Study of History Builds Character

As with language, so with every other study; it may be conducted so that it will tend to strengthen and upbuild character. Of no study is this truer than of history. Let it be considered from the divine point of view.TEd 145.6

As too often taught, history is little more than a record of the rise and fall of kings, the intrigues of courts, the victories and defeats of armies—a story of ambition and greed, of deception, cruelty, and bloodshed. Thus taught, its results cannot but be detrimental. The heart-sickening reiteration of crimes and atrocities, the enormities, the cruelties portrayed, plant seeds that in many lives bring forth fruit in a harvest of evil.TEd 145.7

It is far better to learn, in the light of God’s Word, the causes that govern the rise and fall of kingdoms. Teach the young to study these records and see how the true prosperity of nations has been bound up with an acceptance of divine principles. Let them study the history of great reformatory movements, and see how often these principles—though hated and their advocates sent to the dungeon and the scaffold—triumphed through these very sacrifices.TEd 146.1

Such study will give broad, comprehensive views of life. It will help young people understand something of its relations and dependencies, how wonderfully we are bound together in the great family of society and nations, and to how great an extent the oppression or degradation of one member means a loss to all.TEd 146.2

In the study of arithmetic and mathematics the work should be made practical. Children and youth should be taught not merely to solve imaginary problems but to keep an accurate account of their own income and outgo. Let them learn the right use of money by using it. Boys and girls should learn to select and buy their own clothing, their books, and other necessities, and by keeping an account of their expenses they will learn, as they could learn in no other way, the value and use of money. Rightly directed it will encourage habits of benevolence. It will aid the youth in learning to give, not from the mere impulse of the moment, as their feelings are stirred, but regularly and systematically.TEd 146.3

In this way every study may become an aid in the solution of that greatest of all problems, the training of men and women for the best discharge of life’s responsibilities.TEd 146.4