Surely there is some instruction by the oldest to the youngest nuns in the convent. And outside the convent, in the Tierney family, for example, we see the parents teaching their children, rearing them in the ways we might expect by passing down information, tradition, habit, one generation to another. Yet, there is wisdom in youth in this book as well. It is Sister Jeanne who really lives and practices the love of God for all she meets, and Sally learns, out in the world on her own, that the convent is not the place she wants to spend the rest of her life. So, in examples like these, it seems that maybe the author is telling us that she believes that knowledge and what is good or right, is not necessarily something which does always come from the top down, from the oldest to the youngest. The young are here to be listened to and learned from as well.