Monday, January 22, 2018

Watch Out for What Your Children Learn

Let [children’s] ears be ever kept from all immodest stories, and from wanton songs, from riddles and puns with double meanings and foul intentions: let them not be suffered to read wanton jests or amorous romances; and due care should be taken to remove all books out of their way that may defile their imagination, or teach them the language or the sentiments of impurity.  Nor let their eyes be entertained with lewd and unclean pictures, and images of things or actions that are not fit to be exposed. . . .  Even the common necessities and actions of nature should be always expressed before them in the most modest forms of speech that our mother-tongue can furnish us with.

Isaac Watts, The Improvement of the Mind: A Supplement to Logic, pg.342

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