In English
Children should grow with love of the mother
Children should have the love of their parents. The child should grow with the mother for the first five years of life. Many children do not know what mother’s love is like. The mother should not hand over her responsibility during those years to someone else and be called simply “mummy”, as if she was some doll with which the child liked to play. Nowadays, the children of rich and “educated” parents are severely handicapped. They are deprived of the care and love of parents. They are handed over to the care of servants and nurses, and they grow up in their company and learn their vocabulary and habits and styles of thought. This is very undesirable. When a boy is five years old, the father has to take up the task of bringing him up. Then, he must be entrusted to a , who must teach him a standard of value with which to deal with the family, the village, the country, and mankind. Teachers must be aware of their good fortune as well as their duties. Some teachers shirk their duties and play false to the expectations society has in them. They come into the class, write on the blackboard, say, “Silence”, and go off to sleep in the chair! So the children dislike school. Teachers in the old days used to go round the village with two stalwart students and peep into house after house for shirkers, and when they discovered any, the malingerer was forcibly carried weeping and struggling to school, there to be beaten severely for the crime. Children are like fresh cloth; they can be given any colour you like. Just dip them in that colour, that is enough. Adults are like old clothes that will not imbibe colour so easily and well. Hearts that are green and soft will learn habits and disciplines quicker. For learning good habits and manners, age is no bar; training will make even children learn them.