From the home school we follow the Jewish child to the synagogue or church school. Moses was instructed by the Lord to make every priest a teacher, so the nation had a whole tribe of teachers. As every town had its synagogue, so “a town in which there is no school must perish.” Quoting again from Hinsdale: “The children were gathered for instruction in the synagogues and schoolhouses, where the teacher, generally the Chazzan, or officer of the synagogue, ‘imparted to them the precious knowledge of the law, with constant adaptation to their capacity, with unwearied patience, intense earnestness, strictness tempered by kindness, but, above all, with the highest object of their training ever in view. _To keep children from all contact with vice; to train them to gentleness, even when bitterest wrong had been received_; to show sin in its repulsiveness, rather than to terrify by its consequences; _to train to strict truthfulness_; to avoid all that might lead to disagreeable or indelicate thoughts; and to do all this without showing partiality, without either undue severity or laxity of discipline, with judicious increase of study and work, with careful attention to thoroughness in acquiring knowledge—all this and more constituted the ideal set before the teacher, and made his office of such high esteem in Israel.’”[21] These teachers took the youth at the most critical period of their development. And how thoroughly they understood the needs of the developing minds! [Sidenote: Schools of the prophets] In the days of Samuel we read, for the first time, of the schools of the prophets, where young men were gathered together for the study of the law, of music, poetry, and history, and of the various trades. The name _School of the Prophets_ would indicate the spirituality of their work, and reference to the time of Elijah and Elisha and the experience of Saul would prove the truth of the inference. [Sidenote: Studies in Jewish schools] Concerning the subjects taught we are not left in ignorance, if we study the history of the people. Thus, quoting again from Painter: “The Hebrew parent was not only to impart oral instruction to his children, but to teach them also _reading and writing_. As he was to inscribe the words of the Lord upon his doorposts and gates, he must himself have learned to write; and, as he wrote them for his children, they must have been taught to read. Hence, it appears that the ability to read and write was general among the ancient Jews; and, in this particular, they surpassed every other nation of antiquity.”[22] Hinsdale says: “From the teaching of the alphabet, or writing in the primary school, to the farthest limit of instruction in the academies of the rabbis, all was marked by extreme care, wisdom, accuracy, and moral and religious purpose as the ultimate object.”[23] [Sidenote: The Bible as a text-book]