In the early history of the nation, “Education,” says Painter, “was restricted to the family, in which the father was the principal teacher. There were no popular schools nor professional teachers. Yet the instruction of the Jew ... embraced a vast number of particulars.”[19] Hinsdale says: “Jewish education began with the mother. What the true Jewish mother, considered as a teacher, was, we know from both the Testaments and from many other sources. The very household duties that she performed molded her children in accordance with the national discipline. ‘The Sabbath meal, the kindling of the Sabbath lamp, and the setting apart of a portion of the dough from the bread for the household—these are but instances with which every _Taph_, as he clung to his mother’s skirts, must have been familiar.’ The bit of parchment fastened to the doorpost, on which the name of the Most High was written, ... would be among the first things to arrest his attention. “It was in the school of the mother’s knee that the stories of patriarchs and prophets, of statesmen and warriors, of poets and sages, of kings and judges, wise men and patriots, and of the great Law-giver Himself,—the whole forming the very best body of material for the purposes of child-nurture found in any language,—were told and retold until they became parts of the mind itself.” He then mentions the case of Timothy, and adds: “As teachers of their children, the women of every country may learn lessons from the matrons of Israel.”[20] This was evidently the original plan, and had the families proved faithful to the trust, the greater part, if not all, of the education would have been in the _family school_. Always, however, as long as Israel was a nation, the child (and the term covered the first twelve or fifteen years) was under the instruction of the parents. [Sidenote: Jewish church schools]