From the Mother's University Language Arts page:

A TRAVELER crossing a plain in India saw at a distance a slave who was busy drawing a bucket from a well. The traveler approached the well, hoping to get a drink. On reaching it he saw, to his surprise, that the bucket came to the top of the well empty. Again and again the slave let down the bucket, and ever it came to the top empty.

"Hold!" cried the traveler at length. " Do you not see that the well is empty? In order to get water from the well, you must either fill it from the reservoirs on the hills or dig down till you reach the natural springs in the earth."

This little story well symbolizes much that is called language work — routine efforts to draw from the shallow surface of the child's mind full measures of thought and feeling, efforts that we often thoughtlessly allow to become ends in themselves. Like the slave with his bucket, we go through the motions; we draw from our pupils words, sentences, paragraphs, and punctuation marks, but they are empty. And they will continue to be as empty as the slave's bucket until we change our procedure.

But the story does more than symbolize our futile efforts; it suggests to us, as did the traveler to the slave, what We must do if we would see our efforts crowned with success. We must see to it that the sources from which we attempt to draw are well supplied; we must see to it that the child contains — has command of — something expressible before we attempt to draw anything forth. The slave was told to supply his well either by drawing from the reservoirs on the hills or by sinking the well down to the natural springs. We must supply the child freely from both sources. We must open the ways for an unfailing supply of language material from the "reservoirs on the hill," — the reservoirs of fable, fairy tale, legend, myth, story, poem, --literature; we must also tap the abundant and ever renewed resources of the child's own experiences, the springs deep down in the child's reactions to the world about him — his ideas, his ambitions, his feelings and emotions. We must see that from these two inexhaustible sources the materials of thought and feeling flow together and make up the abundant stream of the child's mental life; when we do this, we may draw deeply and without disappointment.

--From the introduction to the Aldine Language Method (original spellings and grammar)
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Art credit: Rebecca et Eliezer By Alexander Cabanel

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

--Leo Tolstoy

​Art credit: Leo Tolstoy by Mikhail Nesterov

From a book called "Golden Deeds in Character Education" by Cassidy, 1921:

"Learning without character is a vain and noxious thing. The great, underlying cause of the world conflagaration which Germany started and the horrible deeds that her soldiers committed on sea and land were largely the fruits of her highly efficient system of education. But, though efficient, it was grossly material. None of those fine spiritual qualities that are so prized by civilized people were, for nearly fifty years preceding the War, permitted to influence the lives of German children.

"No trace of any fine ethical training could be found in her schools. Juvenile books contained no subtle moral lesson that should influence youth to goodness and gentility. ...

"This system of education was highly organized and coordinated; perfect in routine and detail; but wholly materialistic. It was a system without any attempt to develop fine character, which is the very soul of education...

"The worth and strength of a nation depend far less on the form of its institutions than upon the character of its people. Civilization itself is only a matter of individual improvement. Not until character is the true and steady aim of the home and school will this nation become and remain righteous. And parents and teachers should ever keep in mind:

"One former is worth a thousand reformers."

Can we learn from history or must we experience it ourselves?

Art credit: Young Germany in School by Carl Hertel (1874)

"Who asks much, learns much."
--Lord Bacon

Art credit: Portrait of a Scholar (Archimedes) by Domenico-Fetti