Stuttgart, Germany
April 28, 1913
Among the children many blessed souls will arise, if they be trained according to the Baha’i Teaching.
If a plant is carefully nurtured by a gardener, it will become good and produce better fruit. These children must be given a good training from their earliest childhood. They must be given a systematic training which will further their development, in order that they may receive greater insight, so that their spiritual receptivity be broadened. Beginning in childhood they must receive instruction. They cannot be taught through books. Many elementary sciences must be made clear to them in the nursery; they must learn them in play, in amusement.
Most ideas must be taught them through speech, not by book learning.
One child must question the other concerning those things and the other child must give the answer. In this way they will make great progress. For example, mathematical problems must also be taught in the form of questions and answers.
One of the children asks a question and the other must give the answer.
Later the children will of their own accord speak with each other concerning these same subjects. The children who are at the head of their class must receive premiums. They must be encouraged, and when one of them shows good advancement, for their further development they must be praised and encouraged therein.
Even so in God like affairs. Verbal questions must be asked and the answers must be given verbally. They must discuss these affairs with each other in this manner.
(Star of the West, vol. VII, no. 15, December 12, 1916)
