the breach be made, and his topmost turret shall be laid low."

"Let the Sunday-school for the children teach Christ first, Christ last, Christ in the middle, Christ all the time. And the school that shall be so single-eyed for the Master, shall have the full beam of His eyes which smile as the sun shining in its strength ever upon them."

"It is a grand thing to train the human mind in the academy and in the college and university to great intellectual achievements. It is a grand thing for you to leap, as it were, by the lightning of your thought, from crag to crag of discovery. It is well to make paths for tender feet through the morasses and over the mountains of study. These bring honor and power. But it is also well to remember that the diplomas of colleges and universities can never bring pardon for sin; that all the scholarships and all the titles in the world can never bring peace to the dying. Oh, brethren, it is this discipleship with the Man of Galilee who trod the wine-press alone, and carried His cross up Calvary's hill; this discipleship with the man Christ Jesus, that constitutes the moral and spiritual power in our work. That power it is yours to impart to the children under your care. Aye, this is grander than all human achievements."

"Bring the little ones to Christ. Lord Jesus, we bring them to-day, the children of our Sunday-schools, of our churches, of the streets. Here they are; they wait Thy benediction. The prayer of Jacob for his sons shall be my prayer while I live, and when I die: " The angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.""

"Begin in prayer; continue in prayer; end in prayer. All the help that we have in the conversion of the children comes from God. We cannot convert their souls, but God can by the influence of His Spirit. When we study our lessons, let us go first for illumination to God, that we may so impress it on the minds and hearts of those we are teaching, that they may bring forth fruit for salvation; that they may see our earnestness — see that our desire is for their conversion. Let us pray individually for each one of our scholars."

"Learn to teach the children to look at this world as a beautiful symbol of Jesus; every thing, Jesus; Christ, all; Christ, in all. So shall you educate the imaginations of the children to receive, and their memories to retain and to use, that Christian truth; and you yourself shall be lifted up, as on angel's wings, to see with John things which are unspeakable, but which the sanctified imagination realizes."

"Oh, be assured, fellow teachers, that there is no time in life so favorable to sound conversion as early childhood."

"To live a godly life is the best way to light up a lesson that the teacher can possibly employ."

"Let us see to it that in our schools, as far as possible, every week, some lessons from Scripture, in the language of the Scripture are learned."

"The teacher should use illustrations for the better teaching of the lesson, and never to fill up time, to amuse the class, or to display his own genius."

"It is quite likely that the modern contrivances for making Sunday-schools amusing have given them a distaste for the more solemn services of the sanctuary. If so, the amusement is a sin. The schools should feed the church. Children ought to be led by one into the other, exposed to the preaching of the gospel, taught the ways of God's house, and brought up under its influence, with all its hallowed and elevating influences."

"The more you study the lessons as the word of God speaking to you by the Holy Ghost, and the more you come to believe in direct answers to prayer, the more efficacious will be your teaching by word and example upon the hearts and lives of others."

"The primary principle of education is the determination of the pupil to self-activity — the doing nothing for him which he is able to do for himself."

"Be assured, my dear Anne, that it is only by taking our lesson from God and doing the will of God, that we can either please Him in time, or be happy with Him in eternity."

"From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally."

"Homeschooling will certainly produce some socially awkward adults, but the odds are good they would have been just as quirky had they spent twelve years raising their hand for permission to go to the bathroom"

"Most of the homeschooled children I know have about the same amount of after-school peer time as the rest of the population—but, obviously, without that school day together, they do spend less time with their peers. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is still open to debate."

"All the homeschooling parents I know meet on a regular basis with other families. They organize field trips, cooking classes, reading clubs and Scout troops. Their children tend to be happy, confident and socially engaged.”"

"Homeschooling works because schooling is not the same thing as education. School is not the only place to learn, to grow up. Universities and colleges recognize this fact whenever they admit homeschoolers who have never attended school."

"There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent."

"Once upon a time, all children were homeschooled. They were not sent away from home each day to a place just for children but lived, learned, worked, and played in the real world, alongside adults and other children of all ages.”"

"John Caldwell Holt was one of the earliest homeschool pioneers in addition to being an American author, educator, and early researcher in youth rights theory. He became disillusioned with the public school system after numerous years of working within it and seeking reform. Ultimately, he decided that public school reform was not possible and Holt started advocating homeschooling. He believed that "children who were provided with a rich and stimulating learning environment would learn what they are ready to learn when they are ready to learn it"."

"We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people.”"

"The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home."

"It’s dishonest and unacceptable to link child abusers who lie about homeschooling with committed parents who have chosen the very special and unique vocation of actually homeschooling."

"High school is tough on anyone, an absolute rule of the Universe being that if high school is not a buttockclenchingly awkward, emotionally difficult, and unpleasant time of your life, then the rest of it will be a crushing disappointment. Academic success is desirable, popularity (the only thing that most students really desire) is not. Those who excel socially in high school are truly damned. The homecoming queen does indeed bear the mark of the beast."

"But the winners are a smaller group than we'd like to think, and high school life is very different for those who experience it as the losers. They become part of the invisible middle and suffer in silence alienated and without any real connection to any adults. The popular kids tend to be wealthier and the boys among them tend to be jocks. The Gap Girls-Tommy Girls-Polo Girls compose the pool of desirable girlfriends, many of whom are athletes as well. Below the popular kids, in a shifting order of relative unimportance, are the druggies (stoners, deadheads, burnouts, hippies or neo-hippies), trendies or Valley Girls, preppies, skateboarders and skateboarder chicks, nerds and techies, wiggers, rednecks and Goths, better known as freaks. There are troublemakers, losers and floaters -- kids who move from group to group. Real losers are invisible."

"The notion that truth is reached by the repression of dissent is the kind of claptrap that is believed—or at least implemented—by dictators and high school administrators."

"Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy?"