The Study and Use of Language
In every branch of education there are objects to be gained more important than those secured by mere technical knowledge. Take language, for example. More important than the acquirement of foreign languages, living or dead, is the ability to write and speak one’s mother tongue with ease and accuracy. But no training gained through a knowledge of grammatical rules can compare in importance with the study of language from a higher point of view. With this study, to a great degree, is bound up life’s happiness or sorrow, prosperity or adversity.TEd 143.3
The chief requisite of language is that it be pure and kind and true—“the outward expression of an inward grace.” God says: “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Philippians 4:8. And if such are the thoughts, such will be the oral expression.TEd 143.4
The best school for this language study is the home, but since the work of the home is often neglected, it devolves on teachers to aid their pupils in forming right habits of speech.TEd 143.5
Teachers can do much to discourage the evil habit of backbiting, gossip, and ungenerous criticism that is the curse of the community, the neighborhood, and the home. No pains should be spared to impress upon students the fact that this habit reveals a lack of culture, refinement, and true goodness of heart. It unfits a person both for the society of the truly cultured and refined in this world and for association with the holy ones of heaven.TEd 144.1
We think with horror of the cannibal who feasts on the still warm flesh of his victim, but are the results of this practice more terrible than the agony and ruin caused by misrepresenting motive, blackening reputation, dissecting character? The young should be taught what God says about these things: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Proverbs 18:21. Backbiters are classed with “haters of God,” with “inventors of evil things,” with those who are “violent, proud, boasters,” “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness.” Romans 1:30, 31, 29. People whom God accounts as citizens of Zion are those “who speak the truth from their heart; who do not slander with their tongue, ... nor take up a reproach against their neighbors.” Psalm 15:2, 3, NRSV.TEd 144.2
God’s Word condemns also the use of meaningless phrases and expletives that border on profanity. It condemns deceptive compliments, evasions of truth, exaggerations, and misrepresentations in trade, that are current in society and in the business world. “Let your ‘Yes’ be, ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” Matthew 5:37. “Like a maniac who shoots deadly firebrands and arrows, so is one who deceives a neighbor and says ‘I am only joking!’” Proverbs 26:18, 19, NRSV.TEd 144.3
Closely allied to gossip is the covert insinuation, the sly innuendo, by which the unclean in heart imply the evil they dare not openly express. Teach young people to shun like leprosy every approach to these practices.TEd 144.4
In the use of language there is perhaps no fault that old and young are more ready to pass over lightly in themselves than hasty, impatient speech. They think it a sufficient excuse to plead, “I was off my guard, and did not really mean what I said.” But God’s Word does not treat it lightly. The Scripture says: “Do you see someone who is hasty in speech? There is more hope for a fool than for anyone like that.” “Like a city breached, without walls, is one who lacks self-control.” Proverbs 29:20; 25:28, NRSV.TEd 144.5
In one moment, the hasty, passionate, careless tongue may produce evil that a whole lifetime’s repentance cannot undo. Oh, the hearts that are broken, the friends estranged, the lives wrecked, by the harsh, hasty words of those who might have brought help and healing!TEd 145.1