PETRUS PAULUS VERGERIUS

Children, although for the most part under the unwritten discipline of home, are not to be regarded as outside the control of public regulation. For the education of children is a matter of more than private interest; it concerns the State, which indeed regards the right training of the young as, in certain aspects, within its proper sphere. I would wish to see this responsibility extended.

We cannot deny that there is still a horde—as I must call them—of people who, like Licinius the Emperor [Roman Emperor, ruled 81-96], denounce learning and the Arts as a danger to the State and hateful in themselves.

Whilst a man may escape from the burden of an unlucky name, or from the contempt attaching to a city of no repute, by changing the one or quitting the other, he can never remedy the neglect of early education. The foundation, therefore, of this last must be laid in the first years of life, the disposition molded whilst it is susceptible and the mind trained whilst it is retentive.

Our youth of today, it is to be feared, is backward to learn; studies are accounted irksome.

In judging character in youth, we recognize, first of all, that it is a mark of soundness in a boy's nature that he is spurred by desire of praise: upon this rests emulation

Whilst a man may escape from the burden of an unlucky name, or from the contempt attaching to a city of no repute, by changing the one or quitting the other, he can never remedy the neglect of early education. The foundation, therefore, of this last must be laid in the first years of life, the disposition molded whilst it is susceptible and the mind trained whilst it is retentive.

In judging character in youth, we recognize, first of all, that it is a mark of soundness in a boy's nature that he is spurred by desire of praise: upon this rests emulation

Our youth of today, it is to be feared, is backward to learn; studies are accounted irksome.

Children, although for the most part under the unwritten discipline of home, are not to be regarded as outside the control of public regulation. For the education of children is a matter of more than private interest; it concerns the State, which indeed regards the right training of the young as, in certain aspects, within its proper sphere. I would wish to see this responsibility extended.

We cannot deny that there is still a horde—as I must call them—of people who, like Licinius the Emperor [Roman Emperor, ruled 81-96], denounce learning and the Arts as a danger to the State and hateful in themselves.