Chapter Eight—The First and Best School

“Are you going to school?” Maybe you are eight or ten years old; and you say, “Yes, I’m going to school. My school is that big brick building on Forty-seventh Street.” Or, “My school is out here in the country, in that little white house under the oaks by the brook.”SWhite 67.1

But maybe you are only four or five years old. “Are you going to school?” And you say, “No; I’m not old enough yet. Big Brother Harry and Sister Sue are going to school, but they say I’m too little. Oh, I wish I would hurry and grow up, so I could go to school too.”SWhite 67.2

But, my dear, let me tell you that you are going to school. You started to school the day you were born, and you have been going to school ever since. The first school you went to, and the best school you’ll ever go to, is your home. Your teachers are your father and mother; and your older brothers and sisters, if you have them, teach you a little too. That is something Sister White learned very early, and which she taught us. Wise people know it is true.SWhite 67.3

Why do we go to school? Oh, to learn to read and write, and to figure, and to speak well. When we have learned to read there are lit-er-al-ly thousands of books that have stories in them that teach us all we want to know. And when we have learned to write we can write letters, and maybe sometime we’ll write books, maybe a good many of them. And when we have learned numbers, how to figure, the multiplication table, and all that—why, we can do sums and count our money and keep banks and everything.SWhite 67.4

Besides, going to school is fun. There are so many boys and girls there, and we have games, and we eat our lunch together. And teacher tells us stories, and she draws the cutest pictures, and she lets us play in the sandbox, making geography lessons. And after school we go along home with Jimmy, Grace, Sally, Tom, and—what’s his funny name?—Firman. He’s the most fun, in some ways. He came away across the ocean, where he was born, and he has curly hair, and he talks so fast, and sometimes he talks for us that funny—you know—jabberwock, that he has to tell us what it means.SWhite 68.1

Yes, chatterbox, it’s fun to go to school. And it’s good to go to school, because you do learn things that you need to know to get along in this world and to do God’s work. And that’s what I’m telling you. You’d better start to school pretty early. You have to go to school pretty early, because you can’t be alive without going to school. You are in school whenever you learn something, and you learn something every minute. Why, just think! When you are born, you start from scratch. You know not one thing, ab-so-lute-ly nothing! You don’t know whether a ball is round or flat. You don’t know whether your toes belong to you or to someone else. You haven’t any teeth; and if you have any hair, you lose it all and start all over again to get some. You can’t walk, you can’t talk, you can’t use a knife and fork; and as for the multiplication table—ha! You probably think that one times one equals two!SWhite 68.2

The first year you go to school you learn to walk. And let me tell you, that is something! You stand a pencil up on its rubber tip, and see how long it will stay there. It topples over, just as a baby does when you stand him on his fat little feet. It’s a good thing he’s padded all over, for he gets so many falls and bumps. And besides learning to walk in that first year, you learn a thousand other things.SWhite 69.1

The second year you go to school, you learn a language. And let me tell you, that’s something too! Why, some people go to school for years and years, learning a language. Well, when you start out, you don’t know boo, but by the time you are two years old, you are talking a blue streak. And nearly everybody can understand you, which is more than you can say for my French or my Chinese.SWhite 69.2

It’s pretty important to learn to walk and to learn to talk. But there are other things you learn in this school of the home—things that are more important still. You learn to obey. Do you know, that is the most important law in all nature. It’s the most important thing for children to learn, it’s the most important thing for kittens to learn, it’s the most important thing for puppies to learn, and for little deer and little foxes and little rabbits, and every young thing on earth. They all have to learn to mind their fathers and mothers if they want to live and get along in the world. Did you ever hear the story of Raggylug, the baby rabbit, and how he learned to obey? Well, get daddy to tell it to you. And when you learn to obey father and mother you are learning also to obey God. And that is the most important thing in the world.SWhite 69.3

Another thing, you learn to eat what is good for you, and to eat when you should, and not otherwise. Besides learning what to eat and how to eat, you learn to go to bed on time and to get up on time. And you learn to keep clean, or to clean up if you get dirty, even letting mother wash away the shadow behind your ears. You learn to turn fat into muscle, by plenty of exercise. Now, all that is very important, because it helps to lay the foundation for good health. And without good health you will have a miserable time in this world.SWhite 70.1

And you learn how to get along with other people. But it’s a very scrappy world, a very unpleasant world, if we don’t get along with other people. One thing school is for, is to teach us how to meet people and help people and enjoy people. In the schools for grownups, that’s what is called social education; and it’s one of the greatest and hardest studies that men have. Well, if you start out right in your home school, learning how to have a happy and helpful time with your brothers and sisters and your playmates, and with all the big people too, you are getting the right social education. The secret of it all is love. If you love everybody, you will get along fine with everybody.SWhite 70.2

Your first two or three years in the home school are taken up mostly with people. They are all around you—mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, grandmother, visitors, and friends. They have to do with you, and you have to do with them. You will have to do with people all your life; and how to do with them is the next to the biggest study in any school. Right here in the home school you are learning the A B C of that science, and I hope you will not learn to write your ABC’s upside-down and back-to-front. You will not, if you love Jesus, and so, like Him, love everybody. But the greatest study in any school, and most of all in the home school, is to study and know God, and to get along beautifully with God. God is our Father, as Jesus taught us. He is the Father of all the human race, for He made us and He loves us. He has made a beautiful world for us to live in, and everything in it has the touch of His fingers. All nature is God’s handwriting, and when you have learned to read it, you have learned to read!SWhite 71.1

The Indians used to write in pictures, and you can learn pretty easily to read their picture writing. As a matter of fact, our own alphabet started out as picture writing, and I think if it had stuck to its picture writing, it would be easier now to read. Well, God has made the most wonderful picture writing. Everything we see in nature—the flowers, the trees, the birds, the insects, the animals, the hills, the streams, the sky—are pictures that mean something. They tell us of God; and the best thing you can learn when you are little in the home school, and when you grow big and go to other schools, is this book of nature, which is God’s.SWhite 72.1

When you come to be three and four years old, and you have learned to know people and get along well with people, you begin to reach out toward God in the study of His works. You have pets, maybe a kitten, a dog, a bird, or a pony. You love them and care for them, and they love you. Then you notice the wild birds that sing in the sunshine and that come to your feeding station, especially when it is cold and the snow covers the ground. In the spring you find the flowers, and you watch the trees put on their leaves. You see the garden grow from little plants to flowers and fruits. You play by the brookside, the river, or the lake, and watch the beauty of the rippling waters and the creatures that live in them. And you sit with father and mother and with brothers and sisters to watch the sun go down; and as it goes it paints the clouds in the sky until they look like the shining walls of the New Jerusalem. And the Bible tells you so much about the things of nature that if you learn to put the Bible and nature together, you surely learn about God. “These are lessons,” said Sister White, “that our children need to learn. Like the child Jesus on the hillsides of Nazareth, they may see in them the face and the handwriting of God.”SWhite 72.2

Then besides, in the home school you hear stories. By the time you are three or four years old you begin to understand and to love stories. Teacher-in-the-school isn’t the only one who knows and tells stories. Teacher-in-the-home is a storyteller too. Mother tells stories; father tells stories; even big brother and big sister begin to learn how to tell stories to children. There are Bible stories, for one kind. Do you know that there are five hundred stories in the Bible? And they teach you the most wonderful things—things that tell about God our Father and Jesus our Saviour.SWhite 73.1

Then there are stories about things in nature—rabbits and squirrels and deer and beaver and bear and robins and wrens and crows and eagles. There are stories about the running waters, the rainbows, the sun, the moon, and the stars. A thousand things, and a thousand thousand! You never run out of stories if you learn to read God’s handwriting.SWhite 73.2

You learn to do things with your hands too. You learn to whittle and hammer and saw, and to make boxes and sleds and kites. You learn to wash dishes and cook, to make your first roasts and bread and baked potatoes and puddings. You learn to sew, first your doll’s dresses and then your own aprons and things. You learn to make a garden and to see God’s marvelous work in making seeds to sprout and grow into plants and bear fruit. There are ten things, ten dozen things, ten thousand things, for you to learn to do. All this is to be learned in the home school! No wonder Sister White wrote:SWhite 74.1

“In His wisdom the Lord has decreed that the family shall be the greatest of all educational agencies. It is in the home that the education of the child is to begin. Here is his first school. Here, with his parents as instructors, he is to learn the lessons that are to guide him throughout life—lessons of respect, obedience, reverence, self-control.... How important, then, is the school in the home!”SWhite 74.2

Maybe these are big words for you, but they mean so much you would do well to learn them, and think of what they mean. It is so important that she tells us home should be the only school for the child until he is eight or ten years of age. You are to learn the most important things during these early years, and it takes all your time to do it. You learn to read God’s books. They are written in big letters, so you do not have to hurt your eyes reading them. Many times children’s eyes are hurt by trying to read the fine print of men’s books before they are old enough; and then they have to wear glasses. And they are likely to get stoop-shouldered and narrow-chested too, if they sit too long in school when their bones are young.SWhite 74.3

It is for such reasons that Sister White says children should go to the home school, and no other school, until they are eight or ten years old. Of course, that means that their parents are to teach them. They are not to run wild. But most children are not ready to learn to read print until they are eight or ten years old. Leading teachers in the world today accept this fact. They call it “reading readiness,” and they say that most children should not be sent to school when they are six or seven years old, but should wait till they are eight or ten. Sister White told us this long ago.SWhite 75.1

So be happy in your home, the first and best school that you can have. Learn everything there is for you to learn. Learn to live happily with people. Learn right habits of eating, sleeping, cleanliness, and exercise. Learn through the great world of nature all about you, and through stories of the Bible and history and nature and of all things good and beautiful. It’s the best school you’ll ever have.SWhite 75.2