Rightly planted, children have potential for vast intellectual growth. And richly grow they must. Thinking is an essential language. For it allows them to think about the thinking of others and to think for themselves. It imparts the special strength that those who learn a language possess. They more ably follow the thoughts of others and tell their own thoughts.
Provided that there are rich, guided experiences on the horizon, mastery will increase with years for those who begin early to learn a language. Let them daily appear, and children will develop, as they informally converse with their parents and later formally converse in the classroom. Similarly, there must be rich early experiences to call out thinking, if thinking is to progressively rise. Let those experiences be absent and students will be as neglected seeds, possessing all that is necessary to become trees, but lacking the rain and light to call out greater forms.
Let there be rain and sunshine. It is within the power of parents and teachers to bring about experiences that develop thinking. We are told that, “It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train young people to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other people’s thought.” (Education page 17)
In his counsels, God has reaveled the experiences that bring about a generation of thinkers. The neglect of those counsels makes way for pitiful, meagre results; but if we’re unreservedly obedient, our “institutions of learning may send forth men strong to think and to act, men who are masters and not slaves of circumstances, men who possess breadth of mind, clearness of thought, and the courage of their convictions.” (Education page 17). This will be true of the home and of the school.