In Our Zeal

"Nowhere with us are two out of twelve, much less sixteen out of twenty-four, school hours devoted to religious instruction   Psalm, hymn, and catechism have departed; the Bible lesson is pared down to a shred; and in our zeal, we do not see that we have deprived the people of the classics, the metaphysics, the ethics--as well as the religion--peculiarly their own.  Instead, we have put into their hands--"Readers"--scraps of science, of history, of geography--saw-dust, that cannot take root downwards and bear fruit upwards in human soil.

Charlotte Mason in Formation of Character, p. 148