ABSTRACT
Language was the most intensively taught subject in all the grades. It began with the youngest children in the infant schools and was an important element in all the forms. The love of children is a personality trait that contributed greatly to John Frederic Oberlin's success as an educator. The responsibilities of parents toward their children was often the dominant theme of his preaching; but he also often reiterated similar warnings that parental responsibility for a child must stop short of domination over his life by denying him the free exercise of his will. The poeles were soberly conceived by Oberlin as a means of meeting what he considered a practical and urgent necessity, namely, to remove the children for a few hours several times each week from the evil influences of their squalid and joyless homes into places of warmth and love and joyful activity.
