The criminality of the former is perhaps greater than that of
the latter. This may have more reference to the female than to the male
portion of the family. The abuse here consists of the want of a training up
to wisdom. We see this in what is called the fashionable, instead of the
Christian, education, received at some of our fashionable boarding schools.
Here the child is sent with no home-training whatever, to be trained up a
fashionable doll, fit to be played with and dandled upon the arms of a
whining and heartless society, with no preparation for companionship in
life, destitute of substantial character, with undoctrinated feelings of
aversion to religion, fit only for a puppet show in some gay and
thoughtless circle; kneeling before fashion as her God, and giving her hand
in marriage only to a golden and a gilded calf.
According to this abuse of home-education, "a young maiden is kept in the
nursery and the school room, like a ship on the stocks, while she is
furbished with abundance of showy accomplishments, and is launched like the
ship, looking taut and trim, but empty of everything that can make her
useful." Thus one great abuse of home-education is to substitute the
boarding school for home-culture,--to send our children to such school at
an age when they should he trained by and live under the direct influence
of the parent. This generally ends in initiated profligacy, and alienation
from home, while at best but a dunce after his course of training is
ended.
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