Kindle Notes & Highlights
Why do parents try to protect children’s feet from the earth, from the morning dew and the sun-baked soil? It is all done with good intentions, but the result is bad. Every year more village children come down with influenza, tonsillitis and whooping-cough. We should bring up our children to brave heat and cold.
It was not stipulated how much time the children should spend under the open sky. The main thing was that the children should not tire of it, that they should never long for the teacher to tell them it was time to go home. I tried to end our lessons when the children showed heightened interest in what we were observing or doing.
Experience has convinced me that if children are to fully develop their intellects and have a rich spiritual life, they must hear stories and explanations from a teacher who shares their joys and sorrows.
Teachers want a student to answer as quickly as possible. They are not interested in how a child thinks; they just want the child to answer so they can give him a grade. It does not occur to them that you cannot speed the flow of a slow but mighty river. That river should be allowed to flow as nature intended. Its waters will definitely reach their intended destination, but please do not hurry, do not be anxious, do not lash the mighty river with the birch rod of your grades — that will not help.
The main reason that some children were weak and sickly was that they lived in a hothouse environment, where mothers protected them from the slightest draft. These children tired quickly.
Health is impossible without tiredness. Health flows into a child’s organism with life-giving energy when, after difficult exertion, a child rests.
