“The system of confining children rigidly to grades is not wise.”  2MR:215.

 

“Education, as it is conducted in the schools of to-day, is one-sided, and therefore a mistake.”  2PRC:175.

 

“The result of education should be to enable us to understand the voice of God.”  2PRC:176; 1PRC:144; 5T:322.

 

“Gather your children into your own houses; gather them in from the classes who are voicing the words of Satan, who are disobeying the Commandments of God. . . Gather in your children and give them the Word of God as the foundation of all their education.”  2PRC:182.

 

“To discard many of the worldly text-books will not lower the standard of education, but will raise it to a higher plane.”  2PRC:378.

 

“It is not wise to send the children to schools where they are subject to long hours of confinement and where they will gain no knowledge of what healthful living means.”  2PRC:462.

 

“The education that is generally given in the schools of the world is not that which can be accepted as true education.”  2PRC:604.

 

“To fathers and mothers I am instructed to say, ‘Fail not to keep your children within your own premises.’ ”  3MR:316.

 

“Satan and his host are making most powerful efforts to sway the minds of the children, and they must be treated with candor, Christian tenderness, and love.  This will give you a strong influence over them, and they will feel that they can repose unlimited confidence in you.  Throw around your children charms for home, and your society.  If you do this, they will not desire so much the society of other young associates.  Satan works through young associates to influence and corrupt the minds of each other.  It is the most effectual way he can work.  Young associates have a powerful influence over one another.  Their conversation is not always choice and elevated.  Evil communications will be breathed into the ear, which, if not decidedly resisted, find a lodgment in the heart, take root, and spring up to bear fruit, and corrupt their good manners.  Because of the evils now in the world, and the restriction necessary to be placed upon the children, parents should have double care to bind them to their hearts, and let them see they wish to make them happy.”  4bSG:131.

 

“We know that there are many schools which afford opportunities for education in the sciences, but we desire something more than this.  The science of true education is the truth, which is to be so deeply impressed on the soul that it cannot be obliterated by the error that everywhere abounds.  The third angel’s message is truth, and light, and power, and to present it so that right impressions will be made upon hearts should be the work of our schools as well as of our Churches, of the teacher as well as of the minister.  Those who accept positions as educators should prize more and more the revealed will of God so plainly and strikingly presented in Daniel and the Revelation.”  6T:131.

 

“We can not afford to send our children to the public schools.  This has been presented to me for years. . . What we need to give them is a complete education in that Book which assures us of that life that measures with the life of God.  If we will obey His commandments, we shall live.”  RH, March 25, 1909.  “It is not in the order of the Lord that our students shall attach themselves to worldly educational institutions and be trained according to worldly methods.”  7MR:306.

 

“. . . it is not safe now to send them to public [4] schools.”  8MR:3-4.

 

 

“From the light given me from the Lord, I know that four or five successive years of application to book study is a mistake.”  8MR:110.

 

“We have a special work to do in educating and training our children that they may not, either in attending school, or in association with others, mingle with the children of unbelievers.”  8MR:258.

 

“From the teachers in the public schools, they receive ideas that are opposed to truth.  But farther than this, they receive a wrong education by associating with children. . . Satan uses these children to educate children that are more carefully brought up. . . I would rather children grew up in a degree of ignorance of school education as it is today.”  8MR:366.

 

“I have said that if God would accept my work in training my children for the future immortal life, I will say I have not lived in vain. . . This is our work, mothers, not that they should go out into the pleasures of the world.  I have had people say to me, ‘Why Mrs. White, your children will not know how to act in society.’  Said I, ‘I am educating them for the society of Heaven.  I want them to be educated to do right because it is right and well pleasing to God.’ ”  9MR:260-261.

 

“It is time for the members of our Churches to be instructed to withdraw their children from the public school.  The apt mind of a child readily learns lessons of evil in companionship with children who have not been properly trained.  Thus many children are corrupted.”  10MR:107.

 

“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. . . The educational influences of the home are a decided power for good or for evil. . . If the child is not instructed aright here, Satan will educate him through agencies of his choosing.”  AH:182.

 

“The child’s first teacher is the mother.  During the period of greatest susceptibility and most rapid development his education is to a great degree in her hands.”  Education, p. 275.

 

“Strong temptations will come to many who place their children in our schools [public schools] because they desire the youth to secure what the world regards as the most essential education.  Who knows what the most essential education is unless it is the education to be obtained from that Book which is the foundation of all true knowledge.  Those who regard as essential the knowledge to be gained along the line of worldly education are making a great mistake, one which will cause them to be swayed by individual opinions that are human and erring.  To those who feel that their children must have what the world calls the essential education, I would say, bring your children to the simplicity of the Word of God, and they will be safe.”  LLM:406.

 

“The colleges in our land are many of them places where the youth are in danger of becoming immoral and depraved through these evil associations.”  RH, February 21, 1878.

 

“Fathers and mothers, it is your duty to give more earnest and careful attention to your children.  Guard their principles and their habits as the apple of your eye.  Allow them to associate with no one with whose character you are not well acquainted.  Permit them to form no intimacy until you are assured that it will do them no harm.  Accustom your children to trust to your judgment and experience.  Teach them that you have a clearer perception of character than they in their inexperience can have, and that your decisions must not be disregarded.”  RH, September 13, 1881 par. 11. 

 

“By some, education is placed next to religion, but true education is religion. . . Let not home education be regarded as a secondary matter.  It occupies the first place in all true education.”  RH, June 6, 1899.

 

“It is destructive to the health and life of young children for them to sit in the schoolroom. . . from three to five hours a day, inhaling the impure air caused by many breaths.  The weak lungs become affected; and the brain, from which the nervous energy of the whole system is the strength of the mental organs is sufficiently matured to endure fatigue.  In the schoolroom the foundation has been surely laid for diseases of various kinds.  But more especially, the most delicate of all organs, the brain, has often been permanently injured by too great exercise. . . During the first six or seven years. . . Infancy extends to the age of six or seven years. . . Parents, especially mothers, should be the only teachers of such infant minds.”  RH, August 1, 1899.

 

“. . .we can not trust our youth to go to seminaries and colleges established by other denominations.”  RH, July 2, 1908; RH, February 13, 1913.

 

“He [God] does not call woman to engage in any work that will lead her to neglect the physical, mental and moral training of her own children.  She may not shift this responsibility upon others and leave them to do her work.”  ST, February 9, 1882.

 

“I would not advise any one to place his child where the Holy Scriptures are not regarded as the rule of life.  Every institution where the Word of God is not diligently studied, must become corrupt.”  ST, July 26, 1883.