Lectures and annual reports on education

THE LIBRARY
OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

(

SOUTHERN BRANCH,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

LIBRARY,
i-OS ANGELES, 8AUg

LECTURES,

ANNUAL REPORTS,

EDUCATION.

BY

HOR4QJE jMANN.

CAMBRIDGE:
PUBLISHED FOR THE EDITOR.

1867.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18<5f>,

BY MRS. MARY MANN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT
SEO. C. BAND t AVERT, 3 COBNIIIt.L, BOSTON.

TO
HIS EXCELLENCY

GEORGE N. BRIGGS,

GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, AND EX-OFFICIO

Chairman of the IBoarir of (^buratiott,

Q o <^?

AND TO THE OTHER MEMBERS OF SAID BOARD,
THIS VOLUME, PREPARED AT THEIR REQUEST,

IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED,
BT

THE AUTHOR.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

IN preparing the present volumes of Mr. Mann's
works for republication, I have gone back to his
very first expositions of the deficiencies in the
administration of our common-school system, not
only because it is a matter of historical interest to
note the commencements of the reform in which
he was so actively engaged for twelve years, but
because, on looking into the present condition of
the schools, even in Massachusetts, in towns not
twenty miles from Boston, the same defects may
be observed in many cases, and in many respects,
which at first attracted his attention.

Schoolhouses, as well as churches, are still
erected without the proper means of ventilation ;
seats are still arranged without reference to the
eye-sight of the children ; examinations of school-
teachers, by School Committees, are still very im-
perfectly conducted, thus entailing upon schools
teachers who are deficient either in knowledge, or
in the power of governing upon right principles ;
and no amount of knowledge in a teacher is of
much avail where a deficiency in this power exists.
In reading ever Mr. Mann's exhortations upon

ri EDITOR'S PREFACE.

these points, one is amazed to find how little head-
way has been made ; for these evils are still exist-
ent in schools ; and we would commend these Lec-
tures and Reports to every citizen who may be
eligible to selection as a School-Committee-man.

In re-organizing the Southern portion of our
country, they will prove invaluable guides. And
the government of still another country, sister
Republics on the other side of the equator, are.
subscribing largely for these works of Mr. Mann,
by whose help they hope to give vitality and effi-
ciency to the common-school system, which they
have already adopted on the model of our own.

It is not denied that common-school education,
public, democratic school education, is held in very
different and much higher estimation than at the
time when the Massachusetts Board of Education
and the Normal Schools were inaugurated ; but
few persons who are intimately acquainted with
the subject will deny that the tone of the schools
is still far below what our advanced condition of
prosperity and science demands. A suggestion
of reform in Harvard University has of late been
made by one of the most distinguished and
thoughtful of its sons, one who will not be accused
of any visionary schemes, but who is so far conser-
vative as to be eminently just all round. He ad-
mits the necessity, when Harvard shall be changed
from a High School to a University, of an ex-
tended course of instruction in schools ; where the

EDITOR'S PREFACE. vii

studies are now, taking schools on an average, so
limited in their scope, that they do not answer the
purpose of a preparatory school for the colleges,
so that private instruction is much sought for this
end. When the principle of the "Kindergarten"
shall be fully adopted in the primary schools, so
that children may be put in possession of all their
faculties, besides being taught to read, to write,
and to count (which is now all that is truly effected
in primary schools, unless individual teachers hap-
pen to have a natural vocation for their office, and
instinctively supply craving little souls with some
of the nourishment adapted to their susceptible
age), and when the finest minds and the highest
training and preparation shall be considered indis-
pensable for teachers of schools of every grade,
and are commanded by proper rates of compen-
sation, our educational measures may be said to
have taken a second step. It may still be said
here, as has been said of late in South America by
a distinguished educationist, that more appropria-
tions are made for railroads than for education. It
is true that railroads and schools help one another
forward. When railroads penetrate every great
section of this immense country, other things
follow in regular order ; but statistics will show
that education does not take the lead yet, as it
ought to do. The laying of railroads seems to
create population, not merely to set it in motion.
The next thing to be done, surely, is to train this

viii EDITOR'S PREFACE.

increased population in the way it should go. The
present anomalous condition of our country en-
forces this argument. We are still in danger of
being led by might rather than right, and there is
no remedy for this but in the increased intelligence
of the people.

It is interesting to see that the colored people,
whose distinguishing trait at the present time
seems to be their desire for knowledge, are taking*
the schools into their hands in regions where they
predominate in numbers over the white popula-
tion. They are forming School Committees among
themselves, and colored teachers are pressing for-
ward more and more to take the places of the
white ones who have so eagerly taken up the
cause of their neglected education. The force
with which the emancipated slaves, and even the
free colored population of the South, have been
deprived of education, is undoubtedly the main-
spring of that wonderful rebound, which has never
known a parallel in the world's history, — the
rebound of a wholly oppressed and degraded
people to free themselves suddenly from the
trammels of ignorance. They feel, instinctively,
that knowledge is power ; and that instinct must
serve them until the pleasures of knowledge, for
its own sake, can take the place of it. It is
devoutly to be hoped, that they may have such
furtherance from others as will insure their being
enabled to taste these pleasures; because that

EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix

result alone will carry them through the hard
paths they are destined to travel in pursuit of the
object which they so ardently desire, — an equality
of social condition with the whites. No accumu-
lation of worldly riches, nothing but education,
can ever give it to them. And there is no doubt
that every obstacle will be thrown in their way,
for generations to come, to bar their entrance into
that heaven. Their unsurpassed vitality, their
unfathomable faith, are needed, to sustain them
under the trial ; but these give fair promise of
answering to the demand. That these volumes
may help them to wise methods, is the sincere wish
of the Editor ; and their author would feel no less
earnestly the desire of contributing something to
a cause for which he labored so intently and self-
forgettingly.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

PAG*.

MEANS AND OBJECTS OF COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION 39

LECTURE II.

SPECIAL PREPARATION A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING .

LECTURE III.

THE NECESSITY OF EDUCATION IN A REPUBLICAN GOV-

ERNMENT ...... .... 143

LECTURE IV.

WHAT GOD DOES, AND WHAT HE LEAVES FOR MAN TO

»o, IN THE WORK OF EDUCATION . . . .191

LECTURE V.

AN HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION ; SHOWING ITS DIG-

NITY AND ITS DEGRADATION ...... 241

LECTURE VI.
ON DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES ...... 297

LECTURE VH.

ON SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS ....... 338

xi

Xli CONTENTS.

PAOK.

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION 371

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE BOARD

OF EDUCATION 384

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCA-
TION ON THE SUBJECT OF SCHOOLHOUSES (SUPPLE-
MENTARY TO HIS FIRST ANNUAL REPORT) . . . 433

SECOND" ANNUAL REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE „
BOARD OF EDUCATION .... , 493

PROSPECTUS

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL.

WE avail ourselves of this opportunity to set forth, at
some length, the considerations which have induced us
to incur the labor and the responsibility of preparing
such a work, and to present an outline of the views which
it will be our endeavor hereafter to fill up.

The title we have chosen will turn the mind of every
reader to that ancient and cherished institution, the
Common Schools of Massachusetts. It will naturally
suggest such questions as these : What rank are com-
mon schools entitled to hold in our private and legislative
regards ? After an experiment of almost two hundred
years, what is the verdict rendered by Time on their
utility and necessity? Is the homage we are wont to
pay them traditionary merely, or is it founded upon an
intelligent conviction and an actual realization of their
benefits ? Have they scattered good among past gener-
ations, and have they averted evil? Go back to the
earliest days of the colony, — to the year 1647, when
they had their origin, — when almost the whole of the
present territory of this State was wilderness ; strike out
of existence this single element — the provision made

2 PROSPECTUS OF TIIE

for the education of the whole people — and would our
recorded history be different from what it is? "Would it
have been illuminated or darkened by the change?
Without the schools, should we have had the great men
in the councils and in the fields of the Revolution? or,
which is substantially the same question, should we have
had the mothers of those men? Should we have had the
sages who formed our own state Constitution, and as-
sisted in that more arduous work, the formation of the
Constitution of the United States? Without the schools^
should we have had the industrious yeomanry, exhibiting
so generally within our limits the cheering signs of com-
fort, competence, and respectability; or that race of
artisans and inventors who have made partnership with
the inexhaustible powers of the material world, and won
their resistless forces to labor for human amelioration?
Without the schools, would the same qualities of intelli-
gence and virtue have signalized the hundreds of thou-
sands who, from the distant regions of the West and
South, turn their eyes hither ward to their ancestral
home ? Would our enterprise equally have circuited the
globe, and brought back whatever products belong to a
milder climate or a richer soil ? Without this simple and
humble institution, would no change have come over our
character abroad, our social privileges at home, over the
laws which sustain, the charities which bless, the morals
which preserve, the religion which sanctifies ?

Set down the true constituents of a people's greatness
and happiness, and compare Massachusetts with those
states where one may travel from border to border with-
out ever seeing a schoolhouse ; compare nations, other-
wise similarly circumstanced, in one of which common
schools have been maintained, in the other unknown —
.Scotland with England or Ireland, Holland with Spain

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 3

or Portugal, and say whether the contrast can be but
partially and inadequately explained, on any known prin-
ciples of human nature, if the system of Public Instruc-
tion be left out of the comparison. Indeed, the only
consideration of weight to prove the inefficiency of our
public schools to elevate and dignify the people who sus-
tain them, is the indifference and neglect into which they
have fallen amongst ourselves : and yet they have not
wholly fallen into forgetfulness in a community which
rouses itself to reclaim them.

It may, indeed, be said, that it was freedom of thought,
constituting, as it did, the main element of Protestantism,
which has given superiority to the communities where
common schools have flourished. But if Protestantism,
from which systems of public instruction emanated, has
always tended towards free institutions, yet could Prot-
estantism itself have survived without the alliance of a
system of public instruction ? If the mother watched
over the child, protected it at seasons when it would
otherwise have perished, and nursed it into manly vigor,
has not the child, with filial piety, requited the boon, by
vindicating the cause, and even preserving the existence,
of the mother ?

That the general interest once felt in regard to our
common schools has subsided to an alarming degree of
indifference, is a position not likely to be questioned by
any one who has compared their earlier with their later
history. This is not to be attributed to any single cause,
but to the co-operation of many. First, perhaps, in the
series, came the life-struggle of the Revolution. Educa-
tion is principally concerned with the future. Its eye is
fixed on a remote object, whose magnitude only makes
it visible in the distance ; for it is with our moral as with
our natural vision, the dimensions of the vast are reduced

4 PROSPECTUS OF THE

by remoteness to the size of the minute in proximity ;
as in the case of the astronomer, who, while looking at
the sun, saw an animal of huge limbs and immense bulk
rushing up on one side, and soon overshadowing and
darkening its whole surface, which proved to be only a
fly crossing the upper lens of his telescope. The revo-
lutionary struggle was one for self-preservation, and, of
course, it condensed the future into the immediate and
the present. After that epoch passed, the fiscal condi-
tion of the country, the momentous questions connected
with the organization of a new government, without
model or precedent in the history of mankind, and, at a
later period, the agitations of party, have engrossed the
time and enlisted the talents of men most interested in
elevating the character of the people, and most compe-
tent to do it. It cannot be denied, too, that for years past
the public eye has been pointed backwards to the achieve-
ments of our ancestors, rather than forward to the con-
dition of our posterity; as though the praise of dead
fathers would provide adequately for living children.
The public voice, the public press, and the public mind
have been prolific of that doubtful virtue, which substi-
tutes empty commendations of what is good for earnest
efforts to procure it.

After the more important institutions of the country
had been settled, and an abundant accumulation of the
means of subsistence had bestowed leisure, it would
naturally happen that a portion of public talent and re-
sources would be set at liberty, and left to choose new
spheres of action and new objects of bounty. But here
arose those various philanthropic enterprises, whose ob-
jects lie beyond the limits of our own territory. Had it
not been for their claims to precedence, it may be pre-
sumed that no inconsiderable portion of that self-sacrifi-

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 5

cing spirit and that copious stream of wealth, so bounti-
fully expended upon other causes, would have found a
congenial sphere of activity in cultivating the moral and
intellectual wastes within our own borders. We have
lately heard many of the men, who have been foremost
in these works, speak of their past conduct, in language
which said, " These things ought we to have done, but
not to have left the others undone." And even those
munificent contributions in aid of different departments
of learning, made amongst ourselves, and to be expended
amongst ourselves, have been confined, with one recent
and praiseworthy exception, to the higher literary insti-
tutions of the country. Though their beams have been
vivifying and nourishing, yet they have been shed rather
on the solitariness of the summits of society than through
the populousness of its valleys.

Passing by many causes which have conduced to the
same end, we shall mention but one more. In no other
country was ever such a bounty offered upon industry
and practical talent as in ours. Skill, sagacity, the re-
sults of intellectual application, have won a large portion
of the prizes of fame and of opulence. It has been as
though an officer had been sent to every house, to seek
out and to impress whatever could be made available for
outward and material prosperity. Hence wealth, pos-
sessions, whatever makes up the external part — the
body, if we may so speak — of human welfare, have ad-
vanced with unparalleled success ; while a general ameli-
oration of habits, and those purer pleasures which flow
from a cultivation of the higher sentiments, which con-
stitute the spirit of human welfare, and enhance a thou-
sand-fold the worth of all temporal possessions, — these
have been comparatively neglected. Perhaps it is in the
order of nature that a people, like an individual, shall

6 PEOSPECTUS OF THE

first provide for its lower and animal wants, — its food,
its raiment, its shelter, — but the demands of this part of
our nature should be watchfully guarded, lest in the ac-
quisition of sensual and material gratifications we lose
sight of the line which separates competence and com-
fort from superfluity and extravagance, and thus forget
and forfeit our nobler capacities for more rational enjoy-
ments.

From an inherent cause, different opinions will always
be entertained of the value of education by different men,.
Those who think most correctly upon the subject will
still think differently ; and this difference will be meas-
ured by the difference in their respective powers of
comprehension and forethought. Being infinite in im-
portance, the only question can be, Who approximates
nearest in his computation of its worth ? Its value will
be rated by each just as highly as he can think.

The necessity of education, who can doubt? The
average length of human life is supposed to be between
thirty and forty years. How many efforts are to be put
forth, how many and various relations to be filled, how
many duties to be performed, within that brief period of
time ! How ignorant of all these efforts, relations and
duties are the early years of infancy ! The human being-
is less endowed with instincts for his guidance than the
lower orders of animated creation. Consider then his
condition when first ushered into life. He is encom-
passed by a universe of relations, each one of which will
prove a blessing or a curse, just according to the position
which he may sustain towards it, and yet in regard to all
these relations it is to him a universe of darkness. All
his faculties and powers are susceptible of a right direc-
tion and control, and, if obedient to them, blessings innu-
merable and inexhaustible will be lavished upon him.

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 7

But all his powers and faculties are also liable to a wrong
direction and control ; and, obedient to them, he becomes
a living wound, and the universe of encompassing rela-
tions presses upon him only to torture him. And yet
into this universe of opportunities for happiness on the
one hand, and of dangers and temptations on the other,
he is brought, without any knowledge whither he should
go or what he should do, — by what means he shall se-
cure happiness or avert misery. To leave such a being
physically alone, that is, to refuse to provide nourish-
ment, raiment, protection against the seasons and the
elements, would be to insure his destruction. But such
abandonment would be mercy, compared with leaving
him alone intellectually and morally. Nor is it guidance
merely that he needs ; for his guides will be soon re-
moved in the course of nature, when he will be left with
the dreadful heritage only of an enlarged consciousness
of wants with equal inability to supply them — with capa-
bilities of suffering immensely multiplied and magnified,
without knowledge of antidote or remedy. Before, then,
his natural protectors and guardians and teachers are re-
moved, they will leave their work undone if he have not
been prepared to protect and guide and teach himself.
Nay, if the generation that is, do not raise above their
own level the generation that is to be, the race must re-
main stationary, and the sublime law of human progres-
sion be defeated.

But passing by these general considerations, we will
select a few specific topics, in order to demonstrate that
a proper education of the rising generation is the highest
earthly duty of the risen.

That intelligence and virtue are the only support and
stability of free institutions, was a truism a long time
ago. If free institutions have any other security, we

8 PROSPECTUS OF THE

should be glad to know what it is. This great truth,
however, like many others, has received the readiest
assent of the reason, without producing that effect upon
the feelings which gives birth to action. It has been
admitted and forgotten. . We act like those debtors who
seem to think that an acknowledgment of the existence
of their indebtedness supersedes or postpones the obli-
gation of payment. But such a truth as this ought to be
wrought into the minds of the whole people, so that it
will remain there, not dormant as a mere conclusion of
the reason, but impulsive as an instinct of self-preserva-
tion. Nor is it the intelligence of a few, which will sup-
ply the indispensable condition of freedom, but that of
the many; nor a theoretic intelligence either, but a work-
ing intelligence. Nor, again, will it suffice to have men
who preach virtue or sing it ; but we must have men who
produce it themselves and know how to cultivate its
germs in others. It is not enough to have men who call
themselves Christians ; but Christians must re-examine
and verify the text, and learn whether their great Mas-
ter went about doing good or talking good merely.

Who, let us ask, are to control that legislation of the
state and country, which has been well compared to the
atmosphere, which surrounds us wherever we may be
or whithersoever we may go ? In relation to the law, no
man is ever alone. There is no earthly interest of any
man, which the law, either in its enactment or its admin-
istration, cannot reach. It may alter our relation to our
property, if we have any, or to all the means of acquiring
it, if we have none. It may take away our reputation,
or surround us with a community where to be worthy of
a good reputation would be a legal disability, arid work
a forfeiture of social privileges. The first act of the law
is to prohibit every man from redressing his own wrongs.

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 9

Hence, by its perverted or even mistaken judgments, it
may inflict wounds upon an injured man, even deeper
than those it ought to heal. If the law fails to supply
the remedy which it forbids the individual to pursue for
himself, it leaves him, in that respect, one degree worse
than he would be in a state of utter barbarism. It ties
his hands, which in a state of nature would be free, and
then permits another to wrong him with impunity. So,
too, the laws of a people not only add to or subtract from
the value of life, by extending their control over those
things which constitute so much of its welfare, but in the
case of national hostilities they take life itself without
stint or remuneration.

Now look at the agency and the agents, — the com-
mission to be executed and those who are to execute it.
The agency is the government of the state and country,
embracing in its comprehensive sway most of the greater
and all the lesser interests of life ; extending far into the
future, as well as controlling the present. In the State
of Massachusetts, the agents are any citizen who shall
have resided within its limits one year, within the town
six months, and shall have paid so much as a poll-tax,
provided one has been assessed upon him. And these
agents have power to act, wholly independent of instruc-
tions and exempt from accountability. In the language
of the law, they have a power of attorney, irrevocable, to
dispose, according to their own good pleasure, of the
dearest and most momentous interests of society. Now
what man in the community, in the selection of an agent
or trustee to administer his private affairs, governs his
choice by such a list of qualifications? Is an overseer
in a manufactory, a cashier of a bank, a clerk in a count-
ing-house, a foreman in a mechanic's shop, a market-man
who carries the produce of the farmer to market, chosen

10 PEOSPECTUS OF THE

without reference to any higher standard of conduct or
character than that he has paid a poll-tax within two
3rears ? And yet no one of these interests is comparable,
in importance, to many of those of which tlie voter dis-
poses at the ballot-box. In all other cases, we look for
fitness and qualification — a combination of properties,
adapted to the trust to be reposed or the work to be
done. A voter is a public man ; he is a member of the
p;overnment ; he officiates, indirectly, in the three de-
partments, judicial, legislative, executive. Surely, such-*
a member of the administration ought to be intelligent,
upright, conscientious, impartial, firm ; and yet his pos-
session of all these qualities and virtues is inferred, by
political argumentation, from a certificate of a brief pe-
riod of domicile and the payment of a few shillings !
What consequences will impend over society, and will
assuredly befall it too, if, at the great council of the bal-
lot-box, we see men, who but yesterday arrived at
majority, who know nothing of the principles and struc-
ture of the government under which they live, of the
functions of its officers, or the qualifications indispensa-
ble for discharging them; — if we see there men, who,
for half a century, have labored to draw society back-
wards towards barbarism ; or, what is even worse than
barbarism, to prostitute civilized intelligence to gratify
savage desires; — if we see there men, lately emerged
from confinement in prison, where they were doomed for
some outrage on the rights of the community, Avhich,
however violative of those rights it may have been, may
not be half so baneful as the measures they are now
favoring? Nor has any man a right to put such ques-
tions as these to those disposers of his welfare, perhaps
of himself, — " What knowest thou of government ; of the
deep principles upon which it rests ; of the forethought

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 11

and wisdom its policy requires ; of the equity and fidelity
its administration demands ? What carest thou for the
honesty of the man whose name is borne upon thy vote?
Art thou for making him ruler over many cities, because
he has been false to every obligation in ruling over a
lew ? " Such questions are out of place ; they are im-
pertinent, in that forum over whose portals the great
law of POLITICAL EQUALITY is written. At that gate, all
characteristics but one drop off. No longer is there re-
membered either the virtues of the good or the wisdom
of the wise, the folly of the fool or the guilt of the crim-
inal. The judges of our courts, who merely expound the
laws, are commissioned to hold their offices during good
behavior ; but no such limitation is attached to the right
of voters, though they virtually enact the laws and ap-
point the judges who administer them. In a judicial
investigation between one individual and another, a
witness may be impeached and rejected for legal infamy
or personal interest. He is not allowed to taint with his
corruption the pure stream of justice. Either of a long
catalogue of villanies works disqualification. But the
elective franchise is not forfeited by any magnitude of
interest or atrocity of character. Now as there is a wis-
dom, prudence, probity, upon which individual prosperity
depends, so upon the same qualities does the prosperity
of a government depend. Folly, selfishness, and iniquity
will be as fatal to the latter as to the former. They will
ruin a nation as certainly as they will ruin a man. How
long, then, could free institutions subsist, under adminis-
trators either weak or wicked? How long under weak-
ness and wickedness combined ?

This topic is so momentous, and, as we fear, so super-
ficially considered, that we cannot forbear to present it
under another form of elucidation. It is yet to be de-

12 PEOSPECTUS OF THE

veloped how close a partnership is a republican govern-
ment with the right of universal suffrage. It is yet to
be manifested, that each citizen, by virtue of this social
partnership, contributes, as his part of the common capi-
tal, his hopes for the future, his subsistence for the pres-
ent, his reputation, his life. By virtue of this compact,
the other members of the firm have power to dispose of
the investments, according to their own views and mo-
tives, be they of policy or plunder. Not entire, however,
is the analogy between a business partnership between
merchants and this political association. Prom the for-
mer a man can withdraw, when he finds that the mis-
management of his associates is overwhelming his
interests with ruin and his character with disgrace.
Retiring, he may withdraw whatever remains of his un-
squandered fortune. But not so in this political partner-
ship. Though in this each has a more enlarged power
of binding the whole, yet none can strike his name from
the company and thereby evade the imposition of new
responsibilities. The only legalized modes of dissolving
the connection are death or self-banishment. Would it
not be good policy for the members of such a firm to ex-
pend a little, both of their time and their revenue, to
qualify all of those future members, whose admission
they cannot prevent?

Shortlived, indeed, would be the fame of our ancestors,
if they had established such a frame of government with-
out providing some extensive guaranty that it should
escape the misrule of ignorance and licentiousness.
Otherwise, to have put loaded fire-arms into the hands of
children would have been wisdom in comparison.

Do we then mourn over that political condition of con-
tingent peril, into which we have been thrown by the
great events of the past ? No ! but we rejoice with un-

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 13

speakable joy. The old cycle of years is -filled; a new
era dawns upon the world. In our day, the very condi-
tions of social existence are reversed. Heretofore, the
rulers of the earth have enjoyed their wealth and their
power ; they have rioted in splendid palaces, or played
the terrible games of war, because the multitude were
robbed not only of their rights, but of all the means of
reclaiming them. Political oppression chained the bodies
of men ; religious, their souls. Look backwards through
the historic vista, and how scantily peopled has the earth
been with beings blessed with any knowledge of human
duties or any enjoyment of human rights. Rulers, by
hereditary descent or by conquest, a few commanders of
navies or of armies, — some hundred men in a nation of
millions — are all who emerge into the upper day of his-
tory, from that darkness which shrouds the countless
myriads of our race. Sometimes a poet in singing the
praises of his chief, or a historian in enumerating the
elements of a tyrant's power, has noticed the number of
his subject millions ; yet with as little recognition of their
common nature, as little sympathy for their condition, as
is felt by a curious traveller, who computes the number
of insects that swarm in a given space on the banks- of
the Nile or the Ganges. The beings who bore the
moral lineaments and image of God, would have been
m;\inly forgotten, except for those brief statistics which
number the slaughtered thousands of the battle-field.
And in all this, for those times, there was a certain fit-
ness and propriety. Prerogative, dominion, could not
otherwise exist. Sight and knowledge on one side, blind-
ness and ignorance on the other, were the circumstances
that made equals unequal. Now social positions are
changed. They who were beneath, are above. They
who obeyed, rule. And hence, those who have more of

14 PROSPECTUS OF THE

worldly possessions in their hands ; who, from higher en-
lightenment and a more extensive forecast, in regard to
their children, have a longer reach of the future in their
eye, must seek for help, not in the ignorance and abase-
ment, but in the intelligence and elevation of the multi-
tude. What would once have been their ruin, is now
their only salvation ; for that multitude is safe in the
power it wields. No monarch surrounded by his guards,
no nobleman with his lengthened retinue, no knight in
his harness of mail, was ever half so secure in his suprem-
acy, as the humblest voter is with us of making his will
known and felt through all the ranks of society. Hence
do we rejoice, that in the providence of God a new series
of events has been unfolded, which will compel the basest
instincts of selfishness to co-operate with the highest
sentiments of duty in ameliorating the condition of man-
kind, through an enlargement of their understandings
and a purification of their affections. If the multitude,
who have the power, are not fitted to exercise it, society
will be like the herding together of wolves. The only
safety, then, is in the concomitance of qualifications and
power.

All our readers must have seen or heard of those
strolling companies of tumblers, rope-dancers or balance-
masters, who, among other feats, build human pyramids.
Four stand side by side in a row ; three more mount up
and stand upon their shoulders ; two others overclimb
these and make a third tier ; another ascends aloft, some
twenty feet, and, poising himself on the topmost shoul-
ders, makes the apex of the pyramid. This represents
the structure of despotic governments exactly. While
those above can put out the eyes of those below when-
ever they look upward, and can beat them (with a long
pole, commonly called a sceptre) into due subjection,

COMMON-SCHOOL JOUENAL. 15

things go on very well. But when those below discover
how the great and equal law of gravitation bears upon
the upper strata, and begin to execute certain well-con-
certed jostlings, adapted to topple down their highnesses,
then, from having the farthest to fall, they find themselves
to be the most exposed part of society ; and if not utterly
bereft of reason, they will pray Heaven above and their
underlings below to let them get down as safely and as
fast as they can. Descended to a common platform, they
find their own best welfare dependent upon the common
good ; and that, if they would attain superiority, it must
be that noble superiority, which arises from higher char-
acter and more beneficent conduct. This is the condi-
tion of our society, and this the law by which the
individual welfare of its members is governed.

The love and the admiration of knowledge are instinc-
tive in the human mind. Savages tremble before those
who are supposed to be acquainted with the secret
workings of nature. Divine honors are won amongst
them by superior knowledge. And with civilized nations
in modern times, the veneration for talent and genius
has risen to such a height, that, by common consent, dis-
coveries in science and achievements in literature have
been regarded as a surer test of advancement, as confer-
ring higher honor, than exploits in arms or progress in
the useful arts. But still the object and the rivalry have
been to enlarge the boundaries of science, and, if we may
so speak, to pile up knowledge, mass upon mass, to such
a height, that its bright summits might be visible in dis-
tant lands. There has been no ambition, no competition,
to spread it amongst the people. To produce one man,
unmatched elsewhere in his department of learning, has
been the title to fame amongst emulous nations. To ex-
hibit one man who could read twenty foreign languages,

16 PROSPECTUS OF THE

has been deemed better than to exhibit tens of thousands
who could read understandingly the elevating truths con-
tained in their own. One prodigy of genius in an age
has answered the demands of humanity upon an empire
shrouded in ignorance. What a chorus for the triumph
of intellect was sung, by the most civilized and learned
nation in the old world, when one of its astronomers dis-
covered a planet in the distant regions of space, though
millions of its people were then suffering under debasing
superstitions, derived from heathen astrology. In 1751,"
the New Style was substituted for the Old, by the Brit-
ish Parliament. The scientific labors necessary for the
change were principally performed by the Earl of Mac-
clesfield and the learned astronomer Dr. Bradley. Great
pains were taken beforehand to prepare the public mind
for its introduction ; but so great was the ignorance and
superstition of the people, that, three years afterwards,
when a son of Lord Macclesfield was a candidate for the
House of Commons, the mob pursued him, crying, " Give
us back the eleven days we have been robbed of; " —
and even several years afterwards, when Dr. Bradley,
worn down by his labors in the cause of science, was
sinking under the disease which at last ended his days,
the people attributed his sufferings to a judgment from
heaven, for having been engaged in so impious an un-
dertaking. They probably thought their lives had been
shortened by a change in the almanac. As a conse-
quence of this view, that an enlargement of knowledge
amongst a few was every thing, and the multiplication of
the number of minds capable of comprehending and en-
joying it was nothing, its stores have been gathered into
universities and learned halls ; and an amount of time
and of labor has been uselessly spent in cloistered cells,
sufficient to have breathed moral life and intellectual ac-

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 17

tivity into millions of minds. While over wide tracts of
British territory, persons who could read and write were
scarcely to be found, the funds of government were em-
ployed to collect libraries so extensive that no mortal
could accomplish the perusal of their books, except his
life were prolonged to such seniority as would displace
Methuselah from his rank in the catechism. In the year
1826, the present Lord Brougham, in a pamphlet upon
Education, undertook to demonstrate, for the benefit of
his fellow-countrymen, that a penny a week, saved from
the earnings of a whole family, for one year, would en-
able them to purchase one book for their instruction in
some of the commonest duties of life. But that great
government, instead of supplying such a want, has spent
tens of thousands of pounds in hunting, amidst icebergs
and polar bears, for a North-west passage, difficult to find,
and worthless when discovered.

Far different is the grateful path, where we are sum-
moned to a glorious duty. Not to enter every dwelling
and seize its resources, in order to swell the redundancy
of some treasure-house of knowledge ; not to collect the
rills, whose waters might fertilize the whole land, and
gather them into a stagnant reservoir : — this is not our
work ; but multiplication, diffusion, ever-replenishing, un-
til the people shall learn the nature of the true duties
and enjoyments of freemen. Let not the quest for new
discoveries cease ; let philosopher after philosopher re-
veal more and more of the wonderful works of nature,
and thus present to all men new reasons for adoration of
the Creator. We would not call back any one who is
exploring the skies or diving into the earth for know-
ledge; but first of all, we would diffuse the great moral,
social, and economical truths, already discovered, amongst
the people. What is practically valuable among the

18 PROSPECTUS OF THE

accumulations of past centuries, we would reproduce, and
make it, as far as possible, the fireside companion of
every citizen ; so that if an inventory could be taken of
the virtue and intelligence of the people, the units would
swell to an aggregate, incomputable by the highest
standards of former times.

But shall we aim to make every man a philosopher ?
If by this is meant that highest reach of philosophy,
which consists in an understanding of one's duty and
destination, and a disposition to perform the one and live
up to the other, we answer, yes ; but not that every man
shall be linguist, rhetorician, or astronomer, any more
than we would that every man should be tailor, black-
smith, and watchmaker. Let us not, however, overlook
one of the most striking facts in the ordination of provi-
dence, that the truths, which it required the greatest
philosophers, toiling for years, perhaps for lives, to dis-
cover, can be made perfectly intelligible to ordinary
minds in weeks, or even days. It took the race more
than fifty-five centuries to discover and establish the true
solar system ; and yet the space of fifty-five hours would
suffice to give to an intelligent man such an idea of its stu-
pendous movements and beautiful harmony, that with his
whole mind and heart he would exclaim, " An undevout
astronomer is mad ! "

One of the most important of all the consequences
which have yet resulted from a recognition of the exist-
ence of individual man as a being of rights and duties,
has been the inquiry, what are his attributes; what re-
lation does he bear to other parts of the universe ; that
is, what special adaptation and fitness is there in his con-
stitution to the material world, to filial, fraternal, conju-
gal, parental relations, to society, to his Maker ; how far
can any one of these tendencies be carried without en-

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 19

croaching upon the rightful province of others ; and what
are the specific consequences of the undue indulgence or
neglect of any one of them? From this examination, a
beam of light has been thrown directly upon the subject
of education. Among the ancients, physical strength
was in great demand. The wars they were forever
waging required corporeal vigor, a power of bodily en-
durance, and that thoughtless bravery which springs
from the animal nature, rather than from the moral attri-
butes. Hence the invigoration of the body was their
paramount object ; and civic games, national rewards, and
honors, all tended to rear a race of vigorous animals
rather than of exalted men. Except at some Augustan
epoch, the greatness which was admired and emulated was
that of the body and not of the soul. The word which
the Romans used to express " virtue " was that which
originally signified "valor." Hercules was deified be-
cause of the strong muscles in his arms and legs, and the
Israelites proclaimed Saul their king, by acclamation, be-
cause he was taller by a head and neck than any other
of the people. The opposite extreme has prevailed in
modern times. Our mark has been to cultivate the
powers of the mind, forgetful of the body — as though
we were disembodied spirits already ; — and among the
mental powers, to develop and invigorate the intellect,
rather than to regulate those appetites and affections
upon which so vast a proportion of all individual and
social welfare rests. Each system is partially right;
each is mainly wrong. Each has an element of truth in
it, upon which its advocates could stand, to defend the
attendant errors. In the education of a human being,
all his powers are to be regarded. When the perfection
of a work depends upon the proportion and harmony of
its parts, the absence of any part defeats the whole ; and

20 PROSPECTUS OF THE

this is a reason why the most civilized people have fallen
so immeasurably below an attainable point of elevation.
One of the greatest contributions of science to the world
is the clearness, the distinctness, with which the details
of the idea have been brought out, and made, as it were,
visible and tangible, that man is a being, not created for
one duty, one enjoyment, one relation only, but for many
duties, many enjoyments, and many relations ; that he is
endowed by his Maker with distinct original capacities
and powers, by which he is fitted for the manifold pur-
poses of his being ; that these capacities and powers are
neither equal in authority, nor is their gratification at-
tended with equal quantities of enjoyment, but that they
rise in authority and in their power of bestowing pleas-
ure, according to a graduated scale, from those animal
gratifications which we hold in common with the brutes,
to the sublime emotions, by which we may become kin-
dred to perfected spirits. They rise, like the ladder seen
in the vision of the patriarch, which, resting on earth,
reached heaven. The first feeling of an infant after birth
ought to be and is an impulse of the instinct for food,
while the last thought of a dying man should be that of
a life well spent and an anticipation of a better existence.
How near to each other are these extremes in point of
time ; how infinitely remote in character ! To prepare
the human beings who are coming into this world, as far
as human means can do it, to pass from one of these
points to the other, is the work of Education.

Whatever of this noble work is within the compass of
human powers, is to be accomplished through an investi-
gation of principles, and a skilful application of them to
practice, even in their minutest details, however appar-
ently trivial and insignificant. The type and paper had
first to be mechanically prepared, whereby even the
Gospels have come to us.

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 21

Our limits permit only a brief reference to the classes
of means by which the objects of education are attain-
able. In treating of education, in modern times, it has
become as customary to classify its departments under
the three heads of Physical, Intellectual, and Moral or
Religious, as it is in geographical treatises to consider
the earth under the natural divisions of continents, oceans,
islands, &c. We shall offer a few remarks under each
of these heads.

When physical education is mentioned, that is a knowl-
edge of the laws by which health and strength are at-
tained and preserved, many people start and ask in
surprise whether every man is to be a physician. The
answer to this is easy. Physicians must understand the
laws and symptoms of the diseased body. It is enough
for common men to understand the laws and functions of
the healthy body. The conditions of health are few,
simple, intelligible. The action of disease is intricate
and infinite. Anybody is competent to a knowledge of
the former. After so many lives of study and experience,
the latter is still an imperfect science. That knowledge
respecting air, exercise, dress, and diet, which is requi-
site for the preservation of health, may be acquired with
a far less amount of attention and expense, than are com-
monly necessary in a three-months' sickness; while a
physician has to learn the endless catalogue of diseases
and the infinite varieties of pain, together with the prop-
erties and applications of a catalogue of supposed reme-
dies equally endless.

The body is not only the instrument through which
the mind operates, but it is the first and only one through
which the mind can act upon any other instrument, pro-
vided for it by science or art. Hence the highest powers
of mind, with the most perfect external instruments all

22 PROSPECTUS OF THE

around it, and the noblest sphere of action before it, may
be baffled through the defects of that intermediate in-
strument the body. Prom an ignorant violation of the
simple laws of health, how many young men sicken and
die, after having incurred the expense and volunteered
the labor necessary to qualify them for usefulness and
honor ; like frail barks, sinking in the ocean at the first
approach of the storm, and carrying down the costly
freight with which they were laden ! Who that has
reached middle life has not seen many of the friends wfTo
started with him under the happiest auguries of success,
broken down in their career ; — not falling nobly in the
iace, but ignobly perishing by the wayside and far from
the goal of duty ? Mental power is so dependent for its
manifestation on physical power, that we deem it not ex-
travagant to say, that if, amongst those who lead seden-
tary lives, physical power could be doubled, their mental
power would be doubled also. The health and constitu-
tional vigor of a people is a blessing not to be lost —
certainly not to be regained — in a day. Not only do
bodily fragility and incapacity of endurance diminish the
available powers of the intellect, but the perpetual pres-
ence of pain, the depressing sensations of diseases, not
acute, tend to impair the efficient impulses of virtue and
to undermine the foundations of moral character. Grad-
ually and imperceptibly a race may physically deteriorate,
until their bodies shall degenerate into places, Avhich,
without being wholly untenantable, are still wholly unfit
to keep a soul in.

A proper intellectual education begins with a cultiva-
tion of the senses. Everybody knows the vast difference
which exists between different men, in the quickness
with which they catch the qualities of things, and the
fidelity with which they are able to recall their impres-

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 23

sions. The exquisite sense of touch acquired by the
blind, of sight acquired by the deaf and dumb, shows at
once what those senses are capable of accomplishing,
and how far the mass of the community fall short of what
they might acquire. The ideas excited in the mind by
means of the senses constitute at least the main portion
of the elements of subsequent reasoning. If we may use
an artisan's comparison, the senses bring a large part of
the rough stock or raw material into the mind, after-
wards to be worked up by the reason into solid and use-
ful productions. And as no skill of the workman, though
it rise to infinite, can make a durable and perfect fabric
from worthless substances, so the noblest intellect ever
created will produce only erroneous results, if acting
upon a store of false perceptions.

In a volume of the Historical Collections, there is pre-
served a map of what now constitutes the territory of
Maine and Massachusetts, which was published by Capt.
John Smith, in London, in 1614, under the express
authority of Prince Charles. In that map Boston is
placed about twenty leagues north of Charles River,
Salem about twelve leagues south of Boston, and Cam-
bridge more than thirty leagues north of Salem. The
map represents the distance between Boston and Plym-
outh to be about ninety miles. Now suppose any one
were to confide in the correctness of that map, and go
twelve leagues south of Boston to find Salem, or thirty
leagues north of Salem to visit Cambridge. Yet the
mischief caused by getting such erroneous ideas into the
mind, is no adequate representation of the mischief, and
often ruin, of acquiring wrong notions on a thousand
subjects of practical business or social duty.

The next office of the intellect is to observe the rela-
tions which exist between objects, and how they may be

24 PROSPECTUS OF THE

made subservient to human welfare. Innumerable as
are the individual objects around us, the relations be-
tween them and our personal relations to them are in-
definitely more numerous. Hence it is that not u waking
hour passes, during the whole course of our lives, which
does not require an observation of the things around us,
and an exercise of judgment, either in adjusting them to
our condition, or our condition to theirs. Let us illus-
trate this by a supposition. The architect sits musing
in his office. He is arranging in his mind the ideas of
all the different parts of a perfect edifice, and, one after
another, they rise and take their proper places in his
imagination, until the mental archetype stands forth in
fair proportions from the foundation to the cope-stone.
Then a thousand instruments, and hands and limbs,
which are but instruments, are put in motion : the stone
comes from the quarry, the wood from the forest, the
iron from the earth ; the soft clay becomes solid in the
bricks, and the solid limestone soft for the mortar ;
the sand is turned into glass ; a change is wrought in the
form and place of many thousand things ; and in a few
months, that image, which the musing architect had in
his mind, has taken body and form, and has become the
admiration of every beholder and a home for many gen-
erations. Yet in all the countless operations of the work,
each one of which demanded the constant aid of the per-
ceptive and judging powers, not a single mistake could
have been committed without retarding the completion
or impairing the perfections of the structure. And so in
all the businesses of life, — in agriculture, arts, com-
merce, government ; in all the sacredness of domestic and
social relations ; in fine, wherever we touch any part of
the material or spiritual universe, — the possession and
the exercise of a sound intellect are necessary, or mis-

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 25

take, discomfiture, ruin, misery, will thwart and frustrate
our plans. Who can think, without anxiety, of commit-
ting interests, infinite in number and immeasurable in
importance, to a generation with perverted or unculti-
vated intellects?

But the highest function of the intellect is that of dis-
covering the Laws which the Creator has impressed
upon every work of his hands. A superficial survey of
the operations of nature and events of life might lead
one to infer that they are unregulated, — the produ-fction
of chance, — thrown out promiscuously, without regard
to order or system, — instead of being certain results of
immutable principles. On the contrary, one of the most
striking manifestations of divine wisdom seems to be,
that each part of the creation is endued with a definite
nature, has its appropriate properties and uses, and is
made subject to such invariable laws, that the same cir-
cumstances will always produce the same results, and
different circumstances different results. These laws, so
far as discovered, constitute the body of human science ;
so far as undiscovered, a noble field for intellectual labor.
They are one great element in the superiority of civilized
man. We know the laws by which the pathless ocean
can be traversed, so that a navigator will leave one of
our ports, and strike the narrowest inlet on the other
side of the globe. We know thousands of those laws by
which the earth yields her increase, and by which her
varied productions are changed into innumerable forms,
to subserve the comfort and happiness of man. We are
forever encompassed by these laws, — equally in the
most trivial and the most momentous concerns of life.
We never take a step, or breathe a breath, or form a reso-
lution, but they attach to the act, and affix their conse-
quences. Nor, in one sense, does it matter whether we

26 PROSPECTUS OP THE

know them or not. They affix the appropriate results to
ignorance as well as to wisdom, to involuntary as well as
to voluntary infringements. The fire will burn the finger
of the innocent infant who plays with it, as well as the
body of the Hindoo widow who leaps into it for self-de-
struction. How indispensable then is a knowledge of
these laws ! How long should we remain at liberty, and
unpunished, were we to go into a foreign country and
proceed at once to the gratification of our desires, with-
out Becoming acquainted with its laws? We come into
this world, as into a strange country, ignorant of these
infinitely numerous laws, and we must learn and obey
them, or suffer infinitely numerous penalties for their
violation.

All the plans of wise men are founded upon the as-
sumption of the regularity and invariableness of Nature's
laws. We may rely with confidence upon their fidelity,
for they will never betray us. We anticipate the course
of the seasons, and spring, summer, autumn, winter, fol-
low with grateful vicissitude. We foretell the daily ap-
parent revolution of the sun, and it never fails to rise
and set at the appointed moment. When we suffer from
the irresistible action of these laws, it is because we have
not yet discovered them, or are wickedly regardless of
them. So in our physical and moral nature, we are sub-
ject to the laws of exercise, temperance, veracity, justice,
benevolence, piety, and if these are obeyed, it cannot be
ill with us. In the midst of all this beauty and harmony,
how lamentable it is to find in the houses of our citizens,
and often on the counters of our bookstores, stories of
ghosts and apparitions, and dream-books and fortune-
tellers, by which the most trivial occurrences of the day
or the incongruous visions of the night are held to be
auguries of human destiny ; filling minds, made to be

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 27

rational, with illusive hopes and cruel fears ; going back
to the times when madmen were the accredited expound-
ers of Nature ; — and proving, if we may express our-
selves in mercantile phrase, that the old firm of Night
and Chaos are still doing an extensive business. Intelli-
gence is the only weapon wherewith this vermin brood
can be hunted. The philosophy or the opinion, which
refers events that are within our control to an agency
beyond it, bereaves man of a power graciously conferred
on him by Heaven for the promotion of his welfare.

On these momentous subjects, we can hardly say any
thing beyond what is to be found in our Prospectus,
without entering fields of thought which' it is here im-
possible to traverse. Yet, on the other hand, it is
scarcely possible even to mention so impulsive a theme,
without being roused to expressions in attestation of its
value. What deep and unfathomable meaning dwells in
the words veracity, impartiality, benevolence, justice,
duty ! Attaching to us in our earliest childhood, follow-
ing us, through every waking moment of our lives, with
the imposition of ever-renewing commands ; — attaching
to us in the narrowness of the domestic circle, yet, as
our knowledge and our relations expand to fill up larger
and larger circles, fastening new obligations upon us,
commensurate with our powers of performance ; — in this
view, the all-infolding law of morality may seem to be a
task and a burden ; but when we perceive its consonance
to our nature, its pure and inexhaustible rewards for
obedience, its power of imparting an all-conquering
energy, wherever loftiest efforts are demanded, we must
hail its authority as among our highest honors and bless-
ings. For what slaves are they, over whom conscience
is not supreme ! What sovereignty awaits those who
yield submission to its dictates ! Never since the crea-

28 PROSPECTUS OF THE

tion of man has there been a nation like ours, so nursed
in its infancy by the smiles of Providence, endued with
such vigor in the first half-century of its being, and made
capable in its advancing years at once of rising to such
unparalleled power, and of making existence so rich a
boon to its multitudinous members. For this very rea-
son, debasement would stand in appalling contrast with
its early promises ; and if, through immorality, it inflict
upon itself suicidal wounds, the pangs of its death-strug-
gle will be terrible in proportion to the vigor of its frame
and the tenacity of its young life. It has been well said
that it took Rome three hundred years to die. Her
giant heart still beat, though corruption festered through
all her members. Fiercer will be the throes and deeper
the shame of this young republic, if, in the bright morn-
ing of its days, and enriched with all the beneficence of
heaven, it grows wanton in its strength, and, maddening
itself with the cup of vice, perishes basely in sight of its
high destiny.

There is every thing in our institutions to give (if that
were possible) even an artificial and extraneous value to
upright conduct, to nobleness and elevation of character.
Our institutions demand men, in whose hearts great
thoughts and great deeds are native, spontaneous, irre-
pressible. And if we do not have a generation of men
whose virtues will save us, we shall have a generation
whose false pretensions to virtue will ruin us. In a state
and country like ours, a thousand selfish considerations
tempt men to become hypocrites and to put on the out-
ward guises of morality. Ambition may counsel that
honors are most easily won through honest seemings.
Avarice may covet a fair reputation for its pecuniary
value. Pride and vanity may look for regard without
the worth which alone can challenge it. But all such

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 29

supports will fail in the hour of temptation. They have
no depth of root in the moral sentiments. The germs of
morality must be planted in the moral nature of children
at an early period of their life. In that genial soil they
will flourish and gather strength from surer and deeper
sources than those of time-serving policy ; like those pas-
ture oaks we see scattered about the fields of the farm-
ers, which, striking their roots downward into the earth
far as their topmost branches ascend into the air, draw
their nourishment from perennial fountains, and thereby
preserve their foliage fresh and green, through seasons
of fiery drought, when all surrounding vegetation is
scorched to a cinder.

The diversity of religious doctrines, prevalent in our
community, would render it difficult to inculcate any
religious truths, through the pages of a periodical de-
signed for general circulation, were it not for two rea-
sons : first, that the points on which different portions of
a Christian community differ among themselves are far
less numerous than those on which they agree; and,
secondly, were it not also true, that a belief in those
points in which they all agree, constitutes the best pos-
sible preparation for each to proceed in adding those dis-
tinctive particulars, deemed necessary to a complete and
perfect faith. A work, devoted to education, which did
not recognize the truth that we were created to be re-
ligious beings, would be as though we were to form a
human body forgetting to put in a heart.

While, therefore, we rejoice that each member of this
Christian community possesses the Protestant liberty of
adopting and avowing such peculiar doctrines as best
approve themselves to his own mind, we shall open our
columns to them neither for defence nor confutation ; —
contenting ourselves, in this sphere of duty, with unfold-

30 PROSPECTUS OF THE

ing and applying the great principles of love to God and
love to man, on which " hang all the law and the pro-
phets." We have no fear of giving offence to any sect,
by teaching children to do unto others as they would
that others should do unto them.

We have sketched an imperfect outline of what a man
should do, and what he should not do ; so that in educat-
ing children they may be prepared to perform the one
and discard the other. The great events of life are the
consequences which flow from precedent means. If we
would have improved men, we must have improved
means of educating children. By using the appropriate
means, it is perfectly practicable to have a community,
whose main body shall march forward in the line of in-
dustry, prosperit}7-, and uprightness, while a few strag-
glers or deserters only shall leave its compact ranks to
enlist under the banners of vice ; or, by discarding the
appropriate means, it is perfectly easy to reverse this
condition, so that the main body of society shall be the
abandoned, the sensual, the profligate, with only here and
there an heroic exception, fleeing apostate ranks. Of all
the means in our possession, the common school has pre-
cedence, because of its universality ; because it is the
only reliance of the vast majority of children ; because it
gives them the earliest direction, and an impulse whose
force is seldom spent until death. Whatever advances
the common school, then, will enhance individual and
social well-being for generations to come. History must
be written and read with different emotions of joy or
grief, as they rise or decline ; and individual minds will
bear ineffaceable traces of their good or evil inscriptions.
As, to every great river, the confluence of a thousand
streams are necessary, so every great result is only the
sum — the product — the gathering together — of a

COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL. 31

countless number of minute operations. "We would go
back, therefore, to the fountain of youth. We would act
upon the great truth, which led one of the master paint-
ers of Italy to begin, in his art, back at the very grinding
and mixing of his paints, that no unskilfulness in the pre-
paration of the colors should be found on completion to
have marred the beauty or dimmed the clearness of
works which were to challenge the admiration of pos-
terity. Hence, to improve the places where the business
of education is carried on ; to better what may be called
their outward and material organization ; to attend to
arrangements merely mechanical ; to adapt with a nicer
adjustment the implements and the processes, and to
arrange more philosophically the kind and the succession
of studies ; to increase the qualifications and the rewards
of instructors, and to advance them to that social posi-
tion they deserve to hold ; to convince the community
that their highest interests are dependent upon the cul-
ture of their children, — is the sphere of action to which
this periodical is dedicated.

CITIZENS OP MASSACHUSETTS, — Will you proifer your
aid for the promotion of this object ? It appeals to your
patriotism. It appeals to your philanthropy. None of
you is so high as not to need the education of the people
as a safeguard ; none of you so low as to be beneath its
uplifting power. To be emulous of the good name of
your ancestors may be an honor ; but to be devoted to
the welfare of your posterity is a duty. The one may
be founded on selfishness ; the other is allied to religion.
We invoke your co-operation, not so much for the out-
ward and perishable good of your children, as for their
inward and abiding good ; — not for a temporary object,
but for the interminable future. We seek less for their
external and mutable interests, than for the establish-

32 PROSPECTUS OF THE COMMON-SCHOOL JOURNAL.

raent of those great principles which lie under the whole
length of existence. Let them be educated to be above
pride as well as above abasement ; to be the master,
instead of the slave, of accident and of circumstance ; to
live less in the region of the senses and appetites, and
more in the serener and happier sphere of intellect, of
morals, and religion. Then, though you leave them no
patrimony, they will never be poor ; though temporal
adversity befall them, they cannot be deprived of the
substantial part of all happiness.

NOVEMBER, 1838.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

VOLUME OF LECTURES NOW REPUBLISHED.

THE Act creating the Massachusetts Board of Edu-
cation was passed April 20, 1837. In June follow-
ing, the Board was organized, and its Secretary
chosen. The duties of the Secretary, as expressed
in the Act, are, to " collect information of the actual
condition and efficiency of the Common Schools,
and other means of popular education ; and to
diffuse as widely as possible, throughout every
part of the Commonwealth, information of the most
approved and successful methods of arranging the
studies, and conducting the education of the young,
to the end that all children in this Commonwealth,
who depend upon Common Schools for instruction,
may have the best education which those schools
can be made to impart,"

The Board, immediately after its organization,
issued an " Address to the Public," inviting the
friends of education to assemble in convention, in
their respective counties, in the ensuing autumn ;
and the Secretary was requested to be present at

33

34 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

those conventions, both for the purpose of obtain-
ing information in regard to the condition of the
schools, and of explaining to the public what were
supposed to be the leading motives and objects of
the Legislature in creating the Board.

The author of the following Lectures was a
member of the Legislature when the act establish-
ing the Board was passed ; and he was intimately^
acquainted with the general views of its projectors
and advocates. At that time, however, the idea
never entered his mind that he should be even a
candidate for the Secretaryship ; but when the
Board was organized, and the station was offered
him, he was induced to accept it ; — not so much
from any supposed fitness for the office, as from
the congeniality of its duties with all his tastes and
predilections, and because he thought that what-
ever of industry, or of capacity for usefulness, he
might possess, could be exerted more beneficially
to his fellow-men in this situation than in any
other. On accepting the appointment, therefore,
it became his duty to meet the county conventions,
which were held throughout the State, in the
autumn of 1837 ; and the first of the following
lectures was prepared for those occasions. Its
object was to sketch a rapid outline of deficiencies
to be supplied, and of objects to be pursued, in
relation to the Common-School system of Massa-
chusetts.

In the session of 1838, the Legislature provided

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 35

that a Common-School convention should be held,
each year, in each county of the Commonwealth,
and that the Secretary should be present at every
convention. This law continued in force until the
year 1842, when it was repealed. During the first
five years, therefore, after the establishment of the
Board, a Common-School convention was annually
held in each county in the Commonwealth ; and
in some of the large counties two or more such
conventions were held. The Secretary made his
annual circuit through the State, and was present
at them all; and the first five of the following
lectures were respectively delivered before the an-
nual conventions. The lecture on " District-School
Libraries " was prepared in view of the great defi-
ciency of books in our towns, suitable for the read-
ing of children ; and was delivered before Teach-
ers' Associations, Lyceums, &c., in different parts of
the State. In the year 1839, a number of the
friends of education in Boston instituted a course
of lectures for the female teachers in the city, and
the lecture on " School Punishments " was deliv-
ered, as one of that course.

On almost all the occasions above referred to, a
copy of the lecture delivered was requested for the
press ; but the inadequacy of the views presented,
when compared with the magnitude and grandeur
of the subject discussed, always induced the author
(except in regard to the first lecture, which was
printed in 1840, in order to make known, more

36 AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

generally, the objects which the Board had in
view) to decline a compliance with the request.
In the month of May last, however, the Board of
Education, by a special and unanimous vote, re-
quested him to prepare a volume of his Lectures
on Education for the press, and to this request he
has now acceded.

In preparing this volume, the author was led to-
doubt whether he should retain those portions of
the lectures which contained special and direct
allusions to the times and circumstances in which
they were delivered ; or whether, by omitting all
reference to temporary and passing events, he
should publish only those parts in which an at-
tempt was made to discuss broad and general prin-
ciples, or to enlist parental, patriotic, and religious
motives in behalf of the cause. He has been in-
duced to adopt the first part of the alternative,
both because itjQresents the lectures as they were
delivered, and because it gives an aspect of practi-
cal reform, rather than of theoretic speculation to
the work.

The author begs leave to add, that, as the lec-
tures were designed for popular and promiscuous
audiences, and pertained to a cause in which but
very little general interest was felt, he was con-
strained not only to confine himself to popular top-
ics, but also to treat them, as far as he was able, in
a popular manner. The more didactic expositions
of the merits of the great cause of Education, and

AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 37

some of the relations which that cause holds to the
interests of civilization and human progress, he
has endeavored to set forth in his Annual Reports ;
while his more detailed and specific views, in re-
gard to modes and processes of instruction and
training, may be found in the volumes of the
Common-School Journal. Each one of these three
channels of communication with the public he has
endeavored to use for the exposition of a particular
class of the views and motives belonging to the
comprehensive subject of education.

Justice to himself compels the author to add
another remark, although of an unpleasant char-
acter. Some of the following lectures have been
delivered not only before different audiences in
Massachusetts, but in other States ; and, in several
instances, the author has seen, not only illustra-
tions and clauses, but whole sentences taken bodily
from the lectures, and transferred to works subse-
quently published. Should cases of this kind be
noticed by the reader, he is requested to compare
dates before deciding the question of plagiarism.

BOSTON, March, 1845.

41** f i > s\
. ;,> j 8 9

LECTURES ON EDUCATION.

LECTURE I.

MEANS AND OBJECTS OF COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION : —

IN pursuance of notice, contained in a circular letter,
lately addressed to the school committees and friends of
Education, in this county, I now appear before you, as
the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education.
That Board was constituted by an Act of the Legislature,
passed April 20, 1837. It consists of the Governor and
Lieutenant Governor of the Commonwealth, for the time
being, — who are members ex officiis, — and of eight other
gentlemen, appointed by the Executive, with the advice
and consent of the Council. The object of the Board is,
by extensive correspondence, by personal interviews, by
the development and discussion of principles, to collect
such information, on the great subject of Education, as
now lies scattered, buried, and dormant ; and after digest-
ing, and, as far as possible, systematizing and perfecting
it, to send it forth again to the extremest borders of the
State; — so that all improvements which are local, may
be enlarged into universal ; that what is now transitory
and evanescent, may be established in permanency ; and
that correct views, on this all-important subject, may be

39

40 MEANS AND OBJECTS OP

multiplied by the number of minds capable of under-
standing them.

To accomplish the object of their creation, however,
the Board are clothed with no power, either restraining
or directory. If they know of better modes of education,
they have no authority to enforce their adoption. Nor
have they any funds at their disposal. Even the services
of the members are gratuitously rendered. Without
authority, then, to command, and without money to re-.
mimerate or reward, their only resources, the only sinews
of their strength, are, their power of appealing to an
enlightened community, to rally for the promotion of its
dearest interests.

Unless, therefore, the friends of Education, in different
parts of the State, shall proffer their cordial and strenu-
ous co-operation, it is obvious, that the great purposes
for which the Board was constituted, can never be accom-
plished. Some persons, indeed, have suggested, that the
Secretary of the Board should visit the schools, individ-
ually, and impart such counsel and encouragement as he
might be able to do; — not reflecting that such is their
number and the shortness of the time during which they
are kept, that, if he were to allow himself but one day
for each school, to make specific examinations and to give
detailed instructions, it would occupy something more
than sixteen years to complete the circuit ; — while the
period, between the ages of four and sixteen, during which
our children usually attend school, is but twelve years ;
so that, before the Secretary could come round upon his
track again, one entire generation of scholars would have
passed away, and one-third of another. At his quickest
speed, he would lose sight of one-quarter of all the chil-
dren in the State. The Board, therefore, have no voice,
they have no organ, by which they can make themselves

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 41

heard, in the distant villages and hamlets of this land,
where those juvenile habits are now forming, where those
processes of thought and feeling are, now, to-day, matur-
ing, which, some twenty or thirty years hence, will find
an arm, and become resistless might, and will uphold, or
rend asunder, our social fabric. The Board may, — 1
trust they will, — be able to collect light and to radiate
it ; but upon the people, upon the people, will still rest the
great and inspiring duty of prescribing to the next gen-
eration what their fortunes shall be, by determining in
what manner they shall be educated. For it is the ances-
tors of a people, who prepare and predetermine all the
great events in that people's history ; — their posterity
only collect and read them. No just judge will ever de-
cide upon the moral responsibility of an individual, with-
out first ascertaining what kind of parents he had ; —
nor will any just historian ever decide upon the honor or
the infamy of a people, without placing the character of
its ancestors in the judgment-balance. If the system of
national instruction, devised and commenced by Charle-
magne, had been continued, it would have changed the
history of the French people. Such an event as the
French Revolution never would have happened with free
schools ; any more than the American Revolution would
have happened without them. The mobs, the riots, the
burnings, the lynchings, perpetrated by the men of the
present day, are perpetrated, because of their vicious or
defective education, when children. We see, and feel,
the havoc and the ravage of their tiger-passions, now,
when they are full grown ; but it was years ago that they
were whelped and suckled. And so, too, if we are dere-
lict from our duty, in this matter, our children, in their
turn, will suffer. If we permit the vulture's eggs to be
incubated and hatched, it will then be too late to take
care of the lambs.

42 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

Some eulogize our system of Popular Education, as
though worthy to be universally admired and imitated.
Others pronounce it circumscribed in its action, and fee-
ble, even where it acts. Let us waste no time in cornpos-
, ing this strife. If good, let us improve it ; if bad, let us
reform it. It is of human institutions, as of men, — not
any one is so good that it cannot be made better ; nor so
bad, that it may not become worse. Our system of edu-
cation is not to be compared with those of other states or^
countries, merely to determine whether it may be a little
more or a little less perfect than they ; but it is to be
contrasted with our highest ideas of perfection itself, and
then the pain of the contrast to be assuaged, by improving
it, forthwith and continually. The love of excellence
looks ever upward towards a higher standard ; it is unim-
proving pride and arrogance only, that are satisfied with
being superior to a lower. No community should rest
, contented with being superior to other communities, while
f> it is inferior to its own capabilities. And such are the
beneficent ordinations of Providence, that the very thought
of improving is the germination of improvement.

The science and the art of Education, like every thing
human, depend upon culture, for advancement. And they
would be more cultivated, if the rewards for attention,
and the penalties for neglect, were better understood.
When effects follow causes, — quick as thunder, light-
ning, — even infants and idiots learn to beware ; or they
act, to enjoy. They have a glimmer of reason, sufficient,
in sucli cases, for admonition, or impulse. Now, in this
world, the entire succession of events, which fills time
and makes up life, is nothing but causes and effects.
These causes and effects are bound and linked together
by an adamantine law. And the Deity has given us
power over the effects, by giving us power over the causes.

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 43

This power consists in a knowledge of the connection
established between causes and effects, — enabling us to
foresee the future consequences of present conduct. If
you show to me a handful of perfect seeds, I know, that,
with appropriate culture, those seeds will produce a
growth after their kind ; whether it be of pulse, which is
ripened for human use in a month, or of oaks, whose life-
time is centuries. So, in some of the actions of men,
consequences follow conduct with a lockstep ; in others,
the effects of youthful actions first burst forth as from a
subterranean current, in advanced life. In those great
relations which subsist between different generations, —
between ancestors and posterity, — effects are usually
separated from their causes by long intervals of time.
The pulsations of a nation's heart are to be counted, not
by seconds, but by years. Now, it is in this class of cases,
where there are long intervals lying between our conduct
and its consequences ; where one generation sows, and
another generation reaps ; — it is in this class of cases,
that the greatest and most sorrowful of human errors
originate. Yet, even for these, a benevolent Creator has
supplied us with an antidote. He has given us the faculty
of reason, whose especial office and function it is, to dis-
cover the connection between causes and effects ; and
thereby to enable us so to regulate the causes of to-day,
as to predestinate the effects of to-morrow. In the eye
of reason, causes and effects exist in proximity, — in jux-
taposition. They lie side by side, whatever length of
time, or distance of space, comes in between them. If I
am guilty of an act or a neglect, to-day, which will cer-
tainly cause the infliction of a wrong, it matters not
whether that wrong happens on the other side of
the globe, or in the next century. Whenever or
wherever it happens, it is mine ; it belongs to me ; my

44 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

conscience owns it, and no sophistry can give me absolu-
tion. Who would think of acquitting an incendiary,
because the train which he had laid and lighted, first
circuited the globe before it reached and consumed his
neighbor's dwelling? From the nature of the case, in
education, the effects are widely separated from the causes.
They happen so long afterwards, that the reason of the
community loses sight of the connection between them.
It does not bring the cause and the effect together, and
lay them, and look at them, side by side.

If, instead of twenty-one years, the course of Nature
allowed but twenty-one days, to rear an infant to the full
stature of manhood, and to sow in his bosom the seeds
of unbounded happiness or of unspeakable misery, — I
suppose, in that case, the merchant would abandon his
bargains, and the farmer would leave the in-gathering of
his harvest, and even the drunkard would hie homeward
from the midst of his revel, and that twenty-one days
would be spent, without much sleep, and with many
prayers. And yet, it cannot be denied, that the conse-
quences of a vicious education, inflicted upon a child, are
now precisely the same as they would be, if, at the end of
twenty-one days after an infant's birth, his tongue were
already roughened with oaths and blasphemy ; or he were
seen skulking through society, obtaining credit upon false
pretences, or with rolls of counterfeit bills in his pocket ;
or were already expiating his offences in the bondage and
infamy of a prison. And the consequences of a virtuous
education, at the end of twenty-one years, are now pre-
cisely the same as they would be, if, at the end of twenty-
one days after his birth, the infant had risen from his
cradle into the majestic form of manhood, and were
possessed of all those qualities and attributes, which a
being created in the image of God ought to have ; — with

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 45

a power of fifty years of beneficent labor compacted into
his frame ; — with nerves of sympathy, reaching out from
his own heart and twining around the heart of society,
so that the great social wants of men should be a part of
his consciousness ; — and with a mind able to perceive
what is right, prompt to defend it, or, if need be, to die
for it. It ought to be understood, that none of these con-
sequences become any the less certain, because they are
more remote. It ought to be universally understood and
intimately felt, that, in regard to chUdren,all precept and
example ; all kindness and harshness ; all rebuke and
commendation ; all forms, indeed, of direct or indirect
education, affect mental growth, just as dew, and sun,
and shower, or untimely frost, affect vegetable growth.
Their influences are integrated and made one with the
soul. They enter into spiritual combination with it,
never afterwards to be wholly decompounded. They are
like the daily food eaten by wild game, — so pungent and
saporific in its nature, that it flavors every fibre of their
flesh, and colors every bone in their body. Indeed, so
pervading and enduring is the effect of education upon
the youthful soul, that it may well be compared to a cer-
tain species of writing-ink, whose color, at first, is scarcely
perceptible, but which penetrates deeper and grows black-
er by age, until, if you consume the scroll over a coal-fire,
the character will still be legible in the cinders. It ought
to be understood and felt, that, however it may be in a
i-ocial or jurisprudential sense, it is nevertheless true, in
the most solemn and dread-inspiring sense, that, by an
irrepealable law of Nature, the iniquities of the fathers are
still visited upon the children, .unto the third and fourth
generation. Nor do the children suffer for the iniquities
only, of their parents ; they suffer for their neglect and
even for their ignorance. Hence I have always admired

46 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

that law of the Icelanders, by which, when a minor child
commits an offence, the courts first make judicial inquiry,
whether his parents have given him a good education ;
and, if it be proved they have not, the child is acquitted
and the parents are punished. In both the old Colonies
of Plymouth, and of Massachusetts Bay, if a child, over
sixteen, and under twenty-one years of age, committed a
certain capital offence against father or mother, he was
allowed to arrest judgment of death upon himself, by.
showing that his parents, in the language of the law,
" had been very unchristianly negligent in his education."

How, then, are the purposes of education to be accom-
plished ? However other worlds may be, this world of
ours is evidently constructed on the plan of producing
ends by using means. Even the Deity, with his Omni-
science and his Omnipotence, carries forward our system,
by processes so minute, and movements so subtile, as
generally to elude our keenest inspection. He might
speak all the harvests of the earth, and all the races of
animals and of men, into full-formed existence, at a word,
and yet the tree is elaborated from the kernel, and the
wing from the chrysalis, by a series of processes, which
occupies years, and sometimes centuries, for its comple-
tion. Education, more than any thing else, demands not
only a scientific acquaintance with mental laws, but the
nicest art in the detail, and the application of means, for
its successful prosecution ; because influences, impercep-
tible in childhood, work out more and more broadly into
beauty or deformity, in after-life. No unskilful hand
should ever play upon a harp, where the tones are left,
forever, in the strings.

In the first place, the best methods should be well
ascertained ; in the second, they should be universally
diffused. .In this Commonwealth, there are about three

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 47

thousand Public Schools, in all of which the rudiments
of knowledge are taught. These schools, at the present
time, are so many distinct, independent communities,
each being governed by its own habits, traditions, and
local customs. There is no common, superintending
power over them ; there is no bond of brotherhood or
family between them. They are strangers and aliens to
each other. The teachers are, as it were, embedded, each
hi his own school district, and they are yet to be exca-
vated and brought together, and to be established, each
as a polished pillar of a holy temple. As the system is
now administered, if any improvement in principles or
modes of teaching is discovered by talent or accident, in
one school, instead of being published to the world, it
dies with the discoverer. No means exist for multiplying
new truths, or even for preserving old ones. A gentle-
man, filling one of the highest civil offices in this Com-
monwealth,— a resident in one of the oldest counties
and in one of the largest towns in the State, — a sincere
friend of the cause of education, — recently put into my
hands a printed report, drawn up by a clergyman of high
repute, which described, as was supposed, an important
improvement in relation to our Common -Schools, and
earnestly enjoined its general adoption, when it happened
to be within my own knowledge, that the supposed new
discovery had been in successful operation for sixteen
years, in a town but little more than sixteen miles dis-
tant. Now, in other things, we act otherwise. If a
manufacturer discovers a new combination of wheels, or
a new mode of applying water or steam-power, by which
stock can be economized, or the value of fabrics enhanced
ten per cent., the information flies over the country at
once ; the old machinery is discarded, the new is substi-
tuted. Nay, it is difficult for an inventor to preserve the

48 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

secret of his invention, until he can secure it by letters-
patent. Our mechanics seem to possess a sort of keen,
grey-hound faculty, by which they can scent an improve-
ment afar off. They will sometimes go in disguise to the
inventor, and offer themselves as workmen ; and instances
have been known of their breaking into his workshop,
by night, and purloining the invention. And hence that
progress in the mechanic arts, which has given a name to
the age in which we live, and made it a common wonder.
Improvements in useful, and often in useless, arts, com-
mand solid prices, — twenty, fifty, or even a hundred
thousand dollars, — while improvements in education, in
the means of obtaining new guaranties for the perma-
nence of all we hold dear, and for making our children
and our children's children wiser and happier, these are
scarcely topics of conversation or inquiry. Do we not
need, then, some new and living institution, some animate
organization, which shall at least embody and diffuse all
that is now known on this subject, and thereby save,
every year, hundreds of children from being sacrificed to
experiments which have been a hundred times exploded ?
Before noticing some particulars, in which a common
channel for receiving and for disseminating information,
may subserve the prosperity of our Common Schools,
allow me to premise that there is one rule, which, in all
places, and in all forms of education, should be held as
primary, paramount, and, as far as possible, exclusive.
Acquirement and pleasure should go hand in hand. They
should never part company. The pleasure of acquiring
should be the incitement to acquire. A child is wholly
incapable of appreciating the ultimate value or uses of
knowledge. In its early beginnings, the motive of gen-
eral, future utility will be urged in vain. Tell an abece-
darian, as an inducement to learn his letters, of the

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 49

sublimities of poetry and eloquence, that may be wrought
out of the alphabet, and to him it is not so good as moon-
shine. Let me ask any man whether he ever had, when
a child, any just conception of the uses, to which he is
now, as a man, daily applying his knowledge. How vain
is it, then, to urge upon a child, as a motive to study,
that which he cannot possibly understand ! Nor is the
motive of fear preferable. Fear is one of the most de-
basing and dementalizing of all the passions. The senti-
ment of fear was given us, that it might be roused into
action, by whatever should be shunned, scorned, abhorred.
The emotion should never be associated with what is to
be desired, toiled for, and loved. If a child appetizes his
books, then lesson-getting is free labor. If he revolts at
them, then it is slave-labor. Less is done, and the little
is not so well done. Nature has implanted a feeling of
curiosity in the breast of every child, as if to make her-
self certain of his activity and progress. The desire of
learning alternates with the desire of food ; the mental
with the bodily appetite. The former is even more crav-
ing and exigent in its nature than the latter, and acts
longer without satiety. Men sit with folded arms, even
while they arc surrounded by objects of which they know
nothing. Who ever saw that done by a child ? But we
cloy, disgust, half-extirpate, this appetite for knowledge,
and then deny its existence. Mark a child, when a clear,
well-defined, vivid conception seizes it. The whole ner-
vous tissue vibrates. Every muscle leaps. Every joint
plays. The face becomes auroral. The spirit flashes
through the body, like lightning through a cloud. Tell
a child the simplest story, which is adapted to his present
state of mental advancement, and therefore intelligible,
and he will forget sleep, leave food untasted, nor would
he be enticed from hearing it, though you should give

50 MEANS AND OBJECTS OP

him for playthings, shining fragments broken off from the
sun. Observe the blind, and the deaf and dumb. So
strong is their inborn desire for knowledge, such are the
amazing attractive forces of their minds for it, that, al-
though those natural inlets, the eye and the ear, are
closed, yet they will draw it inward, through the solid
walls and incasements of the body. If the eye be cur-
tained with darkness, it will enter through the ear. If
the ear be closed in silence, it will ascend along the
nerves of touch. Every new idea that enters into the
presence of the sovereign mind, carries offerings of de-
light with it, to make its coming welcome. Indeed, our
Maker created us in blank ignorance, for the very purpose
of giving us the boundless, endless pleasure of learning
new things ; and the true path for the human intellect
leads onward arid upward from ignorance towards om-
niscience, ascending by an infinity of steps, each novel
and delightful.

The voice of Nature, therefore, forbids the infliction of
annoyance, discomfort, pain, upon a child, while engaged
in study. If he actually suffers from position, or heat,
or cold, or fear, not only is a portion of the energy of his
mind withdrawn from his lesson, — all of which should
be concentrated upon it, — but, at that undiscriminating
age, the pain blends itself with the study, makes part of
the remembrance of it, and thus curiosity and the love
of learning are deadened, or turned away towards vicious
objects. This is the philosophy of children's hating study.
We insulate them by fear ; we touch them with non-con-
ductors ; and then, because they emit no spark, we gravely
aver that they are non-electric bodies. If possible, pleas-
ure should be made to flow like a sweet atmosphere
around the early learner, and pain be kept beyond the
association of ideas. You cannot open blossoms with a

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 51

north-east storm. The buds of the hardiest plants will
wait for the genial influences of the sun, though they
perish while waiting.

The first practical application of these truths, in rela-
tion to our Common Schools, is to School-house Archi-
tecture, — a subject so little regarded, yet so vitally im-
portant. The construction of school-houses involves, not
the love of study and proficiency, only, but health and
length of life. I have the testimony of many eminent
physicians to this fact. They assure me that it is within
their own personal knowledge, that there is, annually,
loss of life, destruction of health, and such anatomical
distortion as renders life hardly worth possessing, growing
out of the bad construction of our school-houses. Nor is
this evil confined to a few of them, only. It is a very
general calamity. I have seen many school-houses, in
central districts of rich and populous towns, where each
seat connected with a desk, consisted only of an upright
post or pedestal, jutting up out of the floor, the upper end
of which was only about eight or ten inches square, with-
out side-arms or back-board ; and some of them so high
that the feet of the children in vain sought after the floor.
They were beyond soundings. Yet, on the hard top of
these stumps, the masters and misses of the school must
balance themselves, as well as they can, for six hours in
a day. All attempts to preserve silence in such a house
are not only vain, but cruel. Nothing but absolute em-
palement could keep a live child still, on such a seat ;
and you would hardly think him worth living, if it could.
The pupils will resort to every possible bodily evolution
for relief ; and, after all, though they may change the place,
they keep the pain. I have good reasons for remembering
one of another class of school-houses, which the scien-
tific would probably call the sixth order of architecture,

52 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

— the wicker-work order, summer-houses for winter res-
idence, — where there never was a severely cold day,
without the ink's freezing in the pens of the scholars
while they were writing ; and the teacher was literally
obliged to compromise between the sufferings of those who
were exposed to the cold of the windows and those exposed
to the heat of the fire, by not raising the thermometer of
the latter above ninety degrees, until that of the former fell
below thirty. A part of the children suffered the Arctic"
cold of Captains Ross and Parry, and a part, the torrid
heat of the Landers, without, in either case, winning the
honors of a discoverer. It was an excellent place for
the teacher to illustrate one of the facts in geography ;
for five steps would have carried him through the five
zones. Just before my present circuit, I passed a school-
house, the roof of which, on one side, was trough-like ;
and down towards the eaves there was a large hole ; so
that the whole operated like a tunnel to catch all the rain
and pour it into the school-room. At first, I did not
know but it might be some apparatus designed to explain
the Deluge. I called and inquired of the mistress, if she
and her little ones were not sometimes drowned out.
She said she should be, only that the floor leaked as badly
as the roof, and drained off the water. And yet a health-
ful, comfortable school-house can be erected as cheaply as
one which, judging from its construction, you would
say, had been dedicated to the evil genius of deformity
and suffering.

There is another evil in the construction of our school-
houses, whose immediate consequences are not so bad,
though their remote ones are indefinitely worse. No fact
is now better established, than that a man cannot live
without a supply of about a gallon of fresh air, every
minute ; nor enjoy good health, indeed, without much

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 53

more. The common air, as is now well known, is mainly
composed of two ingredients, one only of which can sus-
tain life, The action of the lungs upon the vital portion
of the air, changes its very nature, converting it from a
life-sustaining to a life-destroying element. As we inhale
a portion of the atmosphere, it is healthful ; — the same
portion, as we exhale it, is poisonous. Hence, ventila-
tion in rooms, especially where large numbers are col-
lected, is a condition of health and life. Privation ad-
mits of no excuse. To deprive a child of comfortable
clothes, or wholesome food, or fuel, may sometimes, pos-
sibly, be palliated. These cost money, and often draw
hardly upon the scanty resources of the poor. But what
shall we say of stinting and starving a child, in regard to
this prime necessary of life, fresh air ? — of holding his
mouth, as it were, lest he should obtain a sufficiency of
that vital element, which God, in His munificence, has
poured out, a hundred miles deep, all around the globe ?
Of productions, reared or transported by human toil,
there may be a dearth. At any rate, frugality in such
things is commendable. But to put a child on short al-
lowances out of this sky-full of air, is enough to make a
miser weep. It is as absurd, as it would have been for
Noah, while the torrents of rain were still descending, to
have put his family upon short allowances of water. This
vast quantity of air was given us to supersede the neces-
sity of ever using it at second-hand. Heaven has or-
dained this matter with adorable wisdom. That very
portion of the air which we turn into poison, by respiring
it, becomes the aliment of vegetation. What is death to
us, is life to all verdure and flowerage. And again, vege-
tation rejects the ingredient which is life to us. Thus
the equilibrium is forever restored ; or rather, it is never
destroyed. In this perpetual circuit, the atmosphere is

54 MEANS AND OBJECTS OP

forever renovated, and made the sustainer of life, both
for the animal and vegetable worlds.

A simple contrivance for ventilating the school-room,
unattended with any perceptible expense, would rescue
children from this fatal, though unseen evil. It is an in-
disputable fact, that, for years past, far more attention
has been paid, in this respect, to the construction of jails
and prisons, than to that of school-house?. Yet, why
should we treat our felons better than our children? I
have observed in all our cities and populous towns, that,
wherever stables have been recently built, provision has
been made for their ventilation. This is encouraging, for
I hope the children's turn will come, when gentlemen
shall have taken care of their horses. I implore physi-
cians to act upon this evil. Let it be removed, extirpated,
cut off, surgically.

I cannot here stop to give even an index of the advan-
tages of an agreeable site for a school-house ; of attrac-
tive, external appearance ; of internal finish, neatness,
and adaptation ; nor of the still more important subject
of having two rooms for all large schools, — both on the
same floor, or one over the other, — so as to allow a sep-
aration of the large from the small scholars, for the pur-
pose of placing the latter, at least, under the care of a
female teacher. Each of these topics, and especially the
last, is worthy of a separate essay. Allow me, however,
to remark, in passing, that I regard it as one of the
clearest ordinances of nature, that woman is the appointed
guide and guardian of children of a tender age. And
she does not forego, but, in the eye of prophetic vision,
she anticipates and makes her own, all the immortal
honors of the academy, the forum, and the senate, when
she lays their deep foundations, by training up children
in the way they should go.

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 55

A great mischief, — I use the word mischief, because it
implies a certain degree of wickedness, — a great mis-
chief is suffered in the diversity and multiplicity of our
school books. Not more than twenty or thirty different
kinds of books, exclusive of a school library, are needed
in our Common Schools ; and yet, though I should not
dare state the fact, if I had not personally sought out the
information from most authentic sources, there are now,
in actual use in the schools of this State, more than three
hundred different kinds of books; and, in the markets of
this and the neighboring States, seeking for our adoption,
I know not how many hundreds more. The standards,
in spelling, pronunciation, and writing ; in rules of gram-
mar and in processes in arithmetic, are as various as the
books. Correct language, in one place, is provincialism
in another. While we agree in regarding the confusion
of Babel as a judgment, we unite in confounding it more,
as though it were a blessing. But is not uniformity on
these subjects desirable ? Are there not some of these
books, to which all good judges, on comparison, would
award the preference ? Could they not be afforded much
cheaper for the great market which uniformity would
open ; thus furnishing better books at lower prices ? And
why not teach children aright, the first time ? It is much
harder to unlearn than to learn. Why go through three
processes instead of one, by first learning, then unlearn-
ing, and then learning, again ? This mischief grew out
of the immense profits formerly realized from the manu-
facture of school books. There seems never to have been
any difficulty in procuring reams of recommendations,
because patrons have acted under no responsibility. An
edition once published must be sold ; for the date has be-
come almost as important in school books, as in almanacs.
All manner of devices are daily used to displace the old

56 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

books, and to foist in new ones. The compiler has a
cousin in the town of A, who will decry the old and re-
commend the new ; or a literary gentleman in the city of
B has just published some book on a different subject,
and is willing to exchange recommendations, even ; or
the author has a mechanical friend, in a neighboring town,
who has just patented some new tool, and who will rec-
ommend the author's book, if the author will recom-
mend his tool ! Publishers often employ agents to hawk-
their books about the country ; and I have known several
instances where such a peddler, — or picaroon, — has taken
all the old books of a whole class in school, in exchange
for his new ones, book for book, — looking, of course, to
his chance of making sales after the book had been estab-
lished in the school, for reimbursement and profits ; so
that at last, the children have to pay for what they sup-
posed was given them. On this subject, too, cannot the
mature views of competent and disinterested men, resid-
ing, respectively, in all parts of the State, be the means
of effecting a much-needed reform ?

There is another point, where, as it seems to me, a
united effort among the friends of education would, in
certain branches of instruction, increase tenfold the
efficiency of our Common Schools. I mean, the use of
some simple apparatus, so as to employ the eye, more
than the ear, in the acquisition of knowledge. After the
earliest years of childhood, the superiority of the eye over
the other senses, in quickness, in precision, in the vast-
ness of its field of operations, and in its power of pene-
trating, like a flash, into any interstices, where light can
go and come, is almost infinite. The senses of taste, and
smell, and touch, seem to be more the servants of the
body than of the soul ; and, amongst the infinite variety
of objects in the external world, hearing takes notice of

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION, 57

sounds only. Close your eyes, and then, with the aid of
the other senses, examine a watch, an artisan's workshop,
a manufactory, a ship, a steam-engine ; and how meagre
and formless are all the ideas they present to you. But
the eye is the great thoroughfare between the outward and
material infinite, and the inward and spiritual infinite.
The mind often acquires, by a glance of the eye, what
volumes of books and months of study could not reveal
so livingly through the ear. Every thing that comes
through the eye, too, has a vividness, a clear outline, a
just collocation of parts, — each in its proper place, —
which the other senses can never communicate. Ideas
or impressions acquired through vision are long-lived.
Those acquired through the agency of the other senses
often die young. Hence, the immeasurable superiority
of this organ is founded in Nature. There is a fund of
truth in the old saying, that " seeing is believing." There
never will be any such maxim in regard to the other
senses. To use the ear instead of the eye, in any case
where the latter is available, is as preposterous, as it
would be for our migratory birds, in their overland pas-
sage, to walk rather than to fly. We laugh at the Ger-
mans, because in using their oxen, they attach the load
to the horns, instead of the neck ; but do we not commit
a much greater absurdity, in communicating knowledge
through the narrow fissure of the ear, which holds com-
munication only with a small circle of things, and in that
circle, only with things that utter a sound, instead of con-
veying it through the broad portals of the earth and
heaven surveying eye ? Nine tenths, — may I not say
ninety-nine hundredths, — of all our Common School in-
struction are conveyed through the ear ; or, — which is
the same thing, — through the medium of written instead
of spoken words, where the eye has been taught to do

58 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

the work of the ear. In teaching those parts of geogra-
phy which comprise the outlines and natural features of
the earth, and in astronomy, the use of the globe and the
planetarium would reduce the labor of months to as
many hours. Ocular evidence, also, is often indispensa-
ble for correcting the imperfections of language, as it is
understood by a child. For instance, (and I take this
illustration from fact and not from imagination,) a child,
born in the interior, and who has never seen the ocean, is
taught that the earth is surrounded by an elastic medium,
called the atmosphere. He thereby gets the idea of per-
fect circumfusion and envelopment. In the next lesson,
he is taught that an island is a small body of land sur-
rounded by water. If he has a quick iniad, he may get the
idea that an island is land, enveloped in water, as the
earth is in air. Mature minds always modify the mean-
ing of words and sentences by numerous rules, of which
a child knows nothing. If, when speaking of the Deity
to a man of common intelligence, I use the word
*' power," he understands omnipotence ; and if I use the
same word when speaking of an ant, he understands that
I mean strength enough to lift a grain ; — but a child
would require explanations, limiting the meaning of the
word in the one case, and extending it in the other.

Other things being equal, the pleasure which a child
enjoys, in studying or contemplating, is proportioned to
the liveliness of his perceptions and ideas. A child who
spurns books, will be attracted and delighted by visible
objects of well-defined forms and striking colors. In the
one case, he sees things through a haze ; in the other, by
sunlight. A contemplative child, whose mind gets as
vivid images from reading as from gazing, always prefers
reading. Although it is undoubtedly true, that taste and
predilection, in regard to any subject, will give brightness

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 59

and distinctness to ideas, yet it is also true that bright
and distinct ideas will greatly modify tastes and predilec-
tions. Now the eye may be employed much more exten-
sively than it ever has been, in giving what I will venture
to call the geography of ideas, that is, a perception, where
one idea bounds on another ; where the province of one
idea ends, and that of the adjacent ideas begins. Could
children be habituated to fixing these lines of demarca-
tion, to seeing and feeling ideas as distinctly as though
they were geometrical solids, they would then experience
an insupportable uneasiness, whenever they were lost in
fog-land, and among the Isles of the Mist ; and this un-
easiness would enforce investigation, survey, and perpet-
ual outlook, and, in after-life, a power would exist of
applying luminous and exact thought to extensive combi-
nations of facts and principles, and we should have the
materials of philosophers, statesmen and chief-justices.
The pleasure which children enjoy in visiting our miser-
able toy-shop collections, — the dreams of crazy brains,
done into wood and pewter, — comes mainly from the
vividness, the oneness, wholeness, completeness, of their
perceptions. The gewgaws do not give delight, because
of their grotesqueness, but in spite of it. Natural ideas
derived through a microscope, or from any mechanism
which would stamp as deep an imprint, aud glow with as
quick a vitality, would give them far greater delight.
And how different, as to attainments in useful knowledge,
would children be, at the end of eight or ten years, ac-
cordingly as they had sought their gratifications from one
or the other of these sources.

And what higher delight, what reward, at once so in-
nocent and so elevating, as to explain by means of suitable
apparatus, to the larger scholars in a school, the cause
and manner of an eclipse of the sun or moon ! And

60 MEANS AND OBJECTS OP

when those impressive phenomena occur, how beautiful
to witness the manifestations of wonder and of reverence
for God, which spring spontaneously from the intelligent
observation of such sublime spectacles, instead of their
being regarded with the horrible imaginings of superstition,
or with such stupid amazement as belongs only to the
brutes that perish ! If a model were given, every inge-
nious boy, with a few broken window panes and a pocket-
knife, could make a prism. With this, the rainbow, the-
changing colors of the dew-drop, the gorgeous light of
the sunset sky, could be explained ; and thus might the
minds of children be early imbued with a love of pure
and beautiful things, and led upward towards the angel,
instead of downward towards the brute, from this middle
ground of humanity. Imbue the young mind with these
sacred influences, and they will forever constitute a part
of its moral being ; they will abide with it, and tend to
uphold and purify it, wherever it may be cast by fortune
in this tumultuous arena of life. A spirit so softened
and penetrated, will be

" Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled ;
You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."

At the last session of the Legislature, a law was enacted,
authorizing school districts to raise money for the purchase
of apparatus and Common School libraries, for the use
of the children, to be expended in sums not exceeding
thirty dollars for the first year, and ten dollars for any
succeeding year. Trifling as this may appear, yet I re-
gard the law as hardly second in importance to any which
has been passed since the year 1647, when Common
Schools were established. Every district can find some
secure place for preserving them, until, in repairing or

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 61

rebuilding schoolhouses, a separate apartment can be
provided for their safe-keeping. As soon as one half the
benefits of these instruments of learning shall be under-
stood, I doubt not that public-spirited individuals will be
found, in most towns, who will contribute something to
the library ; and artisans, too, who will feel an honorable
pleasure in adding something to the apparatus, wrought
by their own hands, — perhaps devised by their own in-
genuity. " Build dove-holes," says the proverb, " and
the doves will come." And what purer satisfaction, what
more sacred object of ambition, can any raau propose to
himself, than to give the first impulse to an improvement,
which will go on increasing in value forever ! It may be
said, that mischievous children will destroy or mutilate
whatever is obtained for this purpose. But children will
not destroy or injure what gives them pleasure. Indeed,
the love of malicious mischief, the proneness to deface
whatever is beautiful, — this vile ingredient in the old
Saxon blood, wherever it flows, — originated, and it is
aggravated, by the almost total want, amongst us, of
objects of beauty, taste, and elegance, for our children to
grow up with, to admire, and to protect.

The expediency of having District School Libraries is
fast becoming a necessity. It is too late to stop the art
of printing, or to arrest the general circulation of books.
Reading of some kind, the children will have ; and the
question is, whether it is best that this reading should be
supplied to them by the choice of men, whose sole object
is gain, or whether it shall be prepared by wise and
benevolent men, whose object is to do good. Probably,
not one child in ten in this State, has free access to any
library of useful and entertaining knowledge. Where
there are town, parish, or social libraries, they either do
not consist of suitable books, or they are burdened with

62 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

restrictions which exclude more than are admitted. A
District School Library would be open to all the children
in the district. They would enter it independently.
Wherever there is genius, the library would nourish it.
Talents would not die of inaction, for want of some
sphere for exercise. Habits of reading and reflection
would be formed, instead of habits of idleness and ma-
licious mischief. The wealth and prosperity of Massa-
chusetts are not owing to natural position or resources.
They exist, in despite of a sterile soil and an inhospitable
clime. They do not come from the earth, but from the
ingenuity and frugality of the people. Their origin is
good thinking, carried out into good action ; and intelli-
gent reading in a child will result in good thinking in the
man or woman. But there is danger, it is said, of read-
ing bad books. So there is danger of eating bad food ;
shall we therefore have no harvests ? No ! It was the
kindling excitement of a few books, by which those Mas-
sachusetts boys, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin,
first struck out an intellectual spark, which broadened
into magnitude and brightened into splendor, until it
became a mighty luminary, which now stands, and shall
forever stand, among the greater lights in the firmament
of glory.

But in the selection of books for school libraries, let
every man stand upon his honor, and never ask for the
introduction of any book, because it favors the distinctive
views of his sect or party. A wise man prizes only the
free and intelligent assent of unprejudiced minds ; he dis-
dains a slavish and non-compos echo, even to his best-
loved opinions. In striving together for a common end,
peculiar ends must neither be advocated nor assailed.
Strengthen the intellect of children, by exercise upon the
objects and laws of Nature ; train their feelings to habits

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 63

of order, industry, temperance, justice ; to the love of
man, because of his wants, and to the love of God, be-
cause of his universally-acknowledged perfections ; and,
so far as public measures, applicable to all, can reach, you
have the highest human assurance, that, when they grow
up, they will adopt your favorite opinions, if they are right,
or discover the true reasons for discarding them, if they
are wrong.

An advantage altogether invaluable, of supplying a
child, by means of a library and of apparatus, with vivid
ideas and illustrations, is, that he may always be possessed,
in his own mind, of correct standards and types with
which to compare whatever objects he may see in his ex-
cursions abroad ; and that he may also have useful sub-
jects of reflection, whenever his attention is not engrossed
by external things. A boy who is made clearly to under-
stand the philosophical principle on which he flies his kite,
and then to recognize the same principle in a wind or a
water-wheel, and in the sailing of a ship ; — wherever busi-
ness or pleasure may afterwards lead him, if he sees that
principle in operation, he will mentally refer to it, and
think out its applications, when, otherwise, he would
be singing or whistling. Twenty years would work out
immense results from such daily observation and reflec-
tion. Dr. Franklin attributed much of his practical turn
of mind, — which was the salient point of his immortal-
ity, — to the fact, that his father, in his conversations
before the family, always discussed some useful subject,
or developed some just principle of individual or social
action, instead of talking forever about troiit-catching or
grouse-shooting ; about dogs, dinners, dice, or trumps.
In its moral bearings this subject grows into immense im-
portance. How many months, — may I not say years, —
in a child's life, when, with spontaneous activity, his mind

64 MEANS AND OBJECTS OP

hovers and floats wherever it listeth ! As he sits at home,
amid familiar objects, or walks frequented paths, or lies
listlessly in his bed, if his mind be not pre-occupied with
some substantial subjects of thought, the best that you
can hope is, that it will wander through dream-land, and
expend its activity in chasing shadows. Far more prob-
able is it, especially if the child is exposed to the contam-
ination of profane or obscene minds, that in these seasons
of solitude and reverie, the cockatrice's eggs of impur.fi
thoughts and desires will be hatched. And what boy, at
least, is there who is not in daily peril of being corrupted
by the evil communications of his elders ? We all know,
that there are self-styled gentlemen amongst us, — self-
styled gentlemen, — who daily, and hourly, lap their
tongues in the foulness of profanity ; and though, through
a morally-insane perversion, they may restrain themselves,
in the presence of ladies and of clergymen, yet it is only
for the passing hour, when they hesitate not to pour out the
pent-up flood, to deluge and defile the spotless purity of
childhood, — and this, too, at an age when these pollut-
ing stains sink, centre-deep, into their young and tender
hearts, so that no moral bleachery can ever afterwards
wholly cleanse and purify them. No parent, no teacher,
can ever feel any rational security about the growth of
the moral nature of his child, unless he contrives in some
way to learn the tenor of his secret, silent meditations,
or prepares the means, beforehand, of determining what
those meditations shall be. A child may soon find it no
difficult tiling, to converse and act by a set of approved
rules, and then to retire into the secret chambers of his
own soul, and there to riot and gloat upon guilty pleas-
ures, whose act would be perdition, and would turn the
fondest home iijto a hell. But there is an antidote, — I
do not say for all, but for most, of this peril. The mind

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 65

of children can be supplied with vivid illustrations of the
works of Nature and of Art ; its chambers can be hung
round with picture-thoughts and images of truth, and
charity, and justice, and affection, which will be compan-
ions to the soul, when no earthly friend can accompany
it.

It is only a further development of this topic, to con-
sider the inaptitude of many of our educational processes,
for making accurately-thinking minds. It has been said
by some one, that the good sense and sound judgment,
which we find in the community, are only what have es-
caped the general ravage of a bad education. School
studies ought to be so arranged, as to promote a harmo-
nious development of the faculties. In despotic Prussia,
a special science is cultivated, under the name of methodik,
the scope of which is to arrange and adapt studies, so as
to meet the wants and exercise the powers of the opening
mind. Li free America, we have not the name ; indeed,
we can scarcely be said to have the idea. Surely, the
farmer, the gardener, the florist, who have established
rules for cultivating every species of grain, and fruit, and
flower, cannot doubt, that, in the unfolding and expand-
ing of the young mind, some processes will be congenial,
others fatal. Those whose business it is to compound in-
gredients, in any art, weigh them with the nicest exact-
ness, and watch the precise moments of their chemical
combinations. The mechanic selects all his materials
with the nicest care, and measures all their dimensions to
a hair's breadth ; and he knows that if he fails in aught, he
will produce a weak, loose, irregular fabric. Indeed, can
you name any business, avocation, profession, or employ-
ment, whatever. — even to the making of hob-nails or
wooden skewers, — where chance, ignorance, or accident,
is ever rewarded with a perfect product ? But in no call-

66 MEANS AND OBJECTS OP

ing is there such a diversity as in education, — diversity
in principles, diversity in the application of those prin-
ciples. Discussion, elucidation, the light of a thousand
minds brought to a focus, would result in discarding the
worst and in improving even the best. Under this head
are included the great questions respecting the order and
succession of studies ; the periods of alternation between
them ; the proportion between the exact and the approx-
imate sciences ; and what is principle and what is subsid-
iary, in pursuing them.

There is a natural order and progression in the devel-
opment of the faculties : " First the blade, then the ear,
afterwards the full corn in the ear." And in the mind,
as in the grain, the blade may be so treated that the full
corn will never appear. For instance, if any faculty is
brooded upon and warmed into life before the period of
its natural development, it will have a precocious growth,
to be followed by weakness, or by a want of symmetry and
proportion in the whole character. Consequences still
worse will follow, where faculties are cultivated in the
reverse order of their natural development. Again, if
collective ideas are forced into a child's mind, without his
being made to analyze them, and understand the individ-
ual ideas of which they are composed, the probability is,
that the collective idea will never be comprehended. Let
me illustrate this position by a case where it is least likely
to happen, that we may form some idea of its frequency
in other things. A child is taught to count ten. He is
taught to repeat the words, one, two, &c., as words,
merely ; and if care be not taken, he will attach no more
comprehensive idea to the word ten, than he did to the
word one. He will not think of ten ones, as he uses it.
In the same way, he proceeds to use the words, hundred,
thousand, million, &c., — the idea in his mind, not keep-

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 67

ing within hailing distance of the signification of the
words used. Hence there is generated a habit of using
words, not as the representatives of ideas, but as sounds,
merely. How few children there are of the age of six-
teen years, — an age at which almost all of them have
ceased to attend upon our schools, — who have any ade-
quate conception of the power of the signs they have been
using. How few of them know even so simple a truth as
this, that, if they were to count one, every second, for ten
hours in a day, without intermission, it would take about
twenty-eight days to count a million. Yet they have been
talking of millions, and hundreds of millions, as though
they were units. Now, suppose you speak to such a per-
son of millions of children, growing up under a highly
elaborated system of vicious education, unbalanced by
any good influences ; or suppose you appeal to him, in
behalf of a million of people wailing beneath the smitings
of the oppressor's rod, — he gets no distinct -idea of so
many as fifty ; and therefore he has no intellectual sub-
stratum, upon which to found an appropriate feeling, or
by which to graduate its intensity.

Again ; in geography, we put a quarto-sized map, or
perhaps a globe no larger than a goose's egg, into a child's
hands, and we invite him to spread out his mind over
continents, oceans, and archipelagoes, at once. This pro-
cess does not expand the mind of the child to the dimen-
sions of the objects, but it belittles the objects to the nut-
shell capacity of the mind. Such a course of instruction
may make precocious, green-house children ; but you will
invariably find, that, when boys are prematurely turned
into little men, they remain little men, always. Physical
geogfapby should be commenced by making a child de-
scribe and plot a room with its fixtures, a house with its
apartments, the adjoining yards, fields, roads or streets,

68 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

hills, waters, <fec. Then embracing, if possible, the oc-
casion of a visit to a neighboring town, or county, that
should be included. Here, perpetual reference must be
had to the points of the compass. After a just extension
has been given to his ideas of a county, or a state, then
that county or state should be shown to him on a globe ;
and, cost what labor or time it may, his mind must be ex-
panded to a comprehension of relative magnitudes, so that
his idea of the earth shall be as adequate to the size of
the earth, as his idea of the house or the field was to the
size of the house or the field. Thus the pupil founds his
knowledge of unseen things upon the distinct notions of
eyesight, in regard to familiar objects. Yet I believe it
is not very uncommon to give the mind of the young
learner a continent, for a single intellectual meal, and an
ocean to wash it down with. It recently happened, in a
school within my own knowledge, that a class of small
scholars in geography, on being examined respecting the
natural divisions of the earth, — its continents, oceans,
islands, gulfs, &c., — answered all the questions with ad-
mirable precision and promptness. They were then asked,
by a visitor, some general questions respecting their lesson,
and, amongst others, whether they had ever seen the
earth about which they had been reciting ; and they
ijnanimously declared, in good faith, that they never had.
Do we not find here an explanation, why there are so
many men whose conceptions on all subjects are laid
down on so small a scale of miles, — so many thousand
leagues to a hair's breadth ? By such absurd processes,
no vivid ideas can be gained, and therefore no pleasure is
enjoyed. A capacity of wonder is destroyed in a day,
sufficient to keep alive the flame of curiosity for years.
The subjects of the lessons cease to be new, and yet are
not understood. Curiosity, which is the hunger and

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 69

thirst of the mind, is forever cheated and balked ; for
nothing but a real idea can give real, true, intellectual
gratification. A habit, too, is inevitably formed of re-
citing, without thinking. At length, the most glib reci-
tation becomes the best; and the less the scholars are
delayed by thought, the faster they can prate, as a mill
clacks quicker when there is no grist in the hopper.
Thoroughness, therefore, — thoroughness, and again I
say, thoroughness, for the sake of the knowledge, and
still more for the sake of the habit, — should, at all
events, be enforced ; and a pupil should never be suffered
to leave any subject, until he can reach his arms quite
around it, and clinch his hands upon the opposite side.
Those persons, who know a little of every thing but
nothing well, have been aptly compared to a certain sort
of pocket-knife, which some over-curious people carry
about with them, which, in addition to a common knife,
contains a file, a chisel, a saw, a gimlet, a screw-driver,
and a pair of scissors, but all so diminutive, that the
moment they are needed for use, they are found useless.
It seems to me that one of the greatest errors in edu-
cation, at the present time, is the desire and ambition, at
single lessons, to teach complex truths, whole systems,
doctrines, theorems, which years of analysis are scarcely
sufficient to unfold ; instead of commencing with simple
elements, and then rising, by gradations, to combined re-
sults. All is administered in a mass. We strive to
introduce knowledge into the child's mind, the great end
first. When lessons are given in this way, the pupil, being-
unable to comprehend the ideas, tries to remember the
words, and thus, at best, is sent away with a single fact,
instead of a principle, explanatory of whole classes of
facts. The lessons are learned by rote ; and when a
teacher practises upon the rote system, he uses the minds

70 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

of the pupils, just as they use their own slates, in working
arithmetical questions ; — whenever a second question is
to be wrought, the first is sponged out, to make room for
it. What would be thought of a teacher of music, who
should give his pupils the most complicated exercises, be-
fore they had learned to sound simple notes ? It is said
of the athlete, Milo of Crotona, that he began by lifting
a calf, and continuing to lift it daily, he gained strength
as fast as the animal gained weight ; so that he was able
to lift it when it became an ox. Had he begun by strain-
ing to lift an ox, he would probably have broken down,
and been afterwards unable to lift even a calf. The point
to which I would invite the regards of the whole commu-
nity, is, whether greater attention should not be paid to
gradation, to progression in a natural order, to adjustment,
to the preparation of a child's mind for receiving the high-
er forms of truth, by first making it thoroughly acquainted
with their elements. The temptation to this error is,
perhaps, the most seductive, that ever beguiles a teacher
from his duty. He desires to make his pupils appear well.
He forgets that the great objects of their education lie in
the power, and dignity, and virtue of life, and not in their
recitations at the end of the quarter. Hence, he strives
to prepare them for the hastening day of exhibition.
They must be able to state, in words, the great results, in
science, which human reason has achieved, after almost
sixty centuries of labor. For this purpose, — in which
they also are tempted to conspire, — he loads their mem-
ories with burden after burden of definitions and formu-
las ; which is about as useful a process, — and is it not
also about as honest ? — as it would be for the rearer of
nursery trees to buy golden pippins in the market, and,
tying them upon the branches of his young trees, to palm
them off upon purchasers, as though the delicious fruit

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 71

had been elaborated from the succulence of the stock he
sells.

Another question of method, to which I most earnestly
solicit the attention of teachers and of the whole public,
is, whether there is not too much teaching of words, in-
stead of things. Never was a severer satire uttered
against human reason, than that of Mirabeau, when he-
said, '"words are things." That single phrase explains
the whole French Revolution. Such a revolution never
could have occurred amongst a people who spoke things,
instead of words. Just so far as words are things, just so
far the infinite contexture of realities pertaining to body
and soul, to earth and heaven, to time and eternity, is
nothing. The ashes, and shreds, and wrecks of every
thing else are of some value ; but of words not freighted
with ideas, there is no salvage. It is not words, but words
fitly spoken, that are like apples of gold in pictures of sil-
ver. Words are but purses ; things, the shining coin
within them. Why buy seventy or eighty thousand
purses, — for it is said we have about that number of
imtcchnical words in the language, — without a copper for
deposit? I believe it is almost universally true, that
young students desire to be composers ; and as universally
true, that they dread composition. When they would
compose, of what service, then, are those columns of
spelling-book words, which they have committed to mem-
ory by the furlong ? Where then, too, are the rich mines
of thought contained in their Readers, their First-Class
Books, and their little libraries ? These they have been
accustomed to consider merely as instruments, to practise
pronunciation, empliasis, and cadence, upon. They have
moved, for years, in the midst of ideas, like blind men in
picture-galleries. Hence they have no knowledge of
things, and their relations; and, when called upon for

72 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

composition, they have nothing to compound. But, as
the outward and visible sign of composition is a sheet-full
of words, a sheet is filled, though more from the diction-
ary than from the head. This practice comes at last, to
make them a kind of sportsmen or warriors, who think
their whole business is to fire, not to hit. Some, who
have a strong verbal memory, become dexterous in the
use of language ; so that, if they can have two ideas, on
any subject, to set up at the ends, as termini, they will fill
up with words any distance of space between them.
Those who have not this verbal memory, become the
wind-driven bubbles of those who have. When the habit
is confirmed, of relying on the verbal faculty, the rest
of the mind dies out. The dogma taught by Aristotle,
that Nature abhors a vacuum, is experimentally refuted.
I know of but one compensation for these word-men ; I
believe they never become insane. Insanity requires
some mind for a basis.

The subject of penal discipline, I hardly dare to men-
tion ; especially discipline by corporal punishment. In
this department, extremes both of doctrine and of practice
prevail. The public have taken sides, and parties arc
arrayed against each other. Some repudiate and condemn
it altogther. With others, it is the great motive-power ;
and they consider it as, at least, the first and second, if
not the throp estates in the realm of school-keeping.
Generally speaking, I fear that but little judgment and
forethought are brought to the decision of its momentous
questions. It cannot be discussed, alone. It is closely
connected with intellectual progress ; its influences per-
vade the whole moral nature ; and it must be looked at,
in its relations to them. The justifiable occasions, if any,
for inflicting it ; the mode, and emphatically, the spirit,
of its administration ; its instruments ; its extent ; the

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 73

conduct that should precede and should follow it, — are
questions worthy of the deepest attention. That corporal
punishment, considered by itself, and without reference
to its ultimate object, is an evil, probably none will deny.
Yet, with almost three thousand public schools in this
State, composed of all kinds of children, with more than
five thousand teachers, of all grades of qualification, to
govern them, probably the evils of corporal punishment
must be endured, or the greater ones of insubordination
and mutiny be incurred. I hesitate, also, to speak so
fully of the magnitude of these evils, as I would wish to
do ; because there are some excellent teachers, who man-
age schools without resorting to it ; while others, ambi-
tious for the same honor, but destitute of skill and of the
divine qualities of love, patience, sympathy, by which
alone it can be won, have discarded what they call cor-
poral punishment, but have resorted to other modes of
discipline, which, though they may bear a milder name,
are, in reality, more severe. To imprison timid children in
a dark and solitary place ; to brace open the jaws with a
piece of wood ; to torture the muscles and bones by the
strain of an unnatural position, or of holding an enor-
mous weight ; to inflict a wound upon the instinctive
feelings of modesty and delicacy, by making a girl sit
with the boys, or go out with them, at recess ; to bring a
whole class around a fellow-pupil, to ridicule and shame
him ; to break down the spirit of self-respect, by enforcing
some ignominious compliance ; to give a nick-name ; —
these, and such as these, are the gentle appliances, by
which some teachers, who profess to discard corporal pun-
ishment, maintain the empire of the schoolroom; — as
though the muscles and bones were less corporeal than
the skin ; as though a wound of the spirit were of less
moment than one of the flesh ; and the bodv's blood more

74 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

sacred than the soul's purity. But of these solemn topics,
it is impossible here to speak. I cannot, however, for-
bear to express the opinion, that punishment should never
be inflicted, except in cases of the extremest necessity ;
while the experiment of sympathy, confidence, persuasion,
encouragement, should be repeated, for ever and ever.
The fear of bodily pain is a degrading motive ; but we
have authority for saying, that where there is perfect love,
every known law will be fulfilled. Parents and teachers,
often create that disgust at study, and that incorrigible-
ness and obstinacy of disposition, which they deplore. It
is a sad exchange, if the very blows, which beat arith-
metic and grammar into a boy, should beat confidence
and manliness out. So it is quite as important to consider
what feelings are excited, in the mind, as what are sub-
dued, by the punishment. Which side gains, though the
evil spirit of roguery or wantonness be driven out, if seven
other evil spirits, worse than the first, — sullenness, irrev-
erence, fraud, lying, hatred, malice, revenge, — are allowed
to come in ? The motive from which the offence emanated,
and the motives with which the culprit leaves the bar of
his judge and executioner, are every thing. If these are
not regarded, the offender may go away worse than he
came, in addition to a gratuitous flagellation. To say a
child knows better, is nothing ; if he knows better, why
does he not do better ? The answer to this question re-
veals the difficulty ; and whoever has not patience and
sagacity to solve that inquiry, is as unworthy of the pa-
rental trust, as is the physician, of administering to the
sick, who prescribes a fatal nostrum, and says, in justifi-
cation, that he knew nothing of the disease. In fine, if
any thing, in the wide range of education, demands pa-
tience, forethought, judgment, and the all-subduing spirit
of love, it is this ; and though it may be too much to say,

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 75

that corporal punishment can be disused by all teachers,
with regard to all scholars, in all schools, yet it may be
averred, without exception, that it is never inflicted with
the right spirit, nor in the right measure, when it is not
more painful to him who imposes, than to him who re-
ceives it.

Of emulation in school, as an incitement to effort, I
can here say but a word ; but I entreat all intelligent
men to give to this subject a most careful consideration.
And let those who use it, as a quickener of the intellect,
beware, lest it prove a depraver of the social affections.
There is no necessary incompatibility between the upward
progress of one portion of our nature, and the lower and
lower debasement of another. The intellect may grow
wise, while the passions grow wicked. No cruelty towards
a child can be so great as that which barters morals for
attainment. If, under the fiery stimulus of emulation,
the pupil comes to regard a successful rival with envy or
malevolence, or an unsuccessful one with arrogance or
disdain ; if, in aiming at the goal of precedence, he loses
sight of the goal of perfection ; if, to gain his prize, he
becomes the hypocrite, instead of the reverer of virtue ;
then, though his intellect should enter upon the stage of
life with all the honors of an early triumph, yet the no-
blest parts of his nature, — his moral and social affec-
tions, — will be the victims, led captive in the retinue.
Suppose, in some Theological Seminary, a prize were
offered for the best exposition of the commandment,
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' and two known
competitors were to task their intellects to win it ; and,
on the day of trial, one of these neighbor-loving rivals,
with dilated nostril and expanded frame, should clutch
the honor ; while the other neighbor-loving rival, with
quivering lip and livid countenance, stood by, — the vul-

76 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

ture of envy, all the while, forking her talons into his
heart ; — would it not be that very mixture of the ludi-
crous and the horrible, which demons would choose for
the subject of an epigram ! Paint, or chisel the whole
group of neighbor-loving rivals, and pious doctors sitting
around and mingling, — in one chalice, the hellebore of
pride, and in another, the wormwood of defeat, — to be
administered to those who should be brothers, and can
aught be found more worthy to fill a niche in the council-
hall of Pandemonium ! Who has not seen winter, with
its deepest congelations, come in between ingenuous-
minded and loving fellow-students, whose hearts would
otherwise have run together, like kindred drops of water ?
Who has not witnessed a consumption, — not of the lungs,
but of the heart ; nay, both of lungs and heart, — wast-
ing its victims with the smothered frenzy of emulation ?
It surely is within the equity of the prayer, " lead us not
into temptation," not to lead others into it. And ought
not the teacher, who, as a general and prevalent, — I do
not say a universal rule, — cannot sustain order and in-
sure proficiency, in a school, without resorting to fear and
emulation, to consider, whether the fault be in human
nature or in himself ? And will there ever be any more
of that secret, silent beneficence amongst us, where the
left hand knows not of the blessings scattered by the
right ? — will there ever be any less of this deadly strife
for the ostensible signs of precedence, in the social and
political arena, while the germs of emulation are so
assiduously cultivated in the schoolroom, the academy,
and the college ? The pale ambition of men, ready to
sacrifice country and kind for self, is only the fire of
youthful emulation, heated to a white heat. Yet, there
is an inborn sentiment of emulation, in all minds, and
there are external related objects of that sentiment. The

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 77

excellent, who may be present with us, but who are ad-
vanced in life ; the great and good, who are absent, but
whose fame is everywhere ; the illustrious dead ; — these
are the objects of emulation. A rivalry with these yields
sacred love, not consuming envy. On these, therefore,
let the emulous and aspiring gaze, until their eyes over-
flow with tears, and every tear will be the baptism of
honor and of purity.

Such are some of the most obvious topics, belonging to
that sacred work, — the education of children. The
science, or philosophical principles on which this work is
to be conducted ; the art, or manner in which those prin-
ciples are to be applied, must all be rightly settled and
generally understood, before any system of Public Instruc-
tion can operate with efficiency. Yet all this has been
mainly left to chance. Compared with its deserts, how
disproportionate, how little, the labor, cost and talent,
devoted to it. We have a Congress, convening annually,
at almost incredible expense, to decide upon questions of
tariff, internal improvement, and currency. We have a
State Legislature, continuing in session more than a fourth
part of every year, to regulate our internal polity. We
have Courts, making continual circuits through the Com-
monwealth, to adjudicate upon doubtful rights of person
or property, however trivial. Every great department of
literature and of business has its Periodical. Every party,
political, religious and social, has its Press. Yet Educa-
tion, that vast cause, of which all other causes are only
constituent parts ; that cause, on which all other causes
are dependent, for their vitality and usefulness, — if I
except the American Institute of Instruction, and a few
local, feeble, unpatronized, though worthy associations, —
Education has literally nothing, in the way of comprehen-
sive organization and of united effort, acting for a com-

78 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

mon end, and under the focal light ot a common intelli-
gence. It is under these circumstances, it is in view of
these great public wants, that the Board of Education
has been established, — not to legislate, not to enforce, —
but to collect facts, to educe principles, to diffuse a knowl-
edge of improvements ; — in fine, to submit the views of
men who have thought much upon this subject to men
who have thought but little.

To specify the labors which education has yet to per-,
form, would be only to pass in review the varied interests
of humanity. Its general purposes are to preserve the
good and to repudiate the evil which now exist, and to
give scope to the sublime law of progression. It is its
duty to take the accumulations in knowledge, of almost
six thousand years, and to transfer the vast treasure to
posterity. Suspend its functions for but one generation,
and the experience and the achievements of the past are
lost. The race must commence its fortunes anew, and
must again spend six thousand years, before it can grope
its way upward from barbarism to the present point of
civilization. With the wisdom, education must also teach
something of the follies of the past, for admonition and
warning ; for it has been well said, that mankind have
seldom arrived at truth, on any subject, until they had
first exhausted its errors.

Education is to instruct the whole people in the proper
, care of the body, in order to augment the powers of that
wonderful machine, and to prevent so much of disease,
of suffering, and of premature death. The body is the
mind's instrument ; and the powers of the mind, like the
skill of an artisan, may all be baffled, through the imper-
fection of their utensils. The happiness and the useful-
ness of thousands and tens of thousands of men and
women have been destroyed, from not knowing a few of

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 79

the simple laws of health, which they might have learned
in a few months ; — nay, which might have been so im-
pressed upon them, as habits, in childhood, that they
would never think there was any other way. I do not
speak of the ruin that comes from slavery to throned
appetites, where the bondage might continue in defiance
of knowledge ; but I speak of cases, where the pros-
tration of noble powers and the suffering of terrible
maladies result from sheer ignorance and false views of
the wise laws to which God has subjected our physical
nature. No doubt, Voltaire said truly, that the fate of
many a nation had depended upon the good or bad diges-
tion of its minister ; and how much more extensively
true would the remark be, if applied to individuals !
How many men perfectly understand the observances by
which their horses and cattle are made healthy and strong,
while their children are puny, distempered, and have
chronic diseases, at the very earliest age at which so
highly-finished an article as a chronic disease can be pre-
pared. There is a higher art than the art of the physi-
cian ; — the art, not of restoring, but of making' health.
Health is a product. Health is a manufactured article,
— as much so as any fabric of the loom or the workshop ;
and, except in some few cases of hereditary taint, or of
organic lesion from accident or violence, the how much,
or the how little, health any man shall enjoy, depends
upon his treatment of himself, or rather, upon the treat-
ment of those who manage his infancy and childhood,
and create his habits for him. Situated, as we are, in a
high latitude, with the Atlantic ocean on one side, and a
range of mountains on the other, we cannot escape fre-
quent and great transitions in the temperature of our
weather. Our region is the perpetual battle-ground of
the torrid and the arctic, where they alternately prevail ;

80 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

and it is only by a sort of average that we call it temper-
ate. Yet to this natural position we must adapt ourselves,
or abandon it, or suffer. Hence the necessity of making
health, in order to endure natural inclemencies ; and
hence also the necessity of including the simple and
benign laws on which it depends, in all our plans of edu-
cation. Certainly, oiir hearts should glow with gratitude
to Heaven, for all the means of health ; but every expres-
sion indicating that health is a Divine gift, in any other-
sense than all our blessings are a Divine gift, should be
discarded from the language ; and it should be incorpo-
rated into the forms of speech, that a man prepares his
own health, as he does his own house.

Education is to inspire the love of truth, as the su-
premest good, and to clarify the vision of the intellect to
discern it. We want a generation of men above deciding
great and eternal principles, upon narrow and selfish
grounds. Our advanced state of civilization has evolved
many complicated questions respecting social duties. We
want a generation of men capable of taking up these
complex questions, and of turning all sides of them
towards the sun, and of examining them by the white
light of reason, and not under the false colors which
sophistry may throw upon them. We want no men who
will change, like the vanes of our steeples, with the course
of the popular wind ; but we want men who, like moun-
tains, will change the course of the wind. We want no
more of those patriots who exhaust their patriotism, in
lauding the past ; but we want patriots who will do for
the future what the past has done for us. We want men
capable of deciding, not merely what is right in principle,
— that is often the smallest part of the case ; — but we
want men capable of deciding what is right in means, to
accomplish what is right in principle. We want men who

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 81

will speak to this great people in counsel, and not in
flattery. We want godlike men who can taine the mad-
ness of the times, and, speaking divine words in a divine
spirit, can say to the raging of human passions, "Peace,
be still ; " and usher in the calm of enlightened reason
and conscience. Look at our community, divided into so
many parties and factions, and these again subdivided, on
all questions of social, national, and international, duty ;
— while, over all, stands, almost unheeded, the sublime
form of Truth, eternally and indissolubly One ! Nay,
further, those do not agree in thought who agree in
words. Their unanimity is a delusion. It arises from
the imperfection of language. Could men, who sub-
scribe to the same forms of words, but look into each
other's minds, and see, there, what features their own
idolized doctrines wear, friends would often start back
from the friends they have loved, with as much abhor-
rence as from the enemies they have persecuted. Now,
what can save us from endless contention, but the love
of truth ? What can save us, and our children after us,
from eternal, implacable, universal war, but the greatest
of all human powers, — the power of impartial thought ?
Many, — may I not say most, — of those great questions,
which make the present age boil and seethe, like a cal-
dron, will never be settled, until we have a generation of
men who were educated, from childhood, to seek for truth
and to revere justice. In the middle of the last century,
a great dispute arose among astronomers, respecting one
of the planets. Some, in their folly, commenced a war
of words, and wrote hot books against each other ; others,
in their wisdom, improved their telescopes, and soon set-
tled the question forever. Education should imitate the
latter. If there are momentous questions which, with
present lights, we cannot demonstrate and determine, let

rot, i, 0

82 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

us rear up stronger, and purer, and more impartial, minds,
for the solemn arbitrament. Let it be for ever and ever
inculcated, that no bodily wounds or maim, no deformity
of person, nor disease of brain, or lungs, or heart, can be
so disabling or so painful as error ; and that he who heals
us of our prejudices is a thousand fold more our benefac-
tor, than he who heals us of mortal maladies. Teach chil-
dren, if you will, to beware of the bite of a mad dog ;
but teach them still more faithfully, that no horror of
water is so fatal as a horror of truth, because it does not
come from our leader or our party. Then shall we have
more men who will think, as it were, under oath ; — not
thousandth and ten thousandth transmitters of falsity ;
— not copyists of copyists, and blind followers of blind
followers ; but men who can track the Deity in his ways
of wisdom. A love of truth, — a love of truth; this is
the pool of a moral Bethesda, whose waters have miracu-
lous healing. And though we lament that we cannot
bequeath to posterity this precious boon, in its perfect-
ness, as the greatest of all patrimonies, yet let us rejoice
that we can inspire a love of it, a reverence for it, a devo-
tion to it; and thus circumscribe and weaken whatever
is wrong, and enlarge and strengthen whatever is right,
in that mixed inheritance of good and evil, which, in the
order of Providence, one generation transmits to another.
If we contemplate the subject with the eye of a states-
man, what resources are there, in the whole domain of
Nature, at all comparable to that vast influx of power
which comes into the world with every incoming genera-
tion of children ? Each embryo life is more wonderful
than the globe it is sent to inhabit, and more glorious
than the sun upon which it first opens its eyes. Each
one of these millions, with a fitting education, is capable
of adding something to the sum of human happiness, and

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 83

of subtracting something from the sum of human misery ;
and many great souls amongst them there are, who may
become instruments for turning the course of nations, as
the rivers of water are turned. It is the duty of moral
and religious education to employ and administer all
these capacities of good, for lofty purposes of human be-
neficence, as a wise minister employs the resources of a
great empire. " Suffer little children to come unto me,"
said the Saviour, " and forbid them not, for of such is the
kingdom of Heaven." And who shall dare say, that
philanthropy and religion cannot make a better world
than the present, from beings like those in the kingdom
of Heaven !

Education must be universal. It is well, when the
wise and the learned discover new truths ; but how much
better to diffuse the truths already discovered, amongst
the multitude ! Every addition to true knowledge is an
addition to human power ; and while a philosopher is
discovering one new truth, millions may be propagated
amongst the people. Diffusion, then, rather than dis-
covery, is the duty of our government. With us, the
qualification of voters is as important as the qualification
of governors, and even comes first, in the natural order.
Yet there is no Sabbath of rest in our contests about the
latter, while so little is done to qualify the former. The
theory of our government is, — not that all men, however
unfit, shall be voters, — but that every man, by the power
of reason and the sense of duty, shall become fit to be a
voter. Education must bring the practice as nearly as
possible to the theory. As the children now arc, so will
the sovereigns soon be. How can we expect the fabric of
the government to stand, if vicious materials are daily
wrought into its frame-work ? Education must prepare
our citizens to become municipal officers, intelligent jurors,

84 MEANS AND OBJECTS OF

honest witnesses, legislators, or competent judges of legis-
lation,— in fine, to fill all the manifold relations of life.
For this end, it must be universal. The whole land must
be watered with the streams of knowledge. It is not
enough to have, here and there, a beautiful fountain play-
ing in palace-gardens ; but let it come like the abundant
fatness of the clouds upon the thirsting earth.

Finally, education, alone, can conduct us to that enjoy-
ment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in
quantity. God has revealed to us, — not by ambiguous
signs, but by His mighty works ; — not in the disputable
language of human invention, but by the solid substance
and reality of things, — what He holds to be valuable,
and what He regards as of little account. The latter He
has created sparingly, as though it were nothing worth ;
while the former he has poured forth with immeasurable
munificence. I suppose all the diamonds ever found,
could be hid under a bushel. Their quantity is little,
because their value is small. But iron ore, — without
which mankind would always have been barbarians ;
without which they would now relapse into barbarism, —
he has strewed profusely all over the earth. Compare
the scantiness of pearl, with the extent of forests and
coal-fields. Of one, little has been created, because it is
worth little ; of the others, much, because they are worth
much. His fountains of naphtha, how few, and myrrh
and frankincense, how exiguous ; but who can fathom
His reservoirs of water, or measure The light and the air !
Tiiis principle pervades every realm of Nature. Creation
seems to have been projected upon the plan of increasing
the quantity, in the ratio of the intrinsic value. Em-
phatically is this plan manifested, when we come to that
part of creation we call ourselves. Enough of the mate-
rials of worldly good has been created to answer this

COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 85

great principle, — that, up to the point of competence, up
to the point of independence and self-respect, few things
are more valuable than property ; beyond that point, few
things are of less. And hence it is, that all acquisitions
of property, beyond that point, — considered and used as
mere property, — confer an inferior sort of pleasure, in
inferior quantities. However rich a man may be, a cer-
tain number of thicknesses of woollens or of silks is all
he can comfortably wear. Give him a dozen palaces, lie
can live in but one at a time. Though the commander
be worth the whole regiment, or ship's company, he can
have the animal pleasure of eating only his own rations ;
and any other animal eats with as much relish as he.
Hence the wealthiest, with all their wealth, are driven
back to a cultivated mind, to beneficent uses and appropria-
tions ; and it is then, and then only, that a glorious vista
of happiness opens out into immensity and immortality.

Education, then, is to show to our youth, in early life,
this broad line of demarcation between the value of those
things which can be owned and enjoyed by but one, and
those which can be owned and enjoyed by all. If I own
a ship, a house, a farm, or a mass of metals called pre-
cious, my right to them is, in its nature, sole and exclu-
sive. No other man has a right to trade with my ship, to
occupy my house, or gather my harvests, or to appropriate
my treasures to his use. They are mine, and are incapa-
ble, both of a sole and of a joint possession. But not so
of the treasures of knowledge, which it is the duty of
education to diffuse. The same truth may enrich and en-
noble all intelligences at once. Infinite diffusion subtracts
nothing from depth. None are made poor because others
are made rich. In this part of the Divine economy, the
privilege of primogeniture attaches to all ; and every son
and daughter of Adam are heirs to an infinite patrimony.

86 COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION.

If I own an exquisite picture or statue, it is mine exclusive-
ly. Even though publicly exhibited, but few could be
charmed by its beauties, at the same time. It is incapable
of bestowing a pleasure, simultaneous and universal. But
not so of the beauty of a moral sentiment ; not so of the
glow of sublime emotion ; not so of the feelings of con-
scious purity and rectitude. These may shed rapture upon
all, without deprivation of any; be imparted, and still
possessed; transferred to millions, yet never surrendered ;
carried out of the world, yet still left in it. These may
imparadise mankind, and, undiluted, unattenuated, be
sent round the whole orb of being. Let education, then,
teach children this great truth, written as it is on the fore-
front of the universe, that God has so constituted this
world, into which He has sent them, that whatever is real-
ly and truly valuable may be possessed by all, and pos-
sessed in exhaustless abundance.

And now, you, my friends ! who feel that you are patri-
ots and lovers of mankind, — what bulwarks, what ram-
parts for freedom can you devise, so enduring and im-
pregnable, as intelligence and virtue ! Parents ! among
the happy groups of children whom you have at home, —
more dear to you than the blood in the fountain of life, —
you have not a son nor a daughter who, in this world of
temptation, is not destined to encounter perils more dan-
gerous than to walk a bridge of a single plank, over a
dark and sweeping torrent beneath. But it is in your power
and at your option, with the means which Providence will
graciously vouchsafe, to give them that firmness of intellec-
tual movement and that keenness of moral vision, — that
light of knowledge and that omnipotence of virtue, — by
which, in the hour of trial, they will be able to walk, with
unfaltering step, over the deep and yawning abyss below,
and to reach the opposite shore, in safety, and honor, and
happiness.

LECTURE H.

1838.

LECTURE II

SPECIAL PREPARATION A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: —

AFTER the lapse of another year, we are again assembled
to hold counsel together for the welfare of our children.
On this occasion, we have much reason to meet each other
with voices of congratulation and hearts of gladness. Dur-
ing the past year, the cause of Popular Education, in this
Commonwealth, has gained some suffrages of public
opinion. On presenting its wants and its claims to citizens
in every part of the State, I have found that there were
many individuals who appreciate its importance, and who
only awaited an opportunity to give utterance and action
to their feelings ; — in almost every town, some, — in
many, a band.

Some of our hopes, also, have become facts. The last
Legislature acted towards this cause, the part of a wise
and faithful guardian. Inquiries having been sent into all
parts of the Commonwealth, to ascertain the deficiencies
in our Common School system, and the causes of failure
in its workings ; and the results of those inquiries having
been communicated to the Legislature, — together with
suggestions for the application of a few obvious and ener-
getic remedies, — that body forthwith enacted such laws
as the wants of the system most immediately and imperi-
ously demanded. Probably, at no session since the origin
of our Common School system, have laws more propitious

89

90 SPECIAL PREPARATION

to its welfare been made, than during the last. True, the
substantive parts of the great system of Public Instruction,
pre-existed ; but, in many respects, these parts were like
the wheels of some excellent machine, unskilfully put
together ; and hence, if not absolutely refusing to go, for
want of proper adjustment, yet going, at best, only accord-
ing to our expressive word, bunglingly. The enactments
of the last session, have, to no inconsiderable extent, ad-
justed the relative parts of this machinery, in an admira-
ble manner ; and it now only remains for the people to do
their part, by vigorously applying the power that is to
move it.

For instance, the law formerly compelled towns, under
a penalty, to choose school committees ; and it accumu-
lated such an amount of duties upon these officers, that
the efficiency, nay, I might almost say, the very existence,
of the schools, for any useful purpose, depended upon their
intelligence and fidelity ; and yet, because this law pro-
vided no compensation for their services, nor even indem-
nity for their actual expenses, it left the whole weight of
private interest gravitating against public duty. In the
apprehension of many persons, too, there seemed to be
something of officiousness and obtrusion, when the com-
mittees entered earnestly and faithfully upon the discharge
of the legal obligations they had assumed. An office was
lightly esteemed to which public opinion attached no
rank, and the law no emolument. It was an office, too,
in which fidelity often gave offence, and one whose duties
were always deemed burdensome, and but rarely accounted
honorable. Hence, the punctilious discharge of its vari-
ous duties, required a higher degree of public spirit, or a
greater enthusiasm in the noble cause of education, than
the present condition of our society is likely to furnish.
Besides, many towns circumvented the law ; for, though the

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 91

law had provided that the office of school committee man
should not lie dormant, yet it could make no such wake-
ful provision in regard to the officer. Hence, school com-
mittees were not unfrequently chosen, by the towns, with
a tacit, and sometimes even with an express understand-
ing, that they were to sleep during the whole of the school
terms, and only to rouse themselves up in sufficient
season to make such an annual Return, as would secure
a share of the income of the school fund of their respec-
tive towns. But this condition of things is now changed.
By the late law, school committees are hereafter to
receive a moderate compensation for services rendered, —
or, at least, a sufficient sum to reimburse the expenses
which they actually incur. Is it too much, therefore, for
us now to say. in regard to these officers, that, not only
their own townsmen, but the friends of education general-
ly, have a right to expect, that they will so fulfil the requi-
sitions of the law, that a looker-on may know what the law
is, by seeing what the committees do, as well as he could
by reading its provisions in the pages of the statute book ?
Is this demand too great, when we consider the claims
which the office has upon the efforts of all wise and
benevolent men ? The committees are to prescribe the
books which are to be used in the schools. They are to
see that every child whose parents are unable to supply it
with books, is supplied at the expense of the town. They
are to visit every district school soon after its opening,
and shortly before its close, and once a month during its
continuance; — and this duty of visitation, let me say,
means something more than just stopping, when engaged
on some other errand or business, fastening a horse at
the schoolhouse door, and going in for a few minutes to
rest or to warm. Emphatically, — I would speak it with
tenfold emphasis, — they are to see that none but the very

92 SPECIAL PREPARATION

best persons who can possibly be procured, are put in as
keepers of that inestimable, unutterable treasure, the
children of the district.

Another provision of the late law requires the commit-
tee of each town to keep a record, in a permanent form,
of all their acts, votes, and proceedings ; and, at the end
of their official year, to deliver the record-book to their
successors in office.

If the affairs of the pettiest manufacturing corporation
cannot be systematically nor economically conducted,
without a sworn clerk, and the registration of every cor-
porate act, must not the incomparably greater interests of
the schools suffer, if all the orders and regulations of the
school committees have no other depository, nor means
of verification in case of dispute, than the imcertainty of
human memory, and the faithlessness of oral testimony?

A far more important duty imposed upon school com-
mittees by the new law, — one which will form an epoch
in the history of education in Massachusetts, — is that
of making to the towns, annually, a " detailed " report of
the condition of the schools, "designating particular im-
provements and defects in the methods or means of edu-
cation, and stating such facts and suggestions in relation
thereto, as, in their opinion, will best promote the inter-
ests, and increase the usefulness of said schools." The
significance of this provision lies in the word "detailed."
The reports are to be specific, not general. They are to
expose errors and abuses, and to be accompanied by plans
for their rectification. They are to particularize improve-
ments, and to devise the means for their attainment. The
mere fact of knowing that a report must be made at the
end of the year, will attract the attention of committee-
inen to a. variety of facts, and will suggest numerous con-
siderations, which would otherwise elude both their ob-

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 93

servatiou and reflection. We are so constituted that, the
moment we have a fixed purpose in our minds, there
arises, at once, a sort of elective affinity between that pur-
pose and its related ideas ; and the latter will come, one
after another, and, as it were, crystallize around the former.
Besides, no man ever comprehends his own views clearly
and definitely, or ever avails himself of all the resources
of his own mind, until he reduces his thoughts to writing,
or embodies them in some visible, objective form. To
make a " detailed report," which is based upon facts,
which will be useful to the town, and creditable to the
committee, will doubtless require great attention and
forethought. But if school committees perform this duty
with half that far-reaching sagacity, that almost incredi-
ble thoroughness, which is always displayed by those
town-agents who are chosen to employ counsel, and hunt
up evidence, in pauper-cases, such reports will be most
invaluable documents. And yet the manner in which
this duty is performed will settle the question prospective-
ly, for many a child, whether he shall be a pauper or not, —
not the question of the body's pauperism only, but of the
soul's pauperism.

These annual reports of the committees are by law to
be deposited with the town clerk. They are to be tran-
scribed, and the copy forwarded to the office of the Sec-
retary of State, for the use of the Board of Education.
Each succeeding year, therefore, there will be placed in
the hands of the Board, three hundred reports, describing
the condition of the schools, in every part of the State,
with more or less particularity and ability, according to
the intelligence and fidelity of the respective committees.
It seems to me that selections may then be made, — if
the work is not too great, — of the most instructive por-
tions of the whole body of these reports. Let a volume

94 SPECIAL PREPARATION

consisting of these selections be transmitted to every town
in the State. Each town will then receive hack its own
contribution, in a permanent form, multiplied by the con-
tributions of three hundred other towns. Such a course,
if adopted, will make known to all, the views, the plans
and experiments of each. It will be a Multiplying-glass,
increasing each beam of light, three hundred times. I ven-
ture to predict that, hereafter, no document will be found
to transcend these, in value, and in the interest and grat-
itude they will inspire. Posterity will here see what was
done for them by their fathers. Surely, the interest in-
herent in these records, cannot be less than that which
has lately led the Commonwealth to publish those Colo-
nial and Revolutionary papers, which trace out the very
paths in the wilderness, through which, under the gui-
dance of the pillar and the cloud, our fathers came out of
the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.
Compared with the bondage of ignorance and vice, Pha-
raoh was clement and his task-masters merciful.*

Another provision of the law requires that Registers,
in such form as shall be prescribed by the Board of Edu-
cation, shall be kept in all the schools. As a means of
collecting accurate statistics, registers are indispensable.
They will also reveal a fact, to the existence of which
the public eye seems almost wholly closed. I mean the
amount or extent of non-attendance upon our schools,
and the enormous losses thereby occasioned. In the hand
of an adroit teacher, too, the register may be made an
efficient means of remedying that irregularity of attend-
ance which it discloses. If the school is what it should
be, the remark will be literally true, that every mark in
the register indicating a vacancy in the child's seat at
school, will indicate a corresponding vacuum in his mind.

* See Appendix A.

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 95

But, before I go on to speak of other provisions of the
law, perhaps there may be a class of persons ready to
ask, — "Why all this interference ? Why this obtrusion
of the State into the concerns of the individual ? Arc
not our children," say they, " our own ? Who can be
presumed to care more for them than we do ? And
whence your authority," they demand, " to fetter our
free-will, and abridge our sovereignty in their manage-
ment ? " The vagabond, the drunkard, the monster-parent
who wishes to sell his children to continuous labor, — who,
for the pittance of money they can earn, is willing they
should grow up without schooling, without instruction,
and be used, year after year, as parts of machinery, —
these may cry out to the Legislature, — " By what right
do you come between ns and our offspring ? By what right
do you appoint a Board of Education and a Secretary to
pry into our domestic arrangements, and take from us our
parental rights ? We wish to be our own Board of Educa-
tion, and Secretary also." Such questions may, perhaps,
be honestly put, and therefore should be soberly answered.

The children, whom parents have brought into this
world, are carried forward by the ceaseless flow of time,
and the irresistible course of nature, and will soon be
men. They are daily gathering forces and passions of
fearful energy, soon to be expended upon society. The
powers of citizenship, which reach every man's home and
every man's hearth, will soon be theirs. In a brief space,
these children will have the range of the whole commu-
nity, and will go forth to pollute or to purify, to be bane
or blessing to those who are to live with them, and to
come after them. On the day when their minority ceases,
their parents will deliver them over, as it were, into the
hands of society, without any regard to soundness or un-
souuclnoss in their condition. Forthwith, that society has

96 SPECIAL PREPARATION

to assume the entire responsibility of their conduct for
life ; — for society, in its collective capacity, is a real, not
a nominal sponsor and godfather for all its children. So-
ciety has no option whether to accept or to reject them.
Society cannot say to any parent, " Take back this felon-
brood of yours ; we never ordered any such recruits ; we
know not what to do with them ; we dread them, and
therefore we will not receive them;" — but society must
equally accept them, whether they are pieces of noblest"
workmanship, inwrought with qualities of divinest beauty
and excellence, or whether they are mere trumpery and
gilded pasteboard, impossible to be thought of for any use-
ful purpose. Now, in those cases from which the object-
ors draw their analogies, the circumstances are totally
different. If I make a general contract with my neighbor
for an article of merchandise, the iutendment of the law
is, that it shall be, at least, of a fair, merchantable quality ;
— and if it be valueless, or even materially defective, in
stock or workmanship, the law exonerates me from all
obligation to receive it. I may cast it back into the hands
of the producer, and make the loss wholly his, not mine.
So if, for a sound price, I contract with a dealer to furnish
me a horse for a specified journey or business, and he, in-
stead of providing for me an animal suitable for the
object stipulated, sends me an old hack, whose only merit
is that one might study all the diseases of farriery upon
him, — there is not a court or jury in the country but
would make the fraudulent jockey take back the beast,
and pay smart-money, and all the costs of litigation. But
not so, when parents deliver over to the community a son
who carries the poison of asps beneath his glistening
tongue ; or a daughter, who, from her basilisk eye, streams
guilt into whomsoever she looks upon. Twenty-one years
after a child's birth, — and often much earlier than that. —

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 97

be lie sot, brawler, libeller, poisoner, lyncher, — society
lias, none the less, to take him into her bosom, and bear
his stings and stabs; — and this, as I suppose, is the rea-
son why all those good citizens who care what they have
in their bosoms, have an undoubted right to take these
precautions beforehand.

Another provision of law, which transfers the power to
select and employ teachers, from the prudential to the
town's committee, — unless the town shall otherwise or-
der,— is worthy of commendation. While this arrange-
ment allows a continuance of the old system, in towns
where it is preferred, it proposes a course which is far
better, and which is sure to be adopted just as fast as the
interests of education and the best means of promoting
it, become better understood and more appreciated by the
community.

But not inferior in importance to any of the preceding,
is another law, passed by the Legislature at its last ses-
sion. It is not a compulsory, but a permissive enactment.
You doubtless anticipate, that I refer to the law which
authorizes the union of two or more existing school dis-
tricts, so as to form a Union or Central school, for teach-
ing more advanced studies to the older children.

Heretofore the practice, in most towns, has been, to sub-
divide territory into smaller and smaller districts; and
this practice has drawn after it the calamitous consequen-
ces of stinted means, and of course, cheap schoolhouses,
cheap teachers and short schools. Under this weakening
process, many of our children have fared like southern
fruits in a northern clime, where, owing to the coldness
of the soil and the shortness of the season, they never
more than half ripen. Immature fruits, at the close
of the year, are not only valueless, but they sometimes
breed physical diseases ; such diseases are a blessing com-

98 SPECIAL PREPARATION

pared to those moral distempers which must be engen-
dered, when immature minds, fermenting with unsound
principles, are sent forth into the community. The pre-
vailing argument, in favor of the subdivision of districts,
has been the inconvenience of sending small children,
great distances, to school. The new law remedies this
difficulty. It allows the continuation of existing districts
for the small scholars, while it invites the union of two or
more of them for the accommodation of the larger ones-
As the benefits of this arrangement are set forth in my
supplementary Report to the Board of Education, on
schoolhouses, (pp. 30, 31,) I need not dwell upon them
here. On reference to that report, it will be seen that the
advantages to the older scholars, attending the union or
central school, will be more than doubled, at a diminished
expense. Nor will the benefits of this arrangement, to
the small children, be less, — particularly because it will
secure to them the more congenial influences of female
teaching.

I believe there will soon be an entire unanimity in pub-
lic sentiment in regarding female as superior to male
teaching for young children. As a plain man of excel-
lent sense once said to me, " A woman will find out
where a child's mind is, quickest." I may add, that she
will not only find where a child's mind is, more quickly
than a man would do, but she will follow its movements
more readily ; and, if it has gone astray, she will lead it
back into the right path more gently and kindly.

Under our present system, the proportion of the female
to the male teachers, in our public schools, is about as
three to two. This disparity of numbers may be increased
with advantage to all, both as to quantity and quality
of instruction. It is also universally known that there is,
in our community, a vast amount of female talent, of

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 99

generous, philanthropic purpose, now unappropriated.
It lies waste and dormant for want of some genial sphere
of exercise ; and its possessors are thereby half driven,
from mere vacuity of mind, and the irritation of unem-
ployed faculties, to the frivolities and despicableness of
fashion, to silly amusements, or to reading silly books,
merely to kill time, which, properly understood, means
killing one's self. I trust there are many noble-minded
young women amongst us, whose souls are impatient of a
degradation to that idleness and uselessness to which false
notions of rank and wealth would consign them ; and
who would rejoice, in some form, either as public servants
or as private benefactors, to enter this sphere of useful,
beneficent employment. As the tone of society now is,
the daughters of the poor do not suffer more from a want
of the comforts and the refinements of life than the
daughters of the rich do, from never knowing or feeling
what the high destinies of woman are. But it is begin-
ning to be perceived that the elevation of the character,
the condition and the social rank of the female sex, pro-
duced by Christianity and other conspiring causes, has,
by conferring new privileges, also imposed new duties
upon them.

In reference to this topic, I wish it to be considered
more deeply than it has ever yet been, whether there be
not, in truth, a divinely appointed ministry for the per-
formance of the earlier services in the sacred temple of
education. Is there not an obvious, constitutional differ-
ence of temperament between the sexes, indicative of a
pre-arranged fitness and adaptation, and making known
to us, as by a heaven-imparted sign, that woman, by her
livelier sensibility and her quicker sympathies, is the fore-
chosen guide and guardian of children of a tender age ?
After a child's mind has acquired some toughness and in-

100 SPECIAL PREPARATION

duration, by exposure for a few years to the world's hard-
ening processes, then let it be subjected to the firmer grasp,
to the more forcible, subduing- power of masculine hands.
But when the infant spirit, which even too rude an em-
brace would wound, is first ushered into this sharp and
thorny life, let whatever the gross earth contains of gen-
tleness, of ethereal delicacy, of loving tenderness, be its
welcomer, and cherish it upon its halcyon bosom, and
lead it as by still waters. And why should woman,
lured by a false ambition to shine in courts or to mingle
in the clashing tumults of men, ever disdain this sacred
and peaceful ministry ? Why, renouncing this serene
and blessed sphere of duty, should she ever lift up her
voice in the thronged market-places of society, higgling
and huckstering to barter away that divine and acknowl-
edged superiority in sentiment which belongs to her own
sex, to extort confessions from the other, of a mere
equality in reason ? Why, in self-debasement, should
she ever strive to put off the sublime affections and the
ever-beaming beauty of a seraph, that she may clothe
a coarser, though it should be a stronger spirit, in
the stalwort limbs and hugeness of a giant ? Nature
declares that whatever has the robustness of the oak,
shall have its ruggedness also. To no portion of her
works has she at once given pre-eminence both in
strength and in grace. If the intellect of woman,
like that of man, has the sharpness and the penetrancy
of iron and of steel, it must also be as cold and as
hard. No ! but to breathe pure and exalted sentiments
into young and tender hearts. — to take the censers which
Heaven gives, and kindle therein the incense which
Heaven loves, — this is her high and holy mission. To
be the former of wise and great minds, is as much more
noble than to be wise and great, as the creative is higher

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 101

than the created. In camps or senates, she could shine
but for a day, and with a fitful light ; but if, with endur-
ing patience and fidelity, she fulfils her sacred duties to
childhood, then, from the sanctuary of her calm and se-
questered life, there will go forth a refulgent glory to irra-
diate all countries and all centuries. The treasures of
virtue arc self-perpetuating and self-increasing, and when
she gathers them into young hearts, to grow with their
growth and strengthen with their strength, she makes
Time so rich an almoner, that though he goes strewing
and scattering his blessings over the earth and over the
ages, yet he will never be impoverished, but only so much
the more abound. The loftiest spirits, the finest geniuses
of pagan antiquity passed by the gods of the deep and full-
flowing river with moderated reverence, but, nicely true
to a moral and a religious instinct, they bore their richest
offerings and paid their deepest homage to the goddess
who presided at the fountain.

But amongst all the auspicious events of the past year,
ought not the friends of popular education to be most
grateful, on account of the offer made by a private gen-
tleman* to the Legislature, of the sum of ten thousand
dollars, upon the conditions that the State should add
thereto an equal sum, and that the amount should be
expended, under the direction of the Board of Education,
in qualifying teachers for our Common Schools, and of
the promptness and unanimity with which the Legisla-
ture acceded to the proposition ? I say, the unanimity , for
the vote was entirely unanimous in the House of Repre-
sentatives, and there was but one nay in the Senate. Vast
donations have been made in this Commonwealth, both
by the government and by individuals, for the cause of
learning in some of its higher, and, of course, more lim-

* Hon. Edmund Dwight, of Boston.

102 SPECIAL PEEPARATION

ited departments ; but I believe this to be the first instance
where any considerable sum has been given for the cause
of education, generally, and irrespective of class, or sect,
or party. Munificent donations have frequently been
made, amongst ourselves, as well as in other States and
countries, to perpetuate some distinctive theory or dogma
of one's own, or to requite a peculiar few who may have
honored or flattered the giver. But this was given to
augment the common mass of intelligence, and to pro-
mote universal culture ; it was given with a high and
enlightened disregard of all local, party, personal or sec-
tional views ; it was given for the direct benefit of all the
heart and all the mind, extant, or to be extant, in our
beloved .Commonwealth ; and, in this respect, it certainly
stands out almost, if not absolutely alone, both in the
amount of the donation, and in the elevation of the motive
that prompted it. I will not tarnish the brightness of
this deed, by attempting to gild it with praise. One of
the truest and most impressive sentiments ever uttered
by Sir Walter Scott is, however, so appropriate, and forces
itself so strongly upon my mind, that I cannot repress its
utterance. When that plain and homely Scotch girl,
Jeannie Deans, — the highest of all the characters ever
conceived by that gifted author, — is pleading her suit
before the British queen, — and showing herself therein
to be ten times a queen, — she utters the sentiment I
refer to : " But when," says she, " the hour of trouble
comes to the mind or to the body, and when the hour
of death comes, that comes to high and low, then it isna
what we hae dune for oursells, but what we hae dune for
ithers, that we think on maist pleasantly."

There is, then, at last, on the part of the government
of Massachusetts, a recognition of the expediency of pro-
viding means for the special qualification of teachers for

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 103

our Common Schools ; or, at least, of submitting that
question to a fair experiment. Let us not, however,
deceive or flatter ourselves with the belief, that such an
opinion very generally prevails, or is very deeply seated.
A few, and those, as we believe, best qualified to judge,
hold this opinion as an axiom. But this cannot be said
of great numbers ; and it requires no prophetic vision to
foresee that any plan for carrying out this object, however
wisely framed, will have to encounter not only the preju-
dices of the ignorant, but the hostility of the selfish.

The most momentous practical questions now before
our state and country are these : In order to preserve
our republican institutions, must not our Common Schools -
be elevated in character and increased in efficiency ? and,
in order to bring our schools up to the point of excellence
demanded by the nature of our institutions, must there
not be a special course of study and training to qualify
teachers for their office ? No other worldly interest pre-
sents any question comparable to these in importance.
To the more special consideration of the latter, — namely,
whether the teachers of our public schools require a
special course of study and training to qualify them for
their vocation, — I solicit your attention, during the resi-
due of this address.

I shall not here insist upon any particular mode of pre-
paration, or of preparation in any particular class of in-
stitutions, — whether Normal Schools, special departments
hi academies, colleges, or elsewhere, — to the exclusion
of ail other institutions. What I insist upon, is, not the
form, but the substance.

In treating this subject, duty will require me to speak
of errors and deficiencies, and of the inadequate con-
ceptions now entertained of the true office and mission
of a teacher. This is a painful obligation, and in dis-

104 SPECIAL PREPARATION

charging it I am sure I shall not be misunderstood by any
candid arid intelligent mind. Towards the teachers of
our schools, — as a class, — I certainly possess none but
the most fraternal feelings. Their want of adequate
qualifications is the want of the times, rather than of
themselves. Teachers, heretofore, have only been par-
takers in a general error, — an error in which you and I,
my hearers, have been as profoundly lost as they. Let
this be their excuse hitherto, and let the ignorance of the
past be winked at; but the best service we can now render
them, is to take this excuse away, by showing the inade-
quacy and the unsoundness of our former views. Let all
who shall henceforth strive to do better, stand acquitted
for past delinquencies ; but will not those deserve a
double measure of condemnation who shall set themselves
in array against measures, which so many wise and good
men have approved, — at least until those measures have
been fairly tested ? When the tree shall have been
planted long enough to mature its fruit, then let it be
known by its fruit.

No one has ever supposed that an individual could
build up a material temple, and give it strength, and con-
venience, and fair proportions, without firsl/ mastering the
architectural art); but we have employed thousands of
teachers for our children /to build up the immortal Tem-
ple of the Spirit, who have never given to this divine, edu-
cational art, a day nor an hour of preliminary study or
attention. How often have we sneered at Dogberry in
the play, because he holds that " to read and write comes
by nature ; " when we ourselves have undertaken to teach,
or have employed teachers, whose only fitness for giving1
instruction, not only in reading and writing, but in all
other things, has come by nature, if it has come at all ; —
that is, in exact accordance with Dogberry's philosophy.

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 105

111 maintaining the affirmative of this question, — name-
ly, that all teachers do require a special course of study
and training-, to quality them for their profession, — I will
not higgle with my adversary in adjusting preliminaries.
He may be the disciple of any school in metaphysics, and
he may hold what faith he pleases, respecting the mind's
nature and essence. Be he spiritualist or materialist, it
here matters not, — nay, though he should deny that
there is any such substance as mind or spirit, at all, I will
not stop to dispute that point with him, — preferring
rather to imitate the example of those old knights of the
tournament, who felt such confidence in the justness of
their cause, that they gave their adversaries the advantage
of sun and wind. For, whatever the mind may be, in its
inscrutable nature or essence, or whether there be any
such thing as mind or spirit at all, properly so called, this
we have seen and do know, that there come beings into
this world, with every incoming generation of children,
who, although at first so ignorant, helpless, speechless, —
so incapable of all motion, upright or rotary, — that we
can hardly persuade ourselves they have not lost their
way, and come, by mistake, into the wrong world ; yet,
after a few swift years have passed away, we see thousands
of these same ignorant and helpless beings, expiating hor-
rible offences in prison cells, or dashing themselves to
death against the bars of a maniac's cage ; — others of
them, we see, holding " colloquy sublime," in halls where
a nation's fate is arbitrated, or solving some of the might-
iest problems that belong to this wonderful universe ; —
and others still, there are, who, by daily and nightly con-
templation of the laws of God, have kindled that fire of
divine truth within their bosoms, by which they become
those moral luminaries whose light shine th from one part
of the heavens unto the other. And this amazing change

10G SPECIAL PREPARATION

in these feeble and helpless creatures, — this transfigura-
tion of them for good or for evil, — is wrought by laws
of organization and of increase, as certain in their opera-
tion, and as infallible in their results, as those by which
the skilful gardener substitutes flowers, and delicious
fruits, and healing herbs, for briers and thorns and
poisonous plants. And as we hold the gardener respon-
sible for the productions of his garden, so is the commu-
nity responsible for the general character and conduct of
its children.

Some, indeed, maintain, — erroneously as we believe, —
that a difference in education is the sole cause of all the
differences existing among men. They hold that all per-
sons come into the world just alike in disposition and
capacity, though they go through it, and out of it, so
amazingly diverse. They hold, in short, that if any two
men had changed cradles, they would have changed char-
acters and epitaphs ; — that, not only does the same
quantity of substance or essence go to the constitution of
every human mind, but that all minds are of the same
quality also, — all having the same powers, and bearing,
originally, the same image and superscription, like so
many half-dollars struck at the government mint.

But deeply as education goes into the core of the heart
and the marrow of the bones, we do not claim for it any
such prerogative. There are certain substructures of
temperament and disposition, which education finds, at
the beginning of its work, and which it can never wholly
annul. Nor does it comport with the endless variety and
beauty manifested in all other parts of the Creator's
works, to suppose that he made all ears and eyes to be
delighted with the same tunes and colors ; or provided so
good an excuse for plagiarism, as that all minds were
made to think the same thoughts. This inherent and

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 107

original diversity, however, only increases the difficulty
of education, and gives additional force to the argument
for previous preparation ; for, were it true that all children
are born just alike, in disposition and capacity, the only
labor would be to discover the right method for educating
a single child, and to stereotype it for all the rest.

This, however, we must concede to those who affirm
the original equality and exact similitude of all minds ; —
namely, that all minds have the same elementary or con-
stituent faculties. This is all that we mean when we say
that human nature is everywhere the same. This is, in
part, what the Scriptures mean when they say, " God hath
made of one blood all nations of men." The contrasts
among men result, not from the possession of a different
number of original faculties, but from possessing the same
faculties, in different proportions, and in different degrees
of activity. The civilized men of the present day, have
neither more nor less faculties, in number, than their barba-
rian ancestors had. If so, it would be interesting to ascer-
tain about what year, or century, a new good faculty was
given to the race, or an old bad one was taken away. An
assembly of civilized men, on this side of the globe, con-
vening to devise measures for diminishing the number of
capital crimes, and thus to reduce the number of capital
punishments, were born with the same number and kind
of faculties, — though doubtless differing greatly in pro-
portion and in activity, — with a company of Battas
islanders, on the opposite side of the globe, who, perhaps
at the same time, may be going to attend the holiday rites
of a public execution, and, as is their wont, to dine on the
criminal. As each human face has the same number of
features, each human body the same number of limbs, mus-
cles, organs, &c., so each human soul has the same capaci-
ties of Reason, Conscience, Hope, Fear, Love, Self-love, &c.

108 SPECIAL PREPARATION

The differences lie in the relative strength and supremacy
of these powers. The human eye is composed of about
twenty distinct parts or pieces ; yet these constituent parts
are so differently arranged that one man is far-sighted,
another near-sighted. When an oculist has mastered a
knowledge of one eye, he knows the general plan upon
which all eyes have been formed ; but lie must still learn
the peculiarities of each, or, in his practice, he will ruin
all he touches.* When a surgeon, or an assassin, knows
where one man's heart is, he knows, substantially, where
the hearts of all other men may be found. And so of the
mind and its faculties. It is because of this community
of original endowments, that all the great works of nature
and art and science, address a common susceptibility or
capacity, existing in all minds. It is because of this kin-
dred nature that the same earth is given to us all, as a
common residence. The possession by each of his com-
plement of powers and susceptibilities, confers the common
nature, while the different portions or degrees in which
they exist, and the predominance of one or a few over the
others, break us up into moral and intellectual classes.
It is impossible to vindicate the propriety of making or of
carrying a Revelation to the whole human race, unless
that race has common capacities and wants to which the
revelation is adapted. And hence we learn the appalling
truth, — a truth which should strike " loud on the heart
as thunder on the ear," — that every child born into this

* I have heard that distinguished surgeon, Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston,
relate the following anecdote, which happened to him in London: — Being
invited to witness a very difficult operation upon the human eye, by a celebrat-
ed English oculist, he was so much struck by the skill and science which were
exhibited by the operator, that he sought a private interview with him, to
inquire by what means he had become so accomplished a master of his art.
" Sir," said the oculist, " I spoiled a hat-full of eyes to learn it." Thus it is
with incompetent teachers ; they may spoil schoolrooms-full of children to learn
how to teach, — and perhaps may not always learn even then.

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 109

world has tendencies and susceptibilities pointing to the
furthest extremes of good and evil. Each one has the
capacity of immeasurable virtue or vice. As each body
has an immensity of natural space open all around it, so
each spirit, when waked into life, has an immensity of
moral space open all around it. Each soul has a pinion
by which it may soar to the highest empyrean, or swoop
downwards to the Tartarean abyss. In the feeblest voice
of infancy, there is a tone which can be made to pour a
sweeter melody into the symphonies of angels, or thunder
a harsher discord through the blasphemies of demons.
To plume these wings for an upper or a nether flight ; to
lead these voices forth into harmony or dissonance ; to
woo these beings to go where they should go, and to be
what they should be, — does it, or does it not, my friends,
require some knowledge, some anxious forethought, some
enlightening preparation ?

You must pardon me, if, on this subject, I speak to you
with great plainness ; and you must allow me to appeal
directly to your own course of conduct in other things.
You have property to be preserved for the support of your
children while you live, or, when you die, for their patri-
mony ; you have health and life to be guarded and con-
tinued, that they may not be bereaved of their natural
protectors ; — and you have the children themselves, with
their unbounded, unfathomable capacities of happiness
and misery. Now, in respect to your property, what is it
your wont to do, when a young lawyer comes into the
village, erects his sign, and, (the most unexclusive of
men,) gives to the public a general invitation ? Though
he has a diploma from a college, and the solemn approval
of bench and bar, yet how warily do the public approach
him. How much he is reconnoitred before he is retained.
How many premeditated plans are laid to appear to meet

110 SPECIAL PREPARATION

him accidentally, to talk over indifferent subjects with
him, — the weather, the crops, or Congressional matters,
— in order to measure him, and probe him, and see if
there be any hopefulness in him. And should all things
promise favorably, the young attorney is intrusted, in the
first instance, only with some outlawed note, or some
doubtful account, before a justice of the peace. No man
ever thinks of trusting a case which involves the old
homestead, to his inexperienced hands. He would as soon
set fire to it.

So, too, of a young physician. No matter from what
medical college, home or foreign, he may bring his cre-
dentials. From day to day the neighbors watch him
without seeming to look at him. In good-wives' parties,
the question is confidentially discussed, whether, in a case
of exigency, it would be safe to send for him. And when,
at last, he is gladdened with a call, it is only to look at
some surface ailment, or to pother a little about the ex-
tremities. Nobody allows him to lay his unpractised hand
upon the vitals. Now this common sentiment, — this
common practice of mankind, — is only the instinctive
dictate of prudence. It is only a tacit recognition of a
truth felt by all sensible men, that there are a thousand
ways to do a thing wrong, but only one to do it right.
And if it be but reasonable to exercise such vigilance and
caution, in selecting a healer for our bodies which perish,
or a counsellor for our worldly estates, who shall assign
limits to the circumspection and fidelity with which the
teachers of our children should be chosen, who, in the
space of a few short years, or even months, will determine,
as by a sort of predestination, upon so much of. their
future fortunes and destiny ?

Again ; it is the universal sense of mankind, that skill
and facility, in all other things, depend upon study and

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. Ill

practice. We always demand more, where opportunities
have been greater. We stamp a man with inferiority,
though he does ten times better than another, if he has
had twenty times the advantages. We know that a skilful
navigator will carry a vessel through perilous straits, in a
gale of wind, and save cargo and lives ; while an ignorant
one will wreck both, in a broad channel. With what a
song of delight we have all witnessed, how easily and
surely that wise and good man, at the head of a great
institution in our own State, will tame the ferocity of the
insane ; and how, when each faculty of a fiery spirit
bursts away like an affrighted steed from its path, this
mighty tamer of madmen will temper and quell their wild
impetuosity and restore them to the guidance of reason.
Nay, the great moral healer can do this, not to one only,
but to hundreds at a time ; while, even in a far shorter
period than he asks to accomplish such a wonderful work,
an ignorant and passionate teacher will turn a hundred
gentle, confiding spirits into rebels and anarchists. And,
my hearers, we recognize the existence of these facts, we
apply these obvious principles, to every thing but to the
education of our children.

Why cannot we derive instruction even from the folly
of those wandering show-men who spend a life in teaching
brute animals to perform wonderful feats ? We have all
seen, or at least we have all heard of, some learned horse,
or learned pig, or learned dog. Though the superiority
over their fellows, possessed by these brute prodigies, may
have been owing, in some degree, to the possession of
greater natural parts, yet it must be mainly attributed to
the higher competency of their instructor. Their teacher
had acquired a deeper insight into their natures; his
sagacious practice had discovered the means by which
their talents could be unfolded and brought out. How-

112 SPECIAL PREPARATION

ever unworthy and even contemptible, therefore, the mere
trainer of a dog may be, yet he illustrates a great princi-
ple. By showing us the superiority of a well-trained dog,
lie shows what might be the superiority of a well-trained
child. He shows us that higher acquisitions, — what may
be called academical attainments, — in a few favored in-
dividuals of the canine race, are not so much the results
of a more brilliant genius on the part of the dog-pupil, as
they are the natural reward and consequence of his
enjoying the instructions of a professor who has concen-
trated all his energies upon dog-teaching.

Surely, it will not be denied that a workman should
understand two things in regard to the subject-matter of
his work; — fast, its natural properties, qualities, and
powers ; and secondly, the means of modifying and regu-
lating them, with a view to improvement. In relation to
the mechanic arts, this is admitted by all. Everybody
knows that the strength of the blow must be adjusted to
the malleability of the metal. It will not do to strike
glass and flint, either with the same force or with the same
implements ; and the proper instrument will never be
selected by a person ignorant of the purpose to be effected
by its use. If a man working on wood, mistakes it for
iron, and attempts to soften it in the fire, his product is
— ashes. And so if a teacher supposes a child to have
but one tendency, and one adaptation, when he has many ;
— if a teacher treats a child as though his nature were
wholly animal, or wholly intellectual, or wholly moral and

, religious, he disfigures and mutilates the nature of that
child, and wrenches his whole structure into deformity.

The being Man is more complex and diversified in
constitution, and more variously endowed in faculties,
than any other earthly work of the Creator. It is in this
assemblage of powers and prerogatives that his strength

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 113

and majesty reside. They constitute his sovereignty and
lordship over the creation around him. By our bodily
organization we are adapted to the material world in
which we are placed ; — our eye to the light, which makes
known to us every change in the form, motion, color,
position, of all objects within visual range ; — our ear and
tongue to the air, which flows around us in silence, yet is
forever ready to be waked into voice and music ; — our
hand to all the cunning works of art which subserve
utility or embellishment. Still more wonderfully does the
spiritual nature of man befit his spiritual relations.
Whatever there is of law, of order, of duty, in the works
of God, or in the progressive conditions of the race, all
have their spiritual counterparts within him. By his per-
ceptive and intellectual faculties, he learns the properties
of created things, and discovers the laws by which they
are governed. By tracing the relation between causes
and effects, he acquires a kind of prophetic vision and
power ; for, by conforming to the unchanging laws of
Nature, he enlists her in his service, and she works with
him in fulfilling his predictions. Regarded as an individ-
ual, and as a member of a race which reproduces itself and
passes away, his lower propensities, — those which he
holds in common with the brutes, — are the instincts and
means to preserve himself and to perpetuate his kind ;
while by his tastes, and by the social, moral, and religious
sentiments of which he is capable, he is attuned to all the
beauties and sublimities of creation, his heart is made
responsive to all the delights of friendship and domestic
affection, and ho is invited to hold that spiritual inter-
course with his Maker, which at once strengthens and
enraptures.

Now the- voice of God and of Nature declares audibly
which of these various powers within us are to command.

114 SPECIAL PEEPARATION

and which are to obey ; and with which, in every ques-
tionable case, resides the ultimate arbitrament. Even the
lowest propensities are not to be wholly extirpated.
Within the bounds prescribed by the social and the divine
law, they have their rightful claims. But the moral and
the religious sentiments, — Benevolence, Conscience, —
Reverence for the All-creating and All-bestowing Power,
these have the prerogative of supremacy and absolute
dominion. These are to walk the halls of the soul, like a
god, nor suffer rebellion to live under their eye. Yet how
easy for this many-gifted being to fall, — more easy, indeed,
because of his many gifts. Some subject-faculty, some
subordinate power, in this spiritual realm, unfortunately
inflamed, or, — what is far more common, — unwisely
stimulated by an erroneous education, grows importunate,
exorbitant, aggrandizes itself, encroaches upon its fellow-
faculties, until, at last, obtaining the mastery, it subverts
the moral order of the soul, and wages its parricidal war
against the sovereignty of conscience within, and the laws
of society and Heaven without. And how unspeakably
dreadful are the retributions which come in the train of
these remorseless usurpers, when they obtain dominion
over the soul ! Take, for instance, the earliest-developed,
the most purely selfish and animal appetite that belongs
to us, — that for nourishing beverage. It is the first which
demands gratification after birth. Subjected to the laws
of temperance, it will retain its zest, fresh and genial, for
threescore years and ten, and it aifords the last corporal
solace -upon earth to the parched lips of the dying man.
Yet, if the possessor of this same pleasure-giving appetite
shall be incited, either by examples of inordinate indul-
gence, or by festive songs in praise of the vine and the
wine-cup, to inflame it, and to feed its deceitful fires,
though but for the space of a few short years, then the

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 115

spell of the sorcerer will be upon him ; and, day by day,
he will go and cast himself into the fiery furnace which
he has kindled ; — nor himself, the pitiable victim, alone,
but he will seize upon parents and wife and his group of
innocent children, and plunge with them all into the
seething hell of intemperance.

So there is, in human nature, an innate desire of
acquiring property, — of owning something, — of using
the possessives my and mine. Within proper limits, this
instinct is laudably indulged. Its success affords a pleas-
ure in which reason can take a part. It stimulates and
strengthens many other faculties. It makes us thought-
ful and forethoughtful. It is the parent of industry and
frugality, — and industry and frugality, as we all know,
are blood-relations to the whole family of the virtues.
But to the eye and heart of one in whom this love of ac-
quisition has become absorbing and insane, all the diver-
sified substances in creation are reduced to two classes, —
that which is gold, and that which is not; — and all the
works of Nature are valued or despised, and the laws and
institutions of society upheld or assailed, as they are sup-
posed to be favorable or unfavorable to the acquisition of
wealth. Whether at home or abroad, in the festive circle
or in the funeral train ; whether in hearing the fervid and
thrilling appeals of the sanctuary, or the pathos of civic
eloquence, one idea alone, — that of money, money,
money, — holds possession of the miser's soul ; its voice
rings forever in his ear ; and were he in the garden of
Eden, — its beauty, and music, and perfume suffusing all
his senses, — his only thought would be, how much money
it would bring ! Such mischief comes from giving suprem-
acy to a subordinate, though an essential and highly
useful faculty. This mischief, to a greater or less extent,
parents and teachers produce, when, through an ignorance

116 SPECIAL PEEPARATION

of the natural and appropriate methods of inducing chil-
dren to study, they hire them to learn by the offer of
pecuniary rewards.

So, too, we all have an innate love for whatever is beau-
tiful;— a sentiment that yearns for higher and higher
degrees of perfection in the arts, and in the embellish-
ments of life, — a feeling which would prompt us to " gild
refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a porfume on the
violet, and add another hue unto the rainbow." Portions
of the external world have been exquisitely adapted to
this inborn love of the beautiful, by Him who has so
clothed the lilies of the field that they outshine Solomon
in all his glory. Tin's sentiment may be too much or too
little cultivated; — so little as to make us disdain gratifi-
cations that are at once innocent and pure ; or sojnuch
as to over-refine us into a hateful fastidiousness. In the
works of nature, beauty is generally, if not always, subor-
dinated to utility. In cases of incompatibility, graceful-
ness yields to strength, not strength to gracefulness. How
would the rising sun mock us with his splendor, if he
brought no life or warmth in his beams ! The expectation
of autumnal harvests enhances the beauty of vernal bloom.
These manifestations of nature admonish us respecting the
rank which ornament or accomplishment should hold in
the character and in the works of men ; and, of course,
in the education of children. Christ referred occasionally
to the beauties and charms of nature, but dwelt perpetually
upon the obligations of duty and charity. But what oppo-
site and grievous offences are committed on this subject
by different portions of society! The laboring classes, by
reason of early parental neglect in cultivating a love for
the beautiful, often forego pleasures which a bountiful
Providence scatters profusely and gratuitously around
them, and strews beneath their feet ; while there is a class

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 117

of persons at the other extremity of the social scale, who,
from never comprehending the immeasurable value of the
objects for which they were created, and the vast benefi-
cence of which, from their wealth and station, they are
capable, actually try every thing, however intrinsically
noble or vsacrod, by some conventional law of fashion, by
some arbitrary and capricious standard of elegance. In
European society, this class of " fashionables " is numer-
ous. They have their imitators here, — beings, who are
not men and women, but similitudes only, — who occupy
the vanishing point in the perspective of society, where
all that is true, or noble, or estimable in human nature,
fades away into nothing. With this class, it is no matter
what a man does with the " Ten Commandments," pro-
vided he keeps those of Lord Chesterfield ; and, in their
society, Beau Brummell would take precedence of Dr.
Franklin.

In a Report lately made by the Agricultural Commis-
sioner for the survey of this Commonwealth, I noticed a
statement respecting some farmers in the northern part
of the County of Essex, who attempted to raise sun-flow-
ers for the purpose of extracting oil from the seeds.
Twenty bushels to the acre was the largest crop raised by
any one. Six bushels of the seed yielded but one gallon
of oil, worth, in the market, one dollar and seventeen
cents only. It surely required no great boldness to assert
that the experiment did not succeed: — cultivation, one
acre ; product, three gallons of oil ; value, three dollars
and fifty cents ! — which would, perhaps, about half repay
the cost of labor. Woe to the farmer who seeks for inde-
pendence by raising sun-flowers ! Ten times woe to the
parents who rear up sun-flower sons or sun-flower daugh-
ters,— instead of sons whose hearts glow and burn with
an immortal zeal to run the noble career of usefulness

118 SPECIAL PREPARATION

and virtue which a happy fortune has laid open before
them ; — instead of daughters who cherish such high re-
solves of duty as lift them even above an enthusiasm for
greatness, into those loftier and serene regions where
greatness comes not from excitement, but is native, and
ever-springing and ever-abiding. Every son, whatever
may be his expectations as to fortune, ought to be so
educated that he can superintend some part of the com-
plicated machinery of social life ; and every daughter
ought to be so educated that she can answer the claims
of humanity, whether those claims require the labor of
the head or the labor of the hand. Every daughter ought
to be so trained that she can bear, with dignity and self-
sustaining ability, those revolutions in Fortune's wheel,
which sometimes bring the kitchen up and turn the parlor
down.

Again : we have a natural, spontaneous feeling of self-
respect, an innate sense that, simply in our cajiaeiiy as
human beings, we are worth something, and entitled to
some consideration. This principle constitutes the inte-
rior frame-work of some of the virtues, veiled, indeed, by
their own beautiful covering, but still necessary in order
to keep them in an erect posture, amidst all the over-
bearing currents and forces of the world. Where this
feeling of self-respect exists too weakly, the whole charac-
ter becomes limber, flaccid, impotent, sinks under the
menace of opposition, and can be frightened out of any
thing or into any thing. On the other hand, when this
propensity aggrandizes itself, and becomes swollen and
deformed with pride, and conceit, and intolerance, it is a
far more offensive nuisance than many of those which the
law authorizes us to abate, summarily, by force and
arms. Our political institutions are a rich alluvium for
the growth of self-esteem ; for, while everybody knows

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 119

that there are the greatest differences between men in
point of honesty, of ability, of will to do good and to pro-
mote right, yet our fundamental laws, — and rightly too,
— ordain a political equality. But what is not right is,
that the political equality is the fact mainly regarded,
while there is a tendency to disregard the intellectual and
moral inequalities. And thus a faculty, designed to sub-
serve, and capable of subserving the greatest good, engen-
ders a low ambition, and fills the land with the war-whoop
of party strife.

These are specimens only of a long list of original ten-
dencies or attributes of the human mind, from a more
full enumeration and exposition of which, I must, on this
occasion, refrain. But have not enough been referred to,
to authorize us to assert the general doctrine, that every
teacher ought to have some notions, clear, definit^ yyd-
comprehensive, of the manifold powegs,T— the varioujfpp^
tare, — of the beings confided to his hands, so that he
may repress the redundancy of a too luxuriant growth,
and nourish the feeble with his fostering: care ? No idea
can be more erroneous than that children po to school to
lea ni ilic rudiments of knowledge, only, and not to form
.••liaracier. The character of children is always forming.
No place, no companion, is without an influence upon it ;
and at school it is formed more rapidly than anywhere
else. The mere fact of the presence of so many children
together, puts the social or dissocial nature of each into
fervid action. To be sent to school, especially in the coun-
try, is often as great an event in a child's life, as it is, in
his father's, to be sent to the General Court ; and we all
know with what unwonted force all things affect the
mind, in new places and under new circumstances.
Every child, too, when he first goes to school, under-
stands that he is put upon his good behavior ; and, with

120 SPECIAL PREPARATION

man or child, it is a very decisive thing, and reaches deep
into character and far into futurity, when put upon his
good behavior, to prove recreant. Now, teachers take
children under their care, as it were, during the firxf
irarm days of the spring of life, when more can be done
towards directing their growth and modifying their dis-
positions, than can be done in years, at a later season of
their existence.

Equally indispensable is it, that every teacher should
know by what means, — by virtue of what natural laws,
— the human powers and faculties are strengthened or
enfeebled. There is a principle running through, every
mental operation, — without a knowledge of which,
without a knowledge how to apply which, the life of the
most faithful teacher will be only a succession of well-
intentioned errors. The growth or decline of all our
powers depends upon a steadfast law. There is no more
chance in the processes of their growth or decay than
there is in the Multiplication Table. They grow by exer-
cise, and they lose tone and vigor by inaction. All the
faculties have their related objects, and they grow by-
being excited to action through the stimulus or instru-
mentality of those objects. Each faculty, too, has its
own set or class of related objects ; and the classes of re-
lated objects differ as much from each other, as do the

corresponding faculties which they naturally excite. If

any one power or faculty, therefore, is to be strengthened,
s-o as to perform its office with facility, precision and de-
spatch, that identical faculty, — not any other one, — _mu jt
be exercised, (jt does not strengthen my left arm to exer-
cise my right ;) and this is just as true of the powers of
the mind, as of the organs of the body. The whole pith
of that saying of Solomon, "Train up a child in the way
he should go," consists in this principle, because i(i te

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 121

.

train " moans to drill, to repeat, to do the same thing
ovpr_nnrL QVP.P a orpin 7 — t.TmA - ia^ f.n exercise. Solomon
does not say, " Tell a child the way he should go, and
when he is old, he will not depart from it." Had he said
this, we could refute him daily by ten thousand facts.
Unfortunately, education amongst us, at present, consists
too much in telling, not in training, on the part of par-
ents and teachers ; and, of course, in hearing, not in
doing, on the part of children and pupils. The black-
smith's right arm, the philosopher's intellect, the philan-
thropist's benevolence, all grow and strengthen accord-
ing to this law of exercise. The farmer works solid
flesh upon his cattle ; the pugilist strikes vigor into his
arms and breast ; the foot soldier marches strength into
his limbs ; the practical man thinks quickness and judg-
ment into his mind ; and the true Christian lives his
prayers of love and his thoughts of mercy, until every
man becomes his brother. Our own experience and ob-
servation furnish us with a life-full of evidence attesting
this principle. How did our feet learn to walk, our fin-
gers to write, our organs of speech to utter an innumera-
ble variety of sounds ? By what means does the musi-
cian pass from coarse discords to perfect music, — from
hobbling and shambling in his measure, to keeping time
like a chronometer, — from a slow and timid touch of
keys or chords, to such celerity of movement, that,
though his will sends out a thousand commands in a
minute, his nimble fingers obey them all ? It is this exer-
cise, this repetition, which gives to jugglers their marvel-
lous dexterity. By dint of practice, their motions be-
come quicker than our eyesight, and thus elude inspection.
A knowledge of this principle solves many of the riddles
of life, by showing us whence comes the domineering
strength of human appetites and passions. It comes

122 SPECIAL PREPARATION

from exercise, — from a long indulgence of them in
thought and act, — until the offspring of sinful desire
turn back, and feast upon the vitals of the wretch who
nurtured them. It is this which makes the miser pant
and raven for gain, more and more, just in proportion to
the shortness of the life during which he can enjoy it.
It is this which sends the drunkard to pay daily tribute
to his own executioner. It is this which scourges back
the gambler to the hell he dreads.

It is by this law of exercise that the perceptive and re-
flective intellect, — I mean the powers of observing and
judging, — are strengthened. If, therefore, in the edu-
cation of the child, the action of these powers is early
arrested ; if his whole time is engrossed and his whole
energy drawn away, by other things ; or, if he is not sup-
plied with the proper objects or apparatus on which these
faculties can exert themselves, — then the after-life of
such a child will be crowded with practical errors and
misjudgments. As a man, his impressions of things will
be faint and fleeting ; he will never be able to describe
an object as he saw it, nor to tell a story as he heard it.
No handicrafts-man or mechanic ever becomes what we
call a first-rate workman, until after innumerable experi-
ments and judgments, — that is, repetitions, or exercises.
And the rule is the same even with genius, — artisan or
artist, he must practise long and sedulously upon lines,
proportions, reliefs, before he can become the first sculp-
tor of the age, or the first boot-maker in the city. The
teacher, then, must continue to exercise the powers of
his pupils, until he secures accuracy even in the minut-
est things he teaches. Every child can and should learn
to judge, almost with mathematical exactness, how long
an inch is ; — no matter if he does not guess within a
foot of it the first time. Whether the story of Casper

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 123

Hauser be true or not, it has verisimilitude, and is there-
fore instructive. It warns us what the general result
must be, if, by a non-presentation of their related objects,
the -faculties of a child are not brought into exercise.
We meet with persons, every day, who, in regard to some
one or more of the faculties, are Casper Hausers. This
happens, almost universally, not through any natural de-
fect, but because parents and teachers have been igno-
rant, either of the powers to be exercised, or of the
related objects through whose instrumentality they can
be excited to action.

But here arises a demand for great skill, aptitude and
resources, on the part of the teacher ; for, by continuing
to exercise the same faculty, I do not mean a monoto-
nous repetition of the same action, nor a perpetual pres-
entation of the same object or ' idea. Such a course
would soon cloy and disgust, and thus terminate all effort
in that direction. Would a child ever learn to dance, if
there were but one figure ; or to sing, it there were but
one tune ? Nature, science, art, offer a boundless variety
of objects and processes, adapted to quicken and employ
each of the faculties. These resources the teacher
should have at his command, and should make use of
them, in the order, and for the period, that each particu-
lar case may require. ^Look into the shops of our inge-
nious artisans and mechanics, and see their shining rows
of tools, — hundreds in number, — but each adapted to
some particular process in their curious art.) Look into
the shop or hut of a savage, an Indian mechanic, and
you will find his chest of tools composed of a single jack-
knife ! So with our teachers. Sonae of them have ap-
paratus, diagram, chart, model ; they have anecdote,
epigram, narrative, history, by which to illustrate every
branch of study, and to fit every variety of disposition ;

124 SPECIAL PREPARATION

while the main resource of others, for all studies, for all
ages and for all dispositions, is — the rod !

Again ; a child must not only be exercised into correct-
ness of observation, comparison and judgment, but into
accuracy in the narration or description of what he has
seen, heard, thought or felt, so that, whatever thoughts,
emotions, memories, are within him, he can present them
all to others in exact and luminous words. Dr. Johnson
said, "Accustom your children constantly to this ; if a
thing happened at one window, and they, when relating
it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but
instantly check them. You do not know where deviation
from the truth will end." Every man who sees effects in
causes, will fully concur with the Doctor in regard to the
value of such a habit of accuracy as is here implied. If.
in the narration of an event, or in the recitation of a
lesson, a child is permitted to begin at the last end of it,
and to scatter the middle about promiscuously, depend
upon it, if that child, after growing up, is called into
court as a witness, somebody will suffer in fortune, in
reputation, or perhaps in life. When practising at the
bar, I was once engaged in an important case of slan-
der, where the whole question of the innocence or
guilt of the defendant turned upon the point, whether,
at a certain time, he was seen out of one window, or
out of another ; and the stupid witness first swore
that is was one window, then another window, and
at last, thought it might be a door ; and doubtless,
he could have been made to swear that he saw him
through the sky-light. Would you appreciate the im-
portance of accuracy, in observation and statement,
take one of those cases which so frequently occur in our
courts of law, where a dozen witnesses, — all honest, —
swear one way, and another dozen, — equally honest, — .

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 125

counter-swear ; and contrast it with a case, which so rare-
ly occurs, where a witness, whose mind, like a copying
machine, having taken an exact impression of whatever
it has seen or heard, attests to complicated facts, in a
manner so orderly, luminous, natural, — giving to each,
time, locality, proportion, that when he has finished,
every auditor, — bench, bar, spectators, — all feel as
though they had been personally present and witnessed
the whole transaction. Now, although something of this
depends, unquestionably, upon soundness in physical and
mental organization, yet a vast portion of it is referable
to the early observation or neglect, on the part of teacher
or parent, of the law we are considering.

There is another point, too, which the teacher should
regard, especially where only a small portion of non-age
is appropriated to school attendance. In exercising the
faculties for the purpose of strengthening them, the
greatest amount of useful knowledge should be commu-
nicated. The faculties may be exercised and strength-
ened in acquiring useful or useless knowledge. A farmer
or a stone-mason may exercise and strengthen the mus-
cles of his body, by pitching or rolling timbers or stones,
backwards and forwards ; but. by converting the same
materials into a house or a fence, he may at once gain
strength and do good. Every teacher, at the same time
that he exercises the faculties of his pupils, ought to im-
part the greatest amount of valuable knowledge ; and he,
.-Tiould always be above the temptation of keeping a pu-
pil in a lower department, of study, because he himself
• Iocs not understand the higher ; or, on the other hand,
of prematurely carrying his pupil into a higher depart-
ment, because of his own ignorance of the lower) Sup-
pose a bright boy, for instance, to be studying arithmetic
and geography, at school. Now, arithmetic cannot be

126 SPECIAL PREPARATION

taught unless it is understood ; but. with the help of an
atlas, and a text-book whose margin is all covered with
questions, the business of teaching geography may be set
up on a very slender capital of knowledge. And here a
teacher who is obliged to be very economical of his arith-
metic, would be tempted to keep his pupil upon all the
small towns, and tiny rivers, and dots of islands in the
geography, in order to delay him, and gain time, — like
the officers of those banks whose specie runs low, who
seek to pay off their creditors in cents, because it takes
so long to count the copper. Every teacher ought to
know vastly more than he is required to teach, so that he
may be furnished, on every subject, with copious illustra-
tion and instructive anecdote ; and so that the pupils may
be disabused of the notion they are so apt to acquire,
that they carry all knowledge in their satchels. Eveiy
teacher should be possessed of a facility at explanation,
— a tact in discerning and solving difficulties, — not to
be used too often, for then it would supersede the effort it
should encourage, — but when it is used, to be quick and
sure as a telescope, bringing distant objects near, and
making obscure ones distinct. In the important, but
grossly neglected and abused exercise of reading, for in-
stance, every new fact, every new idea, is news to the
child ; and did he fully understand it, he would be as
eager to learn it, as we are to learn what is news to us.
But how. think you, should we be vexed, if our news-
bringer spoke every third word in a foreign language ; or
gave us only a Pennsylvania newspaper printed in Ger-
man, when we wanted to know how their votes stood in
an election for President. Whatever words a child does
not understand, in his reading lesson, are, to him, words
in a foreign language ; and they must be translated into
his own language before he can take any interest in them.

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 127

But if, instead of being translated into his language, they
are left unnoticed, or are translated into another foreign
language still, — that is, into other words or phrases of
which he is ignorant, — then, the child, instead of de-
lightful and instructive ideas, gets empty words, mere
sounds, atmospheric vibrations only. In Dr. Johnson's
Dictionary, the word, "Network" is denned to be " any
thing reticulated or decussated, with interstices between
the intersections." Now who, ignorant of the meaning
of the word " network," before, would understand it any
better by being told, that it is " any thing reticulated or
decussated, with interstices between the intersections ? "
Nor would he be much enlightened, if, on looking far-
ther, he found that the same author had given the follow-
ing definitions of the defining words : — "reticulated,"
"formed with interstitial vacuities ; " — " decussated,"
" intersected at acute angles ; " — " interstice," " space
between one thing and another;" — "intersection,"
" point ivhere lines cross each other."" If this is not, as
Milton says, " dark with excess of bright," it is, at least,
" darkness visible." A few years since, a geography was
published in this State, — the preface of which boasted
of its adaptation to the capacities of children ; — and, on
the second page, there was this definition of the words
" zenith and nadir : " ;i zenith and nadir, two Arabic
words importing' their own signification." A few years
since, an English traveller and book-maker, who called
himself Thomas Ashe, Esq., visited the Big Bone Licks,
in Kentucky, where he found the remains of the mam-
moth, in great abundance, and whence he carried away
several wagon-loads of bones. In describing the size of
one of the shoulder-blades of that animal, he says, it
" was about as large as a breakfast-table ! " A child's
mind may be dark and ignorant before, but, under such

128 SPECIAL PREPARATION

explanations as these, darkness will coagulate, and igno-
rance be sealed in hermetically. Let a school be so con-
ducted but for one season, and all life will be abstracted
from it ; and it will become the painful duty of the school
committee, at its close, to attend a post mortem examina-
tion of the children, without even the melancholy sat-
isfaction of believing that science will be benefited by the
horrors of the dissection.

f Every teacher should be competent to some care of the
Jhoalth of his pupils, — not merely for the purpose of rcg-
ynifttUig the temperature of the schoolroom, and, of
/course, the transition which the scholars must undergo,
if on entering or leaving it, — though this is of no small
importance, — but so that, as occasion offers, he may in-
culcate a knowledge of some of the leading conditions
jipon which health and life depend. I saw, last year, in
the public town school of Northampton, — under the care
of Mr. R. M. Hubbard, — more than a hundred boys,
from ten or eleven to fifteen or sixteen years of age, who
pointed out the place and gave the name of all the prin-
cipal bones in their bodies, as well as an anatomist would
have done ; who explained the physiological processes of
the circulation of the blood and the alimentation of food,
and described the putrefactive action of ardent spirits
upon the delicate tissues of the stomach. Now such
boys have a chance, nay, a certainty, of far longer life
and far better health, than they would otherwise have ;
and as they grow up, they will be far less easily tempted
to emulate either of the three cockney graces, — Gin,
Swearing and Tobacco.

But 1 must pass by other considerations, respecting the
growth and invigoration of the intellectual faculties, and
the classes of subjects upon which they should be em-
ployed. I hasten to the consideration of another topic,
incalculably more important.

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 129

The moral faculties increase or decline, strengthen or
languish, by the same law of exercise. In legislating for
"loenTacgg^rare mainly regarded ; but in the education
of children, motives are every thing > MOTIVES ARE EVERY
THING! All, this side of the motive, is mere mechanism,
anxTTt matters not whether it be done by the hand, or by
a crank. There was profound philosophy in the old theo-
logical notion, that whoever made a league with the
devil, in order to gratify a passion through his help, be-
came the devil's property afterwards. And so, when a
teacher stimulates a child to the performance of actions,
externally right, by appealing to motives intrinsically
wrong, he sells- that child into bondage to the wrong
motive. Some parents, finding a desire of luxurious food
a stronger motive-power in their children than any other,
accomplish every thing through its means. They hire
them to go to school and learn, to go to church and re-
member the text, and to behave well before company, by
a promise of dainties. Every repetition of this enfeebles
the sentiment of duty, through its inaction, while it in-
creases the desire for delicacies, by its exercise ; and as.
they successively come into competition afterwards, the
virtue will be found to have become weaker, and the ap-
petite stronger. Such parents touch the wrong pair of
nerves, — the sensual instead of the moral, the bestial
instead of the divine. These springs of action lie at the
very extremes of human nature, — one class down among
the brutes, the other up among the seraphim. When a
child, so educated, becomes a man, and circumstances
make him the trustee or fiduciary of the friendless and
unprotected, and he robs the widow and orphan to obtain
the means of luxury or voluptuousness, we exclaim,
" Poor human nature I " and are ready to appoint a Fast;
when the truth is, he was educated to be a knave under

130 SPECIAL PREPARATION

that very temptation. Were a surgeon to operate upon
a human body, with as little knowledge of his subject as
this, and whip round his double-edged knife where the
vital parts lie thickest, he would be tried for manslaugh-
ter at the next court, and deserve conviction.

Take another example ; — and I instance one of the
motive-forces which, for the last fifty or a hundred years,
has been mainly relied on, in our schools, academies and
colleges, as the stimulus to intellectual effort ; and
which has done more than every thing else, to cause
the madness and the profligacy of those political and
social rivalries that now convulse the land. Let us
take a child who has only a moderate> love of learning,
but an inordinate passion for praise and place ; and we
therefore allure him to study by the enticements of pre-
cedence and applause. If he will surpass all his fellows,
we advance him to the post, and signalize him with the
badges of distinction, and never suffer the siren of flat-
tery to cease the enchantments of her song. If he ever
has any compassionate misgivings in regard to the
effect which his own promotion may have upon his less
brilliant, though not less meritorious fellow-pupils, then
we seek to withdraw his thoughts from this virtuous
channel, and to turn them to the selfish contemplation of
his own brilliant fortunes in future years ; if waking
conscience ever whispers in his ear, that that pleasure is
dishonorable which gives pain to the innocent ; then we
dazzle him with the gorgeous vision of triumphal honors
and applauding multitudes ; — and when, in after-life,
this victim of false influences deserts a righteous cause
because it is declining, and joins an unrighteous one be-
cause it is prospering, and sets his name in history's pil-
lory, to be scoffed and jeered at for ages, then we pour
out lamentations, in prose and verse, over the moral sui-

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 131

cide ! And yet, by such a course of education, he was
prepared beforehand, like a skilfully organized machine,
to prove a traitor and an apostate at that very conjuncture.
No doubt, a college-boy will learn more Greek and Latin
if it is generally understood that college-honors are to be
mainly awarded for proficiency in those languages ; but
what care we though a man can speak seven languages,
or dreams in Hebrew or Sanscrit, because of their fami-
liarity, if he has never learned the language of sympathy
for human suffering, and is deaf when the voice of truth
and duty utters their holy mandates ? We want men
who feel a sentiment, a consciousness, of brotherhood for
the whole human race. We want men who will instruct
the ignorant, — not delude them ; who will succor 'the
weak, — not prey upon them. We want men who will
fly to the moral breach when the waters of desolation
are pouring in, and who will stand there, and, if need
be, die there, — applause or no applause. No doubt,
every one is bound to take watchful care of that portion
of his happiness which rightfully depends upon the good
opinion of others ; but before any teacher attempts to
secure the proficiency of his pupils by inflaming their
love of praise and place, ought he not to appeal, with
earnest and prolonged entreaty, to every higher senti-
ment ; and even then, should he fail of arousing a desire
for improvement, would it not be better to abandon a
pupil to mediocrity, or even insignificance, than to insure
him the highest eminence by awakening an unholy ambi-
tion in his bosom ? It is infinitely better for any nation
to support a hospital for fools, than to have a parliament
or a congress of knaves.

And thus it is with all moral developments. Igno-
rance may appeal to a wrong motive, and thus give inor-
dinate strength to an inferior sentiment, while honestly

132 SPECIAL PEEPAEATION

iii quest of a right action. For a few times, perhaps
even for a few years, the appeal may be successful ; but,
by and by, the interior sentiment or propensity will gain
predominance, and usurp the throne, and rule by virtue
of its own might.

So, too, a train of circumstances may be prepared, or
a system of government adopted, designed by their
author for good, yet productive of a venomous brood of
feelings. .Suppose a teacher attempts to secure obedi-
ence by fear, instead of love-, but still lacks the energy or
the talent requisite for success. Forthwith, and from the
necessity of the case, there are two hostile parties in that
school, — the teacher with his government to maintain, the
pupils with their various and ever-springing desires to
gratify, in defiance of that government. Not only will
there be revolts and mutinies, revolutions and counter-
revolutions, iu sucli a school, but, what is infinitely worse
because of its meanness and baseness, there will be gene-
rated a moral pestilence of deception and trickery. The
boldest spirits, — those already too bold and fool-hardy,
— will break out into open rebellion, and thus begin to
qualify themselves to become, in after-life, violators and
contemners of the laws of society ; while those who are
already prone to concealment and perfidy will sharpen
their wits for deception ; they will pretend to be saying
or doing one thing when saying or doing another ; they
will sever the connection between tongue and heart ; they
will make the eyes, the face, and all the organs that con-
tribute to the natural language, belie the thoughts ; and,
in fine, will turn the whole body into an instrument of
dissimulation. Such children, under such management,
are every day preparing to become, — not men of frank-
ness, of ingenuousness, of a beautiful transparency of
disposition, — but sappers and miners of character, —

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 133

men accomplishing all their ends by stratagem and am-
bush, and as full of guile as the first serpent. Who of us
has not seen some individual so secretive and guileful as
to be impervious to second-sight, or even to the boasted
vision of animal magnetism ? I cannot but believe that
most of those hateful specimens of duplicity, — I might
rather say, of triplicity, or multiplicity, — which we
sometimes encounter in society, had their origin in the
attempts made in early life to evade commands injudi-
ciously given, or not enforced when given. If any thing
pertaining to the education of children demands discre-
tion, prudence, wisdom, it is the commands which we im-
pose upon them. In no case ought a command ever to
be issued to a child without a moral certainty either that
it will be voluntarily obeyed, or, if resisted, that it can
be enforced ; because disobedience to superiors, who stand
at first in the place of a child's conscience, prepares the
way for disobedience to conscience itself, when that fac-
ulty is developed. Hence the necessity of discriminat-
ing, as a preliminary, between what a child will do, or
can be made to do, and the contrary. Hence, when dis-
obedience is apprehended, the issue should be tried rather
on a case of prohibition than of injunction, because a
child can be deterred when he cannot be compelled.
Hence, also, the necessity of discriminating between what
a child has the moral power to do, and what it is in vain
to expect from him. Take a child who has been brought
up luxuriously, indulgently, selfishly, and command him,
in the first instance, to incur some great sacrifice for a
mere stranger, or for some object which he neither un-
derstands nor values, and disobedience is as certain as long
days in the middle of June ; — I mean the disobedience
of the spirit, for fear, perhaps, may secure the perform-
ance of the outward act. Such a child knows nothing of

134 SPECIAL PKEPARATION

the impulsions of conscience, of the joyful emotions
that leap up in the heart after the performance of a gen-
erous deed ; and it is as absurd to put such a weight of
self-denial upon his benevolence, the first time, as it
would be to put a camel's load upon his shoulders. Such
a child is deeply diseased. He is a moral paralytic. In
regard to all benevolent exertion and sacrifice, he is as
weak as an infant ; and he can be recovered and strength-
ened to virtuous resolutions only by degrees. What
should we think of a physician, who, the first time his
patient emerged from a sick -chamber, — pallid, emaci-
ated, tottering, — should prescribe a match at wrestling,
or the running of races ? Yet this would be only a par-
allel to the mode in which selfish or vicious children are
often treated ; nay, some persons prepare or select the
most difficult cases, — cases requiring great generosity or
moral intrepidity, — by which to break new beginners
into the work of benevolence or duty. If, by a bad edu-
cation, a child has lost all generous affections, (for no
child is. born without them ;) if he never shares his books
or divides his luxuries with his playmates ; if he hides
his playthings at the approach of his little visitors ; if his
eye never kindles at the recital of a magnanimous deed,
— of course 1 mean one the magnanimity of which he
can comprehend, — then he can be won back to kindness
and justice only by laborious processes, and in almost im-
perceptible degrees. In every conversation before such
children, generosity and self-denial should be spoken of
with a fervor of admiration and a glow of sympathy.
Stories should be told or read before them, in which the
principal actors are signalized by some of the qualities
they delight in, (always provided that no element of evil
mingles with them,) and when their attachments are firm-
ly fastened upon hero or heroine, then the social, amia-

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 135

•

ble and elevated sentiments which are deficient in the
children themselves, should be developed in the actors or
characters whom they have been led to admire. A child
may be led to admire qualities on account of their relation-
ships and associations, when he would be indifferent to
them if presented separately. If a child is selfish, the
occasion for kind acts should be prepared, where all the
acompaniments are agreeable. As the sentiment of be-
nevolence gains tone and strength, and begins to realize
some of those exquisite gratifications which God, by its
very constitution, has annexed to its exercise, then let the
collateral inducements be weakened, and the experiments
assume more of the positive character of virtue. In this
way, a child so selfish and envious as to be grieved even
at the enjoyment of others, may be won, at last, to seek
for delight in offices of humanity and self-sacrifice. There
is always an avenue through which a child's mind can be
reached ; the failures come from our want of persever-
ance and sagacity in seeking it. We must treat moral
more as we treat physical distempers. Week after week
the mother sits by the sick-bed, and welcomes fasting and
vigils ; her watchfulness surrounds her child, and, with all
the means and appliances that wealth or life can com-
mand, she strives to bar up every avenue through which
death can approach him. Did mothers care as much for
the virtues and moral habits as for the health and life of
their offspring, would they not be as patient, as hopeful,
and as long-suffering in administering antidote and rem-
edy to a child who is morally, as to one who is physi-
cally, diseased ?

Is it not in the way above described, — after a slowly
brightening twilight of weeks, perhaps of months, — that
the occulist, at last, lets in the light of the meridian sun
upon the couched eye ? Is it not in this way that the

136 SPECIAL PREPARATION.

•

convalescent of a fevered bed advances, from a measured
pittance of the weakest nutrition, to that audacious
health which spurns at all restraints upon appetite, wheth-
er as to quantity or quality ? For these healings of the
diseased eye or body, we demand the professional skill "
and science of men educated and trained to the work ;
nay, if any impostor or empiric wantonly tampers with
eye or life, the injured party accuses him, the officers of
the law arrest him, the jurors upon their oaths convict
him, the judges pass sentence, and the sheriff executes
the mandates of the law ; — while parties, officers, jurors,
judges and sheriffs, with one consent, employ teachers to
direct and train the godlike faculties of their children,
who never had one hour of special study, who never re-
ceived one lesson of special instruction, to fit them for
their momentous duties.

If, then, the business of education, in all its depart-
ments, be so responsible ; if there be such liability to
excite and strengthen any one faculty of the opening
mind, instead of its antagonist ; if there be such danger
of promoting animal and selfish propensities into com-
mand over social and moral sentiments ; if it be so easy
for an unskilful hand to adjust opportunity to temptation
in such a way that the exposed are almost certain to fall ;
if it be a work of such delicacy and difficulty to reclaim
those who have wandered ; if, in fine, one, not deeply con-
versant with the human soul, with all its various facul-
ties and propensities, and with all the circumstances and
objects which naturally excite them to activity, is in incom-
parably greater danger of touching the wrong spring of
action, than one, unacquainted with music, is of touching
the wrong key or chord of the most complicated musical
instrument, — then ought not every one of those who
are installed into the sacred office of teacher to be " a

A PREEEQUISITE TO TEACHING. 137

workman who needeth not to be ashamed " ? Surely,
they should know, beforehand, how to touch the right
spring, with the right pressure, at the right time.

There is a terrible disease that sometimes afflicts indi-
viduals, by which all the muscles of the body seem to be
unfastened from the volitions of the mind, and then, after
being promiscuously transposed, to be re-fastened ; so
that a wrong pair of muscles is attached to every volition.
In such a case, the afflicted patient never does the thing
he intends to do. If he would walk forwards, his will
starts the wrong pair of muscles, and he walks back-
wards. When he would extend his right arm to shake
hands with you, in salutation, he starts the wrong pair of
muscles, thrusts out his left, and slaps or punches you.
Precisely so is it with the teacher who knows not what
faculties of his pupils to exercise, and by what objects,
motives, or processes, they can be brought into activity.
He is the will of the school ; they are the body which that
will moves ; and, through ignorance, he is perpetually
applying his will to the wrong points. What wonder,
then, if, spending day after day in pulling at the wrong
pairs of muscles, the teacher involves the school in inex-
tricable disorder and confusion, and, at last, comes to the
conviction that they were never made to go right?

But, says an objector, can any man ever attain to such
knowledge that he can touch as he should this " harp of
a thousand strings " ? Perhaps not, I reply ; but ask, in
my turn, Cannot every man know better than he now
does ? Cannot something be done to make good teachers
better, and incompetent ones less incompetent ? Cannot
something be done to promote the progress and to di- ' j
minish the dangers of all our schools? Cannot some-
thing be done to increase the intelligence of those female \
teachers, to whose hands our children are committed in

138 SPECIAL PREPARATION

the earliest and most impressible periods of childhood ; —
and thus, in the end, to increase the intelligence of moth-
ers, — for every mother is ex officio a member of the Col-
lege of Teachers ? Cannot something be done, by study,
by discussion, by practical observation, — and especially
by the institution of Normal Schools, — which shall dif-
fuse both the art and the science of teaching more widely
through our community than they have ever yet been
diffused ?

My friends, you cannot go for any considerable distance
in any direction, within the limits of our beloved Com-
monwealth, without passing one of those edifices profes-
sedly erected for the education of our children. Though
rarely an architectural ornament, yet, always, they are
a moral beauty, to the land in which we dwell. Enter
with me, for a moment, into one of these important,
though lowly mansions. Survey those thickly-seated
benches. Before us are clustered the children of to-day,
the men of to-morrow, the immortals of eternity ! What
costly works of art, what splendid galleries of sculpture
or of painting, won by a nation's arms, or purchased by a
nation's wealth, are comparable, in value, to the treasures
we have in these children ? How many living and pal-
pitating nerves come down from parents and friends, and
centre in their young hearts ; and, as they shall advance
in life, other living and palpitating nerves, which no man
can number, shall go out from their bosoms to twine
round other hearts, and to feel their throbs of pleasure or
of pain, of rapture or of agony ! How many fortunes of
others shall be linked with their fortunes, and shall share
an equal fate ! As yet, to the hearts of these young be-
ings, crime has not brought in its retinue of fears, nor
disappointment its sorrows. Their joys are joys, and their
hopes more real than our realities ; and, as visions of the

A PREREQUISITE TO TEACHING. 139

future burst upon their imaginations, their eye kindles,
like the young eagle's at the morning sunbeam. Group-
ing these children into separate circles, and looking for-
ward, for but a few short years, to the fortunes that await
them, shall we predict their destiny, in the terrific lan-
guage of the poet : —

" These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind,
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,
And Shame that skulks behind.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,
Then whirl the wretch from high,
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning Infamy.

The stings of Falsehood those shall try,
And hard Unkindness' altered eye
That mocks the tear it forced to flow;
And keen Remorse, with blood denied,
And moody Madness, laughing wild,
Amid severest woe."

Or, concentrating our whole souls into one resolve, —
high and prophetically strong, — that our duty to these
children shall be done, shall we proclaim, in the blessed
language of the Saviour : " IT is NOT THE WILL OF YOUR
FATHER WHICH is IN HEAVEN THAT ONE OF THESE LITTLE

ONES SHOULD PERISH " ?

LECTURE m.

1838.

LECTURE III.

THE NECESSITY OF EDUCATION IN A REPUBLICAN
GOVERNMENT.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION : —

THE common arguments in favor of Education have
been so often repeated, that, in rising to address you on
this subject, I feel like appealing to your own judgment
and good sense to bear testimony to its worth, rather
than attempting to make your convictions firmer, or your
feelings stronger, by any attestations of mine.

I hardly need to say, that, by the word Education, I
mean much more than an ability to read, write, and keep
common accounts. I comprehend, under this noble
word, such a training of the body as shall build it up
with robustness and vigor, — at once protecting it from
disease, and enabling it to act, formatively, upon the
crude substances of Nature, — to turn a wilderness into
cultivated fields, forests into ships, or quarries and clay-
pits into villages and cities. I mean, also, to include
such a cultivation of the intellect as shall enable it to
discover those permanent and mighty laws which pervade
all parts of the created universe, whether material or
spiritual. This is necessary, because, if we act in obedi-
ence to these laws, all the resistless forces of Nature become
our auxiliaries, and cheer us on to certain prosperity and
triumph ; but, if we act in contravention or defiance of
these laws, then Nature resists, thwarts, baffles us ; and,
in the end, it is just as certain that she will overwhelm

143

144 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

us with ruin, as it is that God is stronger than man.
And, finally, by the term Education, I mean such a cul-
ture of our moral affections and religious susceptibilities,
as, in the course of Nature and Providence, shall lead to
a subjection or conformity of all our appetites, propen-
sities, and sentiments to the will of Heaven.

My friends, is it not manifest to us all, that no individ-
ual, unless he has some acquaintance with the lower
forms of education, can superintend even the coarsest
and most common interests of life, without daily error
and daily shame? The general utility of knowledge,
also, and the higher and more enduring satisfactions of
the intellect, resulting from the discovery and contem-
plation of those truths with which the material and the
spiritual universe are alike filled, impart to this subject
a true dignity and a sublime elevation. But, in its office
of attempering feelings which otherwise would blast or
consume us ; — in its authority to say to the clamorous
propensities of our nature, "Peace, be still!" — in its
auxiliary power to fit us for the endearments of domestic,
for the duties of social, and for the sanctity of immortal
life; — in its twofold office of enhancing the enjoyment
which each one of us may feel in the virtue and happiness
of all others, and of increasing the virtue and happiness
of all others, to make a larger fund for common enjoy-
ment ; — in these high and sacred prerogatives, the cause
of education lays claim to our mind and heart and
strength, as one of the most efficient instruments pre-
pared by the Creator for the welfare of His creatures,
and the honor of Himself.

Take any individual you please, separate him from the
crowd of men, and look at him, apart and alone, — like
some Robinson Crusoe in a far-off island of the ocean,
without any human being around him, with no prospect

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 145

of leaving any human being behind him. — and, even
in such a solitude, how authoritative over his actions,
how decisive of his contemplations and of his condition,
are the instructions he received and the habits he formed
in early life ! But now behold him as one of the tumul-
tuous throng of men ; observe the wide influences which
he exerts upon others, — in the marts of business, in the
resorts of pleasure, in the high places of official trust, —
and reflect how many of all these influences, whether
beneficent or malign, depend upon the education he has
received, and you will have another gauge or standard
whereby to estimate the importance of our theme. Look
at him again, not as a being, coming, we know not
whence, alighting for a brief residence upon this earth,
and then making his exit through the door of the tomb,
to be seen and heard of no more, and leaving no more
impression upon society of his ways or works, than the
sea-bird leaves upon the surface of the deep, when she
stoops from the upper air, dips her breast for a moment
in the wave, and then rises again to a viewless height ;
but look at him in his relations to posterity, as the father
of a family, as a member of a generation which sows
those seeds of virtue or vice, that, centuries hence, shall
bear fruit or poison ; — look at him as a citizen in a free
government, throwing his influence and his vote into one
or the other of the scales where peace and war, glory and
infamy, are weighed ; — look at him in these relations,
and consider how a virtuous or a vicious education tends
to fit or to unfit him for them all, and you will catch one
more glimpse of the importance of the subject now pre-
sented to your consideration. But if we ascend to a still
higher'point of vision, and, — forgetting the earthly, per-
sonal career, and the wide sphere of social influences,
and those acts of life which survive life, — fasten our

VOL. I. 10

146 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

eyes upon effects which education may throw forward
into immortal destinies, it is then that we are awed,
amazed, overpowered, by the thought, that we have been
created and placed in a system, where the soul's eternal
flight may be made higher or lower by those who plume
its tender wings and direct its early course. Such is the
magnitude, the transcendence of this subject. In a phil-
osophical view, beginning at what point we will, and fol-
lowing the most rigid connection and dependence of
cause and effect, of antecedent and consequence, we shall
find that education is intimately related to every good,
and to every evil, which, as mortal, or as immortal be-
ings, we can desire or dread.

Were a being of an understanding mind and a benevo-
lent heart, to see, for the first time, a peaceful babe re-
posing in its cradle, or on its mother's breast, and were
he to be told, that that infant had been so constituted
that every joint and organ in its whole frame might
become the rendezvous of diseases and racking pains ;
that such was its internal structure, that every nerve and
fibre beneath its skin might be made to throb with a
peculiar torture ; that, in the endless catalogue of human
disasters, maladies, adversities or shame, there was
scarcely one to which it would not be exposed ; that, in
the whole criminal law of society, and in the more com-
prehensive and self-executing law of God, there was not
a crime which its heart might not at some time will, and
its hand perpetrate ; that, in the ghastly host of tragic
passions, — Fear, Envy, Jealousy, Hate, Remorse, De-
spair, — there was not one which might not lacerate its
soul, and bring down upon it an appropriate catastro-
phe ; — were the benevolent spectator whom I have
supposed, to see this environment of ills underlying,
surrounding, overhanging their feeble and unconscious

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 147

victim, and, as it were, watching to dart forth and seize
it, might he not be excused for wishing the newly-created
spirit well back again into nonentity ?

But we cannot return to nonentity. We have no ref-
uge in annihilation. Creative energy has been exerted.
Our first attribute, the vehicle of all our other attributes,
— is immortality. We are of indestructible mould.
Do what else we please with our nature and our faculties,
we cannot annihilate them. Go where we please, self-
desertion is impossible. Banished, we may be, from the
enjoyment of God, but never from his dominion. There
is no right or power of expatriation. There is 110 neigh-
boring universe to fly to. If we forswear allegiance, it is
but an empty form, for the laws by which we are bound
do not only surround us, but are in us, and parts of us.
Whatsoever other things may be possible, yet to break up
or suspend this perpetuity of existence ; to elude this sus-
ceptibility to pains, at once indefinite in number and in-
describable in severity ; to silence conscience, or say that
it shall not hold dominion over the soul ; to sink the past
in oblivion ; or to alter any of the conditions on which
Heaven has made our bliss and our woe to depend, —
these things are impossible. Personality has been given
us, by which we must refer all sensations, emotions, re-
solves, to our conscious selves. Identity has been given
us, by virtue of which, through whatever ages we exist,
our whole being is made a unity. Now, whether curses
or blessings, by these conditions of our nature we must
stand ; for they are appointed to us, by a law higher than
Pate, — by the law of God.

Were any one of this assembly to be shipwrecked upon
a desert island, — " out of Humanity's reach," — would
it not be his first act to ascend the nearest eminence and
explore his position ? Would he not at once strive to

148 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

descry the dangers and the resources by which he might
bo surrounded ? And, if reason, or even an enlightened
self-love, constitutes any attribute of our nature, is it any
the less our duty, — finding ourselves to be, and to have
entered upon an interminable career of existence, — find-
ing ourselves inwrought and organized with certain fac-
ulties and susceptibilities, so that we are necessitated to
enjoy pleasure or to suffer pain, and so that neutrality
between good and evil is impossible, — is it, I say, any
the less our duty and our interest to look around us and
within us, and to see what, on the whole, we can best do
with this nature and with these faculties, of which we
find ourselves in possession ? Ought we not to inquire
what mighty forces of Nature and of Providence are
sweeping us along, and whither their currents are tending ? .
what parts of the great system in which we are placed
can be accommodated to us, and to what parts we must
accommodate ourselves ?

Before such a theme I stand in awe. On which side
shall its vastness be approached ? Shall I speak of the
principles on which an educational system for a State
should be organized ; or of the means and agencies by
which it should be administered, in contrast with the ab-
sence of any fundamental plan ? Prom the Capitol, where
the sovereign la,w is enacted, and whence it is promul-
gated, to the school district and the fireside, where the grand
results of that law are to appear, in a more prosperous,
more intelligent, more virtuous, and, of course, more hap-
py generation of men and women, there is a vast inter-
vening distance ; — upon which one of the many links of
the chain that binds these two extremes together shall I
expatiate ?

I venture, my friends, at this time, to solicit your at-
tention, while I attempt to lay before you some of the re-

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 149

lations which we bear to the cause of Education, because
we are the citizens of a Republic ; and thence to deduce
some of the reasons, which, under our political institu-
tions, make the proper training of the rising generation
the highest earthly duty of the risen.

It is a truism, that free institutions multiply human
energies. A chained body cannot do much harm ; a
chained mind can do as little. In a despotic govern-
ment, the human faculties arc benumbed and paralyzed ;
in a Republic, they glow with an intense life, and burst
forth with uncontrollable impetuosity. In the former,
they aro circumscribed and straitened in their range of
action ; in the latter, they have " ample room and verge
enough," and may rise to glory or plunge into ruin.
Amidst universal ignorance, there cannot be such wrong-
notions about right, as there may be in a community par-
tially enlightened ; and false conclusions which have been
reasoned out are infinitely worse than blind impulses.

To demonstrate the necessity of education in our gov-
ernment, I shall not attempt to derive my proofs from
the history of other Republics. Such arguments are
becoming stale. Besides, there are so many points of
difference between our own political institutions, and
those of any other government calling itself free, which
has ever existed, that the objector perpetually eludes or
denies the force of our reasoning, by showing some want
of analogy between the cases presented.

I propose, therefore, on this occasion, not to adduce,
as proofs, what has been true only in past times ; but
what is true at the present time, and must always con-
tinue to be true. I shall rely, not on precedents, but on
the nature of things ; and draw my arguments less from
history than from humanity.

Now it is undeniable that, with the possession of cer-

150 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

tain higher faculties, — common to all mankind, — whose
proper cultivation will bear us upward to hitherto undis-
covered regions of prosperity and glory, we possess, also,
certain lower faculties or propensities ; — equally com-
mon ; — whose improper indulgence leads, inevitably, to
tribulation, and anguish, and ruin. The propensities to
which I refer seem indispensable to our temporal exist-
ence, and, if restricted within proper limits, they are pro-
motive of our enjoyment ; but, beyond those limits, they
work dishonor and infatuation, madness and despair.
As servants, they are indispensable ; as masters, they tor-
ture as well as tyrannize. Now despotic and arbitrary
governments have dwarfed and crippled the powers of
doing evil as much as the powers of doing good ; but a
republican government, from the very fact of its freedom,
unreins their speed, and lets loose their strength. It is
justly alleged against despotisms, that they fetter, muti-
late, almost extinguish the noblest powers of the human
soul ; but there is a per contra to this, for which we have
not given them credit ; — they circumscribe the ability to
do the greatest evil, as well as to do the greatest good.

My proposition, therefore, is simply this : — If republican
institutions do wake up unexampled energies in the whole
mass of a people, and give them implements of unexam-
pled power wherewith to work out their will, then these
same institutions ought also to confer upon that people
unexampled wisdom and rectitude. If these institutions
give greater scope and impulse to the lower order of fac-
ulties belonging to the human mind, then they must
also give more authoritative control and more skilful
guidance to the higher ones. If they multiply tempta-
tions, they must fortify against them. If they quicken
the activity and enlarge the sphere of the appetites and
passions, they must, at least in an equal ratio, establish

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 151

the authority and extend the jurisdiction 'of reason and
conscience. In a word, we must not add to the impul-
sive, without also adding to the regulating forces.

If we maintain institutions, which bring us within the
action of new and unheard-of powers, without taking any
corresponding measures for the government of those
powers, we shall perish by the very instruments prepared
for our happiness.

The truth has been so often asserted, that there is no
security for a republic but in morality and intelligence,
that a repetition of it seems hardly in good taste. But
all permanent blessings being founded on permanent
truths, a continued observance of the truth is the condi-
tion of a continued enjoyment of the blessing. I know
we are often admonished that, without intelligence and
virtue, as a chart and a compass, to direct us in our un-
tried political voyage, we shall perish in the first storm ;
but I venture to add that, without these qualities, we
shall not wait for a storm, — we cannot weather a calm.
If the sea is as smooth as glass we shall founder, for we
are in a stone boat. Unless these qualities pervade the
general head and the general heart, not only will repub-
lican institutions vanish from amongst us, but the words
prosperity and happiness will become obsolete. And all
this may be affirmed, not from historical examples mere-
ly, but from the very constitution of our nature. We
are created and brought into life with a set of innate,
organic dispositions or propensities, which a free govern-
ment rouses and invigorates, and which, if not bridled and
tamed, by our actually seeing the eternal laws of justice,
as plainly as we can see the sun in the heavens, — and
by our actually feeling the sovereign sentiment of duty,
as plainly as we feel the earth beneath our feet, — will
hurry us forward into regions populous with every form
of evil.

152 NECESSITY OP EDUCATIOS

Divines, moralists, metaphysicians, — almost without
exception, — regard the human being as exceedingly
complex in his mental or spiritual constitution, as well
as in his hodily organization ; — they regard him as hav-
ing a plurality of tendencies and affections, though
brought together and embodied in one person. Hence,
in all discussions or disquisitions respecting human na-
ture, they analyze or assort it into different classes of
powers and faculties.

First, there is a conscience in every one of us, and a
sense of responsibleness to God, which establish a moral
relation between us and our Creator ; and which, —
though we could call all the grandeur and the splendors
of the* universe our own, and were lulled and charmed
by all its music and its beauty, — will forever banish all
true repose from our bosom, unless our nature and our
lives are supposed to be in harmony with the divine will.
The object of these faculties is, their Infinite Creator ;
and they never can be supremely happy unless they are
tuned to perfect concord with every note in the celestial
anthems of love and praise.

Then there is a set of faculties that we denominate so-
cial or sympathetic, among the most conspicuous of which
is benevolence or philanthropy, — a sentiment which mys-
teriously makes our pulse throb, and our nerves shrink,
at the pains or adversity of others, even though, at the
same time, our own frame is whole, and our own for-
tunes gladdening. How beautiful and marvellous a
thing it is, when imbosomed in a happy family, sur-
rounded by friends and children, ->.- which even Paradise
had not, — that the history of idolatry in the far-off is-
lands of the Pacific, or of the burning of Hindoo widows
on the other side of the globe, amongst a people whom
we never saw and never shall see, should pierce our

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 153

hearts like a knife ! How glorious a quality of our na-
ture it is, that the story of some old martyr or hero, who
nobly upheld truth with life, — though his dust has now
been blown about by the winds for twenty centuries, —
should transport us with such feelings of admiration and
ecstasy, that we long to have been he, and to have borne
all his sufferings ; and we find ourselves involuntarily
sublimed by so noble a passion, that the most terrible form
of death, if hallowed by a righteous cause, looks lovely
as a bride to the bridegroom !

There are also the yearning, doting fondness of parents
for children, of natural kindred for each other, and the
passionate, yet pure affection of the sexes, which fit us
for the duties and the endearments of domestic life.
Even that vague general attachment to our fellow-
beings, which binds men together in fraternal associa-
tions, is so strong, and is universally recognized as so
natural, that we look upon hermits and solitaries as crea-
tures half-mad or half-monstrous. The sphere of these
sentiments or affections is around us and before us, —
family, neighborhood, country, kind, posterity.

And lastly, there is the strictly selfish part of our na-
ture, which consists of a gang of animal appetites, — a
horde of bandit propensities, — each one of which, by
its own nature, is deaf to the voice of God, reckless of
the welfare of men, blind, remorseless, atheistic ; — each
one of the whole pack being supremely bent upon its own
indulgence, and ready to barter earth and heaven to win
it. We all have some pretty definite idea of beasts of
prey and of birds of prey ; but not among the whelps
of the lion's lair, not among the young of the vulture's
nest, are there any spoilers at all comparable to those
that may be trained from the appetites and propensities
which each human being brings with him into the world.

154 . NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

I am sorry not to be able to speak of this part of our
common nature in a more complimentary manner ; but
to utter what facts will not warrant, would be to ex-
change the records of truth for a song of Delilah.

The first of these animal propensities is the simple
want of food or nourishment. This appetite may be very
gentlemanly and well-behaved. There is nothing in it
necessarily incompatible with decorum and good-breed-
ing, or with the conscientious fulfilment of every pri-
vate and every public duty. When duly indulged, and
duly restrained, it furnishes the occasions, — around the
family and the hospitable board, — for much of the pleas-
ure of domestic, and the enjoyment of social existence.
But thousands go through life, without ever having oc-
casion to know or to think of its awful strength. Be-
hold, what this appetite has actually and not unfrequently
become, when, taking the ghastly form of Hunger in a
besieged city, or amongst a famishing people, it forces
the living to feed upon flesh torn from the limbs of the
dead. Look at that open boat, weltering in mid-ocean ;
it holds the crew of a foundered vessel who have escaped
with life only, but days and days have passed away, and
no morsel of food or drop of drink has assuaged the tor-
tures of hunger and thirst. At first, they wept together
as suffering friends, then they prayed together as loving
Christians ; but now friendship is extinct and prayer is
choked, for hunger has grown to a cannibal, uttering
horrible whispers, and proposing the fatal lot, by which
the blood of one is to fill a bowl to be quaffed by the rest !
Look again at the ravages of this appetite, in its other
and more familiar, though not less appalling forms ; —
look at its havoc of life in China, where thousands annu-
ally perish by opium ; in Turkey, where the pipe kills
more than the bowstring ; and at the Golgothas of Intern-

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 155

perance, in Ireland,* in Old England, and in New Eng-
land. Now, the elements of this appetite are common
to us all ; and no uutempted mortal can tell what he
would do, or would not do, if he were in the besieged
city, or in the ocean-tost, provisionless boat. The sensa-
tions belonging to this appetite reside in the ends of a few
nerves, — called by the anatomists, papillce, — which are
situated about the tongue and .throat ; and yet, on the
wants of this narrow spot, are founded the cultivation of
myriads of orchards, vineyards and gardens, the tilling
of grain-fields, prairie-like in extent, the scouring of for-
ests for game, the dredging of seas, and the rearing of
cattle upon a thousand hills. Granaries are heaped, cel-
lars filled, vintages flow, to gratify this instinct for food.
And what toils and perils, what European as well as
African slavery among the ignorant, and what epicurean
science among the learned, have their origin and end in
this one appetite ! Once, cooling draughts from the
fountain, and delicious fruits from the earth, sufficed for
its demands. Now, whenever the banquet table is spread,
there must be mountains of viands and freshets of wine.
What absurdities as well as wickednesses it tempts men,
otherwise rational and religious, to commit. Have we
not all seen instances of men, who will ask the blessing
of Heaven upon the bounties wherewith a paternal Provi-
dence has spread their daily board, — who will pray that
their bodies may be nourished and strengthened for use-
fulness, by partaking of its supplies ; and will then sit
down and almost kill themselves by indulgence ! It is as
impossible to satisfy the refinements, as to satiate the
grossness of this appetite. The Roman, Apicius, by his
gold, provided a dish for his table composed of thousands

* At the time this was written, the redemption of Ireland by Father Mathew
was only beginning.

156 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

of nightingales' tongues ; a despot, by his power, distils
the happiness of a thousand slaves, to make one delicious
drop for his palate. This appetite, then, though consist-
ing of only a few sensations about the mouth and throat,
is a crucible in which the treasures of the world may be
dissolved. Behold the epicure and the inebriate. — men
who affect a lofty indignation if you question that they
are rational beings ; — see them bartering friends, family
and fame, body, soul and estate, — to gratify a space not
more than two inches square in the inside of the mouth !
Do we not need some new form of expression, some sin-
gle word, where we can condense, into one monosyllable,
the meaning of ten thousand fools !

Take another of these animal wants, — that of cloth-
ing. How insignificant it seems, and yet of what excess-
es it is capable ! What sacrifices it demands ! what fol-
lies and crimes it suborns us to commit ! Compare the
first fig-leaf suit with the monthly publication of London
and Parisian fashions ! Our first parents began with a
vegetable, pea-green wardrobe, plucked from the nearest
tree, and were their own dress-makers. Now, how many
fields are tilled for linen and cotton and silks ! how many
races of animals are domesticated, or are hunted under
the line, around the poles, in ocean or in air, that their
coverings may supply the materials of ours ! How many
ships plough the ocean to fetch and carry ; what ponder-
ous machinery rolls ; how many warehouses burst with
an opulence of merchandise, — all having ultimate refer-
ence to this demand for covering ! Nor is there any as-
signable limit to the refinements and the expenditures,
to the frauds and the cruelties, which may grow on this
stock. The demands of this propensity, like those of the
former, if suffered to go onward unrestrained, increase to
infinity. The Austrian, Prince Esterhazy, lately visited

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 157

the different courts of Europe, dressed in a coat which
cost five hundred thousand dollars ; and it cost him from
five hundred to a thousand dollars every time he put it
on. Yet, undoubtedly, if he had not thought himself
sadly stinted in his means, he would have had a better
coat, and underclothes to match !

Nor is this all which is founded upon the sensations of
the skin, when the thermometer is much below, or much
above sixty-five degrees. Shelter must be had ; and how
much marbje and granite rises from the quarry ; what
masses of clay are shaped and hardened into bricks ; how
many majestic forests start from their stations, and move
afield, to be built up into villages and cities and temples,
for the habitations of men ! And, notwithstanding all
that has been done under the promptings of this appe-
tite, who, if his wishes could execute themselves, would
remain satisfied with the house he lives in, the temple he
worships in, or the tomb in which he expects to sleep ?

Again ; there are seasons of the year when vegetable
life fails, when the corn and the vine cease to luxuriate
in the fields, and the orchards no longer bend with fruit-
age. ' There is also the season of infancy, when, though
bountiful Nature should scatter her richest productions
spontaneously around us, we could not reach out our
hands to gather them ; and again, there is the season of
old age, with its attendant infirmities, when our exhaust-
ed frame can no longer procure the necessaries of exist-
ence. Now, that in summer we may provide for winter,
— that during the vigor of manhood we may lay up pro-
visions for the imbecility of our old age, and for the help-
lessness of children, we have been endued by our Ma-
ker with an instinct of acquisition, of accumulation ; —
or with a desire, as we familiarly express it, to lay up
something for a rainy day. Thus a disposition, or mental

158 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

pre-adaptation, was given us, before birth, for these neces-
sities which were to arise after it, just as our eye was
fitted for the light to shine through, before it was born
into this heaven-full of sunshine. Look at this blind in-
stinct, — the love of gain, — as it manifests itself even in
infancy. A child, at first, has no idea that there is any
other owner of the universe but himself. Whatever
pleases him, he forthwith appropriates. His wants are
his title-deeds and bills of sale. He does not ask in
whose garden the fruit grew, or by whose diving the
pearl was fished up. Carry him through a museum or a
market, and he demands, in perfectly intelligible, though
perhaps in inarticulate language, whatever arrests his
fancy. His whole body of law, whether civil or crimi-
nal,— omne ejus corpus juris, — is in three words,"!
want it." If the candle pleases him, he demands the
candle ; if the rainbow and the stars please him, he de-
mands the rainbow and the stars.

And how does this blind instinct overleap the objects
for which it was given ! • Not content with competency in
means, and disdaining the gradual accumulations of hon-
est industry, it rises to insatiate avarice and rapacity.
From the accursed thirst for gold have come the felon
frauds of the market-place, and the more wicked pious
frauds of the church, the robber's blow, the burglars
stealthy step around the midnight couch, the pirate's
murders, the rapine of cities, the plundering and captiv-
ity of nations. Even now, in self-styled Christian com-
munities, are there not men who, under the sharp goad-
ings of this impulse, equip vessels to cross the ocean, —
not to carry the glad tidings of the gospel to heathen
lands, but to descend upon defenceless villages in a whirl-
wind of fire and ruin, to kidnap men, women and chil-
dren, and to transport them through all the horrors of

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 150

the middle passage, where their cries of agony and de-
spair outvoice the storm, that the wretched victims may
at last be sold into remorseless bondage, to wear chains,
and to bequeath chains ; — and all this is perpetrated
and suffered because a little gold can be transmuted, by
such fiery alchemy, from human tears and blood ! Such
is the inexorable power of cupidity, in self-styled Chris-
tian lands, in sight of the spires of God's temples point-
ing upward to heaven, which, if Truth had its appropriate
emblems, would be reversed and point downward to hell.

Startle not, my friends, at these far-off enormities.
Are there not monsters amongst ourselves, who sell their
own children into bondage for the money they can earn ?
who coin not only the health of their own offspring, but
their immortal capacities of intelligence and virtue, into
pelf ? Are there not others, who, at home, at the town-
meeting, and at the school-meeting, win all the victories
of ignorance by the cry of expense ? Are there not men
amongst us, possessed of superfluous wealth, who will
vote against a blackboard for a schoolroom, because the
scantling costs a shilling and the paint sixpence !

Nay, do we not see men of lofty intellects, of mind
formed to go leaping and bounding on from star to star
in the firmament of knowledge, absorbed, sunk, in the
low pursuit of gain ? and if, perchance, some of their su-
perfluous coffers are lost, they go mad, — the fools ! —
and whine and mope in the wards of a lunatic hospital,
because, forsooth, they must content themselves with a
little less equipage, or upholstery, or millinery ! Such
follies, losses, crimes, prove to what infinite rapacity the
instinct of acquisition may grow.

Again ; there is the natural sentiment of self-respect,
or self-appreciation ; — when existing in excess, it is
popularly called self-esteem. This innate tendency im-

160 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

parts to every individual the feeling that, in and of him-
self, he is of some mark and consequence. This instinct
was given us that it might act outwards and embody
itself in all dignity and nobleness of conduct ; that it
might preserve us, at all times, from whatever is beneath
us or unworthy of us, though we were assured that no
other being in the universe knew it, or ever would know
it. For, when a man of true honor, — one who has
formed a, just estimate of the noble capacities with which
God has endowed him, and of his own duty in using
them, — when such a man is beset by a base temptation,
and the tempter whispers, — "You may yield, for, in this
solitude and impenetrable darkness, none can ever
know your momentary lapse," — his indignant reply is,
" But I shall know it myself! " Without this elevating
and sustaining instinct, existing in some degree, and
acting with some efficiency, no man could ever hold him-
self erect, in the midst of so many millions of other men,
each by the law of nature equal to himself. Without
this, when surveying the sublimities of creation, — the
cataract, the mountain, the ocean, the awful magnificence
of the midnight heavens ; or when contemplating the
power and perfections of Jehovah, — every one would
lay his hand on his mouth and his mouth in the dust,
never to rise again.

But this common propensity, like the others, is capable
of infinite excess. There are no bounds to its expansive-
ness and exorbitancy. When acting with intensity, it
seems to possess creative power. It changes emptiness
into fulness. It not only reveals to its possessor a self-
worthiness wholly invisible to others, but it so overflows
with arrogance and pride as to confer an excellence upon
every thing connected with or pertaining to itself. The
tyrant Gessler mounted his cap upon a pole, and com-

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 101

manded his subjects to pay homage to it. It had imbibed
a virtue from contact with his head, which made it of
greater value than a nation of freemen. It is said of one
of the present British dukes, that he will give a thousand
pounds sterling for a single worthless book, or for some
ancient marble or pebble, provided it is known to be the
only one of the kind in existence, — a unique, — so that
his pride can blow its trumpet in the ears of all man-
kind, and say, " In respect of this old book, or marble, or
pebble, I have what no other man has, and am superior
to the rest of the world. " Constable was so inflated
with the supposed honor of being the publisher of Sir
Walter Scott's novels, that, in one of his paroxysms of
pride, he exclaimed with an oath, " I am all but the
author of the Waverley novels ! " Yes, he came as near
as type-setter ! It is this feeling which makes the organ-
blower appropriate the plaudits bestowed upon the musi-
cian, and the hero's valet mistake himself for his master.
It is this propensity that makes a man proud of his
ancestors, who were dead centuries before he was born ;
— proud of garments which he never had wit enough to
make, while he despises the tailor by whose superior skill
they were prepared ; — and proud of owning a horse
that can trot a mile in three minutes, though the credit
of his speed belongs to the farmer who reared, and the
jockey who trained, and even to the hostler who grooms
him, infinitely more than to the self-supposed gentleman
who sits behind him in a gig, and just lets him go !
Other selfish propensities play the strangest tricks, delu-
sions, impostures, upon us, and make us knaves and fools;
but it is the inflation of pride, more than any thing else,
that swells us into an Infinite Sham.

I have time to mention but one more of this" lower or-
der of the human faculties, — the Love of Approbation.

VOL. I. 11

162 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

As a proper self-respect makes us discard and disdain all
unworthy conduct, even when alone ; so a rational desire
to obtain the good-will of others stimulates us to gene-
rosity, and magnanimity, and fortitude, in the perform-
ance of our social duties. It is a strong auxiliary motive,
— useful as an impulse, though fatal as a guide. I think
it is by the common consent of mankind, that the plau-
dits of the world rank as the third, in the list of rewards
for virtuous conduct, — coming next after the smiles of
Heaven and the approval of conscience. In this country,
the bestowment of offices is the current coin in which the
love of approbation pays and receives its debts. Offices,
in the United States, seem to be a legal tender, for no-
body refuses them. But if this desire becomes rabid and
inappeasable, if it grows from a subordinate instinct into
a domineering and tyrannical passion, it reverses the
moral order, and places the applauses of men before the
rewards of conscience and the approval of Heaven. The
victim of this usurper-passion will find the doctrines of
revealed truth in the prevalent opinions of the commu-
nity where he resides ; and the doctrines of political truth
in the majority of votes at the last election, — modified
by the chances of a change before the next. Under its
influence, the intellect will plot any fraud, and the tongue
will utter any falsehood, in order to cajole and invei-
gle a majority of the people ; but should that majority
fail, it will compel its poor slave to abandon the old party,
and try its fortunes with a new one.

There are other original, innate propensities, which can-
not properly be discussed on an occasion like this. Their
action, within certain limits, is necessary to self-preserva-
tion, and to the preservation of the race ; a description
of their excesses would make every cheek pale and every
heart faint.

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 163

Now there are a few general truths appertaining to this
whole tribe of propensities. Though existing with differ-
ent degrees of strength, in different individuals, yet
they are common to the whole race. As they are neces-
sary to self-preservation, their bestowment is almost uni-
versal, and we regard every man as so far unnatural, and
suffering privation, who has not the elements of them all,
mingled in his composition. As they are necessary to the
continuance of the race, we must suppose, at least during
the present constitution of human nature, that they will
always exist ; and that all improvements in government,
science, morals, faith, and other constituents of civiliza-
tion, will produce their blessed effects, not by extirpating,
but by controlling them, and by bringing them into sub-
jection to the social and the divine law. As we have a
moral nature to which God speaks, commanding us to
love and obey his holy will ; as we have a social nature,
which sends a circulating current of sympathy from our
hearts around through the hearts of children, friends,
kindred and kind, mingling our pleasures and pains and
their pleasures and pains in one common stream ; so, by
these propensities, we are jointed into this earthly life,
and this frame of material things.

Again ; each one of these propensities is related to the
whole of its class of objects, and not to any proportionate
or definite quantity of them ; — just as the appetite of a
wolf or a vulture is adapted or related to the blood of all
lambs and all kids, and not merely to the blood of some
particular number of lambs and kids. Each one of them,
also, is blind to every thing but its own gratification ; it
sallies forth, — if uncontrolled, — and seizes and riots
upon its objects, regardless of all sacrifices, and defiant
of all consequences. Each one of them is capacious as
an abyss, is insatiable by indulgence, would consume

164 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

whatever lias been created for all, and then task Omnipo-
tence to invent new pleasures for its pampering. Was
any royal epicure ever satisfied, while a luxury was
known to exist which he had not tasted ? To rear an ar-
chitectural pile, or a mausoleum, vast as the unrestrained
desires of man, the cedars of Lebanon would be too few ;
nor cotild the materials of his wardrobe be supplied,
though Damascus were his merchant. There have been
thousands of men, all whose coffers were literally filled
with gold ; but where the avaricious man in whose heart
there was not room for more coffers ? The experiment
was tried with Alexander of Macedon, whether the love
of power could be satisfied by the conquest of all the na-
tions of the earth. He did not weep, at first, for the
conquest of the world ; it was only after conquering one
world that he wept for the conquest of more. The ambition
of Napoleon never burned with a fiercer flame than when
he escaped from his island-prison to remount the throne
of France ; although it is said that the wars in which he
had then been engaged had cost Europe five millions of
human lives. But to slake his thirst for power and fame,
the blood of five millions or of five hundred millions, the
destruction of a continent or a constellation, of zone or
zodiac, would have been nothing.

And thus it is with all the propensities. Their object
must be obtained, whether, like Richard, they murder two
male children, or, like Herod, all under two years of age.
Pride built the pyramids and the Mexican mounds. Ap-
petite led down the Goths and Vandals into the delicious
South. Cupidity brought forth the slave-trade. And so
of other enormities, — the Bastille, the Inquisition, the
Harem, — they grew on the same stock. And though
our bodies seem so small, and occupy so little space, yet,
through these propensities, they are capable of sending

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 165

out earth-o'erspreading branches, all clustering with
abominations.

Our propensities have no affinity with reason or con-
science. Did you ever hear two persons conversing about
a third, whose ruin and infamy they agreed had come
from the amount of his fortune, or from his facilities for
indulgence, when, in the very breath in which they spoke
of the resistless power of the temptation over him, they
did not add that, in their own persons, they should be
willing to run the same risk ? This is the language of
all the propensities. They are willing to run any risk,
whether it be of health or of character, of time or of
eternity. This explains how it is, that some men not
wholly lost to virtue, — men who acknowledge their re-
sponsibleness to God, and their obligations to conscience,
— but in whom the propensities predominate and tyran-
nize ; — I say this explains how it is that such men, when
stung and maddened by the goadings of desire, wish them-
selves bereft of their better attributes, that they might
give full career to passion, without remorse of conscience
or dread of retribution. That human depravity, which,
hitherto, has made the history of our race, like the roll
of the prophet, a record of lamentation and mourning
and woe, has worked out through these propensities ; and,
if the very substance and organization of human nature
be not changed, by the eradication of these instincts, that
depravity which is, to a greater or less degree, to make
the future resemble the past, will pour out its agonies
and its atrocities though the same channels !

Such, then, are our latent capabilities of evil, — all
ready to be evolved, should the restraints of reason, con-
science, religion, be removed. Here are millions of men,
each with appetites capacious of infinity, and raging to
be satisfied out of a supply of means too scanty for any

166 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

one of them. Millions of coveting eyes are fastened on
the same object, — millions of hands thrust out to seize
it. What ravening, torturing, destroying, then, must
ensue, if these hounds cannot be lashed back into their
kennel ! They must be governed ; they cannot be de-
stroyed. Nature declares that the germs, the embryos, of
these incipient monsters, shall not be annihilated. She
reproduces them with every human being that comes into
the world. Nor, indeed, is it desirable, even if it were
practicable, that they should be wholly expunged and
razed out of our constitution. He who made us, knew our
circumstances and necessities, and He has implanted
them in our nature too deep for eradication. Besides,
within their proper sphere, they confer an innocent,
though a subordinate enjoyment. Certainly, we would
not make all men hermits and anchorites. Let us be
just, even to the appetites. No man is the worse because
he keenly relishes and enjoys the bountiful provisions
which Heaven has made for his food, his raiment, and his
shelter. Indeed, why were these provisions ever made,
if they are not to be enjoyed ? Surely they are not su-
perfluities and supernumeraries, cumbering a creation
which would have been more perfect without them. Let
them then be acquired and enjoyed, though always with
moderation and temperance. Let the lover of wealth
seek wealth by all honest means, and with earnestness, if
he will ; — let him surround himself with the comforts
and the embellishments of life, and add the pleasures of
beauty to the pleasures of utility. Let every honorable
man indulge a quick and sustaining confidence in his own
worthiness, whenever disparaged or maligned ; and let
him count upon the affections of his friends, and the
benedictions of his race, as a part of the solid rewards of
virtue. These, and kindred feelings, are not to be crushed,

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 167

extinguished. Let them rouse themselves in presence
of their objects, and rush out to seize them, and neigh,
like a war-horse for the battle, — only let them know that
they have a rider, to whose eye no mist can dim the severe
line they are never to pass, and whose arm can bend
every neck of them, like the twig of an osier.

But I must pass to the next topic for consideration, —
the stimulus which, in this country, is applied to the pro-
pensities ; and the free, unbarred, unbounded career,
which is here opened for their activity. In every other
nation that has ever existed, — not even excepting Greece
and Rome, — the mind of the masses has been obstructed
in its development. Amongst millions of men, only some
half-dozen of individuals, — often only a single individ-
ual, — have been able to pour out the lava of their pas-
sions, with full, volcanic force. These few men have
made the Pharaohs, the Neros, the Napoleons of the race.
The rest have usually been subjected to a systematic
course of blinding, deafening, crippling. As an inevita-
ble consequence of this, the minds of men have never
yet put forth one-thousandth part of their tremendous
energies. Bad men have swarmed upon the earth, it is
true, but they have been weak men. Another consequence
is, that we, by deriving our impressions from history,
have formed too low an estimate of the marvellous powers
and capacities of the human being for evil as well as for
good. The general estimate is altogether inadequate to
what the common mind will be able to effect, when apt
instruments are put into its hands, and the wide world is
opened for its sphere of operations. Amongst savage na-
tions, it is true, the will has been more free ; but there it
has had none of the instruments of civilized life, where-
with to execute its purposes — such, for instance, as the

168 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

mechanic arts ; a highly cultivated language, with the
general ability to read and write it : fire-arms ; engineer-
ing; steam; the press, and the post-office ; — and among
civilized nations, though the means have been far more,
ample, yet the will has been broken or corrupted. Even
the last generation in this country, — the generation that
moulded our institutions into their present form, — were
born and educated under other institutions, and they
brought into active life strong hereditary and traditional
feelings of respect for established authority, merely be-
cause it was established, — of veneration for law, simply
because it was law, — and of deference both to secular and
ecclesiastical rank, because they had been accustomed to
revere rank. But scarcely any vestige of this reverence
for the past now remains. The momentum of heredi-
tary opinion is spent. The generation of men now enter-
ing upon the stage of life, — the generation which is to
occupy that stage for the next forty years, — will act out
their desires more fully, more effectively, than any gene-
ration of men that has ever existed. Already, the tramp
of this innumerable host is sounding in our ears. They
are the men who will take counsel of their desires, and
make it law. The condition of society is to be only an
embodiment of their mighty will ; and if greater care be
not taken than has ever heretofore been taken, to inform
and regulate that will, it will inscribe its laws all over the
face of society in such broad and terrific characters, that,
not only whoever runs may read, but whoever reads will
run. Should avarice and pride obtain the mastery, then
will the humble and the poor be ground to dust beneath
their chariot-wheels ; but, on the other hand, should be-
sotting vices and false knowledge bear sway, then will
every wealthy, and every educated, and every refined in-
dividual and family, stand in the same relation to society,
in which game stands to the sportsman 1

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 169

111 taking a survey of the race, we see that all of human
character and conduct may be referred to two forces ; the
innate force of the mind acting outwards, and the force of
outward things acting upon the mind. First, there is an
internal, salient, elancing vigor of the mind, which, ac-
cording to its state and condition, originates thoughts,
desires, impulses, and projects them outwards into words
and deeds ; and secondly, there is the external force of
circumstances, laws, traditions, customs, which besieges
the mind, environs it, places a guard at all its outer gates,
permits some of its desires and thoughts to issue forth,
and to become words and actions, but forbids others to es-
cape, beats them back, seals the lips that would utter
them, smites off the arm that would perform them, pun-
ishes the soul that would send them forth by finding an
avenue in every sense arid in every nerve, through which
to send up tormentors to destroy its hopes and lay waste
its sanctuaries ; and finally, if all these means fail to sub-
due and silence the internal energy, then the external
power dismisses the soul itself from the earth, by crushing
the physical organization which it inhabits. These two
forces, — on the one hand, the mind trajecting itself
forth, and seeking to do its will on whatever is external
to itself, — and, on the other hand, whatever is external
to the mind, modifying or resisting its movements, —
these constitute the main action of the human drama.
As a mathematician would express it, human conduct and
character move in the diagonal of these two forces.
Sometimes, indeed, both forces are coincident, sometimes
antagonistic ; but it is useless to inquire which force has
predominated, as no universal rule can be laid down re-
specting them. In despotisms, the external prevails ; in
revolutions, — such as the French, for instance, — the
internal. Why are the Chinese, for a hundred succes-

170 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

sive generations, transcripts and fac-similes of each other,
as though the dead grandparent had come back again in
the grandchild, and so round and round ? It is because,
among the Chinese, this external force overlays the grow-
ing faculties of the soul, and compels them, as they grow,
to assume a prescribed shape. In that country the laws
and customs are so inflexible, and the spirit of the people
is so impotent, that their minds grow, as it were, into the
hollow of a brazen envelope, whose walls are not remova-
ble nor penetrable ; and hence, all growth must conform
to the shape and size of the concave surface. By their
education, laws, and penalties, the minds of the people
ara made to grow into certain social, political, and reli-
gious forms, just as certainly, and on the same principle of
force, as the feet of their beauties are made, by small, in-
olastic shoes, to grow hoof-wise. In Russian Poland, a
subject is as much debarred from touching certain topics,
in the way of discussion, as from seizing on the jewels of
the crown. The knout and the Siberian mines await the
first outward expression of the transgressor. Hence the
divinely-formed soul, created to admire, through intelli-
gence, this glorious universe; to go forth, through knowl-
edge, into all lands and times ; to be identified, through
sympathy, with all human fortunes : to know its Maker,
and its immortal destiny, is driven back at every door of
egress, is darkened at every window where light could en-
ter, and is chained to the vassal spot which gave it birth,
— where the very earth, as well as its inhabitant, is blast-
ed by the common curse of bondage. In Oriental and
African despotisms, the mind of the millions grows, only
as the trees of a noble forest could grow in the rocky
depths of a cavern, without strength, or beauty, or heal-
ing balm, — in impurity and darkness, fed by poisonous
exhalations from stagnant pools, all upward and outward

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 171

expansion introverted by solid barriers, and forced back
into unsightly forms. Thus has it always fared with the
faculties of the human soul when caverned in despotism.
They have dwelt in intellectual, denser than subterra-
nean, darkness. Their most tender, sweet, and hallowed
emotions have been choked and blighted. The pure and
sacred effusions of the heart have been converted into
hatred of the good and idolatry of the base, for want of
the light and the air of true freedom arid instruction.
The world can suffer no loss equal to that spiritual loss
which is occasioned by attempting to destroy, instead of
regulating, the energies of the mind.

Since the Christian epoch, great has been the change
in Christian countries between the relative strength of
the mind, acting outwards, and the strength of outward
things, repulsing and stifling the action of the mind.
Christianity established one conviction in the minds of
thousands and tens of thousands, which other religions
had established in the mind of here and there an individ-
ual only. This conviction was, that the future existence
is infinitely more important than the present ; — the dif-
ference between the two being so great as to reduce all
mere worldly distinctions to insignificance and nothing.
Hence it might have been predicted from the beginning,
that the human mind, acting under the mighty stimulus
of Christianity, would eventually triumph over despotism.
The interests of despotism lie in this life ; those of Chris-
tianity, not only in this, but in the life to come. It was,
therefore, mortality at one end of the lever, and immor-
tality at the other. When one party contends for the
1 Blessings of life merely, while the other contends for bless-
ings higher than life, the latter, by a law of the moral
nature, must ultimately prevail.

Although many of the ancients had a belief in a fu-

172 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

ture state of existence, yet it was apprehended by them
so dimly, and its retributions were pressed home so feebly
on their consciences, that the belief appears to have had
but little effect upon the conduct of individuals, or the
administration and policy of states ; and, for all practical
purposes, it would hardly be too strong an expression to
say, that immortality was first revealed by Christ. Dur-
ing the first three centuries of our era, the knowledge of
this discovery, — so to call it, — was widely diffused
among men. Then, by the union of Church and State,
under Constantino, the civil power came in, and attemptr
ed to appropriate the benefits of the new discovery to
itself, so that it might use divine motives for selfish pur-
poses. And, had the throne and the priesthood sought to
govern men by the motive of fear alone, they might have
retained their ascendency, — we cannot tell for what pe-
riod of time. But they found a natural conscience in
men, a sense of responsibleness to duty, which they were
so short-sighted as to enlist in their service ; — I say,
short-sighted, for, when they aroused the sentiment of
duty in the human soul, and used it as a means of secur-
ing obedience to themselves, they called up a power
stronger than themselves. The ally was mightier than
the chief that invoked its aid. Hence the uprisings, the
rebellions of the people against regal and ecclesiastical
oppression. Rulers attempted to subdue the people, by
persecutions, massacres, burnings, but in vain ; becaiise,
though they could kill men, they could not kill conscience.
After a conflict of sixteen centuries, the victory has
been achieved. Mind has triumphed over the quellers of
mind, — the internal force over the external. When
mankind shall be removed by time to such a distance that
they can see past events in their true proportions and rel-
ative magnitude, this struggle between oppression on the

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 173

one side, striving to keep the human mind in its prison-
house, and to set an eternal seal upon the door ; and, on
the other hand, the convulsive efforts of that mind to dis-
inthrall itself, and to utter its impatient thoughts ; and to
form, and to abide by, its own convictions of truth, —
this conflict, I say, will be the grand, central, conspicuous
object, in the history of our era. The history of wars
between rival dynasties, for the conquest or dismember-
ment of empires, will fade away, and be but dimly visible
in the retrospect ; while this struggle between the soul
and its enslavers will stand far out in the foreground, —
the towering, supereminent figure on the historic can-
vas.

It has not been in accustomed modes, nor with weapons
of earthly temper only, that this warfare has been waged.
As the energies of the soul, acting under the mighty im-
pulses of a sense of duty and the prospect of an endless
futurity, waxed stronger and stronger, tyrants forged new
engines to subdue it. Their instruments have been the
dungeons of a thousand Bastilles ; the Inquisition, whose
ministers were literally flames of fire ; devastations of
whole provinces ; huntings of entire communities of men
into the mountains, like timorous flocks; massacres, — in
one only of which, thirty thousand men and women were
slaughtered at the ringing of a signal-bell ; and, after
exhausting all the agonies of earth and time, they un-
vaulted the Bottomless Pit, and, suspending their victims
over the abyss, they threatened to hurl them down into the
arms of beckoning demons, impatient to begin their pas-
time of eternal torture. But, impassive to annihilation ;
though smitten down, yet, witli recuperative energy,
springing from its fall ; victorious over the sufferings of
this world and the more formidable terrors of another, —
the human soul, immortal, invulnerable, invincible, has

174 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

at last unmanacled and emancipated itself. It has tri-
umphed ; and here, in our age and in our land, it is now
rising- up before us, gigantic, majestical, lofty as an arch-
angel, and, like an archangel, to be saved or lost by its
obedience or its transgressions. Amongst ourselves it is,
that this spirit is now walking forth, full of its new-found
life1, wantoning in freshly-discovered energies, surrounded
by all the objects which can inflame its boundless appe-
tites, and, as yet, too purblind, from the long darkness of
its prison-house, to discern clearly between its blessing
and its bane. That unconquerable force of the human
soul, which all the arts and power of despotism, — which
all the enginery borrowed from both worlds, — could not
subdue, is here, amongst ourselves, to do its sovereign
will.

Let us now turn for a moment to see what means and
stimulants our institutions have provided for the use of
the mighty powers and passions they have unloosed. No
apparatus so skilful was ever before devised. Instead of
the slow and cumbrous machinery of former times, we
have provided that which is quick-working and far-reach-
ing, and which may be used for the destruction as
easily as for the welfare of its possessors. Our institu-
tions furnish as great facilities for wicked men, in all
departments of wickedness, as phosphorus and lucifer
matches furnish to the incendiary. What chemistry has
done, in these preparations, over the old art of rubbing-
two sticks together, for the wretch who would fire your
dwelling, our social partnerships have done for flagitious
and unprincipled men. Through the right, — almost
universal, — of suffrage, we have established a commu-
nity of power ; and no proposition is more plain and self-
evident, than that nothing but mere popular inclination

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 175

lies between a community of power and a community in
every thing else. And though, in the long-run, and when
other things are equal, a righteous cause always has a
decisive advantage over an evil one, yet, in the first onset
between right and wrong, bad men possess one advantage
over the good. They have double resources, — two
armories. The arts of guilt are as welcome to them as
the practices of justice. They can use poisoned weapons
as well as those approved by the usages of war.

Again ; has it been sufficiently considered, that all
which has been said, — and truly said, — of the excel-
lence of our institutions, if administered by an upright
people, must be reversed and read backwards, if adminis-
tered by a corrupt one ? I am aware that some will be
.ready to say, " We have been unwise and infatuated to
confide all the constituents of our social and political
welfare to such irresponsible keeping." But let me ask
of such, — of what avail is their lamentation ? The ir-
resistible movement in the diffusion of power is still pro-
gressive, not retrograde. Every year puts more of social
strength into the hands of physical strength. The arith-
metic of numbers is more and more excluding all estimate
of moral forces, in the administration of government.
And this, whether for good or for evil, will continue to
be. Human beings cannot be remanded to the dungeons
of imbecility, if they are to those of ignorance. The sun
can as easily be turned backwards in its course, as one
particle of that power, which has been conferred upon the
millions, can be again monopolized by the few. To dis-
cuss the question, therefore, whether our institutions are
not too free, is, for all practical purposes, as vain as it
would be to discuss the question whether, on the whole,
it was a wise arrangement on the part of Divine Provi-
dence, that the American continent should ever have

176 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

been created, or that Columbus should have discovered it.
And let me ask, further, have those who believe our insti-
tutions to be too free, and who, therefore, would go back
to less liberal ones, — have they settled the question, how
far back they will go ? Will they go back to the dark
ages, and recall an eclipse which lasted centuries long ?
or will they ascend a little higher for their models, — to
a time when our ancestors wore undressed skins, and
burrowed in holes of the earth ? or will they strike at
once for the institutions of Egypt, where, though the
monkey was a god, there was still a sufficient distance
between him and his human worshipper ? But all such
discussions are vain. The oak will as soon go back into
the acorn, or the bird into its shell, as we return to the
monarchical or aristocratic forms of by-gone ages.

Nor let it be forgotten, in contemplating our condition,
that the human passions, as unfolded and invigorated by
our institutions, are not only possessed of all the preroga-
tives, and equipped with all the implements of sover-
eignty ; but that they are forever roused and spurred to
the most vehement efforts. It is a law of the passions,
that they exert strength in proportion to the causes which
excite them, — a law which holds true in cases of sanity,
as well as in the terrible strength of insanity. And with
what endless excitements are the passions of men here
plied ! With us, the Press is such a clarion, that it pro-
claims all the great movements of this great country, with
a voice that sweeps over its whole surface, and comes
back to us in echoes from its extremest borders. From
the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf,
men cheer, inflame, exasperate each other, as though
they were neighbors in .the same street. What the ear
of Dionysius was to him, making report of every word
uttered by friend or foe, our institutions have made this

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 177

land to every citizen. It is a vast sounding gallery ;
and from horizon to horizon every shout of triumph and
every cry of alarm are gathered up and rung in every
man's dwelling. All objects which stimulate the passions
of men are made to pass before the eyes of all, as in a
circling panorama. In very truth we are all hung upon
the same electrical wire, and if the ignorant and vicious
get possession of the apparatus, the intelligent and the
virtuous must take such shocks as the stupid or profligate
experimenters may choose to administer.

Mark how the excitements which our institutions sup-
ply have wrought upon the love of gain and the love of
place. Vast speculations, — such as in other countries
would require not only royal sanctions and charters, but
the equipment of fleets, and princely outfits of gold and
arms, — are here rushed into, on flash paper, by clerks
and apprentices, not out of their time. What party can
affirm that it is exempt from members who prize office,
rather than the excellence that deserves it'? Where can
I be, — not what can I be, — is the question suggested to
aspirants for fame. How many have their eyes fixed
upon posts of honor and emolument which but one only
can fill ! While few will be satisfied with occupying less
than their portion of space in the public eye, thousands
have marked out some great compartment of the sky for
the blazonry of their names. And hence it is, that,
wherever there is a signal of gain, or of power, the vul-
tures of cupidity and of ambition darken the air. Young
men launch into this tumultuous life, years earlier than
has ever been witnessed elsewhere. They seek to win
those prizes without delay, which, according to Nature's
ordinances and appointments, are the rewards of a life
of labor. Hence they find no time for studying the eter-
nal principles of justice, veracity, equality, benevolence,

VOL. i. is

178 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

and for applying them to the complicated affairs of men.
What cares a young adventurer for the immutable laws
of trade, when he has purchased a ticket in some lottery
of speculation, from which he expects to draw a fortune-?
Out of such an unbridled, unchastened love of gain,
whether it traffics in townships of land or in twopenny
toys, do we not know beforehand, there will come infinite
falsehoods, knavery and bankruptcy ? Let this state of
things continue, and he will be a happy man who dares
to say of any article of food or of apparel, which he eats
or wears, that it has not, at some period of its prepara-
tion, or in some of its transfers, been contaminated by
fraud. And what a state of society would it argue, in
other respects, if the people at large should ever become
indifferent to the question, whether fraud be, or be not,
inwoven into the texture, and kneaded into the substance
of what they daily consume, — whether what they eat or
drink or wear be not an embodiment of the spirit of lies !
So the inordinate love of office will present the specta-
cle of gladiatorial contests, — of men struggling for sta-
tion as for life, and using against each other the poisonous
weapons of calumny and vituperation ; — while the abid-
ing welfare, the true greatness and prosperity of the
people will be like the soil of some neutral Flanders, over
which the hostile bands of partisans will march and coun-
termarch, and convert it into battle-fields, — so that,
whichever side may triumph, the people will be ruined.
And even after one cause or one party has prevailed, the
conquered land will not be wide enough to settle a tithe
of the conquerors upon. Hence must come new ral-
lyings ; new banners must be unfurled, and the repose of
the land be again broken by the convulsions of party
strife. Hence, too, the death-grapple between the defend-
ers of institutions which ought to be abolished, and the

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 179

assailants of institutions which ought to be preserved.
Laocoon cries, " My life and my children are mine."
The hissing and inwreathing serpents respond, " They
are ours." If eacli party espouses and supports whatever
is wrong on its own side, because such a course is deemed
necessary to union and strength ; and denounces whatever
is right in the plans of its antagonists, because such are
the approved tactics of opposition ; if each party sounds
the loudest alarms, when the most trivial danger from its
opponents is apprehended, and sings the gentlest lullabies
over perils of its own producing, can seer or prophet
foretell but one catastrophe ?

Again ; we hear good men, every day, bemoaning the
ignorance of certain portions of our country, and of indi-
viduals in all parts of it. The use often made of the
elective franchise, the crude, unphilosophical notions,
sometimes advanced in our legislative halls on questions
of political economy, the erroneous views entertained by
portions of the people, respecting the relation between
representative and constituent, and the revolutionary
ideas of others in regard to the structure of civil society,
— these are cited as specimens and proofs of the igno-
rance that abounds amongst us. No greater delusion can
blind us. This much-lamented ignorance, in the cases
supposed, is a phantom, a spectre. The outcry against it
is a false alarm, diverting attention from a real to an
imaginary danger. Ignorance is not the cause of the
evils referred to. With exceptions comparatively few, we
have but two classes of ignorant persons amongst us, and
they are harmless. Infants and idiots are ignorant ; few
others are so. Those whom we are accustomed to call
ignorant, are full of false notions, as much worse than
ignorance as wisdom is better. A merely ignorant man
has no skill in adapting means to ends, whereby to jeop-

180 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

ard the welfare of great interests or great numbers.
Ignorance is blankness ; or, at most, a lifeless, inert mass,
which can, indeed, be moved and placed where you
please, but will stay where it is placed. In Europe, there
are multitudes of ignorant men, — men into whose minds
no idea ever entered respecting the duties of society or
of government, or the conditions of human prosperity.
They, like their work-fellows, the cattle, are obedient to
their masters ; and the range of their ideas on political
or social questions is hardly more extensive than that of
the brutes. But with our institutions, this state of things,
to any great extent, is impossible. The very atmosphere
we breathe is freighted with the ideas of property, of ac-
quisition and transmission ; of wages, labor and capital ;
of political and social rights ; of the appointment to, and
tenure of offices ; of the reciprocal relations between the
great departments of government — executive, legisla-
tive, and judicial. Every native-born child amongst us
imbibes notions, either false or true, on these subjects.
Let these notions be false ; let an individual grow up,
with false ideas of his own nature and destiny as an im-
mortal being, with false views respecting what govern-
ment, laws, customs, should be ; with no knowledge of
the works or the opinions of those great men who framed
our government, and adjusted its various parts to each
other ; — and when such an individual is invested with
the political rights of citizenship, with power to give an
authoritative voice and vote upon the affairs of his coun-
try, he will look upon all existing things as rubbish which
it is, his duty to sweep away, that lie may have room for
the erection of other structures, planned after the model
of his own false ideas. No man that ever" lived could,
by mere intuition or instinct, form just opinions upon a
thousand questions, pertaining to civil society, to its juris-

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 181

prudence, its local, national and international duties.
Many truths, vital to the welfare of the people, differ in
their reality, as much from the appearances which they
present to uninstructed minds, as the apparent size of the
sun differs from its real size, which, in truth, is so many
thousand times larger than the earth, while to the un-
taught eye it appears to be so many thousand times
smaller. And if the human propensities are here to
manifest themselves through the enlarged means of false
knowledge which our institutions, unaided by special in-
struction, will furnish ; if they are to possess all the instru-
ments and furtherances which our doctrine of political
equality confers ; then the result must be, a power to do
evil almost infinitely greater than ever existed before,
instigated by impulses proportionately strong. Hence
our dangers are to be, not those of ignorance, which
would be comparatively tolerable, but those of false knowl-
edge, which transcend the powers of mortal imagination
to portray. Would you appreciate the amazing difference
between ignorance and false knowledge, look at Prance,
before and during her great revolution. Before the revo-
lution, her people were merely ignorant ; during the revo-
lution, they acted under the lights of false knowledge.
An idiot is ignorant, and does little harm ; a maniac has
false ideas, and destroys, burns and murders.

Looking again at the nature of our institutions, we find
that it is not the material or corporeal interests of man
alone that are here decided by the common voice ; —
such, for instance, as those pertaining to finance, revenue,
the adjustment of the great economical interests of socie-
ty, the rival claims between agriculture, commerce and
manufactures, the partition and distribution of legisla-
tive, judicial and executive powers, with a long catalogue
of others of a kindred nature ; but also those more sol-

182 NECESSITY OP EDUCATION

emu questions which pervade the innermost sanctuary of
domestic life, and, for worship or for sacrilege, enter the
Holy of Holies in the ark of society : — these also are
submitted to the general arbitrament. The haughty lord-
ling, whose heart never felt one throb for the welfare of
mankind, gives vote and verdict on the extent of popular
rights ; the libertine and debauchee give vote and verdict
on the sanctity of the marriage covenant ; the atheist
on the definition of blasphemy. Nor is this great people
invited merely to speculate, and frame abstract theories,
on these momentous themes ; to make picture models, on
paper, in their closets ; they are not invited to sketch
Republics of Fancy only, but they are commissioned to
make Republics of Fact ; and in such Republics as they
please to make, others, perforce, must please to live. If
I do not like my minister, or my parish, I can sign off,
(as we term it,) and connect myself with another ; if I
do not like my town, I can move out of it ; but where
shall a man sign to, or move to, out of a bad world ?
Nor do our people hold these powers, as an ornament
merely, as some ostensible but useless badge of Freedom ;
but they keep them as instruments for use, and sometimes
wield them as weapons of revenge. So closely indeed
are we inwoven in the same web of fate, that a vote given
on the banks of the Missouri or Arkansas may shake
every plantation and warehouse on the Atlantic, and,
reaching seaward, overtake and baffle enterprise, into
whatever oceans it may have penetrated.

Such, then, is our condition. The minds that are to
regulate all things and govern all things, in this country,
are innately strong ; they are intensely stimulated ; they
are supplied with the most formidable artillery of means ;
and each one is authorized to form its own working-plan,

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 183

its own ground-scheme, according to which, when the so-
cial edifice has been taken to pieces, it is to be recon-
structed ; — some are for going back a thousand or two
thousand years for their model ; others, for introducing
what they consider the millennium, at once, by force of
law, or by force without law.

And now, my friends, I ask, with the deepest anxiety,
what institutions exist amongst us, which at once possess
the power and are administered with the efficiency, requi-
site to save us from the dangers that spring up in our own
bosoms ? That the propensities, which each generation
brings into the world, possess terrific power, and are
capable of inflicting the completest ruin, none can deny.
Nor will it be questioned that amongst us, they have an
open career, and a command of means, such as never
before co-existed. What antagonist power have we pro-
vided against them ? By what exorcism can we lay the
spirits we have raised ? Once, brute force, directed by a
few men, trampled upon the many. Here, the many are
the possessors of that very force, and have almost abolished
its use as a means of government. The French gen-
darmerie, the British horse-guards, the dreadful punish-
ment of the Siberian mines, will never be copied here.
Should the government resort to a standing army, that
army would consist of the very forces they dread, organ-
ized, equipped and officered. Can laws save us ? With
us, the very idea of legislation is reversed. Once, the
law prescribed the actions and shaped the wills of the
multitude ; here, the wills of the multitude prescribe and
shape the law. With us, legislators study the will of the
multitude, just as natural philosophers study a volcano,
— not with any expectation of doing aught to the volca-
no, but to see what the volcano is about to do to them.
While the law was clothed with majesty and power, and

184 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

the mind of the multitude was weak, then, as in all cases
of a conflict between unequal forces, the law prevailed.
But now, when the law is weak, and the passions of the
multitude have gathered irresistible strength, it is falla-
cious and insane to look for security in the moral force
of the law. As well might the man who has erected his
dwelling upon the verge of a cliff overhanging the deep,
when the equilibrium of the atmosphere is destroyed, and
the elements are on fire, and every billow is excavating
his foundations, expect to still the tempest by reading the
Riot-act. Government and law, which ought to be the
allies of justice and the everlasting foes of violence and
wrong, will here be moulded into the similitude of the
public mind, and will answer to it, as, in water, face an-
swereth to face.

But, if arms themselves would be beaten in such a con-
test, if those who should propose the renewal of ancient
severities in punishment would themselves be punished,
have we not some other resource for the security of modera-
tion and self-denial, and for the supremacy of order and
law ? Have not the scholars who adorn the halls of
learning, and woo almost a hallowed serenity to dwell in
their academic shades, — have they not, amongst all the
languages which they speak, some tongue by which they
can charm and pacify the mighty spirits we have evoked
into being ? Alas ! while scholars and academists are
earnestly debating such questions, as whether the name
of error shall or shall not be spelled with the letter u, the
soul of error becomes incarnate, and starts up, as from
the earth, myriad-formed and ubiquitous, and stands by
the side of every man, and whispers transgression into
his ear, and, like the first Tempter, entices him to pluck
the beautiful, but fatal fruit of some forbidden tree.
Our ancestors seem to have had great faith that the alumni

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 185

of our colleges would diffuse a higher order of intelli-
gence through the whole mass of the people, and would
imbue them with a love of sobriety and a reverence for
justice. But either the leaven has lost its virtue, or the
lump has become too large ; for, surely, in our day, the
mass is not all leavened.

I speak with reverence of the labors of another profession
in their sacred calling. No other country in the world
has ever been blessed with a body of clergymen, so learn-
ed, so faithful, .so devout as ours. But by traditionary
custom and the ingrained habits of the people, the efforts
of the clergy are mainly expended upon those who have
passed the forming state ; — upon adults, whose charac-
ters, as we are accustomed to express it, have become
fixed, which being interpreted, means, that they have
passed from fluid into flint. Look at the ablest pastor, in
the midst of an adult congregation whose early education
has been neglected. Though he be consumed of zeal,
and ready to die of toil, in their behalf, yet I seem to see
him, expending his strength and his years amongst them,
like one solitary arborist working, single-handed and
alone, in a wide forest, where there are hundreds of stoop-
ing and contorted trees, and he, striving with tackle and
guy-ropes to undouble their convolutions, and to straight-
en the flexures in trunks whose fibres curled as they
grew ; and, with his naked hand, to coax out gnarls and
nodosities hard enough to glance off lightning ; — when,
could he have guided and trained them while yet they
were tender shoots and young saplings, he could have
shaped them into beauty, a hundred in a day.

But perhaps others may look for security to the public
Press, which has now taken its place amongst the organ-
ized forces of modern civilization. Probably its politi-
cal department supplies more than half the reading of

186 NECESSITY OF EDUCATION

the mass of our people. But, bating the point, whether,
in times of public excitement, when the society and
thoughtfulness of wisdom, when severe and exact
truth, are, more than ever else, necessary, — whether, at
such times, the press is not itself liable to be inflamed by
the heats it should allay, and to be perverted by the obli-
quities it should rectify ; — bating this point, it is still
obvious that its principal efforts are expended upon one
department only of all our social duties. The very exist-
ence of the newspaper press, for any useful purpose,
presupposes that the people are already supplied with the
elements of knowledge and inspired with the love of
right ; and are therefore prepared to decide, with intelli-
gence and honesty, those complicated and conflicting
claims, which the tide of events is constantly presenting,
and which, by the myriad messengers of the press, are
carried to every man's fireside for his adjudication. For,
of what value is it, that we have the most wisely-framed
government on earth ; to what end is it, that the wisest
schemes which a philanthropic statesmanship can devise,
are propounded to the people, if this people has not the
intelligence to understand, or the integrity to espouse
them ? Each of two things is equally necessary to our
political prosperity ; namely, just principles of govern-
ment and administration, on one side, and a people able
to understand and -resolute to uphold them, on the other.
Of what use is the most exquisite music ever composed
by the greatest masters of the art, until you have orches-
tra or choir that can perform the pieces ? Pupils must
thoroughly master the vocal elements, musical language
must be learned, voices must be long and severely trained,
or the divinest compositions of Haydn or Mozart would
only set the teeth of an auditory on edge. And so
must it be with our government and laws ; — the best

IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT. 187

will be useless, unless we have a people who will appre-
ciate and uphold them.

Again, then, I ask, with unmitigated anxiety, what in-
stitutions we now possess, that, can furnish defence or bar-
rier against the action of those propensities, which eacli
generation brings into the world as a part of its being,
and which our institutions foster and stimulate into
unparalleled activity and vigor ? Can any Christian man
believe, that God has so constituted and so governs the
human race, that it is always and necessarily to be suici-
dal of its earthly welfare ? No ! the thought is impious.
The same Almighty Power which implants in our nature
the germs of these terrible propensities, has endowed us
also with reason and conscience and a sense of responsibil-
ity to Him ; and, in his providence, he has opened a way
by which these nobler faculties can be elevated into domin-
ion and supremacy over the appetites and passions. But
if this is ever done, it must be mainly done during the
docile and teachable years of childhood. I repeat it, my
friends, if this is ever done, it must be mainly done during
the docile and teachable years of childhood. Wretched,
incorrigible, demoniac, as any human being may ever
have become, there was a time when he took the first step
in error and in crime ; when, for the first time, he just
nodded to his fall, on the brink of ruin. Then, ere he
was irrecoverably lost, ere he plunged into the abyss of
infamy and guilt, he might have been recalled, as it were
by the waving of the hand. Fathers, mothers, patriots,
Christians ! it is this very hour of peril through which
our children are now passing. They know it not, but
we know it ; and where the knowledge is, there rests the
responsibility. Society is responsible ; — not society con-
sidered as an abstraction, but society as it consists of liv-
ing members, which members we are. Clergymen are

188 EDUCATION IN A REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT.

responsible ; — all men who have enjoyed the opportuni-
ties of a higher education in colleges and universities are
responsible, for they can convert their means, whether of
time or of talent, into instruments for elevating the mass-
es of the people. The conductors of the public press are
responsible, for they have daily access to the public ear,
and can infuse just notions of this high duty into the
public mind. Legislators and rulers are responsible. In
our country, and in our times, no man is worthy the hon-
ored name of a statesman, who does not include the
highest practicable education of the people in all his
plans of administration. He may have eloquence, he
may have a knowledge of all history, diplomacy, jurispru-
dence ; and by these he might claim, in other countries,
the elevated rank of a statesman ; but, unless he speaks,
plans, labors, at all times and in all places, for the culture
and edification of the whole people, he is not, he cannot
be, an American statesman.

If this dread responsibility for the fate of our children
be disregarded, how, when called upon, in the great
eventful day, to give an account of the manner in which
our earthly duties have been discharged, can we expect
to escape the condemnation : " Inasmuch as ye have not
done it to one of the least of these, ye have not done it
unto me " ?

LECTURE IV.
1840.

LECTURE IV.

WHAT GOD DOES, AND WHAT HE LEAVES FOE MAN TO
DO, IN THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION : —

WITH the coming of another year, I come to you
again, asking and offering sympathy for the welfare of
our children.

When I last had the pleasure of meeting a convention
of the friends of Common Schools in this county, I
addressed them on the subject of the Necessity of Educa-
tion, under a government and with institutions like our
own. I endeavored to demonstrate, that here, in our
country arid in our age, the enlightenment of the intel-
lect, and the cultivation of the affections, of the rising
generation, had not been left optional with us, but made
indispensable ; that the efficient and thorough education
of the young was not merely commended to us, as a
means of promoting private and public welfare, but com-
manded, as the only safeguard against such a variety and
extent of calamities as no nation on earth has ever
suffered.

The argument, in brief, ran thus: — All men are born
into the world with many appetites and propensities of a
purely animal and selfish nature. Some of these appe-
tites and propensities are necessary to the existence of the
individual, and therefore they adhere to him and remain
a part of him as long as he lives ; others are necessary to
the continuance of the race, and therefore we must ex-

191

192 THE WOEK OF EDUCATION.

pect that they will be reproduced with every new-born
generation to the end of time. Each individual, for in-
stance, brings into the world, and carries through it, an
appetite for food ; and this appetite perpetually tends to
an excess ruinous to health and fatal to life, — among the
vulgar running into the coarseness of gluttony, — among
the refined to a no less injurious epicurism. Each indi-
vidual brings into the world, and carries through it, an
appetite for beverage ; and what multitudes has this
desire stretched upon the " burning marl " of Intemper-
ance ! All are born with a love of wealth, or, at least, of
acquisition, which leads to wealth ; — and we should be
unfit to live in such a world as this is, without such an
innate tendency ; because, in health, we must lay by
something for sickness, and in the strength of manhood
something for the helplessness of children and for the
feebleness of old age. Yet how easily does this propen-
sity run out into avarice and cupidity, leading on to fraud,
robbery, rapine, and all the enormities of the slave-trade,
the opium-trade, the rum-trade ! So we all have a desire
for the good will of others, — an instinct beautifully
adapted to diffuse pleasure over all the intercourse of
life. But in this country, where the rule once was that
the honors of office should be awarded to merit, — detur
digniori, — the sign seems to have been mistaken for the
thing signified ; and now, whenever there is an office to
be filled, a crowd of applicants throng around, more than
sufficient, in point of numbers, to fill the vacancy for the
next thousand years. Again, a certain feeling of self-
estimation is absolutely essential to us all ; because,
without it, every man would be awed into annihilation
before the majesty of the multitude, or the glories of the
visible universe. But how readily does this feeling of
self-importance burst out into pride and a love of domina-

THE WORK OP EDUCATION. 193

tion, and that intolerance towards the opinions of others,
which does not seek to enlighten or persuade, but dog-
matizes, denounces, and persecutes !

All history cries out, with all her testimonies and her
admonitions, proclaiming to what excesses these innate
and universal appetites may grow, when supplied with
opportunities and incitements for indulgence. If men
consult their propensities alone, no sacrifice ever seems
too great to purchase indulgence for the lowest and mean-
est of them all. Each one of them is not only capable
of unlimited growth, but each, also, is blind to all con-
sequences, and demands gratification, though the next
hour brings perdition as the penalty. We need not go
back to patriarchal or primeval times to find a man who,
because he was hungry or thirsty, would barter a glorious
inheritance for a mess of pottage ; or a woman who would
forfeit paradise through curiosity to taste an apple.
When the political destiny of his family and of all France
depended upon the speed which Louis XVI. should make
in his flight from Paris, he paused by the wayside to
drink a bottle of Burgundy, — said coolly, that it was
the best bottle he overdrank, — and suffered the scale,
which held the fortunes of twenty-five millions of people,
to turn, irrevocably, while he prolonged his gustations. To
add a few more items to his inventory of conquered na-
tions, Napoleon snatched the scythe from the hand of
Death, 'and, forerunning the great Destroyer, he strewed
the earth, from torrid sands to arctic snows, with the
corses of human slain, mowed down in the morning
beauty and vigor of life ; and, rather than not to be em-
peror at all, he would have reigned the emperor of a Euro-
pean solitude. He played the game of war, as he played
his favorite game of chess, — for the sake of triumph, —
making no more account of nations than of pawns.

VOL. I. 13

194 THE WOKK OF EDUCATION.

Pope Innocent III. founded an Inquisition, modelled
after the plan of Pandemonium, that he might compel
mankind to acknowledge the infallibility of his dogmas.
Notwithstanding the manifest intentions of nature in
making the sexes almost numerically equal, the Sultan
culls nations to fill his seraglio with beauty. Did not
Mark Antony forget his hard-earned fame, perfidiously
abandon his faithful troops, and shut his eyes upon the
vision of a kingdom, for a transient hour of voluptuous-
ness in the arms of Cleopatra ? Herod hears that a
man-child is born in Judsea, who may one day endanger
his throne ; and forthwith, to avert that possible event,
he murders all the male children in the land under two
years of age ; and the moment power was given, a wo-
man, to avenge a private pique, brings in the head of
John the Baptist on a charger. Even good men, — those
for whose steadfastness we would almost be willing to
pledge our lives, — exemplify the terrible strength of the
propensities. Moses rebels ; David murders ; Peter,
although forewarned, yet denies his Master, and for-
swears himself.

Now, the germs or elements of these propensities be-
long to us all. We possess them at birth; they abide with
us till death. Vast differences exist in the power which
they exert over men, owing to differences in their innate
vigor ; still greater differences, perhaps, result from
early education. In bad men they predominate, and
break out into the commission of as much iniquity as
finite beings, with limited means, can compass. They
exist also in good men ; but, in them, they are either
feebly developed, or they are bound and leashed in by
pure and holy affections. By nature, they were boiling
seas of passion in the breasts of Socrates and of Wash-
ington ; but god-like sentiments of justice and duty and

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 195

benevolence kept down their rage, as the deep granite
beneath New England's soil keeps down the central fires
of the globe, and forbids earthquake or volcano to agitate
her surface. When subordinated to conscience and the
will of God, these propensities give ardor to our zeal and
strength to our exertions ; just as the genius of man con-
verts wind and fire from destroyers into servants.

From our very constitution, then, there is a downward
gravitation forever to be overcome. The perpetual bias
of our instincts is, from competency and temperance to
luxury and inebriation ; from frugality to avarice ; from
honest earnings to fraudulent gains ; from a laudable
desire of reputation, and a reasonable self-estimate, to
unhallowed ambition, and a determination to usurp the
prerogative of God by writing our creeds on other men's
souls. Hence these propensities require some mighty
counterpoise to balance their proclivity to wrong. They
must he governed, — cither by the pressure of outward
force, or by the supremacy of inward principle. In other
countries and ages, external force, — the civil execu-
tioner, Pretorian cohorts, Janizaries, standing armies, an
established priesthood, — have kept them down. The
propensities and appetites of a few men have overlaid and
smothered those of the rest. A few men, whom we call
tyrants and monsters, having got the mastery, have
prevented thousands of others from being tyrants and
monsters like themselves. And although it is with entire
justice that we charge the despotisms of the old world
with having dwarfed and crippled whatever is great and
noble in human nature ; yet it is equally true that they
have dwarfed and crippled, in an equal degree, whatever
is injurious and base. The Neros and Napoleons have
prevented others from being Neros and Napoleons, as well
as from becoming Senecas and Howards.

196 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

But with the changed institutions of this country, all is
changed. Here history may be said, in familiar phrase,
not merely to have turned over a new leaf, but to have
opened a new set of books. With our Revolution, the
current of human events was turned quite round, and set
upon a new course. That external power which, thereto-
fore, had palsied the propensities of the mass, was abol-
ished. Instead of the old axiom, that the ruler is a lord,
— a vicegerent of God, — here, to a proverb, rulers are
servants. Lightly and fearfully the law lays its hand
upon men ; and, should the wisest law ever framed chafe
the passions or propensities of the majority, or of men
who can muster a majority, they speak, and the law
perishes. The will of the people must be our law,
whether that will reads the moral code forwards or back-
wards.

Now, for one moment, compare the collected vastness
of men's desires with the sum of the world's resources.
Compare the demand with the supply, where the propen-
sities are the customers. Suppose the wealth of this
country were divided into fifteen million equal parts, and
each man were allowed to subscribe for what number of
shares he might please ; how many, think you, would
have subscribed, before it would be announced that all
the stock had been taken up ? Had each man permission
to drop a folded ballot into the urn of fate, designating
the rank and the office which he and his children should
hold, would not the nominal aristocracy be tremendous ?
Were each religious dogmatist and bigot authorized to
write out article's of faith for universal adoption, what a.
mad-house of creeds and theological systems would there
be ! But this is endless. All know, if every holder of a
lottery ticket could name the amount of his prize, how
soon the office would be bankrupt.

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 197

Now the simple question for an American, is, whether
all this mighty accession of power, growing out of our
free institutions, shall or shall not be placed in the hands
of these ravenous and tyrannizing propensities.

From this view of the subject it is obvious, that we may
become just as much worse than any other nation that
ever existed, as the founders of our institutions hoped we
should be better. If the propensities are to prevail, then
speculation will supersede industry ; violence will usurp
the prerogatives of the law ; the witness will be perjured
upon the stand, and the guilty be rescued by forsworn
jurors ; the grand council-halls of the nation will be con-
verted from an Areopagus of wise and reverend men, into
a gladiatorial ring ; the depositaries of public and of
private trusts will administer them for personal ends ; not
only individuals, but States, will become reckless of their
obligations ; elections will be decided by bribery and cor-
ruption ; and the newspaper press, which scatters its
sheets over the country, thick as snow-flakes in a wintry
storm, will justify whatever is wrong on one side, and
vilify whatever is right on the other, until nothing that is
right will be left on either. Ay, my friends, if you put
your ear to the ground, can you not hear, even now, the
sappers and miners at their work ?

Even in the present state of society, and with all our
boastings of civilization arid Christianity, if all men were
certain that they could, with entire impunity, indulge
their wishes for a single night, what a world would be
revealed to us in the morning ! Should all selfish desires
at once burst their confines, and swell to the extent of
their capacity, it would be as though each drop of the
morning dew were suddenly enlarged into an ocean.

Does any possessor of wealth, or leisure, or learning,
ask, " What interest have I in the education of the multi-

198 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

tude ? " I reply, You have at least this interest, that,
unless their minds are enlightened by knowledge and con-
trolled by virtuous principle, there is not, between their
appetites and all you hold dear upon earth, so much as
the defence of a spider's web. Without a sense of the
inviolability of property, your deeds are but waste-paper.
Without a sense of the sacredness of person and life, you
are only a watch-dog whose baying is to be silenced, that
your house may be more securely entered and plundered.
Even a guilty few can destroy the peace of the virtuous
many. One incendiary can burn faster than a thousand
industrious workmen can build ; — and this is as true of
social rights as of material edifices.

Had God, then, provided no means by which tin's part
of our nature can be controlled, we should indeed say
that we had been lifted up to heaven in point of privi-
leges, that we might, so much the more certainly, be
dashed in pieces by our inevitable fall.

But we have not been inexorably subjected to such a
doom. If it befalls us, it befalls us with our own consent.
Means of escape are vouchsafed ; and not of escape only,
but of infinite peace and joy.

The world is to be rescued through physical, intel-
lectual, moral and religious action upon the young. I
say, upon the young, for the number of grown men who
ever change character for the better is far too small to lay
the foundation of any hope of a general reform. After
the age of twenty-five, — or even after that of twenty-one
years, — few men commence a course of virtue or abandon
one of vice ; — and even when this is done, its cause almost
invariably dates back to some early impression, which for
many years has lain dormant in the mind. Let that
period be passed, and, ordinarily, you must wait for a
death-bed repentance ; and often will your waiting be in

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 199

vain even for that. By the time the age of manhood has
been reached, the course of life has usually acquired a
momentum which propels it onwards, substantially in the
same direction, to its close.

Now for the great end of ransoming the human race
from its brutish instincts and its demoniac indulgences,
let us see what the benevolence of God does for us, in the
common course of nature and providence, and what His
wisdom has left for us to do ; — -because it is obvious, that
He may go on doing his part of the work, for a hundred,
or for a thousand generations, and yet, unless we also do
our part, the work never will be done. And it may be
further remarked, that while He does His part, and we
neglect ours, the work, so far from being half done, will
be worse than undone. Our folly perverting His good-
ness will be like an unskilful hand operating upon an
exquisitely wrought machine. But His part of the work,

— that is, the general course of nature and providence,

— will go on, whether we co-operate or oppose. It is not
for us, therefore, to say with the Psalmist, " Awake ! why
sleepest Thou, O Lord ! " for it is not the Lord who
sleeps, but it is we ourselves.

The general truth here stated may find its illustrations
and analogies in all the departments of nature. I will
give only a single example.

The husbandman is promised that seed-time and harvest
shall not fail ; and, in pursuance of that promise, the
fountains of the clouds are opened to saturate the earth
with fatness ; the sun shoots a genial warmth into the soil,
and the rich mould and the richer atmosphere are ready
for a magical transformation into verdure and flowers and
fruit ; — but unless the husbandman knows how to scatter
the seed at the right time, and to cultivate the tender
plant in the right way, in vain shall the fields be visited
by the reapers.

200 THE WORK OP EDUCATION.

For all Africa and for all Asia, nature has done her part
of the work, for thousands of years ; and yet the miser-
able generations rise and suffer and perish, like so many
swarms of insects on the banks of the Nile or the Ganges.
Nor does nature show any symptoms of impatience at
their delay ; — with awful tranquillity, she waits for their
part of the work to be done.

The first thing done for us, in the course of nature and
providence, is the creation of children in a state of entire
ignorance and receptiveness. Were children born with
characters full-formed, — with minds inflexibly made up
on all possible subjects, and armed at all points for their
defence ; — were babes, as soon as they can speak, to start
up into ferocious partisans and fanatics, — then nature
would have done the whole work, and left nothing for us
to do ; — nay, in that case, she would have rendered it
impossible for us to interfere, to any practical purpose.
But it depends hardly less upon the language of the
household, which, of all the tongues upon earth, the child
shall most readily speak, than it does upon the opinions
of the household, what opinions, on a great variety of the
most important subjects, he shall adopt. Hence we find,
almost without exception, the children of Pagans to be
Pagans ; of Mahommedans, Mahommedans ; and of
Catholics and Protestants, to be respectively Catholics
and Protestants. It depends upon residence in a partic-
ular latitude and longitude, what natural objects a child
shall become acquainted with ; and one who is born
in the frigid zone will be as little accustomed to the social
habits as to the natural productions of the torrid. And
finally, it depends upon the examples and the institutions,
amidst which a child is reared, what shall be his earliest,
and probably his most enduring impressions, respecting
the great realities of existence.

THE WORK OP EDUCATION. 201

Here, then, is an ample sphere for the exertion of our
influence. We should transfuse our hest sentiments,
transplant our best ideas and habits, into the receptive
soul of childhood. It is our duty to separate the right from
the wrong, in our own minds and conduct, and to incor-
porate the former only in the minds and conduct of chil-
dren. Then the force of habit will aid them in doing
those duties, whose performance, in our own case, habit
may have opposed. It is an admirable proverb which
says, " Happy is the man whose habits are his friends."
Could we ever know that we are infallibly right on all the
great questions which pertain to our temporal and eternal
destiny, then it might be our duty to inculcate our views
authoritatively and dogmatically upon children, and to
insist upon their acquiescence and conformity ; but as we
can never know in this life, with absolute and positive
certainty, that we are right on such mighty themes, it
becomes our first and highest duty to awaken in their
hearts the sentiment of truth, to inculcate the love and
the pursuit of it, wherever it may be found, and to teach
them to abandon every thing else, even their own most
cherished opinions, for its sake. That is the worst of
sacrilege which creates a belief in a child's soul that any
opinion is better than truth.

The entire helplessness of children, for a long period
after birth, is another circumstance not within our control,
and one deserving of great moral consideration. In one
respect, children may be said to possess their greatest
power, at this, the feeblest period of their existence ; — a
power which, — however paradoxical it may seem, —
originates in helplessness, and therefore diminishes just
in proportion as they gain strength. It was most beauti-
fully said by Dr. Thomas Brown, that after a child has
grown to manhood, " he cannot, even then, by the most

202 THE WORK OP EDUCATION.

imperious orders, which he addresses to the most obse-
quious slaves, exercise an authority more commanding
than that, which, in the very first hours of his life, when
a few indistinct cries and tears were his only language,
he exercised irresistibly over hearts, of the very existence
of which he was ignorant." It may be added that, under
no terror of a despot's rage ; under no bribe of honors or
of wealth ; under no fear of torture or of death, have
greater struggles been made, or greater sacrifices endured,
than for those helpless creatures, who, for all purposes of
immediate availability, are so utterly worthless. All,
unless it be the lowest savages, fly to the succor and melt
at the sufferings of infancy. God has so adapted their
unconscious pleadings to our uncontrollable impulses,
that they, in their weakness, have the prerogative of com-
mand, and we, in our strength, the instinct of obedience.
It was the highest wisdom, then, not to intrust the fate of
infancy to any volitions or notions of expediency, on our
part ; but, at once, by a sovereign law of the constitution,
to make our knowledge and power submissive to their
inarticulate commands.

In proportion as this power of helplessness wanes, the
child begins to excite our interest and sympathy, by a
thousand personal attractions and forms of loveliness.
The sweetness of lips that never told a lie ; the smile that
celebrates the first-born emotions of love ; the intense gaze
at bright colors and striking forms, gathering together the
elements from whose full splendor and gorgeousness
Raphael painted and Homer wrote ; the plastic imagina-
tion, fusing the solid substances of the earth, to be recast
into shapes of beauty ; — what Rothschild, what Croesus
has wealth that can purchase these !

How cheap and how beautiful, too, are the joys of
childhood ! Paley, in speaking of the evidences of the

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 203

goodness of God, says, there is always some " bright spot
in the prospect ; " — some " single example," " by which
each man finds himself more convinced than by all others
put together. I seem, for my own part," he adds, " to
see the benevolence of the Deity more clearly in the
pleasures of young children, than in any thing in the
world. The pleasures of grown persons may be reckoned
partly of their own procuring, especially if there has been
any industry, or contrivance, or pursuit to come at them ;
or, if they are founded, like music, painting, &c., upon
any qualifications of their own acquiring. But the pleas-
ures of a healthy infant are so manifestly provided for it
by another, and the benevolence of the provision is so
unquestionable, that every child I see at its sport affords,
to my mind, a kind of sensible evidence of the finger of
God, and of the disposition which directs it." At the age
of two or three years, before a child has ever seen a jest-
book, whence comes his glad and gladdening laughter, —
at once costless and priceless ? Whence comes that flow
of joy, that gurgles and gushes up from his heart, like
water flung from a spouting-spring ? That bright-haired
boy, how came he as full of music and poetry as a sing-
ing-book ? Who imprisoned a dancing-school in each of
his toes, which sends him from the earth with bounding
and rebounding step ? What an JEolian harp the wind
finds in him ! Nor music alone does it awaken in his
bosom ; for, let but its feathery touch play upon his locks,
or fan his cheek, and gravitation lets go of him, — he
floats and sails away, as though his body were a feather
and his soul the zephyr that played with it. Indeed,
half his discords come, because the winds, the buds, the
flowers, the light, — so many fingers of the hand of nature,
— are all striving to play different tunes upon him at the
same time. These delights are born of the exquisite

204 THE WOEK OF EDUCATION.

workmanship of the Creator, before the ignorance and
wickedness of men have had time to mar it ; — and they
flow out spontaneously and unconsciously, like a bird's
song, or a. flower's beauty.

Even to those who have no children of their own, —
unless they are, as the apostle expresses it, " without
natural affection," — even to those, the wonderful growth
of a child, in knowledge, in power, in affection, makes all
other wonders tame. Who ever saw a wretch so hea-
thenish, so dead, that the merry song or shout of a group
of gleeful children did not galvanize the misanthrope into
an exclamation of joy ? What orator or poet has elo-
quence that enters the soul with such quick and subtle
electricity, as a child's tear of pity for suffering, or his
frown of indignation at wrong ? A child is so much more
than a miracle, that its growth and future blessedness are
the only things worth working miracles for. God did not
make the child for the sake of the earth, nor for the sake
of the sun ; but he made the earth and the sun, as a foot-
stool and a lamp, to sustain his steps and to enlighten his
path, during a few only of the earliest years of his immor-
tal existence.

You perceive, my friends, that in speaking of the love-
liness of children, and their power to captivate and subdue
all hearts to a willing bondage, I have used none but mas-
culine pronouns, — referring only to the stronger and
hardier sex ; — for by what glow and melody of speech
can I sketch the vision of a young and beautiful daughter,
with all her bewildering enchantments ? By what cun-
ning art can the coarse material of words be refined and
subtilized into color, and motion, and music, till they shall
paint her bloom of health, " celestial, rosy red ; " till they
shall trace those motions that have the grace and the free-
dom of flame, and echo the sweet and affectionate tones

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 205

of a spirit yet warm from the hand that created it ?
What less than a divine power could have strung the
living chords of her voice to pour out unbidden and exult-
ing harmonies ? What fount of sacred flame kindles and
feeds the light that gleams from the pure depths of her
eye, and flushes her cheek with the hues of a perpetual
morning, arid shoots auroras from her beaming forehead ?
Oh ! profane not this last miracle of heavenly workmanship
with sight or sound of earthly impurity. Keep vestal
vigils around her inborn modesty ; and let the quickest
lightnings blast her tempter. She is Nature's mosaic of
charms. Looked upon as we look upon an object in
Natural History, — upon a gazelle or a hyacinth, — she is
a magnet to draw pain out of a wounded breast. While
we gaze upon her, and press her in ecstasy to our bosom,
we almost tremble, lest suddenly she should unfurl a wing
and soar to some better world. But, my friends, with
what emotions ought we to tremble, when our thoughts
pass from the present to the future, — when we ponder
on the possibilities of evil as well as of good, which now,
all unconsciously to herself, lie hidden in her spirit's
coming history, — now hidden, but to be revealed
soon as her tiny form shall have expanded to the stature
and her spirit to the power of womanhood ! When we
reflect, on the one hand, that this object, almost of our
idolatry, may go through life, solacing distress, minister-
ing to want, redeeming from guilt, making vice mourn
the blessedness it has lost because it was not virtue ; and,
as she walks holy and immaculate before God and before
men, some aerial anthem shall seem to be forever hymn-
ing peaceful benedictions around her ; or, on the other
hand, that, from the dark fountains of a corrupted heart,
she shall send forth a secret, subtle poison, compared with
which all earthly venoms are healthful ; — when we reflect

206 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

that, so soon, she may become one or the other of all this,
the pen falls, the tongue falters and fails, while the hope-
ful, fearful heart rushes from thanksgiving to prayer, and
from prayer to thanksgiving.

But the most striking and wonderful provision which Is
made, in the accustomed course of nature and providence,
for the welfare of children, remains to be mentioned.
Reflect, for a moment, my friends, how it has come to
pass, that the successive generations of children, from
Adam to ourselves, — each one of which was wholly inca-
pable of providing for itself for a single day, — how has it
come to pass, that these successive generations have been
regularly sustained and continued to the present day,
without intermission or failure ? The Creator did not
leave these ever-returning exigencies without adequate
provision ; — for how universal and how strong is the
love of offspring in the parental breast ! This love is the
grand resource, — the complement of all other forces.
"We are accustomed to call the right of self-preservation
the first law of nature ; yet how this love of offspring
overrules and spurns it ! To rescue her child, the mother
breaks through a wall of fire, or plunges into the fathom-
less flood ; — or, if it must be consumed in the flames,
or lie down in the deep, she clasps it to her bosom and
perishes with it. This maternal impulse does not so
much subjugate self, as forget that there is any such thing
as self; and, were .the mother possessed of a thousand
lives, for the welfare of her offspring she would squander
them all. Mourning, disconsolate mothers, bewailing lost
children ! Behold the vast procession, which reaches
from the earliest periods of the race to those who now
stand bending and weeping over the diminutive graves
which swallow up their hopes ; and what a mighty attes-
tation do they give to the strength of that instinct which

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 207

God lias implanted in the maternal breast ! Nor is it in
the human race only that this love of offspring bears
sway. All the higher orders of animated nature are
subjected to its control. It inspires the most timid races
of the brute creation with boldness, and melts the most
ferocious of them into love. To express its strength and
watchfulness, the hare is said to sleep with ever-open eye
on the form where her young repose ; and the pelican to
tear open her breast with her own beak, and pour out her
life-blood to feed her nestlings. The famishing eagle
grasps her prey in her talons and carries it to her lofty
nest ; and though she screams witli hunger, yet she will
not taste it until her young are satisfied ; and the gaunt
lioness bears the spoils of the forest to her cavern, nor
quenches the fire of her own parched lips until her whelps
have feasted. And thus, from the parent stock, — from
the Adam and Eve, whether of animals or of men, who
came into the world full-formed from the hands of their
Creator, — down through all successive generations, to
the present dwellers upon earth, has this invisible but
mighty instinct of the parents' heart brooded and held
its jealous watch over their young, nurturing their weak-
ness and instructing their ignorance, until the day of their
maturity, when it became their turn to re-affirm this great
law of nature towards their offspring.

This, my friends, is not sentimentality. It is the con-
templation of one of the divinest features in the Economy
of Providence. It was for the wisest ends that the Crea-
tor ordained, that as the offspring of each, " after its
kind," should be brought into life, — then, in that self-
same hour, without volition or forethought on their part,
— there should flame up in the breast of the parent, as
from the innermost recesses of nature, a new and over-
mastering impulse, — an impulse which enters the soul

208 THE WORK OP EDUCATION.

like a strong invader, conquering, revolutionizing, trans-
forming old pains into pleasures and old pleasures into
pains, until its great mission should be accomplished.
On this link the very existence of the races was suspended.
Hence Divine foreknowledge made it strong enough to
sustain them all ; — for in vain would the fountain of
life have been opened in the maternal breast, if a deeper
fountain of love had not been opened in her heart.

Would you more adequately conceive what an insup-
portable wretchedness and torment the rearing of children
would be, if, instead of being rendered delightful by these
endearments of parental love, it had been merely com-
manded by law, and enforced by pains and penalties ; —
would you, I say, more fully conceive this difference ;
— contrast the feelings of a slave-breeder, (a wretch ab-
horred by God and man !) contrast, I say, the feelings of
a slave-breeder, who raises children for the market, with
the feelings of the slave-mother, in whose person this
sacred law of parental love is outraged. If one of these
doomed children, from what cause soever, becomes puny
and sickly, and gives good promise of defeating the cu-
pidity that called it into life, with what bitter emotions
does the master behold it ! He thinks of investments
sunk, of unmerchantable stock on hand, of the profit-and-
loss account ; and perhaps he is secretly meditating
schemes for preventing further expenditures by bringing
the hopeless concern to a violent close. But what an in-
expressible joy does the abused mother find in watching
over and caressing it, and cheating the hostile hours ; —
and, (for such is the impartiality of nature,) if she can
beguile it of one pain, or win one note of gladness from its
sorrow-stricken frame, her dusky bosom thrills with as keen
a rapture as ever dilated the breast of a royal mother, when,
beneath a canopy and within curtains of silk and gold,
she nursed the heir of a hundred kings.

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 209

Iii civilized and Christianized man, this natural instinct
is exalted into a holy sentiment. At first, it is true, there
springs up this blind passion of parental love, yearning
for the good of the child, delighted by its pleasures, tor-
tured by its pains. But this vehement impulse, strong as
it is, is not left to do its work alone. It summons and
supplicates all the nobler faculties of the soul to become
its counsellors and allies. It invokes the aid of con-
science ; and conscience urges to do all and suffer all, for
the child's welfare. For every default, conscience ex
postulates, rebukes, mourns, threatens, chastises. That
is selfishness, and not conscience, in the parent, which
says to the child, " You owe your being and your capaci-
ties to me." Conscience makes the parent say, " I owe
my being and my capacities to you. It is I who have
struck out a spark which is to burn with celestial efful-
gence, or glare with baleful fires. It is I who have
evoked, out of nothingness, unknown and incalculable
capacities of happiness and of misery ; and all that can
be done by mortal means is mine to do."

Nor does this love of offspring stop with conscience.
It enlists, in its behalf, the general feeling of benevolence,
— benevolence, that god-like sentiment which rejoices in
the joys and suffers in the sufferings of others. The soul
of the truly benevolent man does not seem to reside much
in its own body. Its life, to a great extent, is the mere
reflex of the lives of others. It migrates into their
bodies, and, identifying its existence with their existence,
finds its own happiness in increasing and prolonging their
pleasures, in extinguishing or solacing their pains. And
of all places into which the whole heart of benevolence
ever migrates, it is in the child, where it finds the readiest
welcome, and where it loves best to prolong its residence.

So the voice of another sentiment, — a sentiment

VOL. I. 14

210 THE WORK OP EDUCATION.

whose commands are more authoritative than those of
any other which ever startles the slumbering faculties
from their guilty repose, — I mean the religious senti-
ment, the sense of duty to God, — this, too, comes in aid
of the parental affection ; and it appeals to the whole
nature, in language awful as that which made the camp
of the Israelites tremble at the foot of Sinai. This sense of
duty to God compels the parent to contemplate the child
in his moral and religious relations. It says, " However
different you may now be from your child, — you strong,
and he weak ; you learned, and he ignorant ; your mind
capacious of the mighty events of the past and the
future, and he alike ignorant of yesterday and to-morrow,
— yet, in a few short years, all this difference will be lost,
and one of the greatest remaining differences between
yourself and him will be that which your own conduct
towards him shall have caused or permitted. If, then,
God is Truth, — if God is Love, — teach the child above
all things to seek for Truth, and to abound in Love."

So much, then, my friends, is done, in the common
and established course of nature, for the welfare of our
children. Nature supplies a perennial force, unexhausted,
inexhaustible, re-appearing whenever and wherever the
parental relation exists. We, then, who are engaged in
the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon
all parents as having given hostages to our cause ; and,
just as soon as we can make them see the true relation
in which they and their children stand to this cause, they
will become advocates for its advancement, more ardent
and devoted than ourselves. "We hold every parent by a
bond more strong and faithful than promises or oaths, — -
by a Heaven-established relationship, which no power on
earth can dissolve. Would parents furnish us with a
record of their secret consciousness, how large a portion

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 211

of those solemn thoughts and emotions, which throng the
mind in the solitude of the night-watches, and fill up
their hours of anxious contemplation, would be found to
relate to the welfare of their offspring ! Doubtless the
main part of their most precious joys comes from the
present or prospective well-being of their children ; — and
oh ! how often would they account all gold as dross, and
fame as vanity, and life as nothing, could they bring back
the look of the cradle's innocence upon the coffined
reprobate !

With some parents, of course, these pleasures and pains
constitute a far greater share of the good or ill of life
than with others ; — and with mothers generally far more
than with fathers. We have the evidence of this superior
attachment of the mother, in those supernatural energies
which she will put forth to rescue her child from danger ;
we know it by the vigils and fasting she will endure to
save it from the pangs of sickness, or to ward off the
shafts of death ; — when, amid all the allurements of the
world, her eye is fastened, and her heart dwells upon but
one spot in it ; we know it by her agonies, when, at last,
she consigns her child to an early grave ; we know it by
the tear which fills her eye, when, after the lapse of years,
some stranger repeats, by chance, its beloved name ; and
we know it by the crash and ruin of the intellect some-
times produced by the blow of bereavement ; — all these
are signatures written by the finger of God upon human
nature itself, by which we know that parents are con-
stituted and predestined to be the friends of education.
They will, they must be its friends, as soon as increasing
intelligence shall have demonstrated to them the indis-
soluble relation which exists between Education and Hap-
piness.

212 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

I have now spoken, my friends, of what is done for us,
in the accustomed course of nature and providence, as it
regards the well-being of our children. But here I come
to the point of divergence. Here I must speak of OUR
part of the work ; of those duties which the Creator has
devolved upon ourselves. Here, therefore, it becomes
my duty to expose the greatest of all mistakes, committed
in regard to the greatest of all subjects, and followed by
proportionate calamities.

Two grand qualifications are equally necessary in the
education of children, — Love and Knowledge. Without
love, every child would be regarded as a nuisance, and
cast away as soon as born. Without knowledge, love
will ruin every child. Nature supplies the love ; but she
does not supply the knowledge. The love is spontaneous ;
the knowledge is to be acquired by study and toil, by the
most attentive observation and the profoundest reflection.
Here, then, lies the fatal error : — parents rest contented
with the feeling of love ; they do not devote themselves
to the acquisition of that knowledge which is necessary
to guide it. Year after year, thousands and tens of
thousands indulge the delightful sentiment, but never
spend an hour in studying the conditions which are in-
dispensable to its gratification.

In regard to the child's physical condition, — its growth,
and health, and length of life, — these depend, in no in-
considerable degree, on the health and self-treatment of
the mother before its birth. After birth, they depend
not only on the vitality and temperature of the air it
breathes, on dress, and diet, and exercise, but on certain
proportions and relations which these objects bear to each
other. Now the tenderest parental love, — a love which
burns, like incense upon an altar, for an idolized child,
for a quarter of a century, or for half a century, — will

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 213

never teach the mother that there are different ingredi-
ents in the air we breathe, — that one of them sustains
life, that another of them destroys life, — that every breath
we draw changes the life-sustaining element into the life-
destroying one ; and therefore that the air which is to be
respired must be perpetually renewed. Love will never
instruct the mother what materials or textures of cloth-
ing have the proper conducting or non-conducting quali-
ties for different climates, or for different seasons of the
year. Love is no chemist or physiologist, and therefore
will never impart to the mother any knowledge of the
chemical or vital qualities of different kinds of food, of
the nature or functions of the digestive organs, of the
susceptibilities of the nervous system, nor, indeed, of any
other of the various functions on which health and life
depend. Hence, the most affectionate but ignorant mo-
ther, during the cold nights of winter, will visit the
closet-like bed-chamber of her darling, calk up every
crevice and cranny, smother him with as many integu-
ments as. incase an Egyptian mummy, close the door of
his apartment, and thus inflict upon him a consumption,
— born of love. Or she will wrap nice comforters about
his neck, until, in some glow of perspiration, he flings
them off, and dies of the croup. Or she will consult the
infinite desires of a child's appetite, instead of the finite
powers of his stomach, and thus pamper him, until he
languishes into a life of suffering and imbecility, or becomes
stupefied and besotted by one of sensual indulgence.

A mother has a first-born child, whom she dotes upon
to distraction, but, through some fatal error in its man-
agement, occasioned by her ignorance, it dies in the first,
beautiful, budding hour of childhood, — nipped like the
sweet blossoms of spring by an untimely frost. Another
is committed to her charge, and in her secret heart she

214 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

says, " I will love this better than the first." But it is
not better love that the child needs ; it is more knowl-
edge.

It is the vast field of ignorance pertaining to these
subjects, in which quackery thrives and fattens. No one
who knows any thing of the organs and functions of the
human system, and of the properties of those objects in
nature to which that system is related, can hear a quack
descant upon the miraculous virtues of his nostrums, or
can read his advertisements in the newspapers, — wherein,
fraudulently towards man, and impiously towards God,
he promises to sell an " Elixir of Life," or " The Balm
of Immortality," or " Resurection Pills," — without con-
tempt for his ignorance, or detestation of his guilt. Could
the quack administer his nostrums to the great enemy,
Death, then, indeed, we might expect to live forever.

And what is the consequence of this excess of love and
lack of knowledge on the part of the parent ? More than
one-fifth part, — almost a fourth part, — of all the children
who are born, die before attaining the age of one year.
A fifth part have died before a seventieth part of the term
of existence has been reached ! What would the farmer
or the shepherd say, if he should lose one-fifth part of
his lambs or his kids before a seventieth part of their
natural term of life had been reached ? And before the
age of five years, more than a third part of all who are
born of our race have returned again to the earth, —
the great majority of them having died of that most fatal
and wide-spread of all epidemics, — unenlightened pa-
rental love. What an inconceivable amount of anxiety
for the health and life of children might he prevented ;
how much of the agony of bereavement might be saved ;
how much joy might be won from beholding childhood's
rosy beauty and bounding health, if parents, especially

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 215

mothers, would study such works as those of Doctor
Combe, on the Principles of Physiology, as applied to
Health and Education, and on Digestion and Dietetics ;
of Doctor Brigham, on Mental Excitement ; or Miss Sedg-
wick's Means and Ends ; and, (if they are to stand at all
in the way of mastering this knowledge,) throw Cooper,
and Bulwer, and Maryatt, and Boz, into the grate, or
under the fore-stick !

When we ascend from the management of the body to
the direction and culture of the intellectual and moral
nature, the calamitous consequences of ignorance are as
much greater, as spirit is more valuable than matter, —
because the mischief wrought by unskilfulness is always
in proportion to the value of the material wrought upon.
In regard to the child's advancement in knowledge and
virtue, with what spontaneity and vigor do the parental
impulses spring up ! They seek, they yearn, they pray
for his welfare, for his worldly renown, for his moral ex-
cellence, — that he may grow, not only in stature, but in
favor with God and man. These parental affections
watch over him; they stand like an angelic guard around
him; they agonize for his growth in the right, for his
redemption from the wrong. But all these affections are
blind impulses. They do not know, they cannot devise
a single measure, whereby to accomplish the object they
would die to attain. Love of children has no knowledge
of the four different temperaments, — the fibrous, the
sanguine, the nervous, the lymphatic, — or of the differ-
ent combinations of them, and how different a course of
treatment each one of them, or the predominance of either,
demands. Love of children does not know how to com-
mand, in order to insure the habit of prompt and willing
obedience, — obedience, in the first place, to parental
authority, afterwards to the dictates of conscience when

216 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

that faculty is developed, and to the laws of God when
those laws are made known to them. Love of children
does not know in what manner, or in what measure, to
inflict punishment; or how to reconcile inflexibility of-
principle with changes in circumstances. It does not
understand the favorable moments when the mind is fitted
to receive the seeds of generous, noble, devout sentiments ;
or when, on the other hand, not even the holiest princi-
ples should be mentioned. All this invaluable, indispen-
sable knowledge comes from reading, from study, from
observation, from reflection, from forethought ; — it never
comes, it never can come, from the blind instinct or feel-
ing of parental love. Hence, as we all know, those pa-
rents do not train up their children best who love them
most. Nay, if the love be not accompanied with knowl-
edge, it precipitates the ruin of its object. This result
can be explained in a single word. The child has appetites
and desires, without knowledge. These, if unrestrained,
all tend to excess. They demand too much of food, dress,
liberty, authority, and so forth. The child has a throng
of selfish propensities, which, if unbalanced by the higher
sentiments, prompt to acts of disrespect, pride, cruelty,
injustice. Now the dictate of unintelligent love in the
parent is, to assist the child in realizing all its wants.
Hence the parent's power supplies the child's weakness
in procuring the means for gratifying its excessive desires;
and thus, that love which nature designed as its blessing,
becomes its curse. What intelligent observer has not
seen many a parent run, at the first call of a child, re-
move all obstructions from his path, and hasten his slow
steps onward to ruin !

Solomon says, — explicitly and without qualification,
— " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when
he is old, HE WILL NOT DEPART FROM IT." Now, if this be

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 217

true, then it is a short and a clear syllogism, that if men
do depart from the way in which they should go, they
were not, as children, trained up in it. Or, take the say-
ing only as a general proposition, — one to be applied to
the great majority of cases, — and it equally follows that
if men, generally-, do depart from the way in which they
should go, then, generally, they were not trained up in
it. Under the loosest construction, Solomon must have
meant, that there are powers, faculties, instrumentalities,
graciously vouchsafed by Heaven to man, by which, if
discovered, and applied to the processes of education,
children, generally, when they become men, will go and
do, and love to go and do, as they ought to go and do.
No latitudinarianisni of interpretation can escape this
inference.

And yet, with this authority from the Scriptures before
us, as to what may be done, how often does the miscon-
duct of children bring down the gray hairs of parents
with sorrow to the grave ! With every generation, there
re-appear amongst us, the arts of fraud, the hand of vio-
lence, and the feet that are swift to shed blood. Nor are
flagitious deeds and abandoned lives confined to families
alone, where the treatment of children, by their parents,
is characterized by gross ignorance and heathenism.
Such cases, it is true, abound, and in such numbers, too,
as almost to laugh to scorn our claims, as a people, to
civilization and Christianity, But how often do we see
children issuing from the abodes of rational and pious
parents, where a burning love, a hallowed zeal, a life-
consuming toil, have been expended upon them, — of
parents who have bedewed the nightly pillow with tears,
and, morning and evening, have wrestled with the angel
of mercy to bring down blessings upon their heads, —
how often do we see these children bursting madly forth,

218 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

and rushing straight onward to some precipice of destruc
tion ; and though parents and kindred and friends pursue,
and strive to intercept them ere they reach the brink of
ruin ; and gather in long array and stand with outstretched
arms and imploring voice, to arrest their fatal career,

— yet, gathering strength and swiftness, the victims rush
by, and plunge into the abyss of perdition ! Yet, if there
is any truth in the declaration of Solomon, these victims,

— at least most of them, — might have been saved, and
would have been saved, had the knowledge of the parents
been equal to their love. God grant that in saying these
things, I may not shoot an arrow of pain through any
parent's heart ; — still more fervently do I say, God grant
that a timely consideration of these truths may turn aside
the arrows of pain from every parental breast !

The instinctive love which parents feel for their chil-
dren is only one of a large class of natural desires, — all
of which are subjected to the same conditions. Nature,
in each case, supplies the desire, but she leaves it to us
to acquire the knowledge which is necessary to guide it.
She leaves it to us so to control and regulate the desire,
that, in the long-run, it may receive the highest amount
of gratification. This truth is susceptible of most exten-
sive illustration. Time, however, will allow me to adduce
only a few analogies.

All men are born with a desire for food, but they are
born without any knowledge of agriculture, or of the arts
or implements of the chase, by means of which food can
be procured. The lowest grade of savages feel a natural
hunger or thirst as keen as that of the .highest orders of
civilized man. But the savage has no knowledge how to
rear the luxuries of the garden, the orchard, the grain-
field, the pasture, or the fold. Hence he subsists upon
such uncooked roots or unsodden flesh as can be found

THE WOEK OP EDUCATION. 219

or caught in the neighborhood of his cave or wigwam.
But knowledge — an excited and cultivated intellect —
has been at work for civilized man ; and, in obedience
to its command, the earth teems with delicious fruits, the
valleys abound with fatness, the ocean becomes tributary ;
in fine, all the fields of nature are converted into one
great laboratory to prepare sweets and fragrance and
flavor for his voluptuous table. We derive the appetite,
perfect and full-grown, from our Maker ; but we are left
to discover for ourselves the means and processes by which
this appetite can best be gratified. The result of all our
knowledge on this subject is expressed in the common
proverb, that the temperate man is the greatest epicure ;
— that is, the greatest possible amount of gratification
from eating and drinking will be enjoyed by the temperate
man ; — a conclusion, the very opposite of that which the
appetite itself suggests.

So in regard to a love of beauty. Nature confers this
sentiment, in a greater or less degree, upon all the race.
But the cultivation of it, the preparation of objects to
gratify it, — architecture, painting, sculpture, — these
come through art and genius, by the application of a
knowledge of our own acquiring. The Indian bridegroom,
stung with love, and seeking to beautify the tawny idol
of his affections, besmears her face with red or yellow
ochre ; he tattoos her skin, and for jewels suspends a
string of bears' claws over her sooty bosom. In conse-
quence of possessing a somewhat higher knowledge, our
sense of beauty is elevated perhaps two or three degrees
above that of the barbarian. Hence we seek to clothe
a beloved object with fine linen, and Tyrian purple, and
silken stuffs of colors rich and costly ; and instead of the
claws of bears, we adorn her with carcanets of pearl and
diamonds. When mankind shall be blessed with that

220 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

purer and higher knowledge which shall identify the types
of beauty with those of excellence, then will our ideal,
advancing with the advancing light, demand, as the price
of its admiration, richer ornaments than Ophir or Gol-
conda can supply ; — it will demand the bloom and elas-
ticity of perfect health, manners born of artlessness and
enthusiasm, and a countenance so inscribed with the
records of pure thoughts and benevolent deeds, as to be
one beaming, holy hieroglyph of love and duty. Then
will our exalted sense of beauty repel the aggression of
foreign ornaments.

So the love of property, to which for another purpose
I have before referred, is common to all. There is an
inborn desire for the conveniences, the comforts, the ele-
gances, the independence, which property confers. But
men are not born with one particle of knowledge respect-
ing the means or instruments by which property can be
acquired. And we all know how certainly a man, who
acts from the blind desire, without any knowledge of the
appropriate means, brings ruin upon himself and family.
How much knowledge is requisite, what long courses of
previous study and apprenticeship are demanded, to fit
men for the learned professions, for commerce, manufac-
tures and the mechanic arts ! Who would consign his
goods to a merchant who knows nothing of the laws of
trade, of demand and supply, of eligible markets, seasons,
and so forth ? What a variety and extent of preliminary
knowledge respecting modes and processes must be ob-
tained, before the fabrics of the artisan or the manufac-
turer can be produced. Suppose a young man of twenty
or twenty-five years of age, to begin to rear a family of
children. Suppose him, at the same time, to inherit a
hundred thousand dollars in money. He seeks to gratify
his parental instinct, by educating his children ; and he

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 221

seeks also to enlarge his estate, by purchasing and carry-
ing on a manufacturing establishment ; — but neither on
the subject of education nor of manufactures, has he ever
thought, or read, or sought instruction. How long, think
you, my friends, would it be, before the most perfect
machinery ever made by human skill would be wrenched,
or crushed, or torn in pieces, under his ignorant manage-
ment; the best of cottons or woollens spoiled, and his
whole fortune dissipated ? Without some knowledge of
the art of manufacturing, he would hardly know which
way to turn the wheels of his machinery ; he would not
know in what quantities to feed it, or in what order and
succession to carry the material from part to part. With-
out knowledge, also, he will conduct the education of
his children quite as ruinously as his pecuniary invest-
ments. If he is unacquainted with the different temper-
aments which his children may have, — the lymphatic,
the sanguine, the nervous, the fibrous, — he will make
as great mistakes in regard to diet and exercise, to intel-
lectual and moral training, to mental stimulus or restraint,
as though he should attempt to weave hemp upon a silk-
loom. If he does not know in what order nature develops
the faculties, one after another, he will commit the same
error, as though he should put the raw material, in the
first instance, on the finishing machine, and carry it, last
of all, through the preliminary stages. If you will allow
me to carry on the comparison, I will add, that, to feed
machinery, in any stage of the work, with such an over-
quantity of stock as clogs and chokes it, is only the paral-
lel of that common misjudgment which gives to children
longer lessons than they can learn. So, to ply the minds
of children with improper motives, in order to accelerate
their progress, is a far greater mistake than it would be
to drive machinery by doubling the head of water or the

222 THE WOEK OF EDUCATION.

power of steam, until every shaft should be twisted,
every baud stretched, and every pinion loosened, in it.
Such a silly adventurer would bring depravation and ruin
alike upon the mechanical and the educational depart-
ments of his enterprise.

Here lies the great and the only difference between the
cases. When material fabrics or commodities are spoiled
by a bungler, — when ore is turned into dross in the
smelting, when garments are ruined in the making, when
a house will not stand, or a ship will not sail, — we see
what mischief has been done, what materials have been
wasted. We understand enough of the subject to know
what should have been done, and to compare it with
what has been done. But no reflecting man can doubt,
for a moment, that the minds of our children, — those
treasures of inestimable value, — are corrupted and de-
vastated by every ignorant parent, in a degree at least
equal to what the most precious earthly materials would
be, in the hands of the rudest workman.

But it is not every child, nor even a majority of chil-
dren, who, with any propriety, can be compared to mechan-
ical structures, or to those pliant and ductile materials
that are wrought into beautiful forms by the skill of the
artisan. Children formed in the prodigality of nature,
gifted to exert strong influences upon the race, are not
passive ; — they are endued with vital and efficient forces
of their own. Their capacious and fervid souls were
created to melt and recast opinions, codes, communities,
as crude ores are melted and purified in the furnace. To
the sensitive and resilient natures of such children, an
ungentle touch is a sting ; a hot word is a living coal.
By mere innate, spontaneous force, their vehement spirits
rise to such a pitch of exaltation, that, if all bland and
sedative arts do not assuage them, if all wisdom does not

THE WOEK OF EDUCATION. 223

guide them, they become scourges instead of blessings
to mankind. Such natures are among the richest gifts
of Heaven to the race, — created for great emergencies
and enterprises, always finding or making occasions for
deeds of immortality ; — like Moses, scorning the power
of kings and giving deliverance to a captive nation ; or
like Paul, speaking undaunted in the face of courts, and
making potentates tremble. Yet how few parents know,
or have ever sought to know, how to manage these impet-
uous and fiery souls ! How many parents regard physi-
cal strength as the only antagonist and corrective of
spiritual strength, — ignorant of the truth that, to a great
extent, they are incommensurable quantities. How few
reflect that a child may be as much stronger than the
parents in his passions, as the parents are stronger than
the child, in their limbs ; that wisdom in them, therefore,
is the only true correlative of will in him; and that
prudence and discretion in the arrangement of circum-
stances beforehand, are, in thousands of cases, the effectual
preventive of the necessity of punishment afterwards.
If a man rashly undertakes to use materials which are
liable to spontaneous combustion, without any knowledge
of the conditions which are sure to generate the flame,
ought he to complain of the laws of nature, or of his
own ignorance, when he suffers a conflagration ? We
know that a man of intelligence and circumspection will
spend a life in the manufacture or the transportation
of gunpowder, without an accident ; while a stupid
clodpoll will celebrate his first day's service by an ex-
plosion.

My friends, is it not incredible that any parent should
ever attempt to manage and direct that mighty force, —
a child's soul, — without having first sought to acquire
some knowledge of its various attributes, of its upward

224 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

and its downward tending faculties, of the reciprocal re-
lations existing between it and the world into which it
has been brought, and of the manner in which its marvel-
lous capacities may be developed into harmony and beauty-,
and sanctified into holiness ? Look at that every-day re-
ality in life, — which, were it not so familiar, we should
pronounce the most delightful sight in this sorrowing
world, — that of a young mother clasping her first-born
infant to her breast, while the light and shade that cross
her countenance reveal the infinite hopes and fears that
alternate within. What is there of ease, pleasure, luxury,
fortune, health, life, that she would not barter, could she
win a sign from heaven, that her child should grow to
manhood, and as it should wax strong in body, should
grow also in favor with God and man ? Yet, was there
any thing in her own education, is there any thing in her
daily pursuits in life, or in the tone and habits of society,
which lead her to lay hold upon the promise, that if she
brings up her child in the way he should go, when he is
old he WILL NOT depart from it ? If the hospitalities of
her house are to be tendered to a distinguished guest, —
nay, if she is only to prepare a refection of cakes for a
tea-party, she fails not to examine some cookery-book, or
some manuscript recipe, lest she should convert her rich
ingredients into unpalatable compounds ; but without
ever having read one book on the subject of education,
without ever having reflected one hour upon this great
theme, without ever having sought one conversation with
an intelligent person upon it, she undertakes so to mingle
the earthly and the celestial elements of instruction for
that child's soul, that he shall be fitted to discharge all
duties below, and to enjoy all blessings above. When the
young mother has occasion to work the initials of her
name upon her household napery, does she not consult

THE WOKK OF EDUCATION. 225

the sampler, prepared in her juvenile days, that every
stitch may be set with regularity and in order ? 'Yet this
same mother surrenders herself to blind ignorance and
chance when she is to engrave immortal characters upon
the eternal tablets of the soul. To embroider an earth-
ly garment, there must be knowledge and skill ; but
neither is regarded as necessary for the fit adornment of
the soul's imperishable vesture. The young mother seems
to think she has done her whole duty to her child when
she has christened it George Washington Lafayette, or
Evelina Henrietta Augusta ; but she consults neither book
nor friends to know by what hallowed words of counsel
and of impulse she can baptize it into a life of wisdom and
of holiness. What wonder then, what wonder then, when
children grow old, that they should disperse in all ways,
rather than walk in the way in which they should go ?

If the vehement, but blind love of offspring, which
comes by nature, is not enlightened and guided by knowl-
edge, and study, and reflection, it is sure to defeat its
own desires. Hence, the frequency and the significance
of such expressions as are used by plain, rustic people,
of strong common sense: — " There were too many pea-
cocks where that boy was brought up ; " or, " The silly
girl is not to blame, for she was dolled up, from a doll in
the cradle to a doll in the parlor." All children have
foolish desires, freaks, caprices, appetites, which they have
no power or skill to gratify ; but the foolish parent sup-
plies all the needed skill, time, money, to gratify them ;
and thus the greater talent and resources of the parent
foster the propensities of the child into excess and pre-
dominance. The parental love which was designed by
Heaven to be the guardian angel of the child, is thus
transformed into a cruel minister of evil.

Think, my friends, for one moment, of the marvellous

VOL. I. 15

228 THE WOEK OF EDUCATION.

nature with which we have been endowed, — of its mani-
fold and diverse capacities, and of their attributes of
infinite expansion and duration. Then cast a rapid
glance over this magnificent temple of the universe into
which we have been brought. The same Being created
both by His omnipotence ; and, by His wisdom, He has
adapted the dwelling-place to the dweller. The exhaust-
less variety of natural objects by which we are sur-
rounded ; the relations of the family, of society, and of the
race; the adorable perfections of the Divine mind, —
these are means for the development, and spheres for the
activity, and objects for the aspiration of the immortal
soul. For the sustentation of our physical natures, God
has created the teeming earth, and tenanted the field
and the forest, the ocean and the air, with innumerable
forms of life ; and He has said to us, " have dominion "
over them. For the education of the perceptive intellect,
there have been provided the countless multitude and
diversity of substances, forms, colors, motions, — from a
drop of water, to the ocean ; from the tiny crystal that
sparkles upon the shore, to the sun that blazes in the
heavens, and the sun-strewn firmament. For the educa-
tion of the reflecting intellect we have the infinite relations
of discovered and undiscovered sciences, — the encyclo-
paedias of matter and of spirit, of which all the en-
cyclopaedias of man, as yet extant, are but the alphabet.
We have domestic sympathies looking backwards, around,
and forwards ; and answering to these, are the ties of filial,
conjugal, and parental relations. Through our inborn
sense of melody and harmony, all joyful and plaintive
emotions flow out into spontaneous music ; and, not friends
and kindred only, but even dead nature echoes back our
sorrows and our joys. To give a costless delight to our
sense of beauty, we have the variegated landscape, the

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 227

rainbow, the ever-renewing beauty of the moon, the
glories of the rising and the setting sun, and the ineffable
purity and splendor of that celestial vision when the
northern and the southern auroras shoot up from the
horizon, and overspread the vast concave with their many-
colored flame, as though it were a reflection caught from
the waving banner of angels, when the host of heaven
rejoices over some sinner that has repented. And finally,
for the amplest development, for the eternal progress of
those attributes that are proper to man, — for conscience,
for the love of truth, for that highest of all emotions, the
love and adoration of our Creator, — God, in his un-
searchable riches, has made full provision. And here, on
the one hand, is the subject of education, — the child,
with its manifold and wonderful powers ; — and, on the
other hand, this height, and dopth, and boundlessness of
natural and of spiritual instrumentalities, to build up the
nature of that child into a capacity for the intellectual
comprehension of the universe, and into a spiritual simi-
litude to its Author. And who are they that lay their
rash hands upon this holy work ? Where or when have
they learned, or sought to learn, to look at the unfolding
powers of the child's soul, and to see what it requires,
and then to run their eye and hand over this universe of
material and of moral agencies, and to select and apply
whatever is needed, at the time needed, and in the mea-
sure needed ? Surely, in no other department of life is
knowledge so indispensable ; surely, in no other is it so
little sought for. In no other navigation is there such
danger of wreck ; in no other is there such blind pilotage.
But the parent has the child on hand, and he must
educate and control him. For this purpose, he must ap-
ply such means and motives as he is acquainted with,
and use them with such skill as he may happen to possess.

228 THE WORK OP EDUCATION.

In regard to the intellect, the parent has one general
notion that the child has faculties by which he can learn,
and he has another general notion that there are things
to be learned ; but, at the same time, he is utterly ig-
norant of the distinctive nature of the intellectual facul-
ties ; of the periods of their respective development ; of
the particular classes of objects in the external world,
and the particular subjects of philosophical speculation,
which are related to particular faculties, and adapted to
arouse and strengthen them ; and he is also ignorant of
all the favoring circumstances under which the faculties
and their related objects should be brought into com-
munion. In such a condition of things, are not the
chances as infinity to one against the proper training of
the child ?

I say, the parent who has never read or reflected on
this subject, is necessarily ignorant of the favoring cir-
cumstances under which knowledge should be addressed
to a child's mind. What but a profound and widely
prevalent ignorance on this point, can account for the
fact, that a parent should send his child of four years
of age to a dreary and repulsive schoolroom, and plant
him there upon a seat, which, like the old instruments
of torture, seems to have been contrived in the light of
anatomical knowledge, and pre-adapted to shoot aches
ai^d cramps into every joint and muscle ? What but ig-
norance on this subject, could ever permit a teacher to
enforce stagnation upon both the body and the mind of
a little child, for at least two hours and a half of the
three hours in each half day's session of a school ? In
our old schoolhouses, and under our old system, were
not little children denied alike the repose of sleep and the
excitements of being awake ? Were not their heads often
surrounded by air as hot and dry as that of an African

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 229

desert, while Boreas was allowed to seize them by the
feet ? Were they not condemned to read what they did
not comprehend, and to commit to memory arbitrary
rules in grammar and in arithmetic, which were not
explained ? Did the parent visit the school, or manifest
interest and sympathy in the studies of the child ? And
when, at last, alienation and disgust succeeded, when the
school was deserted, the books thrown aside, and scenes
of rude and riotous pleasure were sought in their stead,
did not the parent justify himself, and throw the blame
of his own folly upon nature, by saying, Alas ! the child
never loved learning ? But I ask whether such a course
of proceeding is a fair trial of the question, whether God
has created the human intellect to hate knowledge ? In
all soberness I ask, whether it would not be every whit
as fair an experiment, should an idiot seize a child in one
hand and a honey-pot in the other, and after besmearing
the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, and the
nape of his neck with the honey, and producing only resist-
ance and disgust, should then deny that children like
honey ?

Still more disastrous are the mistakes of ignorance,
in moral training. All punishment, for instance, holds
the most intimate relation to morals ; and yet, how reck-
less and absurd is its infliction, when administered by
ignorant or passionate parents ! When a child is made
to expiate a wrong, by committing to memory two chap-
ters in the Bible, — as many a child has been compelled
to do, — does it make him love the right or — hate the
Bible ? When a rich father threatens to disinherit a way-
ward son, does the menace tend to make that son obey
the fifth commandment, or does it only make him hope
that his father will die in a fit, and too suddenly to make
a will ? I once saw the mother of a large family of chil-

230 THE WORK OP EDUCATION.

dren, — a woman who would have been ashamed not to
be able to discuss the merits of the latest novel, — induce
her little son to take a nauseous dose of medicine, by tell-
ing him that if he did not swallow it quickly, she would
call in his little sister and give it all to her ; and so strong
had the selfish desire of getting something from his sister
become, that the little imp shut his eyes, scowled terri-
bly, and gulped down the dose ! When a child, to whom
no glimpse of the necessity and beauty of truth has ever
been revealed, sees a terrific storm of vengeance gathering
over him, and just ready to burst upon his head, it is not
depravity, it is only the instinct of self-preservation, that
prompts him to escape, through falsehood. Bodily fear
is one of the lowest of all motives, whether we regard the
object or the actor. As it regards the object, it is the
brute, and the brutish part of man only, that are amena-
ble to it. As it regards the agent, no one is so ignorant
and barbarous as not to know its power. The Hottentot,
the Esquimaux, the Fejee-Islander, — all know that the
power of inflicting corporal pain produces subjection ; —
nay, the more ignorant and barbarian any one may be,
the more sure is he to make the power of inflicting pain
his only resource. I do not mean to say, that, in the
present state of society, this motive can be wholly dis-
pensed with, in the government of children ; or, that evils
worse than itself might not arise from its universal pro-
scription. Still, its true place is certainly at, or very near,
the bottom of the scale. It may be used to prevent
wrong, by the sudden arrest of the offender ; but it never
can be used as an incentive to good. Other low classes
of motives consist in the gratification of appetite, the
acquisition of wealth, the love of display, the desire of
outshining others, and so forth. A character of high
and enduring excellence can never be formed from any

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 231

quantity or any combination of these elements. If dis-
tinction is the only thing for which my heart pants, and
I happen to belong to a community or a party that rever-
ences truth and virtue, then I shall be led to simulate
such motives and to perform such external actions as
resemble truth and virtue. Even then, however, the
semblance, and not the reality, will be my aim. But if
I am transferred to another community or party, which
carries its measures by persecution and senseless clamor,
or by persistence in falsehood and wrong ; then, spurred
on by the same love of distinction, I shall persecute, and
clamor senselessly, and persist to the end in falsehood
and wrong. It is because of a prevalent ignorance how
to use the motives of filial affection, of justice, of bene-
volence, of duty to God, of doing right for the internal
delight which doing right bestows ; — it is because of this
prevalent ignorance, that bodily fear, the pleasures of
appetite, emulation and pride, constitute so large a portion
of the motive-forces that are now employed in the educa-
tion of children. And parents are yet to be made to
believe, with a depth of conviction they have never ex-
perienced ; they are to be made to feel as they have never
yet felt, that, from the same infant natures committed to
their care, they may rear up children who will be an honor
to their old age, and a staff for their declining years, or those
who will bring down their gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave ; — and that, in the vast majority of cases, these
results depend, more than upon all things else, upon the
knowledge or the ignorance, the wisdom or the folly, that
superintends their training.

In explaining that part of the work of education which
the Creator seems to have committed to the hands of
men, I have been led thus far to speak of our duties as
individuals, rather than of those social and civil duties

232 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

which devolve upon us as neighbors, as citizens, and as
constituent parts of the government.

The first glance at our social position reveals one of
the most striking and significant facts in the arrangements
of Providence ; and, as a consequence of this fact, one
of the clearest of our social duties. A parent, however
vigilant and devoted he may be, prepares only a part of
the influences which go to the education of his child.
The community, and the State where he resides, prepare
the rest. The united force of all makes up the positive
education which the child receives. No person can now
be situated as Adam and Eve were, when rearing the two
elder members of their family. Without knowledge,
and guided only by chance, or by their own uninstructed
sagacity, they reared first a murderer, and then one who
feared God. The first was what we call a spoiled child,
— whether ruined by indulgence or by severity, we know
not, perhaps by both ; — the second had the advantage
of a little parental experience. But since their day, all
children are subject to influences external to the parental
household. No parent, now, can bring up his child in
an exhausted receiver. And henco the necessity that
each parent should look, not only to his own conduct,
but to the conduct of the community in which he resides.
That community must be moral and exemplary, in order
that he may be safe. Here, therefore, even an enlight-
ened selfishness coincides with benevolence. In order to
our own highest good, we are bound to do good to others ;
for we cannot be wholly safe while they are wrong. How
glorious the appointment of Providence, which thus
reconciles self-love with the love of the race; which, in-
deed, makes the former defeat its own ends, when it pur-
Hues them in contravention of the latter ! The love of
our own children, then, when duly enlightened, prompts
us to regard the welfare of those of our neighbor.

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 233

Emphatically do some of the most important of all
duties devolve upon us, as members of a State which is
invested with the authority to legislate for itself. If we
were governed by others, on their heads would be the
crime of our misgovernment ; but when we govern our-
selves, and govern wrongly, we unite, in our own persons,
both the guilt and the calamities of misgovernment. In
the present state of society, an education of a high char-
acter cannot be universally diffused, without a union of
the forces of society, and a concert in its action. Co-op-
eration and unity of purpose will be found to increase the
power of citizens in peace, as much as they do of soldiers
in war. And hence the duty of combined action, on the
part of the community, in reference to this subject. But
combined action can never be effected to any useful pur-
pose amongst a free people, without agreement, without
compact, that is, — where the action of great numbers is
concerned, — without law. Upon the lawgivers then, there
fastens an obligation of inexpressible magnitude and sa-
credness ; and utterly unworthy the honorable station of
a lawgiver is he, who would elude this duty, or who un-
faithfully discharges it, or who perverts it to any sinister
purpose. And why should the legislator forever debase
his character to that of a scourger, a prison-keeper, and
an executioner? Why, wearing a gorgon's head, and
carrying stripes in his hand, should he pass before the
community as an avenger of evil only, and not as the pro-
moter and rewarder of good ? If terror and retribution
are his highest attributes, then his post is no more honor-
able than that of the beadle who whips, or of the heads-
man who decapitates. A legislator, worthy of the name,
should seek for honor and veneration, by moving through
society as a minister of beneficence, rather than as a spec-
tre of fear. He should reflect that new and better re-

234 THE WOBK OP EDUCATION.

suits in the condition of mankind are to be secured by
new and wiser measures. We are not to ask Heaven for
the annihilation of the present race, and the creation of
a new one ; but we are to ascertain and to use those
means, for the renovation, the redemption of mankind,
which have been given, or which the veracity of Heaven
stands pledged to give, whenever, on our part, we perform
the conditions preliminary to receiving them.

You will recollect, my friends, that memorable fire
which befell the city of New York, in the year 1835. It
took place in the heart of that great emporium, — a spot
where merchants, whose wealth was like that of princes,
had gathered their treasures. In but few places on the
surface of the globe was there accumulated such a mass
of riches. From each continent and from all the islands
of the sea, ships had brought thither their tributary offer-
ings, until it seemed like a magazine of the nations, — the
coffer of the world's wealth. In the midst of these
hoards, the fire broke out. It raged between two and
three days. Above, the dome of the sky was filled with
appalling blackness; below, the flames were of an unap-
proachable intensity of light and heat ; and such were
the inclemency of the season and the raging of the
elements, that all human power and human art seemed
as vanity and nothing. Yet, situated in the very midst
of that conflagration, there was one building, upon
which the storm of fire beat in vain. All around,
from elevated points in the distance, frOm steeples and
the roofs of houses, thousands of the trembling inhab-
itants gazed upon the awful scene; and thought, — as
well they might, — that it was one of universal and
undistinguishing havoc. But, as some swift cross-wind
furrowed athwart that sea of flame, or a broad blast beat
down its aspiring crests, there, safe amidst ruin, erect

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 235

amongst the falling, was seen that single edifice. And
when, at last, the ravage ceased, and men again walked
those streets in sorrow, which so lately they had walked
in pride, there stood that solitary edifice, unharmed amid
surrounding desolation ; — from the foundation to the
cope-stone, unscathed ; — and over the treasures which
had been confided to its keeping, the smell of fire had
not passed. There it stood, like an honest man in the
streets of Sodom. Now, why was this ? It was con-
structed from the same material, of brick and mortar, of
iron and slate, with the thousands around it, whose sub-
stance was now but rubbish, and their contents ashes.
Now, why was this ? It was built by a workman. IT
WAS BUILT BY A WORKMAN. The man who erected that
surviving, victorious structure, knew the nature of the
materials he used ; he knew the element of fire ; he
knew the power of combustion. Fidelity seconded his
knowledge. He did not put in stucco for granite, nor
touchwood for iron. He was not satisfied with outside
ornaments, with finical cornices and gingerbread work ;
but deep in all its hidden foundations, — in the interior
of its walls and in all its secret joints, — where no human
eye should ever see the compact masonry, — he consoli-
dated, and cemented, and closed it in, until it became
impregnable to fire, — insoluble in that volcano. And
thus, my hearers, must parents become workmen in the
education of their children. They must know that, from
the very nature and constitution of things, a lofty and
enduring character cannot be formed by ignorance and
chance. They must know that no skill or power of man
can ever lay the imperishable foundations of virtue, by
using the low motives of fear, and the pride of superi-
ority, and the love of worldly applause or of worldly
wealth, any more than they can rear a material edifice,

236 THE WORK OF EDUCATION.

storm-proof and fire-proof, from bamboo and cane-
brake !

Until, then, this subject of education is far more
studied and far better understood than it has ever yet
been, there can be no security for the formation of pure
and noble minds ; and though the child that is born to-
day may turn out an Abel, yet we have no assurance that
he will not be a Cain. Until parents will learn to
train up children in the way they should go, — until
they will learn what that way is, — the paths that lead
down to the realms of destruction must continue to be
thronged ; — the doting father shall feel the pangs of a
disobedient and profligate son, and the mother shall see
the beautiful child whom she folds to her bosom, turn to
a coiling serpent and sting the breast upon which it was
cherished. Until the thousandth and the ten thousandth
generation shall have passed away, the Deity may go on
doing his part of the work, but unless we do our part
also, the work will never be done, — and until it is done,
the river of parental tears must continue to flow. Unlike
Rachel, parents shall weep for their children because they
are, and not because they are not; — nor shall they be
comforted, imtil they will learn, that God in His infinite
wisdom has pervaded the universe with immutable laws,
— laws which may be made productive of the highest
forms of goodness and happiness ; — and, in His infinite
mercy, has provided the means by which those laws can
be discovered and obeyed ; but that he has left it to us to
learn and to apply them, or to suffer the unutterable con-
sequences of ignorance. But when we shall learn and
shall obey those laws, — when the immortal nature of the
child shall be brought within the action of those influ-
ences, — each at its appointed time, — which have been
graciously prepared for training it up in the way it should

THE WORK OF EDUCATION. 237

go, then may we be sure that God will clothe its spirit in
garments of amianthus, that it may not be corrupted, and
of asbestos, that it may not be consumed, and that it will
be able to walk through the pools of earthly pollution,
and through the furnace of earthly temptation, and come
forth white as linen that has been washed by the fuller,
and pure as the golden wedge of Ophir that has been
refined in the refiner's fire.

LECTURE V.
1840.

LECTURE V.

AN HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION; SHOWING ITS
DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION :

IN treating any important and comprehensive subject,
it will inevitably happen that some portions of it will be
found less interesting than others ; — inferior in beauty,
dignity, elevation. In every book we read, some chapters
will be less animating and instructive than the rest ; in
every landscape we survey, some features less impressive
and grand ; in every journey we take, some stages more
dreary and laborious. Yet we must accept them to-
gether, as a whole, — the poor with the good. This is
my apology for presenting to you, at the present time, a
class of views, which, — whether they excite more or less
interest, — will derive none of it from flattering our self-
complacency.

In attempting a series of lectures on the great subject
of Education, I have arrived at a topic which must be
discussed, however far it may fall below the average in
interest and attractiveness. In previous lectures, I have
spoken of the general state and condition of education
amongst us, and have pointed out some of the more
urgent and immediate wants which it enjoins us to sup-
ply. I have endeavored to unfold some of the more vital
principles of this great science ; I have spoken of its
objects ; of its importance in all countries and in all
times ; and, more especially, of its absolute and uncon-
ditional necessity under social and political institutions

VOL. I. 16 241

242 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

like ours. Under this last head, I have endeavored to
demonstrate that, in a land of liberty, — that is, in a land
where the people, in their collective capacity, are free to do
wrong as well as free to do right ; where there is no san-
guinary or surgical code of laws to cut off the offending
members of society ; no thousand-eyed police to detect
transgression and crush it in the germ ; — in fine, where
are few external restraints which can be brought to bear
upon the appetites and passions of men, — that, in such
a land, there must be internal restraints ; that reason,
conscience, benevolence, and a reverence for all that is
sacred, must supply the place of force and fear ; and, for
this purpose, the very instincts of self-preservation ad-
monish us to perfect our system of education, and to
carry it on far more generally and more vigorously than
we have ever yet done. For this purpose we must study
the principles of education more profoundly ; we must
make ourselves acquainted with the art, or processes, by
which those principles can be applied in practice ; and,
by establishing proper agencies and institutions, we must
cause a knowledge both of the science and the art to be
diffused throughout the entire mass of the people.

In this stage of the inquiry, it seems proper to consid-
er in what relative esteem or disesteem the subject of ed-
ucation has heretofore been held, and is now held, in the
regards of men. Let us seek an answer to such ques-
tions as these : — Have men assigned to the cause of ed-
ucation a high or a low position ? What things have they
placed above it ; and what things, (if any,) have they
placed below it ? How have its followers been honored
or rewarded ? What means, instrumentalities, accommo-
dations, have been provided for carrying on the work ?
In fine, when its interests have come in competion with
other interests, which have been made to yield ? It is re-

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 243

lated of a certain king, that, when embarked on a voyage,
attended by some of his courtiers, and carrying with him
some of his treasures, a storm arose^ which made it ne-
cessary to lighten the ship ; — whereupon, he commanded
his courtiers to be thrown overboard, but saved his
money. How is it with parents, who are embarked with
fortune and family on this voyage of life ; — when they
need a better schoolhouse to save their children from ill
health, or a better teacher to rescue them from immorality
and ignorance ; or even a slate or a shilling's worth of
paper to save them from idleness ; — have we any parents
amongst us, or have we not. who, under such circum-
stances, will fling the child overboard, and save the
shilling ?

A ten-pound weight will not more certainly weigh
down a five-pound weight, than a man will act in obedi-
ence to that which, on the whole, is his strongest motive.
When, therefore, we would ascertain the rank which
education actually holds in the regards of any community,
we must not merely listen to what that community says ;
we must see what it does. This is especially true,
in our country, where this cause has so many flatterers,
but so few friends. Not by their ivords, but by their
works, shall yc know them, is a test of universal appli-
cation. Nor must we stop with inspecting the form of
the system which may have been anywhere established :
we must see whether it be a live system, or an autom-
aton.

A practical unbelief as to the power of education, —
the power of physical, intellectual and moral training, —
exists amongst us. As a people, we do not believe that
these fleshly tabernacles, — which we call tabernacles of
clay, — may, by a proper course of training, become as it
were tabernacles of iron ; or, by an improper course of

244 HISTORICAL VIEW OP EDUCATION.

training, may become tabernacles of glass. We do not
believe, that if we would understand and obey the Phys-
ical Laws of our nature, our bodies might be so com-
pacted and toughened, that they would outlast ten cast-
iron bodies ; or, on the other hand, that by ignorant
and vicious management, they may become so sleazy and
puny, that a body of glass, made by a glass-blower, would
outlast ten of them. We have no practical belief that
the human intellect, under a course of judicious culture,
can be made to grow brighter and brighter, like the rising
sun, until it shall shed its light over the dark problems
of humanity, and put ignorance and superstition to flight ;
— we do not believe this, as we believe that corn will
grow, or that a stone will fall ; and yet the latter facts
are no more in accordance with the benign laws of nature
than the former. We manifest no living, impulsive faith
in the scriptural declaration, " Train up a child in tho
way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
from it." The Scripture does not say that he probably
will not depart from it ; or that in nine cases out of ten
he will not depart from it ; but it asserts, positively and
unconditionally, that he WILL NOT depart from it ; — the
declaration being philosophically founded upon the fact,
that God has made provision for the moral welfare of all
his creatures, and that, when we do not attain to it, the
failure is caused by our own ignorance or neglect. It is
not more true that a well-built ship will float in sea-water
instead of diving to the bottom, than it is that spiritually-
cultivated affections will buoy up their possessor above
the low indulgences of sensuality, and avarice, and pro-
faneness, and intemperance, and irreverence towards
things sacred.

But I repeat, that, as a people, we have no living faitli
in these sublime and indestructible truths ; — no faith

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 245

that makes the mind think and the hand work ; no faith
that induces exertions and sacrifices, as men exert them-
selves to acquire fortunes or to obtain honors. Did we
comprehend, in all their vastness and splendor, the re-
wards of earthly honor and glory, and of a blissful im-
mortality, which an appropriate training of all parts of
their nature is fitted to procure for our children, then we
should hunger and thirst after the requisite knowledge ;
we should make all efforts and sacrifices to secure the
outward means, by which so great a .prize could be won ;
and we should subordinate all other desires to this grand
desire. It would rise with us in the morning, attend us
through the day, retire with us to the nightly couch, and
mingle its aspirations, not only with our prayers but with
our dreams.

And, furthermore, as a people, we justify our scepti-
cism in regard to the power of education ; we virtually
charge it with impotency ; we say that, of two children,
brought up in the same family, in precisely the same man*-
ner, and under the same influences, one shall be almost a
saint, and the other quite a sinner ; when the truth is,
that the natural temperament and dispositions of chil-
dren belonging to the same family, are often so different
from each other, that their being brought up in precisely
the same manner, under the same influences, and, of
course, without any of the necessary discriminations, is
enough to account for the result that, while one of them
may be almost a saint, the other should be the chief of
sinners.

We also appeal to the history of the past, and aver that
among the most enlightened nations of the earth, educa-
tion has done little or nothing towards producing a state
of individual and social well-being, at once universal and
permanent; — and now, in this infancy of the world, we

216 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

rashly prescribe limits to what may be done, from what
has been done, — which is about as wise as it would be to
say of an infant, that because it never has walked or
talked, it never will walk or talk.

My purpose and hope, on the present occasion, are, to
vindicate the cause of education from this charge of im-
becility ; and to show that it has prospered less than other
causes have prospered, for the sole and simple, but suffi-
cient reason, that it has been cherished less than other
causes have been cherished, — not only in former times
and in other countries, but in our own time and country,
that is, always and everywhere.

I affirm generally, that, up to the present age and hour,
the main current of social desires and energies, — the lit-
erature, the laws, the wealth, the talent, the character-
forming institutions of the world, — have flowed in other
channels, and left this one void of fertilizing power.
Philosophers, moralists, sages, who have illumined the
world with the splendor of their genius on other subjects,
have rarely shed the feeblest beam of light upon this.
Of all the literature of the ancients which has comedown
to us, only a most meagre and inconsiderable part has any
reference to education. Examine Homer and Virgil,
among the poets ; Herodotus, Josephus or Livy, among
the historians ; or Plutarch among biographers ; and you
would never infer that, according to their philosophy, the
common mass of children did not grow up noble or hate-
ful by a force of their own, like a cedar of Lebanon, or a
wild thorn-tree.

The most important and most general fact which meets
us, on approaching the subject, is, that, until within less
than two centuries of the present time, no system of free
schools for a whole people was maintained anywhere
upon earth ; and then, only in one of the colonies of this

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGEADATION. 247

country, — that colony being the feeble and inconsiderable
one of Massachusetts, containing at that time only a few
thousand inhabitants.

Among several of the most powerful nations of anti-
quity, where laws on the subject of education existed,
there were no Public Schools. Rome, which so long
swayed the destinies of the world, and at last sunk to so
ignominious a close, had no Public Schools. Its schools
were what we call Private, — undertaken on speculation,
and by any person, however unsuitable or irresponsible.

Among the Jews, there seems to be no evidence that
there were schools even for boys. It is supposed that
even arithmetic was not taught to them, and so univer-
sally was the education of females neglected, that even
the daughters of the priests could not read and write.
Girls, however, were instructed in music and dancing.

The part of education most attended to by all the an-
cient nations, was that which tended to strengthen and
harden the body. Even this, however, was hardly worthy
of being called physical education, because it was con-
ducted without any competent notions of anatomy or
physiology. As war was the grand object which nations
proposed to themselves, the education of male children
was conducted in reference to their becoming soldiers. In
modern times we have gone to the other extreme, — edu-
cating the mind, or rather parts of the mind, to the
almost total neglect of the body. A striking illustration
of these facts is, that the places appropriated to bodily
exercises among the Greeks, were called Gymnasia;
while the Germans, who sxcel in the cultivation of clas-
sical literature, call those schools where mind is culti-
vated, to the almost entire neglect of the body, by the
same name. There can be no true education without
the union of both.

248 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

The subject-matter of education, was, of course, very
limited amongst all ancient nations. Their encyclopaedia
of knowledge would have been but a primer, in size, com-
pared with ours. The seven liberal arts taught in the
celebrated schools of Alexandria, in the time of our
Saviour, were grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, and music ; and these constituted
the complete circle of liberal knowledge. As eloquence
conferred a celebrity inferior only to success in arms, it
was more assiduously cultivated than any of the other
studies. But rhetoric gives only a power over men, while
natural philosophy gives a power over nature. In no
one respect is the contrast or disparity between ancient
and modern times more remarkable than in their igno-
rance of, and our acquaintance with the natural sciences.

It would be unjust to pass unnoticed a few illustrious
educators among the ancients, who existed, not in accord-
ance with, but in defiance of the spirit of the age in
which they lived. One of the earliest, and probably the
most remarkable of these, was Pythagoras, a Greek, bora
between five and six hundred years before Christ. He
opened a school in the southern part of Italy, and proved
the power of education by the results of his labors. Un-
der his instructions, his pupils became men of the most
exemplary and noble character ; and going out from his
school into the different cities of Magua Graecia, they ef-
fected the most beneficent revolutions in the social rela-
tions of life, and the public institutions of society. Music
with him was a prominent means of culture. Each day
began and ended with songs, -accompanied by the lyre or
some other instrument. Particular songs, with corre-
sponding metres and tunes, lively or plaintive, religious or
mirthful, were prepared, as excitants or antidotes for par-
ticular passions or emotions.

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 249

Following Pythagoras, were Socrates, Plato and Aris-
totle among the Greeks, and Quintiliau among the Ro-
mans,— great men, indeed, but with not enough of great
men around them to correct their errors ; - and hence it
may be questioned whether the authority of their names
has not propagated, through succeeding times, more of
error than of truth. This is doubtless true of Aristotle,
if not of some of the rest.

Little was done by any of the ancient nations for the
honor or emolument even of the best of teachers. We
know that Socrates was put to death for his excellences ;
and, according to some accounts, Pythagoras fell in a
public commotion which had been raised by a factious
hostility to his teachings. Julius Caesar was the first who
procured for Grecian scholars an honorable reception at
Rome, by conferring the right of citizenship upon them.*
Augustus encouraged men of learning by honorable dis-
tinctions and rewards, and exempted teachers from hold-
ing certain public offices ; but, at one time, a hundred
and seventy years before Christ, Grecian philosophers and
rhetoricians were expelled from Rome by a decree of the
censors.

Quintilian, one of the most eminent and successful of
teachers, is supposed to have been the first, and perhaps
the only one, among the ancients, who disused and con-
demned whipping in school ; but his power seems, for
many centuries, to have been among the lost arts. He
taught in the last half of the first century of the Christian
era.

Scattered up and down, — but with vast intervals, —
among Grecian and Roman writings, we now and then
catch a glimpse of this multiform subject ; — as when

* Perhaps it is not generally known that Julius Caesar wrote a Latin
Grammar.

250 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

Polybius speaks of the influence of music in refining the
character of the Arcadians ; or when Horace says that
the cultivation of the Fine Arts prevents men from
degenerating- into brutes; — but considering the vast
expanse, — ages of time and millions of minds, — over
which these few beams of light were thrown, what right
have we to say, that the power and beneficence of educa-
tion had any opportunity to make known their transform-
ing and redeeming prerogatives, in ancient times ?

It occurs to me here to make a single remark in refer-
ence to the limited number of those who enjoyed the
advantages of education among the ancients. I have
elsewhere expounded that beautiful law, in the Divine
economy, by which the improvement of the society around
us is made indispensable to our own security, — because
no man, living in the midst of a vicious community, can
be sure that all the virtuous influences which he imparts
to his own children will not be neutralized and lost, by
the counter influences exerted upon them by others.
The sons of Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles. Thucydides,
and even of Socrates himself, were contaminated by the
corruptions of the times, and thus defeated their paternal
hopes. The parent who wishes to bring up his own
children well, but refuses to do all in his power to perfect
the common, educational institutions around him, should
go with his family into voluntary exile, — he should fly
to some Juan Fernandez, where no contagion of others'
vices can invade his solitude and defeat his care.

Shortly after the commencement of the Christian era,
all idea of general popular education, and almost all
correct notions1 concerning education itself, died out of
the minds of men. A gloomy and terrible period suc-
ceeded, which lasted a thousand years, — a sixth part of
the past duration of the race of men ! Approaching this

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 251

period from the side of antiquity, or going back to view
it from our own age, we come, as it were, to the borders
of a great Gulf of Despair. Gazing down from the brink
of this remorseless abyss, we behold a spectacle resem-
bling rather the maddest orgies of demons, than any
deeds of men. Oppression usurped the civil throne.
Persecution seized upon the holy altar. Rulers demand-
ed the unconditional submission of body and soul, and
sent forth ministers of fire and sword to destroy what
they could not enslave. Innocence changed places with
guilt, and bore all its penalties. Even remorse seems to
have died from out the souls of men. As high as the
halls of the regal castle rose into the air, so deep beneath
were excavated the dungeons of the victim, into which
hope never came. By the side of the magnificent Cathe-
dral was built the Inquisition ; and all those who would
not enter the former, and bow the soul in homage to
men, were doomed by the latter to have the body broken
or burned. All that power, wealth, arts, civilization had
conferred upon the old world, — even new-born, divine
Christianity itself, — were converted into instruments of
physical bondage and spiritual degradation. These cen-
turies have been falsely called the Dark Ages ; they were
not dark; they glare out more conspicuously than any
other ages of the world ; but, alas ! they glare with in-'
fernal fires.

What could education do in such an age ? Nothing !
nothing ! Its voice was hushed ; its animation was sus-
pended. It must await the revival of letters, the art of
printing, and other great revolutions in the affairs of the
world, before it could hope to obtain audience among
men.

In the Augustan age of English literature, — in the
days of Johnson, Goldsmith, Swift, Pope, Addison, — in

252 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

all the beautiful writings of these great men, almost
nothing is said on the subject of education. Not any-
where is there a single expression showing that they, or
either of them, had any just conception of its different
departments, and of the various and distinct processes by
which the work of each is to be carried on. Dr. Johnson
has a few paragraphs scattered up and down over his
voluminous writings ; but by far the most labored pas-
sage he ever prepared on the subject was a forensic
argument for Boswell, defending the brutal infliction of
corporal punishment so common in those days. To show
the opinion of this great man respecting the propriety of
giving an education to the laboring and poor classes, let
me quote a sentence or two from his " Review of Free
Inquiry."

" I know not whether there are not many states of life,
in which all knowledge less than the highest wisdom will
produce' discontent and danger. I believe it may be
sometimes found that a little learning' to a poor man is a
dangerous thing"

" Though it should be granted that those who are born
to poverty and drudgery should not be deprived by an im-
proper education of the opiate of ignorance, yet," &c.

One of these expressions of Dr. Johnson seems to have
been caught from a celebrated couplet of Pope : —

" A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring ;
There, shallow draughts intoxicate the hrain,
But drinking deeper sobers us again."

One would like to know what extent of acquired
knowledge would constitute " deep drinking" in the
sense of this authority ; or, in surveying the vastness of
the works of God, whether all that Pope himself knew,

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 253

though it were multiplied a hundred-fold, would not be
" a dangerous thing." The doctrine of this passage is
as false in the eye of reason, as the simile is in the creed
of a teetotaler !

Pope has another oft-quoted passage, in the last line of
which, namely, —

" Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined," —

he uses the word " twig" in a false sense, as it properly
means the end of a limb, and not the stem or shoot which
expands into a tree. In this he was probably misled by
the strength of his associations, because the twigs, or ends
of limbs, performed so important a part in the work of
education in his day, that they had become to him the type
and symbol of the whole process. At the most, Pope
merely symbolizes the general truth ; he nowhere pro-
poses to tell us what modes or processes of cultivation
will stimulate its aspiring tendencies, or bow it downward
to the earth ; — he never pretends to instruct us how the
tiny germs just breaking from the shell, or the tender
shoot just peering from the earth, may be reared into the
lofty tree, bearing a forest-like crown of branches upon its
top, and having limbs and trunk of such massiveness and
cohesive strength, that they will toss off the storm and
survive the thunderbolt.

In one of the numbers of the Spectator, Addison com-
pares the qualities of different dispositions to different
kinds of flowers in aigarden ; but the article is short, and
was written for humor rather than for instruction.

Shakspeare gives us a glimpse of the repulsive aspects
of educational means, in his time, when he describes the
child as " creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school."

Shenstone makes himself merry with the toils and pri-
vations, and homely manners of a school dame.

254 HISTORICAL VIEW OP EDUCATION.

Goldsmith describes a schoolmaster as an arbitrary,
tyrannical, storm-faced brute.

Cowper, in his earnest appeals, preferred in behalf of
the private tutors of gentlemen's sons, gives us the fol-
lowing glimpses of the indignities to which they were cus-
tomarily subjected in his day :

" Doom him not then to solitary meals,
But recollect that he has sense and feels ; —
His post not mean, his talent not unknown,
He deems it hard to vegetate alone.
And if admitted at thy board to sit,
Account him no just mark for idle wit ;
Offend not him, whom modesty restrains
From repartee, with jokes that he disdains ;
Much less transfix his feelings with an oath,
« Nor frown, unless lie vanish with the cloth."

Sir Walter Scott gathers all ungainliness of person,
and awkwardness of manner, and slovenliness of dress,
into one person, makes him horrid with superstition and
pedantry, and names the pedagogue Dominie Sampson.
Even in his sober moments, when expressing his own
thoughts, rather than bodying forth the common idea of
the times, he says of Dr. Adam, the learned author of the
"Roman Antiquities," that "He was deeply imbibed
with the fortunate vanity which alone could induce a
man, who has arms to pare and burn a muir, to submit to
the still more toilsome task of cultivating- youth."

In some admirable essays lately written in England, for
an educational prize, the condition of the school-teacher
is represented as being below that of menial servants,
throughout the kingdom of Great Britain.*

* I find the following pointed remark, in a lecture delivered before the
American Institute of Instruction, at Pittsfield, in 1843, by R. B. Hubbard,
Esq., the accomplished Principal of the High School at Worcester, Mass. : —

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 255

Milton, it is true, wrote a short tract on education,
beautiful to read, but wholly destitute of practical instruc-
tion ; and it would be unpardonable to pass by that admi-
rable treatise, Locke's " Thoughts on Education ; " — but
while his system of metaphysics, which is the poorest of
all his works, has been made a text-book both in the uni-
versities of England and America, this excellent treatise,
which is by far better than any thing which had ever then
been written, has been almost wholly neglected and for-
gotten.

Consider, too, my friends, another general but decisive
fact, showing in what subordinate estimation this para-
mount subject has been held. The human mind is so coir
stituted that it cannot embrace any great idea, but, forth-
with, all the faculties strive to aggrandize and adorn and,
dignify it. Let any principle or sentiment be elevated by
the public voice, — whether rightfully or wrongfully, —
to a station of pre-eminence or grandeur, in the eyes of
men, and it is at once personified, and, as it were, conse-
crated. The arts go, as on a pilgrimage, to do it rever-
ence. Music celebrates it in national songs. Sculpture
embodies it in enduring substance, and clothes it in im-
pressive forms. Painting catches each flashing beam of
inspiration from its look, transfers it to her canvas, and
holds it fast for centuries, in her magic coloring. Archi.
tecture rears temples for its residence and shrines for its
worship. Religion sanctifies it. In fine, whatever is ac-
counted high or holy in any age, all the sentiments of
taste, beauty, imagination, reverence, belonging to that age,

" The meed of praise has been very liberally and justly awarded to Wash-
ington Irving for his valuable contributions to our scanty stock of polite
literature ; yet it may well be questioned, whether the injury done to the
cause of common education in the character of Ichabod Crane has not more
than cancelled the whole debt."

256 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

ennoble it with a priesthood, deify its founders or law-
givers while living, and grant them apotheosis and hom-
age when dead. Such proofs of veneration and love sig-
nalized the worship of the true God among the Jews, and
the worship of false gods among pagans. Such devotion
was paid to to the sentiment of Beauty among the Athe-
nians ; to the iron-hearted god of War among the Ro-
mans ; to Love and knightly bearing in the age of chivalry.
Without one word from the historian, and only by study-
ing a people's relics, and investigating the figurative ex-
pressions in their literature and law, one might see reflect-
ed, as from a mirror, the moral scale on which they
arranged their idea of good and great. Though history
should not record a single line in testimony of the fact,
yet who, a thousand years hence, could fail to read, in
their symbols, in their forms of speech, and in the tech-
nical terms of their law, the money-getting, money-wor-
shipping tendencies of all commercial nations, during the
last and the present centuries ? The word " sovereign,"
we know, means a potentate invested with lawful dignity
and authority ; and it implies subjects who are bound to
honor and obey. Hence, in Great Britain, a gold coin,
worth twenty shillings, is called a " sovereign ; " and hap-
py is the political sovereign who enjoys such plenitude of
power and majesty, and has so many loyal and devoted
subjects as this vicegerent of royalty. An ancient Eng-
lish coin was called an angel. Its value was only ten shil-
lings, and yet it was named after a messenger from heav-
en. In the Scriptures, and in political law, a crown is
the emblem and personification of might and majesty, of
glory and blessedness. The synonyme of all these is a
piece of silver worth six shillings and seven pence. As
the king has his representative in a sovereign, so a duke
has his in a ducat, — the inferior value of the latter cor-

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 257

responding with the inferior dignity of its archetype. As
Napoleon was considered the mightiest ruler that France
ever knew, so, for many years, her highest coin was called
a Napoleon ; though now, in the French mint, they strike
double-Napoleons. God grant that the world may never
see a double-Napoleon of flesh and blood ! Our fore-
fathers subjected themselves to every worldly privation
for the sake of liberty, — and when they had heroically
endured toil and sacrifice for eight long years, — and at
last achieved the blessing of independence, — they showed
their veneration for the Genius of Liberty by placing its
image and superscription — upon a cent !

So, too, in our times, epithets the most distinctively sa-
cred are tainted with cupidity. Mammon is not satisfied
with the heart-worship of his devotees ; he has stolen the
very language of the Bible and the Liturgy ; and the car-
dinal words of the sanctuary have become the business
phraseology of bankers, exchange-brokers; and lawyers.
The word " good," as applied to character, originally
meant benevolent, virtuous, devout, pious ; — now, in the
universal dialect of traffic and credit, a man is techni-
cally called good who pays his notes at maturity ; and
thus, this almost divine epithet is transferred from those
who laid up their treasures in heaven, to such as lay up
their treasures on earth. The three-days' respite which
the law allows for the payment of a promissory note or
bill of exchange, after the stipulated period has expired,
is called "grace" in irreverent imitation of the sinner's
chance for pardon. On the performance of a broken cov-
enant, by which a mortgaged estate is saved from forfeit-
ure, it is said, in the technical language of the law, to be
saved by " redemption" The document by which a de-
ceased man's estate is bequeathed to his survivors, is
called a testament ; and were the glad tidings of the New

VOL. I. 17

258 HISTORICAL VIEW OP EDUCATION.

Testament looked for as anxiously as are the contents of
a rich man's last will and testament, there would be no
further occasion for the Bible Societies. Indeed, on open-
ing some of our law-books, and casting the eye along the
running titles at the top of the pages, or on the marginal
notes, and observing the frequent recurrence of such
words as " covenant-broken," " grace," " redemption,"
" testament," and so forth, one might very naturally fall
into the mistake of supposing the book to be a work on
theology, instead of the law of real estate or bank stock.
I group together a few of these extraordinary facts, my
friends, to illustrate the irresistible tendency of the hu-
man mind to dignify, honor, elevate, aggrandize, and even
sanctify, whatever it truly respects and values. But edu-
cation,— that synonyme of mortal misery and happiness ;
that abbreviation for earth and heaven and hell, — where
are the conscious or unconscious testimonials to its worth ?
"What honorable, laudatory epithets, what titles of enco-
niuni or of dignity, have been bestowed upon its profes-
sors ? What, save such titles as pedagogue, (which,
among the Romans, from whom we derived it, meant a
slave,) and pedant, and knight of the birch and ferule ?
What sincere or single offering has it received from the
hand or voice of genius ? Traverse the long galleries of
art, and you will discover no tribute to its worth. Listen
to all the great masters of music, and you will hear no
swelling notes or chorus in its praise. Search all the vol-
umes of all the poets, and you will rarely find a respect-
ful mention of its claims, or even a recognition of its ex-
istence. In sacred and devotional poetry, with which all
its higher attributes so intimately blend and harmonize,
it has found no place. As proof of this extraordinary
fact, let me say that, within the last five years, I have
been invited to lecture on the subject of education, in

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 259

churches of all the leading religious denominations of New
England ; and perhaps in the majority of instances the lec-
ture has been preceded or followed by the devotional
exercises of prayer and singing. On these occasions,
probably every church hymn-book belonging to every re-
ligious sect amongst us has been searched, in order to
find fitting and appropriate words wherein to utter fitting
and appropriate thoughts on this sacred theme. But, in
all cases, the search has been made in vain. I think I
hazard nothing in saying that there is not a single psalm
or hymn, in any devotional book of psalms and hymns, to
be found in our churches, which presents the faintest out-
line of this great subject, in its social, moral and religious
departments, or in its bearing upon the future happiness
of its objects. On these occasions, the officiating clergy-
man has looked through book and index, again and again,
to make a suitable selection ; he has then handed the
book to me, and I have done the same, — the audience all
the while waiting, and wondering at the delay, — and at
last, as our only resource, we have been obliged to select
some piece that had the word " child " or the word
" young " in it, and make it do.

In contrast with this fact, think of the size of a com-
plete collection of Bacchanal songs, or of martial music ;
— these would make libraries ; but the Muse of educa-
tion is yet to be born.

In regard to all other subjects, histories have been
written. The facts pertaining to their origin and progress
have been collected ; their principles elucidated ; their
modes and processes detailed. As early as the time oi
Cato, there was the history of agriculture. In modern
times we have the history of the silk-worm, the history of
cotton, the history of rice and of tobacco, and the history
of the mechanic arts ; but, in the English language, we

260 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

have no history of education. Indeed, even now, we can
scarcely be said to have any treatise, showing at what fa-
voring hours the sentiments of virtue should be instilled
into young hearts ; or by what processes of care and nur-
ture, or by what neglect, the chrysales of human spirits
are evolved into angels or demons.

And while almost nothing has been written or taught,
on this subject, by the great guides and dictators of the
human mind ; how has it been with the lawgivers of the
race, and the founders of its social and political institu-
tions ? Hitherto there has existed but very little freedom
of thought and action among mankind. Laws and insti-
tutions have been moulds, wherein the minds of men
have been cast, — almost with mechanical precision.
The reciprocal action between the institutions of society,
on the one side, and the successive generations of men,
on the other, has been this : The generations of men have
been born into institutions already prepared and consoli-
dated. During their years of minority, the institutions
shaped their mind ; and when they arrived at majority,
they upheld the institutions to which they had been con-
formed, and, in their turn, bequeathed them. Sometimes,
indeed, a mighty spirit has arisen, too large to be com-
pressed within the mould of existing institutions, or too
unmalleable and infusible to be beaten or molten into
their shape. Then came a death-struggle. If the insti-
tutions prevailed over the individual, he was crushed, an-
nihilated. If the individual triumphed in the unequal
contest, he dashed the mould of the institutions in pieces,
prepared another in his own likeness, and left it behind
him to shape the minds of coming generations. Such
men were Aristotle, in regard to metaphysics ; Alfred, in
regard to law ; Bacon, in regard to philosophy ; Luther
and Calvin, in regard to religious faith.

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 261

Both in Europe and in this country, scientific institu-
tions have been founded, and illustrious men, during suc-
cessive ages, have poured the collected light of their ef-
fulgent minds upon other departments of science and of
art, — upon language, astronomy, light, heat, electricity,
tides, meteors, and so forth, and so forth. Such were
the Royal Academy of Sciences, in Paris, founded in
1660 ; the Royal Society of England, founded in 1663 ;
and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded
in 1780 ; — and what ponderous volumes of reports, es-
says, and transactions, they have published ! But when
or where have a nation's sages met in council to inves-
tigate the principles and to discuss the modes by which
that most difficult and delicate work upon earth, — the
education of a human soul, — should be conducted ?
Yet what is there in philology, or the principles of uni-
versal grammar ; what is there in the ebb and flow of
tides, in the shooting of meteors, or in the motions of the
planetary bodies ; — what is there, in fine, in the corpo-
real and insensate elements of the earth beneath, or of
the firmament above, at all comparable in importance to
those laws of growth and that course of training, by
which the destiny of mortal and immortal spirits is at
least foretokened, if not foredoomed ?

So, too, in regard to those ancient and renowned literary
institutions, which have been established and upheld by
the foremost nations of Christendom, — the Sorbonne in
France ; the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and
Edinburgh, in Great Britain; and the universities and
colleges of this country, — the grand object of all these
institutions has been, not to educate the general, the
common mass of mind, but to rear up men for the three
learned professions (as they are called), Physic, Law, and
Divinity. For this comparatively narrow and special

HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

purpose, vast legislative endowments and munificent pri-
vate donations have been made, and the highest talents
have been culled from the community, for presidentships
and professorships.

The three learned professions, it is true, represent the
three great departments of human interests, — the Medi-
cal representing the body, or corporeal part, through
whose instrumentality alone can the spirit make itself
manifest ; the Legal profession being designed to establish
social rights, and to redress social wrongs, in regard to
property, person, and character ; and the Theological to
guide and counsel us in regard to our moral and religious
concernments both for time and for eternity. But all the
learning of all the professions can never be an adequate
substitute for common knowledge, or remedy for common
ignorance. These professions are necessary for our gen-
eral enlightenment, for guidance in difficult cases, and
for counsel at all times ; but they never should aim to
supersede, they never can supersede, our own individual
care, forethought, judgment, responsibility. Yet how
little is this truth regarded ! How imperfectly do we
live up to its requirements ! In respect to the medical
profession, we are this year, this day, and every day,
sending young men to college, and from college to the
medical school, that they may acquire some knowl-
edge of human diseases and their remedies ; but, at the
same time, we are neglecting to educate and train our
children in accordance with the few and simple laws upon
which health depends, and which every child mi-ght be
easily led to know and to observe ; — and the consequence
is, that we are this year, this day, and every day, sowing,
in the constitutions of our children, the seeds of innu-
merable diseases ; so that the diseases will be ready for
the doctors quite as soon as the doctors are ready for the

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 263

diseases. Indeed, before the doctor confronts the disease,
or while he is pondering over it, how often does death
step in and snatch the victim away !

At what vast expense, both of time and money, is the
legal profession trained, and the judicial tribunals of
the land supported ! Two or three, or half a dozen years,
spent in preparing for college, four years at college, and
two or three years at a law school, or elsewhere, as a
qualification to practise in the courts ; then, the mainte-
nance of the courts themselves ; the salaries of judge?,
and of prosecuting officers ; the expense of jurors, grand-
jurors, and witnesses; the amount of costs and counsel
fees ; the vast outlay for prisons, jails, and houses of
correction ; — and all this enormous expenditure, in order
to adjust disputes, rectify mistakes, and punish offences,
nine-tenths of which would have been prevented by a de-
gree of common knowledge easily taught, and of common
honesty, to which all children, with scarcely an exception,
might be trained.

When the law of hereditary distempers shall be as
profoundly investigated as the law which regulates the
hereditary transmission of property, then may we expect
some improvement in the health and robustness and
beauty of the race. Compare all the books written on
the transmission from parents to children of physical or
moral qualities with the law-books and treatises on the
descent of estates. When will the current of public
opinion, or the stimulus of professional emolument, create
a desire to understand the irreversible ordinances and
statutes of Nature, on this class of subjects, as strong as
that which now carries a student at law through Fearne
on Contingent Remainders ? — a book which requires the
same faculty for divining ideas, that Champollion had for
deciphering Egyptian Hieroglyphics.

264 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

And how is it with the clerical profession ? They enter
upon the work of reforming the human character, — not
at the earlier stages of its development, — but when it
has arrived at, or is approaching to, its maturity; — a
period, when, by universal consent, it has become almost
unchangeable by secondary causes. They are reformers,
I admit, but in regard to any thing that grows, one right
former will accomplish more than a thousand re-formers.
It is their sacred mission to prepare a vineyard for the
Lord, to dress it, and make it fruitful ; but I think no
one will say that an army of laborers, sent into a vine-
yard at midsummer, when brambles and thorns have al-
ready choked the vines, and the hedges have been broken
down, and the unclean beasts of the forest have made
their lair therein ; — I think no one will say that an army
of laborers, entering the vineyard at such a time, will be
able to make it yield so abundant a harvest as one
faithful, skilful servant would do, who should commence
his labors in the spring-time of the year.

The Constitution of the United States makes no pro-
vision for the education of the people ; and in the Con-
vention that framed it, I believe the subject was not even
mentioned. A motion to insert a clause providing for the
establishment of a national university was voted down. I
believe it is also the fact, that the Constitutions of only
three of the thirteen original States made the obligation
to maintain a system of Free Schools a part of their fun-
damental law.

On what grounds of reason or of hope, it may well be
asked, did the framers of our National and State Consti-
tutions expect that the future citizens of this Republic
would be able to sustain the institutions, or to enjoy the
blessings, provided for them ? And has not all our sub-
sequent history shown the calamitous consequences of

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 265

their failing to make provision for the educational wants
of the nation ? Suppose it had been provided, that no
person should be a voter who could not read and write,
and also that no State should be admitted into the Union
which had not established a system of Free Schools for all
its people ; would not our National history and legisla-
tion, our State administrations and policy, have felt the
change through all their annals ? Great and good men
though they were, yet this truth, now so plain and
conspicuous, eluded their sagacity. They did not reflect
that, in the common course of nature, all the learned
and the wise and the virtuous are swept from the stage
of action almost as soon as they become learned and
wise and virtuous ; and that they are succeeded by a
generation who come into the world wholly devoid of
learning and wisdom and virtue. The parents may have
sought out the sublimest truths, but these truths are
nothing to< the children, until their minds also shall have
been raised to the power of grasping and of understand-
ing them. The truths, indeed, are immortal, but the be-
ings who may embrace them are mortal, and pass away,
to be followed by new minds, ignorant, weak, erring,
tossed hither and thither on the waves of passion. Hence,
each new generation must learn all truth anew, and for
itself. Each generation must be able to comprehend the
principles, and must rise to the practice of the virtues,
requisite to sustain the position of their ancestors ; and
the first generation which fails to do this, loses all, and
comes to ruin not only for itself but for its successors.

At what time, then, by virtue of what means, is the
new generation to become competent to take upon itself
the duties of the old and retiring one ? At which of
Shakspeare's "Seven Ages" is the new generation ex-
pected to possess the ability to stand in the places of the

266 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

departed ? Allow that the vast concerns of our society
must be submitted to a democracy, — still, shall they be
submitted to the democracy of babyhood, — to those
whose country, as yet, is the cradle, and whose universe
the nursery ? Can you call in children from trundling
hoops and catching butterflies, organize them into
" Young Men's Conventions," and propound for their de-
cision the great questions of judicature and legislation,
of civil, domestic, and foreign policy ? Or will you take
the youth of the land, from sixteen to twenty-one years
of age, in the heyday of their blood, with passions unap-
peasable in their cry for indulgence, and unquenchable
by it ; without experience, without sobriety of judg-
ment ; whose only notions of the complex structure of
our government and of its various and delicate relations
have been derived from hearing a Fourth-of-July Oration ;
with no knowledge of this multiform world into which
they have been brought, or of their dangers, duties and
destiny, as men, — in one word, with no education, —
and is it to such as these that the vast concernments of a
nation's well-being can be safely intrusted ? Safer, far
safer, would it be to decide the great problems of legisla-
tion and jurisprudence by a throw of dice ; or, like the
old Roman soothsayers, by the flight of birds. And even
after one has passed the age of twenty-one, how is he any
better fitted than before to perform the duties of a citi-
zen, if no addition has been made to his knowledge, and
if his passions have not been subjected to the control of
reason and duty ?

I adduce these extraordinary facts, in relation to the
founders of our Republic, not in any spirit of disparage-
ment or reprehension, but only as another proof in the
chain of demonstration, to show in what relative esteem,
how low down in the social scale, this highest of all

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 267

earthly subjects has been held, — and held in a Republic
too, where we talk so much about foundations of knowl-
edge and virtue.

And what was the first school established by Congress,
after the formation of the general government ? It was
the Military Academy at West Point. This school is sus-
tained at an annual expense of more than a hundred
thousand dollars. It is the Normal School of war.
As the object of the common Normal School is to teach
teachers how to teach ; so the object of this Academy is
to teach killers how to kill. At this school, those delight-
ful sciences are pursued which direct at what precise
angle a cannon or a mortar shall be elevated, and what
quantity and quality of gunpowder shall be used, in
order to throw red-hot balls or bomb-shells a given dis-
tance, so as, by the one, to set a city on fire, and, by the
other, to tear in pieces a platoon of men, — husbands,
brothers, fathers. And while it is thought of sufficient
importance, to nominate the most learned men in the
whole land, and to assemble them from the remotest
quarters of the Union, to make an annual visit to this
School of War, and to spend days and days in the
minutest, severest examination of the pupils, to see if
they have fully mastered their death-dealing sciencies ; it
is not uncommon to meet with the opinion that our Com-
mon Schools need no committees and no examination.

Great efforts have been made in Congress to establish a
Naval School, having in view the same benign and phil-
anthropic purposes, for the ocean, which the Military
School has for the land.

At Old Point Comfort, in Virginia, there now is, and for
a long time has been, under the direction of the general
government, what is called a " School for Practice,"
where daily experiments are tried to test the strength of

268 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

ordnance, the explosive force of gunpowder, and the dis-
tance at which a Christian may fire at his brother Chris-
tian and be sure to kill him, and not waste his ammu-
nition !

At selected points, throughout our whole country,
the thousand wheels of mechanism are now playing ;
chemistry is at work in all her laboratories ; the smelter,
the forger, the founder in brass and iron, the prover of
arms, — all are plying their daily tasks to prepare im-
plements for the conflagration of cities and the destruc-
tion of human life. Occasionally, indeed, a Peace
Society is organized ; a few benevolent men assemble to-
gether to hear a discourse on the universal brotherhood
of the race, the horrors of war and the blessings of
peace ; but their accents are lost in an hour, amid the
never-ceasing din and roar of this martial enginery.
And so the order and course of things will persist to be, —
the ministers of the Gospel of Peace may continue to
preach peace for eighteen centuries more, and still find
themselves in the midst of war, or of all those passions
by which war is engendered, unless the rising generation
shall be educated to that strength and sobriety of intellect
which shall dispel the insane illusions of martial glory ;
and unless they shall be trained to the habitual exercise
of those sentiments of universal brotherhood for the race,
which shall change the common heroism of battle into a
horror and an abomination.

A deputation of some of the most talented and learned
men in this country has lately been sent to Europe, by
the order and at the expense of the general government,
to visit and examine personally all the founderies, armo-
ries and noted fortifications, from Gibraltar to the Bal-
tic ; — to collect all knowledge about the forging of iron
cannon and brass cannon, the tempering of swords, the

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 269

management of steam-batteries, and so forth, and so forth,
— to bring this knowledge home, that our government
maybe instructed and enlightened in the art — to kill.
I have not heard that Congress proposes to establish any
Normal School, the immediate or the remote object
of which shall be to teach " peace on earth and
good will to men." " Go ye out into every nation
and preach the gospel to every creature," has hitherto
been practically translated, " Go ye out into every
nation and kill or rob every creature." We are told that
a celestial choir once winged its way from heaven to
earth on an errand of mercy and love ; but for the com-
munication of that message which burned in their hearts
and melted from their tongues, they sought out no
lengthened epic or long-resounding psean ; — they chant-
ed only that brief and simple strain, "Peace on earth
and good will to men," as if to assure us that these were
the telectest words in the dialect of heaven, and the
choicest beat in all its music. But long since have
these notes died away. Oh ! when shall that song be re-
newed, and every tongue and nation upon earth unite
their voices with those of angels in uplifting the heavenly
strain ?

Again I say, my friends, that the arraignment and de-
nunciation of men is no part of my present purpose. I
advert to these world-known facts, for the sole and simple
object of showing how the subject of education stands,
and has stood, in prosaic and poetic literature, in the
refining arts, in history, and in the laws, institutions and
opinions of men. I wish hereby to show its relative
degradation, the inferiority of the rank assigned to it, as
compared with all other interests, or with any other
interest ; and thus to exhibit the true reasons why, as
vet, it has done so little for the renovation of the world.

270 HISTOKICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

I have spoken only of the general current of events, of
opinions and of practices common to mankind. In our
own times, in such low estimation is this highest of all
causes held, that in these days of conventions for all
other objects of public interest, — when men go hundreds
of miles to attend railroad conventions, and cotton con-
ventions, and tobacco conventions ; and when the delegates
of political conventions* are sometimes counted, as Xer-
xes counted his army, by acres and square miles, — yet
such has often been the dispersive effect upon the public
of announcing a Common-school Convention, and a Lec-
ture on Education, that I have queried in my own mind
whether, in regard to two or three counties, at least, in
our own State, it would not be advisable to alter the law
for quelling riots and mobs ; and, instead of summoning
sheriffs and armed magistrates and the posse comitatm
for their dispersion, to put them to flight by making
proclamation of a Discourse on Common Schools.

When we reflect upon all this, what surprises and
grieves us most is, that so few men are surprised or
grieved.

It has been my fortune, within the last few years, to
visit schools in many of our sister States ; and I have
spared no efforts to make myself acquainted with the
general system, — so far as any system exists, — adopted
in them all. Although in one or two States the general
plan of Public Instruction, owing to its more recent
establishment, may have a few advantages over our own,
yet there is not a single State in the Union whose whole
system is at all comparable to that of Massachusetts,
whether we consider its extent, its efficiency, or the gen-
eral intelligence with which it is administered by the

* It was said that at the Young Men's Whig Convention, held at Balti-
more, in May, 1844, there were forty thousand delegates in attendance.

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 271

local authorities.* Disproportionately, however, as we
value this cause, it would be impossible to convict Mas-
sachusetts of such dereliction from duty as has been
manifested by some of her sister States.

I think, for instance, that it would be impossible for our
people to imitate the example of our neighbors, the inhab-
itants of Maine, — so long and so lately a part of ourselves,
— where, in the year 1839, there was a general uprising of
the whole population, and an appropriation, by an almost
unanimous vote of the Legislature, of the sum of eight
hundred thousand dollars, for the forcible rescue of certain
outlands, or outwastes, claimed by Great Britain ; while,
for three successive sessions, some of the wisest and best

* I believe this statement to have been strictly true at the time when it
was written, (1841.) But, in some respects, it is no longer so. As it re-
gards efficiency, and the means of rapid improvement, to say no more, the sys-
tem of the State of New York now takes precedence of any in the Union. In
addition to a State Superintendent of Common Schools, whose jurisdiction
extends over them all, there are one or more Deputy Superintendents in eadi
county, whose time is devoted to a visitation of the schools, to lecturing
and diffusing information among the people, and so forth ; and who make a
report, once a year, or oftener, to the Stare Superintendent, respecting the
condition of the schools within their respective counties. These Deputy
Superintendents, generally speaking, are men of superior intelligence, prac-
tically acquainted with the business of school-keeping, and enthusiastically
devoted to the duties of their office. We can imagine how efficient such a
system must be, by supposing the existence of one or more intelligent
school agents or officers, in each county of the State of Massachusetts,
whose whole time should be devoted to visiting the schools, and to creating,
in the minds of the people, a more adequate conception of their value.

There is a school library in every school district in the State of New
York.

At the session of the legislature, in 1844, by a unanimous vote of both
branches, the sum of $10,000 a year, for five years, was appropriated for
the support of a Normal School. This was the crowning work. The
school was opened at Albany, in December, 1 844.

The State of New York now possesses every means and facility for the
improvement of its Common Schools, which are possessed by any other
State in the Union, and some which no other State enjoys.

272 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

men iii that State have been striving, in vain, to obtain
from that same Legislature the passage of a law author-
izing school districts to purchase a school library, by
levying a tax upon themselves for the purpose. In the
memoirs of the Pickwick Club, it is related that they
passed a unanimous vote, that any member of said club
should be allowed to travel in any part of England, Scot-
land or Wales, and also to send whatever packages he
might please, always provided that said member should
pay his own expenses. But the Legislature of Maine
would not allow their school districts to buy libraries,
even at their own cost ! What latent capacities for enjoy-
ment and for usefulness, which will now lie dormant for-
ever, might not that sum of eight hundred thousand dollars
have opened for the people of that State, for their chil-
dren and their children's children, had it been devoted
by enlightened minds to worthy objects !

So, too, to give one more example, you will all recollect
that outbreak of South Carolina against the general gov-
ernment, in 1832, when a few of the demi-gods of that
State stamped upon the earth, and instantly it was cov-
ered with armed men ; a State convention was held, laws
were enacted, extending the jurisdiction of the courts
and investing the Executive almost with a Dictator's
power, — all under the pretext of defending State rights,
— while, for the last thirty years, her whole appropriation
for public schools has been less than forty thousand dol-
lars per annum; and out of a white population, of all
ages, of less than 270,000, there are more than 20,000,
above the age of twenty years, who cannot read and
write ; — as though it could long be possible, without
more efficient means for the general diffusion of intelli-
gence and virtue, to have any State rights worth defend-
ing.

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 273

But, after a thorough and impartial inquisition, what
verdict can we render, with a clear conscience, in regard
to our own much-lauded Commonwealth ? The Fathers
of New England, it is true, soon after the settlement of
the colony, established Common Schools, — for which let
their names be honored above the names of all other men,
while the world stands, — but one of their two avowed
objects was, to enable the people to read the Scriptures in
their native tongue. They seem to have forgotten that
the extent of intelligence, and the teachable and consci-
entious and reverential spirit with which one comes to
that reading, is of paramount importance. The insane
followers of Matthews, and of Joe Smith, can read the
Scriptures. Years, too, before Common Schools were es-
tablished for the many, a college was endowed to give a
full and elaborate education to the few, who, according
to the prevalent views of those times, were to be desig-
nated and set apart, even in youth, to fill the offices of
church and state in subsequent life. This, however,
should be remembered in their praiso, that the teachers
selected for the schools, in the early years of the colony,
were uniformly men of age, experience, learning and
moral worth ; and, according to the accustomed rates of
compensation in those days, they were fairly remunerat-
ed. In that age, no prudential-committee-man, or other
officer, — by whatever name he might have been called,
— was seen groping about through all the colonies, after
bats and moles to teach young eagles how to fly, because
they would do it cheap. But is it our general practice to
select, as teachers, only those who have arrived at mature
age, who are known and respected, far and wide, for their
experience, weight of character, dignity of deportment,
and extent of intelligence ? The rate of compensation,
too, had fallen, before the year 1837, when the Board of

VOL. I. 18

274 HISTORICAL VIEW OP EDUCATION.

Education was established, far below that of skilful arti-
sans and mechanics, or even of the better class of opera-
tives in manufacturing establishments. The common
laborers on our farms, the journeymen in our shops, and
the workpeople in our mills, — all have some fixed resi-
dence, some place enjoying the seclusion and invested
with the sacred associations of home. Even the old-
fashioned cobbler, who used to travel from house to
house, carrying on his back his box of tools and his
scraps of leather, has at last found an abiding-place ; —
nobody but the schoolmaster is obliged to board round.
Nobody but the schoolmaster is put up at auction, and
knocked off to the lowest bidder ! I think this use of
the word " lowest " must oftentimes vivify a teacher's
grammatical notions of the superlative degree. Think
you, my friends, there would be so many young men
pressing forward into the profession of the law, if lawyers
were put up at auction, and then had to board round
among their clients ?

Compare the salaries given to engineers, to superintend-
ents of railroads, to agents and overseers of manufacturing
establishments, to cashiers of banks, and so forth, with
the customary rates of remuneration given to teachers.
Yet, does it deserve a more liberal requital, does it require
greater natural talents, or greater attainments, to run
cotton or woollen machinery, or to keep a locomotive
from running off the track, than it does to preserve this
wonderfully-constructed and complicated machine of the
human body in health and vigor ; or to prevent the spir-
itual nature, — that vehicle which carries all our hopes,
— from whirling deviously to its ruin, or from dashing
madly forward to some fatal collision ? Custom-house
collectors and postmasters sometimes realize four, five
or six thousand dollars a year from their offices, while

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 275

as many hundreds are grudgingly paid to a school-
teacher.

The compensation which we give with the hand is a
true representation of the value which we affix in the
mind; and how much more liberally and cordially do we
requite those who prepare outward and perishable gar-
ments for the persons of our children, than those whose
office it is to endue their spirits with the immortal vest-
ments of virtue ? Universally, the price-current of accom-
plishments ranges far above that of solid and enduring
attainments. Is not the dancing-master, who teaches our
children to take the steps, better requited than he who
teaches their feet not to go down to the chambers of death ?
Were the music-master as wretchedly rewarded and as
severely criticised as the schoolmaster, would not his
strains involuntarily run into the doleful and lugubrious ?
Strolling minstrels, catching the eye with grotesque
dresses, and chanting unintelligible words, are feasted,/*?^/
and garlanded ; and when a European dancer, nurtured
at the foul breast of theatrical corruption, visits our land,
the days of idolatry seem to have returned ; — wealth
flows, the incense of praise rises, enthusiasm rages like
the mad Bacchantes. It is said that Celeste received
fifty thousand dollars, in this country, in one year, for the
combined exhibition of skill and person ; and that devotee
to Venus, Fanny Ellsler, was paid the enormous sum of
sixty thousand dollars, in three months, for the same
meritorious consideration, or value received. In both
these cases, a fair proportion was contributed in the
metropolis of our own State. At the rate of compensa-
tion at which a majority of the female teachers in Mas-
sachusetts have been rewarded for their exhausting toils,
it would require more than twenty years' continued labor
to equal the receipts of Fanny Ellsler for a single night !

276 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

Thus, in our most populous places, and amongst people
who profess to lead society, stands the relative supremacy
of sense and soul, of heels and head. And I blush while
I reflect, that amongst all the daughters of New England
who witnessed the unreserved displays of these Cyprian
women, there was not one to be found, in whose veins
flowed the chaste blood of the Puritan mothers, prompt-
ing her to approach these female sans culottes, backwards,
and perform for them the same friendly service, which,
on a like necessity, the sons of Noah performed for him.
And although I would not silence one note in the burst
of admiration with which our young men, who assume to
be the leaders of fashion, respond to the charms of female
beauty, agility, or grace ; yet I do desire, that, in paying
their homage, they should distinguish between the Venus
Celestial and the Venus Infernal ! *

* In discussing the propriety or impropriety of exhibiting live specimens
of female nudity, before mixed assemblies of ladies and gentlemen, — es-
pecially when the spectacles are of the ad libitum sort, and where the actress
is expected to acknowledge every round of applause by enlarging the field of
vision, — I have sometimes been answered in the language of King Edward's
celebrated saying, " Honi soit qui mal y pense," "Evil to him who thinks
eril." One thing has tended to disgust me with this retort. I have never
known it used, for this purpose, except by persons more or less deeply taint-
ed with libertinism during some part of their lives. I never knew it
given by a man wholly free from reproach, in conduct and reputation, on the
score of licentiousness.

One of the most striking things in the " Letters from Abroad," by Miss
C. M. Scdgwick, is the uniform and energetic condemnation which that
irue American lady bestows upon opera-dancers, and the whole corps dc
htllet., for the public and shameless exhibition of their persons upon the
stage. Have the young ladies of our cities a nicer sense of propriety, of
modesty, and of all tbe elements of female loveliness, than this excellent
author, who has written so much for their improvement, and who is herself
so admirable an example of all feminine purity and delicacy? And have
the young men of America a higher ideal of what belongs to a true gentle-
man, — to a man of lofty and noble nature, than a writer, who is so justly

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 277

As I have before intimated, the relics, the symbols, the
monuments, of whatever kind they may be, which a
people has prepared to sustain or enshrine the objects of
its interest or affections, furnish undesigned, and there-
fore demonstrative evidence of the relative estimation in
which these objects were held. The dull and heavy
Egyptians have left us the visible impress and emblem
of their minds, in their indistinct hieroglyphics, their
ponderous architecture, and in their pyramids, which ex-
hibit magnificence without taste, costliness without ele-
gance, and power without genius. But the splendid
temples, statues and arches of the Greeks, the massive
aqueducts and horizon-seeking roads of the Romans, were
only the outward and visible representations of their
conceptions of ideal beauty, of grandeur and power.
Amongst a people strongly drawn towards commerce, as
the source of their supremacy and opulence, like the
ancient Phoenicians, or like the people of Great Britain
or of the United States at the present day, the art of
ship-building is sure to be cultivated, and the finest
specimens of naval architecture to be produced. So, if
great reliance is placed upon an extensive inland traffic,
then innavigable rivers will be made navigable, mountains
of solid rock will be channelled, valleys filled, and what
we have before called the everlasting hills will be removed

celebrated, in both hemispheres, for her pure and elevated conceptions of
human character?

It is not with any harshness of feeling that I make another remark, but
only in view of the natural consequences or tendencies of conduct ; but it
seems to me that, for a husband to accompany his wife, or a father his
daughter, to such an exhibition, ought to be held a good plea in bur in
all our courts of law, should the same husband or father afterwards appear
as a prosecutor claiming damages, as the legal phraseology runs, "for loss
of service and pain of mind," on account of the wife or daughter whom he
had accompanied to such an exhibition.

278 HISTORICAL YIEW OF EDUCATION.

to create facilities for internal transportation. In fine,
our works are the visible embodiment and representation
of our feelings. Thus, the Psalmist, referring to the
unspeakably .magnificent heavens, says: — they "declare
the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handi-
work."

Tried by this unerring standard in human nature, our
Schoolhouses are a fair index or exponent of our interest
in Public Education. Suppose, at this moment, some po-
tent enchanter, by the waving of his magic wand, should
take up all the twenty-eight hundred schoolhouses of
Massachusetts, with all the little triangular and nonde-
script spots of earth whereon and wherein they have been
squeezed, — whether sand-bank, morass, bleak knoll, or
torrid plain, — and, whirling them through the affrighted
air, should set them all down, visibly, round about us, in
this place ; and then should take us up into some watch-
tower or observatory, where, at one view, we could behold
the whole as they were encamped round about, — ea,ch one
true to the point of compass which marked its nativity,
each one retaining its own color or no-color, each one
standing on its own heath, hillock, or fen ; — I ask, my
friends, if, in this new spectacle under the sun, with its
motley hues of red, gray, and doubtful, with its windows
sprinkled with patterns taken from Joseph's many-colored
coat, with its broken chimneys, with its shingles and clap-
boards flapping and clattering in the wind, as if giving
public notice that they were about to depart, — I ask, if,
in this indescribable and unnamable group of architec-
ture, we should not see the true image, reflection and
embodiment of our own love, attachment, and regard for
Public Schools and Public Education, as, in a mirror, face
answereth to face ? But, however neglected, forgotten,
forlorn, these edifices may be, yet within their walls is con-

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 279

tained the young and blooming creation of God. In them
are our hope, the hopes of the earth. There are gathered
together what posterity shall look back upon, as we now
look back upon heroes and sages and martyrs and apos-
tles ; or as we look back upon bandits and inquisitors and
sybarites. Our dearest treasures do not consist in lands
and tenements, in railroads and banks, in warehouses or
in ships upon every sea ; they are within those doors, be-
neath those humble roofs ; and is it not our solemn duty
to hold every other earthly interest subordinate to their
welfare ?

My friends, these points of contrast between our devo-
tion to objects of inferior interest, and our comparative
neglect of this transcendent cause, are as painful to me
as they can be to any one. Among all that remain, I
will mention but one class more. I ask you to look at
'the pecuniary appropriations, which, within a few years
past, the State has made for the encouragement of out-
ward and material interests, compared with what it has
done, or rather refused to do, for the enlightenment and
moral renovation of society, through a universal education
of the people. Within the last three years, the treasury
of the Commonwealth has dispensed a bounty of about
twenty-five thousand dollars to encourage the growth of
wheat, — and within the last two years, of about five
thousand dollars for the culture of silk, — for those goods
which perish with the using ; while it has not contributed
one cent towards satisfying the pressing demand for ap-
paratus and libraries for our schools, by which the im-
perishable treasures of knowledge and virtue would be
increased a hundred-fold. The State has provided for
the gratuitous distribution of a manual, descriptive of
the art and processes of silk-culture, but made no pro-
vision for the distribution of any manual on that most

280 HISTORICAL VIEW OP EDUCATION.

difficult of all arts, — the art of Education, — as though
silk-culture were more important and more difficult than
soul-culture.

During the very last year, the State paid a Militia
Bounty of thirty thousand dollars, to soldiers, for three or
four trainings. Where are those trainings now ? Where
now the net proceeds, the value received, the available,
visible result, as exhibited in the advancement of society,
or the promotion of human welfare ? Could thirty thou-
sand dollars have been distributed to sustain the sinking
hearts of those females who keep school for a dollar a
week, or for ninepence a day, should we not now be able
to show some of its tangible fruits, and would not a trans-
fer of the fund to such an object have illustrated quite as
well the gallantry of the 'citizen soldier ?

To the American Institute of Instruction, whose noble
object it is to improve the race of children, the State,
after much importunity, has given the sum of three
hundred dollars a year for five years, (fifteen hundred
dollars,) while to Agricultural Societies, formed for the
purpose of improving the breed of cattle and a few other
kindred objects, it has given from four thousand dollars
to six thousand dollars a year, for about twenty years !

In the year 1834, the Legislature made provision for
the prospective creation of a School Fund, to be formed
from half the proceeds of wild lands in the State of
Maine, and from the Massachusetts claim on the general
government for militia services rendered during the last
war. Through unexpected good fortune, about four
hundred thousand dollars have been realized from these
sources. Compare this bestowment, however, of a con-
tingent sum, — a part of which was not regarded, at the
time, as much better than a gift of half the proceeds of a
lottery ticket, provided it should draw a prize, — with its

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 281

prompt and magnificent encouragement of railroads.
No sooner were the eyes of the State opened to the com-
mercial importance of an internal communication with
the West, than it forthwith bound itself to the amount
of five millions of dollars in aid of this merely corporeal
and worldly enterprise.

One word more, and I will forbear any further to de-
pict these painful contrasts; — I will forbear, not from
lack of materials, but from faintnoss of spirit. Almost
from year to year, through the whole period of our his-
tory, wealthy and benevolent individuals have risen up
amongst us, who have made noble gifts for literary, chari-
table and religious purposes, — for public libraries, for
founding professorships in colleges, for establishing scien-
tific and theological institutions, for sending abroad mis-
sionaries to convert the heathen, — some to one form of
faith, some to another. For most of these objects, the
State has co-operated with individuals ; often, it has given
on its own account. It has bestowed immense sums upon
the University at Cambridge, and Williams College, es-
pecially the former. It gave thirty thousand dollars to
the Massachusetts General Hospital. It put ten thousand
dollars into the Bunker-hill Monument, there to stand
forever in mindless, insentient, inanimate granite. But
while, with such a bounteous heart and open hand, the
State had bestowed its treasures for special, or local ob-
jects,— for objects circumscribed to a party or a class, —
it had not, for two hundred years, in its parental and
sovereign capacity, given any thing for universal educa-
tion ; — it had given nothing, as God gives the rain aud
the sunshine, to all who enter upon the great theatre of
life.

It was under these circumstances, that a private gentle-
; man, to his enduring honor, offered the sum of ten thou-

282 HISTORICAL VIEW OP EDUCATION.

sand dollars, on condition that the State would add an
equal amount, to aid Teachers of our Common Schools
in obtaining those qualifications which would enable them
the more successfully to cultivate the divinely wrought^
and infinitely valuable capacities of the human soul. The
hope and expectation were, that these teachers would go
abroad over the State, and, by the improved modes and
motives which they would introduce into the schools,
would be the means of conferring new, manifold and un-
speakable blessings upon the rising generation, without
any distinction of party or of denomination, of mental,
or of physical complexion. This hope and expectation
were founded upon the reasonableness of the thing, upon
the universal experience of mankind in regard to all
other subjects, and upon the well-attested experience of
several nations in regard to this particular measure. The
proposition was acceded to. This sum of twenty thou-
sand dollars was placed at the disposal of the Board
of Education, to carry the purposes of the donor and of
the Legislature into effect. Institutions called Normal
Schools were established. That their influence might be
wholly concentrated upon the preparation of teachers for
our Common Schools, the almost doubtful provision, that
the learned languages should not be included in the list
of studies taught therein, was inserted in the regulations
for their government ; — not because there was any hos-
tility or indifference towards those languages, but because
it was desirable to prepare teachers for our Common
Schools, rather than to furnish facilities for those who are
striving to become teachers of Select Schools, High
Schools, and Academies.

The call was responded to by the very class of persons
to whom it was addressed. Not the children of the rich,
not the idle and luxurious, not those in pursuit of gaudy

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 283

accomplishments, came ; but the children of the poor, —
the daughter of the lone widow whose straitened circum-
stances forbade her to send to costly and renowned sem-
inaries, — the young man came from his obscure cottage-
home, where for years his soul had been on fire with the
love -of knowledge and the suppressed hope of usefulness ;
— some accounted the common necessaries of life as
superfluities, and sold them, that they might participate
in these means of instruction ; — some borrowed money
and subsidized futurity for the same purpose, while
others submitted to the lot, still harder to a noble soul,
of accepting charity from a stranger's hand. They came,
they entered upon their work with fervid zeal, with glow-
ing delight, with that buoyancy and inspiration of hope
which none but the young and the poor can ever feel.

But alas ! while this noble enterprise was still in its
bud and blossom, and before it was possible that any
fruits should be matured from it, it was assailed. In the
Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, an
attempt was made to abolish the Normal Schools, to dis-
perse the young aspirants who had resorted to them for
instruction, and crush their hopes ; and to throw back
into the hands of the donor the money which he had
given, and which the State had pledged its faith to appro-
priate,— the first and only gift which had ever been
made for elevating and extending the education of all the
children in the Commonwealth.

In the document which purports to set forth the reasons
for this measure, the doctrine, that " the art of teaching-
is a peculiar art," is gainsaid. It is boldly maintained
" that every person who has himself undergone a process
of instruction, must acquire by that very process the art
of instructing others." And in this country, where,
without a higher standard of qualification for teachers.

HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

without more universal and more efficient means of edu-
cation than have ever elsewhere existed, all our laws and
constitutions are weaker barriers against the assaults of
human passion than is a bulrush against the ocean's tide ;

— in this country, that document affirmed that " perhaps
it is not desirable that the business of keeping these
schools, [the Common Schools,] should become a distinct
and separate profession."

Conceding to the originators and advocates of this
scheme for abolishing the Normal Schools, that they were
sincerely friendly to the cause of Common Schools, how
strikingly does it exhibit the low state of public senti-
ment in regard to these schools ! Those claiming to be
their friends, — men, too, who had been honored by their
fellow-citizens with a seat in the Legislature, — thought
it unnecessary, even in this country, to elevate the teach-
er's office into a profession !

I will never cease to protest that I ana not bringing for-
ward these facts for the purpose of criminating the
motives, or of invoking retribution upon the conduct of
any one. My sole and exclusive object is to show to what
menial rank the majesty of this cause has been degraded ;

— to show that the affections of this community are not
clustered around it ; that it is not the treasure which
their hearts love and their hands guard ; — in fine, that
the sublime idea of a generous and universal education,
as the appointed means, in the hands of Providence, for
restoring mankind to a greater similitude to their Divine
Original, is but just dawning upon the public mind.

But I have done. Let this rapid survey of our con-
dition, by showing us how little has been done, convince
us how much remains to be accomplished. Instead of
repining at the inadequate conceptions of our prede-
cessors, let us rejoice and shout aloud for joy, that we

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 285

have been brought to a point, where the vista of a more
glorious future opens upon our view. Let us dilate our
spirits to a capacity for embracing the magnitude and
grandeur of the work we have undertaken. Let us
strengthen our resolutions, till difficulty and obstruction
shall be annihilated before them. If the ascent before us
is high, all the more glorious will be the prospect from
the summit ; if it is toilsome, our sinews shall grow
mightier by every struggle to overcome it. If it is grate-
ful to recognize blessings which have been won for us by
our ancestors, it is more noble in us to win blessings for
posterity, — for God has so constituted the soul, that the
generous feelings of self-sacrifice are infinitely sweeter
and more enduring than the selfish pleasures of indul-
gence. Although, as friends of this cause, we are few
and scattered, and surrounded by an unsympathizing
world, yet let us toil on, each in his own sphere, what-
ever that sphere may be, nor " bate one jot of heart or
hope." Although we now labor, like the coral insects at
the bottom of the ocean, uncheered, unheard, iinseen,
with the tumultuous waters of interest and of passion
raging high above us, yet let us continue to labor on.—
for, at length, like them, we will bring a rock-built con-
tinent to the surface, and upon that surface God will
plant his Paradise anew, and people it with men and
women of nobler forms and of diviner beauty than any
who now live, — with beings whose minds shall be illu-
mined by the light of knowledge, and whose hearts shall
l>e hallowed by the sanctity of religion.

For the fulfilment, then, of these holy purposes, what
labor shall we undertake, and in what resolutions shall wo
persevere unto the end ? — for labor and perseverance are
indispensable means for the production of any good by
human hands.

286 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

In the first place, the education of the whole people, iu
a. republican government, can never be attained without
the consent of the whole people. Compulsion, even
though it were a desirable, is not an available instrument.
Enlightenment, not coercion, is our resource. The nature
of education must be explained. The whole mass of mind
must be instructed in regard to its comprehensive and
enduring interests. We cannot drive our people up a
dark avenue, even though it be the right one ; but we
must hang the starry lights of knowledge about it, and
show them not only the directness of its course to the goal
of prosperity and honor, but the beauty of the way that
leads to it. In some districts, there will be but a single
man or woman, in some towns scarcely half a dozen men
or women, who have espoused this noble enterprise. But
whether there be half a dozen or but one, they must be
like the little leaven which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal. Let the intelligent visit the ignorant,
day by day, as the oculist visits the blind man, and de-
taches the scales from his eyes, until the living sense leaps
to the living light. Let the zealous seek contact and
communion with those who are frozen up in indifference,
and thaw off the icebergs wherein they lie embedded.
Let the love of beautiful childhood, the love of country,
the dictates of reason, the admonitions of conscience, the
sense of religious responsibility, be plied, in mingled ten-
derness and earnestness, until the obdurate and dark
mass of avarice and ignorance and prejudice shall be dis-
sipated by their blended light and heat.

But a duty more noble, as well as more difficult and
delicate than that of restoring the suspended animation
of society, will devolve upon the physician and friend of
this cause. In its largest sense, no subject is so compre-
hensive as that of education. Its circumference reaches

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 287

around and outside of, and therefore embraces all other
interests, human and divine. Hence, there is danger
that whenever any thing practical, — any real change, —
is proposed, all classes of men will start up and inquire,
how the proposed change will affect some private interest,
or some idolized theory or opinion of theirs. Suppose a
short-sighted, selfish man to be interested as manufacturer,
author, compiler, copyright owner, vender, peddler, or puff-
er, of any of the hundreds of school-books, — from the read-
ing-book that costs a dollar, to the primer that costs four-
pence, — whose number and inconsistencies infest our
schools, and whose expense burdens our community, —
then he will inquire which one of all these books will be
likely to meet with countenance or disfavor, in an adjudi-
cation upon their merits ; and he will strive to turn the
scales which confessedly hold the great interests of hu-
manity, one way or the other, as their inclination will pro-
mote or oppose the success of his reading-book or his
primer. So one, who has entered the political arena, not
as a patriot, but as a partisan, will decide upon any new
measure by its supposed bearing upon the success of his
faction or cabal, and not by its tendency to advance the
welfare of the body politic. In relation, too, to a more
solemn subject, — how many individuals there are belong-
ing to the hundred conflicting forms of religious faith,
which now stain and mottle the holy whiteness of Christi-
anity, who will array themselves against all plans for the
reform or renovation of society, unless its agents and in-
struments are of their selection ! And so of all the varied
interests in the community, — industrial, literary. political,
spiritual. Whatever class this great cause may touch, or
be supposed likely to touch, there will come forth from
that class, active opponents ; or, what may not be less
disastrous, selfish and indiscreet friends. I have known

288 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

the carpenter and the mason belonging to the same school
district, change sides and votes on the expediency of
erecting a new schoolhouse, after it had been determined,
contrary to expectation, to construct it of brick instead
of wood. I have known a bookmaker seek anxiously to
learn the opinions of the Board of Education respecting
his book, in order to qualify himself to decide upon the
expediency of its having been established.

How, then, I ask, is this great interest to sustain itself,
amid these disturbing forces of party and sect and faction
and clan ? how is it to navigate with whirlwinds above
and whirlpools below, and rocks on every side ?

In the first place, in regard to mere secular and busi-
ness interests, we are to do no man wrong ; we are to
show by our deeds, rather than by our words, that we are
seeking no private, personal aims, but public ends by
equitable means. We are to show that our object is to
diffuse light and knowledge, and to leave those who can
best bear these tests to profit most by their diffusion.
Let us here teach the lessons of justice and impartiality
on what, in schools, is called the exhibitory method ; that
is, by an actual exhibition of the principle we would in-
culcate ; and as, for the untaught schoolboy, we bring
out specimens, and models and objects, and give practical
illustrations by apparatus and diagram to make him ac-
quainted with the various branches of study ; so, in the
great school of the world, let us illustrate the virtues of
generosity, magnanimity, equity and self-sacrifice, by the
shining example of our acts and lives.

And again ; in regard to those higher interests which
the politician and theologian feel called upon to guard
and superintend, let us show them that, in supporting a
system of Public Instruction, adapted to common wants
and to be upheld by common means, we will not en-

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 289

croach one hair's breadth upon the peculiar province
of any party or any denomination. But let us never
cease to reiterate, and urge home upon the consideration
of all political parties and religious denominations, that,
in order to gain any useful ally to their cause, or worthy
convert to their faith, they must first find a MAN, — not
a statue, not an automaton, not a puppet, but a free, a
thinking, an intelligent soul; — a being possessed of the
attributes as well as the form of humanity. For what
can the enlightened advocate of any doctrine do, if he is
compelled to address brutish souls through adders' ears ?
How much can the senator or the ambassador of Christ
accomplish, in convincing or in reforming mankind, if
they are first obliged to fish up their subjects from the
fetid slough of sensualism, or to excavate them from
beneath thick layers of prejudice, where, if I may express
myself in geological language, they lie buried below
the granite formation ? In expounding the great problems
of civil polity, or the momentous questions pertaining to
our immortal destinies, how much can they effect, while
obliged to labor upon men whose intellects are so halt-
ing and snail-paced, that they can no more traverse the
logical distance between premises and conclusion, in any
argument, than their bodies could leap the spaces between
the fixed stars ? As educators, as friends and sustainers
of the Common-school system, our great duty is to pre-
pare these living and intelligent souls ; to awaken the
faculty of thought in all the children of the Common-
wealth ; to give them an inquiring, outlooking, forth-
going mind ; to impart to them the greatest practicable
amount of useful knowledge ; to cultivate in them a
sacred regard to truth ; to keep them unspotted from the
world, that is, uncontaminated by its vices ; to train them
up to the love of God and the love of man ; to make the

VOL. I. 19

290 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION.

perfect example of Jesus Christ lovely in their eyes ; and
to give to all so much religious instruction as is compat-
ible with the rights of others and with the genius of our
government, — leaving to parents and guardians the di-
rection, during their school-going days, of all special and
peculiar instruction respecting politics and theology ; and
at last, when the children arrive at years of maturity,
to commend them to that inviolable prerogative of pri-
vate judgment and of self-direction, which, in a Protes-
tant and a Republican country, is the acknowledged birth-
right of every human being.

But sterner trials than any I have yet mentioned await
the disciples of this sacred apostleship. The strong
abuses that have invaded us will not be complimented
into retirement ; they will not be bowed out of society ;
but as soon as they are touched, they will bristle all over
with armor, and assail us with implacable hostility.
While doing good, therefore, we must consent to suffer
wrong. Such is human nature, that the introduction of
every good cause adds another chapter to the Book of
Martyrs. Though wise as serpents, yet there are adders
who will not hear us ; and though harmless as doves, yet
for that very harmlessness will the vultures more readily
stoop upon us. We shall not, indeed, be literally carried
to the stake, or burned with material fires ; but pangs
keener than these, and more enduring, will be made to
pierce our breasts. Our motives will be maligned, our
words belied, our actions falsified. A reputation, for
whose spotlessness and purity we may, through life, have
resisted every temptation and made every sacrifice, will
be blackened ; and a character, — perhaps our only
precious possession wherewith to requite the love of
family and friends, — will be traduced, calumniated, vili-
fied ; and, if deemed sufficiently conspicuous to attract

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 201

public attention, held up, in the public press, perhaps in
legislative halls, to common scorn and derision. What
then ? Shall we desert this glorious cause ? Shall we
ignobly sacrifice immortal good to mortal ease ? No ;
never! But let us meet opposition in the spirit of him
who prophetically said, " If they have persecuted me,
they will also persecute you." For those who oppose
and malign us, our revenge shall be, to make their chil-
dren wiser, better, and happier than themselves. If we
ever feel the earthly motives contending with the heaven-
ly in our bosoms, — selfishness against duty, sloth against
enduring and ennobling toil, a vicious contentment
against aspiring after higher and attainable good, —
let us not suffer the earth-born to vanquish the immor-
tal. What though it cannot be said,

" A cloud of witnesses around
Hold us in full survey,"

yet the voiceless approval of conscience outweighs the
applauses of the world, and will outlast the very air and
light through which the eulogiums of mankind, or the
memorials of their homage, can be manifested to us.

What, too, though we cannot complete or perfect the
work in our own ag-e. For the consummation of such
a cause, a thousand years are to be regarded only as a
day. We know that the Creator has established an indis-
soluble connection between our conduct and its conse-
quences. We know that the sublime order of his Provi-
dence is sustained, by evolving effects from causes. We
know that, within certain limits, he has intrusted the
preparation of caxises to our hands : and, therefore, we
know, that just so far as he has committed this prepara-
tion or adjustm'ent of causes to us, he has given us power
over effects ; — he has given us power to modify or turn

292 HISTORICAL VIEW OF EDUCATION".

the flow of events for coming ages. As the apostles and
martyrs and heroes, who lived centuries ago, have modi-
fied the events which happen to us, so have we the power
to modify the events which shall happen to our posterity.
We are not laboring, then,' for threescore and ten years
only, but, for aught we know, for threescore and ten
centuries, or myriads of centuries. Through these im-
mutable relations of cause and effect, — of evolution,
transmission and reproduction, — our conduct will pro-
ject its consequences through all the eras of coming time.
Though our life, therefore, is but as a vapor which passeth
away, yet we have power to strike the deepest chords of
human welfare, and to give them vibrations which shall
sound onward forever. Corresponding with this stupen-
dous order of events, we are endowed with a faculty of
mind, by which we can recognize and appreciate our
power over the fortunes and destinies of distant times.
By the aid of this faculty, we can see that whatever we
undertake and prosecute, with right motives and on sound
principles, will not return to us void, but will produce its
legitimate fruits of beneficence. On this faculty, then,
as on eagles' wings, let us soar beyond the visible horizon
of time ; let us survey the prospect of redoubling mag-
nificence, which, from age to age, will open and stretch
onward, before those whose blessed ministry it is to im-
prove the condition of the young ; let our thoughts wan-
der up and down among the coming centuries, and par-
take, by anticipation, of the enjoyments which others
shall realize. If we ever seem to be laboring in vain, —
if our spirits are ever ready to faint, amid present obstruc-
tion and hostility, — then, through this faculty of dis-
cerning what mighty results Nature and Providence will
mature from humble efforts, let us look forward in faith,
and we shall behold this mighty cause emerging from its

ITS DIGNITY AND ITS DEGRADATION. 293

present gloom and obscurity, expanding and blossoming
out into beauty, and ripening into the immortal fruits of
wisdom and holiness ; and as we gaze upon the glorious
scene, every faculty within us shall be vivified, and en-
dued with new and unwonted energy.

What, then, though our words and deeds seem now to
be almost powerless and hopeless ; what though bands of
noble followers should rise up in our places, to be suc-
ceeded again and again by others, whose labors and sac-
rifices shall seem to fall and perish like the autumnal
leaves of the forest; — yet, like the annual shedding of
that foliage, which, for uncounted centuries, has been
gradually deepening the alluvium, throughout the vast
solitudes of the Mississippi valley, increasing its depth and
its richness, so shall the product of our labors accumu-
late in value and in amount, until, at last, beneath the
hand of some more fortunate cultivator, it shall yield
more abundant harvests of excellence, and righteousness
and happiness, than had ever before luxuriated in the
" seed-field of Time."

LECTURE VI.
1840.

LECTURE VI.

ON DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

I PROPOSE, in the following lecture, to consider the ex-
pediency of establishing a School Library in the several
School Districts of the State.

The idea of a Common-school Library is a modern
one. It originated in the State of New York. In the
year 1835, a law was passed by the Legislature of that
State, authorizing its respective school districts to raise,
by tax, the sum of twenty dollars the first year, and ten
dollars in any subsequent year, for the purchase of a
Common-school Library. No inducement was held out
to the districts to make the purchase, but only a mere
power granted ; and the consequence was, that for three
years this law remained almost a dead letter upon the
pages of the statute-book. But in the year 1838, Gover-
nor Marcy, in his inaugural address to the Legislature,
recommended the appropriation of a part of the income
of the United-States deposit fund, or surplus revenue,
(so called,) to this object. The recommendation was
adopted, and the sum of $55,000 for three years was set
apart to be applied by the districts to the purchase of a
District-school Library. The towns were also required
to raise an equal sum, to be united with the former, and
to be applied in the same way.* How much more does

* By a law of 1 839, this provision for three was extended to Jive years ;
and by a law of 1843, it was made perpetual, with the following modifica-
tions : Whenever the number of children in a district, between the ages of

297

298 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

such an act of permanent usefulness redound to the
honor of a Governor or a Legislature, than those party
contests which occupy so much of public attention for a
few days or months, but are then forgotten, or are only
remembered to be lamented or condemned !

By the law of April 12, 1837, the Legislature of Mas-
sachusetts authorized each school district in the State to
raise, by tax, a sum not exceeding thirty dollars for the
first year, and ten dollars for any subsequent year, for
the purchase of a library and apparatus for the schools.
Few districts, however, availed themselves of this power ;
and, up to the close of the year 1839, there were but
about fifty libraries in all the Common Schools of Mas-
sachusetts.

Being convinced of the necessity, and foreseeing the
benefits, of libraries in our schools, I submitted to the
Board of Education, on the 27th day of March, 1838, a
written proposition on that subject. In that communica-
tion it was proposed that the Board itself should take
measures for the preparation of such a Common-school
Library as should be adapted to the wants of the schools,
and should at the same time be free from objection on
account of partisan opinions in politics, or sectarian views
in religion. I had been led to suppose that one of the
principal reasons why so few libraries had been purchased,
under the law of 1837, was the jealousy entertained
against each other by members of different political par-

five and sixteen years, exceeds fifty, and the number of volumes in the
library shall exceed one hundred and twenty-five ; or when the number of
children in a district, between the same ages, is fifty, or less, and the num-
ber of volumes belonging to the library shall exceed one hundred, then the
district may appropriate the whole or any part of its distributive share of
the "library money" "to the purchase of maps, globes, blackboards, or
other scientific apparatus, for the use of the school."

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 299

ties and of different religious denominations. Though
sensible men, and friends of education, almost without
exception, were earnest in their desires for a library, yet
they either had fears of their own, or encountered ap-
prehension in others, that the public money devoted to
this purpose of general utility might be perverted, in the
hands of partisans, to the furtherance of sinister ends.
The proposition submitted to the Board, as above stated,
was accompanied by guards designed to obviate these
difficulties. It was favorably received, and immediately
acted upon.

Being convinced, however, that nothing could be effected
towards the accomplishment of so grand an object, except
by going before the people with indubitable facts and
irresistible arguments, I set myself to the work of mak-
ing extensive and minute inquiries throughout the State,
respecting the number of public libraries, the number of
volumes which each contained, their estimated value, the
general character of the books, and also the number of
persons who had a right of access to them. I obtained
returns from all but sixteen towns, which, being small,
had an aggregate population of only 20,966. The result
exceeded my worst apprehensions. I found that there
were but 299 social libraries in the State. The number
of volumes they contained was 180,028. Their estimated
value, $191,538. The number of proprietors, or persons
having access to them, in their own right, was only 25,705.

In* addition to the above, there were, in the State, from
ten to fifteen town libraries, — that is, libraries to which
all the citizens of the town had a right of access. These
contained, in the aggregate, from three to four thousand
volumes, and their estimated value was about $1,400.
There were also about fifty school-district libraries, con-
taining about ten thousand volumes, and worth, by

300 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

estimation, about $3,200 or $3,300. Fifteen of these were
in Boston. The number of Public Schools in the State,
at that time, was 3,014.

A few of the incorporated academies had small libraries.

There were also a few circulating libraries in different
parts of the State, — out of the city of Boston, perhaps
twenty, — but it would be charitable to suppose that,
on the whole, this class of libraries does as much good as
harm.

Of all the social libraries in the State, thirty-six, con-
taining 81,881 volumes, valued at $130,055, and owned
by 8,885 proprietors, or share-holders, belonged to the
city of Boston.

It appeared, then, that the books belonging to the public
social libraries, in the city of Boston, constituted almost
one-half, in number, of all the books in the social libraries
of the State, and more than two-thirds of all in value ;
and yet only abput one-tenth part of the population of
the city had any right of access to them.

I have said above that the whole number of propri-
etors, or share-holders, in all the social libraries in the
State, was 25,705. Now, supposing that each proprietor
or share-holder, in these social libraries, represents, on
an average, four persons, (and this, considering the
number of share-holders who are not heads of families,
is probably a full allowance,) the population represented
by them, as enjoying the benefits of these libraries, would
be only a small fraction over one hundred thousand ;' and
this, strange and alarming as it may seem, would leave a
population, in the State, of more than six hundred thou-
sand, who have no right of participation in those benefits.

I omit here, as not having an immediate connection
with my present purpose, to give an account of the libra-
ries belonging to the colleges and other literary and scien-

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 301

tific institutions in the State. A detailed account of these
may be found in iny Third Annual Report to the Board
of Education.

Do not the above facts show a most extraordinary and
wide-spread deficiency of books in our Commonwealth ?

But even where books exist, another question arises,
hardly less important than the preceding, as to the suit-
ableness or adaptation of the books to the youthful mind.
One general remark applies to the existing libraries al-
most without exception ; — the books were written for
men, and not for children. The libraries, too, have been
collected by men for their own amusement or edification.
There is no hazard, therefore, in saying, that they contain
very few books, appropriate for the reading of the young,
either in the subjects treated of, the intellectual manner
in which those subjects are discussed, or the moral tone
that pervades the works.*

* As descriptive of the general character of the public libraries now ex-
isting in the State, I give the following extract from my Third Annual
Report : —

The next question respects the character of the books composing the
libraries, and their adaptation to the capacities and mental condition of chil-
dren and youth. In regard to this point, there is, as might be expected,
but little diversity of statement. Almost all the answers concur in the
opinion, that the contents of the libraries are not adapted to the intellectual
and moral wants of the young, — an opinion, which a reference to the titles,
in the catalogues, will fully sustain. With very few exceptions, the books
were written for adults, for persons of some maturity of mind, and pos-
sessed, already, of a considerable fund of information ; and, therefore, they
could not be adapted to children, except through mistake. Of course, in
the whole, collectively considered, there is every kind of books ; but proba-
bly no other kind, which can be deemed of a useful character, occupies so
much space upon the shelves of the libraries, as the historical class. Some
of the various histories of Greece and Rome ; the History of Modern Eu-
rope, by Russell ; of England, by Hume and his successors ; Robertson's
Charles V. ; Mavor's Universal History ; the numerous Histories of Napo-
leon, and similar works, constitute the staple of many libraries. And how
little do these books contain, which is suitable for children ! How little do

302 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

Now the object of a Common-school Library is to sup-
ply these great deficiencies. Existing libraries are owned

they record but the destruction of human life, and the activity of those
misguided energies of men, which have hitherto almost baffled the benefi-
cent intentions of Nature for human happiness ! Descriptions of battles,
sackings of cities, and the captivity of nations, follow each other, with the
quickest movement, and in an endless succession. Almost the only glimpses
which we catch of the education of youth, present them as engaged in
martial sports, and in mimic feats of arms, preparatory to the grand trage-
dies of battle; — exercises and exhibitions, which, both in the performer
and the spectator, cultivate all the dissocial emotions, and turn the whole
current of the mental forces into the channel of destructiveness. The
reader sees inventive genius, not employed in perfecting the useful arts, but
exhausting itself in the manufacture of implements of war. He sees rulers
and legislators, not engaged in devising comprehensive plans for universal
welfare, but in levying and equipping armies and navies, and extorting
taxes to maintain them, thus dividing the whole mass of the people into
the two classes of slaves and soldiers; enforcing the degradation and ser-
vility of tame animals upon the former, and cultivating the ferocity and
blood-thirstiness of wild animals in the latter. The highest honors are
conferred upon men, in whose rolls of slaughter the most thousands of
victims are numbered ; and seldom does woman emerge from her obscurity
— indeed, hardly should we know that she existed — but for her appear-
ance to grace the triumphs of the conqueror. What a series of facts would
be indicated, by an examination of all the treaties of peace which history
records ! they would appear like a grand index to universal plunder. The
inference which children would legitimately draw, from reading like this,
would be, that the tribes and nations of men had been created only for
mutual slaughter, and that they deserved the homage of posterity for the
terrible fidelity with which their mission had been fulfilled. Rarely do
these records administer any antidote against the inhumanity of the spirit
they instil. In the immature minds of children, unaccustomed to consider
events under the relation of cause and effect, they excite the conception of
magnificent palaces or temples, for bloody conquerors to dwell in, or in
which to offer profane worship for inhuman triumphs, without a suggestion
of the 'bondage and debasement of the myriads of slaves, who, through
lives of privation and torture, were compelled to erect them ; they present
an exciting picture of long trains of plundered wealth, going to enrich
some city or hero, without an intimation, that, by industry and the arts of
peace, the same wealth could have been earned more cheaply than it was
plundered ; they exhibit the triumphal return of warriors, to be crowned
with 'honors worthy of a god, while they take the mind wholly away from

DISTBICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 303

by the rich, or by those who are in comfortable circum-
stances. The Common-school Library will reach the

the carnage of the battle-field, from desolated provinces, and a mourning
people. In all this, it is true, there are many examples of the partial and
limited virtue of patriotism ; but few, only, of the complete virtue of phi-
lanthropy. The courage held up for admiration is generally of that ani-
mal nature, which rushes into danger to inflict injury upon another ; but
not of that Divine quality, which braves peril for the sake of bestowing
good — attributes, than which there arc scarcely any two in the souls of
men, more different, though the baseness of the former is so often mistaken
for the nobleness of the latter. Indeed, if the past history of our race is to
be much read by children, it should be rewritten ; and, while it records
those events, which have contravened all the principles of social policy, and
violated all the laws of morality and religion, there should, at least, be
some recognition of the great truth, that, among nations, as among indi-
viduals, the highest welfare of all can only be effected by securing the in-
dividual welfare of each. There should be some parallel drawn between
the historical and the natural relations of the race, so that the tender and
immature mind of the youthful reader may have some opportunity of com-
paring the right with the wrong, and some option of admiring and emulat-
ing the former, instead of the latter. As much of history now stands, the
examples of right and wrong, whose nativity and residence are on opposite
sides of the moral universe, are not merely brought and shuffled together, so
as to make it difficult to distinguish between them ; but the latter are made
to occupy almost the whole field of vision, while the existence of the former
is scarcely noticed. It is as though children should be taken to behold,
from afar, the light of a city on fire, and directed to admire the splendor of
the conflagration, without a thought of the tumult, and terror, and death
reigning beneath it.

Another very considerable portion of these libraries, especially where
they have been recently formed or replenished, consists of novels, and all
that class of books which is comprehended under the familiar designations
of "fictions," "light reading," " trashy works," "ephemeral," or "bubble
literature," &c. This kind of books has increased, immeasurably, within
the last twenty years. It has insinuated itself into public libraries, and
found the readiest welcome with people who arc not dependent upon libra-
ries for the books they peruse. Aside from newspapers, I am satisfied
that the major part of the unprofessional reading of the community is of
the class of books above designated. Amusement is the object, — mere
amusement, as contradistinguished from instruction, in the practical con-
cerns of life ; as contradistinguished from those intellectual and moral im-
pulses, which turn the mind, both while reading and after the book is closed ,
to observation, and comparison, and reflection upon the great realities of
existence.

304 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

poor. The former were prepared for adult and educated
minds ; the latter is to be adapted to instruct young and
unenlightened ones. By the former, books are collected
in great numbers, at a few places, having broad deserts
between ; by the latter, a few good books are to be sent
into every school district in the State, so that not a child
shall be born in our beloved Commonwealth, who shall
not have a collection of good books accessible to him at
all times, and free of expense, within half an hour's walk
of his home, wherever he may reside.

My friends, I look upon this as one of the grandest
moral enterprises of the age. The honor of first embody-
ing this idea, in practice, belongs to the State of New
York ; and how much more glorious is it than the honors
of battle ! The execution of this project will carry the
elements of thought where they never penetrated before.
It will scatter, free and abundant, the seeds of wisdom
and virtue in the desert places of the land. It will prove
as powerful an agent in the world of mind, as the use of
steam has done in the world of matter.

I propose now to notice a few particulars, in which the
usefulness of our schools will be so much enlarged in
extent, and increased in efficiency, by means of a library,
that they will become almost new institutions.

The idea which came down to us from our ancestors,
and which has generally prevailed until within a few
years, was, that Common District-schools are places where
the mass of the children may learri to read, to write, and
to cipher.

In regard to the first of these studies, — Reading, —
how imperfect was the instruction given ! Good reading
may be considered under three heads, — the mechanical,
or the ability to speak the names of words on seeing
them ; the intellectual, or a comprehension of an author's

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 305

ideas ; and the rhetorical, or the power of giving, by the
tones and inflexions of the voice and other natural lan-
guage, an appropriate expression to feeling. Now most
men, whose Common-school education closed twenty or
twenty-five years ago, will bear me out in saying, that
the mechanical part of reading was the only branch of
this accomplishment which, in the great majority of our
schools, was then attended to. The intellectual part,
which consists in seeing, with the mind's eye, the whole
subject, broad, ample, unshadowed, just as the author
saw it, was mainly neglected. Consider what a wonder-
ful, — what an almost magical boon, a writer of great
genius confers upon us, when we read him intelligently.
As he proceeds from point to point in his argument or
narrative, we seem to be taken up by him, and carried
from hill-top to hill-top, where, through an atmosphere
of light, we survey a glorious region of thought, looking
freely, far and wide, above and below, and gazing in ad-
miration upon all the beauty and grandeur of the scene.
But if we read the same author unintelligently, not one
of the splendors he would reveal to us is pictured upon
the eye. All is blank. The black and white pages of
the book are, to our vision, the outside of the universe
in that direction. I never attended any but a Common
School until I was sixteen years of age, and up to that
time, I had never heard a question asked, either by
teacher or scholar, respecting the meaning of a word or
sentence in a reading-lesson. In spelling, when words
were addressed singly to the eye or ear, we uttered a sin-
gle mechanical sound ; and in reading, when the words
came in a row, the sounds folio.wed in a row ; but it was
the work of the organs of speed i only, — the reflecting
and imaginative powers being all the while as stagnant
as the Dead Sea. It was the noise of machinery thrown

VOL. i. 20

306 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

out of gear ; and, of course, performing no work, though
it should run on forever. The exercises had no more sig-
nificancy than the chattering of magpies or the cawings
of ravens ; for it was no part of the school instruction of
those days to illustrate and exemplify the power and co-
piousness of the English language, and, out of its flexible
and bright- colored words, to make wings, on which the
mind could go abroad through height and depth and dis-
tance, exploring and circumnavigating worlds.

Nor was our instruction any better in regard to the
rhetorical part of reading, which consists in such a com-
pass of voice and inflection of tone, as tend to reproduce
the feelings of the speaker in the minds of the hearers.
There is this difference between the intellectual and the
rhetorical part of reading ; — the intellectual refers to our
own ability to perceive and understand ideas, arguments,
conclusions ; — the rhetorical refers to the power of ex-
citing in others, by our own enunciation and manner of
delivery, the sentiments and emotions which we feel, or
which were felt by the author in whose place we stand.

Some men have possessed this power, and some men
now possess it, in such perfection, that when they rise to
address a concourse of people, — the more numerous the
concourse, the better for their purpose, — they forthwith
migrate, as it were, into the bodies of the whole multi-
tude before them; they dwell, like a spirit, within the
spirits of their hearers, controlling every emotion and re-
solve, conjuring up before their eyes whatever visions
they please, making all imaginations seem substance and
reality, — rousing, inflaming, subduing, so that if they cry
War ! every hearer becomes valiant and hot as Mars ;
but if they cry Peace ! the fiercest grow gentle and mer-
ciful as a loving child. This is a great art ; and when
.the orator is wise and good, and the audience intelligent,

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 307

there is no danger, but a delicious illusion and luxury in
its enjoyment. Who has not gone beyond the delight,
and speculated upon the phenomenon itself, when he has
seen a master of the art of music place himself before a
musical instrument, and, soon as with nimble fingers he
touches the strings, which, but a moment before, lay
voiceless and dead, they pour out living and ecstatic har-
monies, — as though some celestial spirit had fallen
asleep amid the chords, but, suddenly awakening, was
celebrating its return to life, by a song of its native ely-
sium ? When such music ceases, it seems hardly a figure
of speech to say, " the angel has flown." But what is
this, compared with that more potent and exquisite in-
strument, the well-trained voice ? When Demosthenes
or Patrick Henry pealed such a war-cry, that all people,
wherever its echoes rang, sprang to their arms, and every
peaceful citizen, as he listened, felt the warrior growing
big within him, and taking command of all his faculties,
what instrument or medium was there, by which the soul
of the orator was transfused into the souls of his hear-
ers, but the voice ? Yet while their bodies stood around,
as silent and moveless as marble statuary, there raged
within their bosoms a turbulence and whirlwind and boil-
ing, fiercer than if ocean and ^Etna had embraced. And
so, to a great extent, it is even now, when what they ut-
tered is fittingly read. We call this magic, enchant-
ment, sorcery, and so forth ; but there is no more magic
in it, than in balancing an egg on the smaller end, —
each being equally easy when we have learned how to
do it.

None, however, of the beauties of rhetorical reading
can be attained, unless the intellectual part is mastered.
The mechanical reader is a mere grinder of words. If
he reads without any attempt at expression, it is mere

308 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

see-saw and mill-clackery ; if he attempts expression, he
is sure to mistake its place, and his flourishes become ri-
diculous rant and extravagance.

Now no one thing will contribute more to intelligent
reading in our schools, than a well-selected library ; arid,
through intelligence, the library will also contribute to
rhetorical ease, grace, and expressiveness. Wake up a
child to a consciousness of power and beauty, and you
might as easily confine Hercules to a distaff, or bind Apol-
lo to a tread-mill, as to confine his spirit within the me-
chanical round of a schoolroom, where such mechanism
still exists. Let a child read and understand such stories
as the friendship of Damon and Pythias, the integrity of
Aristides, the fidelity of Regulus, the purity of Washing-
ton, the invincible perseverance of Franklin, and he will
think differently and act differently all the days of his
remaining life. Let boys or girls of sixteen years of age
read an intelligible and popular treatise on astronomy
and geology, and from that day, new heavens will bend
over their heads, and a new earth will spread out beneath
their feet. A mind accustomed to go rejoicing over the
splendid regions of the material universe, or to luxuriate
in the richer worlds of thought, can never afterwards read
like a wooden machine, — a thing of cranks and pipes,
— to say nothing of the pleasures and the utility it
will realize.

Indeed, when a scholar, at the age of sixteen or eigh-
teen years, leaves any one of our Public Schools, I can-
not see with what propriety we can say he has learned the
art of reading in that school, if he cannot promptly un-
derstand, either by reading himself, or by hearing another
read, any common English book of history, biography,
morals, or poetry ; or if he cannot readily comprehend
all the words commonly spoken in the lecture-room, the

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 309

court-room, or the pulpit. It is not enough to understand
the customary words used at meal-time, or in a dram-
shop, or in congressional brawling. I know it is the
cry of many a hearer to the speaker, — " Come down to
my comprehension ; " but I cannot see why any speaker,
who speaks good English words, — whether derived origi-
nally from the Saxon or the Latin, or any other lawful
source, — has not quite as good a right to say to the hearer,
" Come up to my language." When a clergyman, or
public speaker of any kind, for every hour that he spends
in thinking out his discourse, must spend two hours in
diluting it with watery expressions, in order to have it
run so thin that everybody may see to the bottom, he
loses not only the greater part of his time, but he loses
immensely in the value and impressiveness of his teach-
ings. If, in the heat of composition, and with the light
of all his faculties brought to a focus, he kindles with a
thought which glows like the orient sun, must he stop and
cut it up into farthing candles, lest the weak eyes of
some bat or mole should be dazzled by its brightness ?
But, in all such cases, the hearers lose still more than the
speaker. By the half-hour or hour together, they must
receive small coins, — cents and four-penny bits, — in-
stead of guineas and doubloons. They are like those ig-
norant, foreign depositors in one of our city Savings
Banks, during a late panic in the money-market, who
rushed to the counter, demanding immediate payment ;
but when pieces of gold were offered to them, of whose
value they had no test, and with whose image and super-
scription they were not acquainted, they besought the
officers, although, as they supposed, at the imminent risk
of losing their whole deposit, to pay them in small change,
where they felt at home. Just so it is with those who are
forever calling upon the speaker to come down to their

310 DISTEICT-SCHOOL LIBB ARIES.

comprehension, in regard to his language and style ; for,
if he obeys the call and goes very far down, in order to
meet them, he necessarily leaves much of the grandeur
and beauty and sublimity of his subject behind him.
When a speaker is to discourse upon any great theme, —
one belonging to any department of a universe which
Omniscience has planned and Omnipotence has builded,
— ought he not to be allowed a generous liberty in the
use of language ? Ought he not to be allowed a scope and
amplitude of expression, by which he can display, as on a
sky-broad panorama, the infinite relations that belong to
the minutest thing ; or, on the other hand, should he not
be allowed that condensation of speech, by which the
vastest systems of nature can be consolidated into a sin-
gle word, to be hurled, like a bolt, at its mark ? Is it
not as absurd to restrict the speaker, on such occasions,
to mere nursery or cradle talk, as it would be to deny sea-
room to an admiral, and require him, for our amusement,
to mano3iivre navies in a mill-pond ?

Suppose a company of Americans should go to France
or Germany, and, after picking up a few words in hotels
and diligences, should attend the public lecture, the play,
or the services of the cathedral, and should there demand
of the speakers to keep within the narrow limits of their
vocabulary, — I ask, whether it would not be most un-
reasonable, on the one side, to make such a demand, and
impossible, on the other, to comply with it ? And how-
would the case be altered, though the company should re-
side there for twenty-one years, if they still remained ig-
norant of the language of the country ? Now this is
just our case. Children, of course, come into the world
with just as little knowledge of English as of French and
German ; and if they remain here for twenty -one years,
without learning English words, how can they expect to
understand English speakers ?

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 311

I do not mean, by these remarks, to countenance or
palliate the folly of those speakers or writers, who are
always straining after new words, or swell:ng forms of
expression ; and whose breadth and flow of style do not
resemble a river, but only a tiny stream whipped into
bubbles. It is occasionally our lot to encounter men
who seem to have imbibed some mathematical notion,
that the power of a word is as the square of its length,
and hence they suppose, that what Horace calls seven-
foot words * must have have at least forty-nine times
the pith of monosyllables. Such diction and style are as
offensive to men of good taste as they are unintelligible
to the illiterate. But I do mean, by these remarks, to
give a definition of what should be understood by the
phrase, — learning to read. Unless pupils, therefore, on
going out from our schools, can read intelligently any
good English book, and understand any speech or dis-
course expressed in good English words, they cannot, with
any propriety, be said to have learned to read. And as
no set of reading-books, in our schools, contains any
thing like the whole circle of words which are in common
and reputable use in the pulpit, at the bar, in the senate,
or in works of standard literature, it is obvious that a
school library is needed to supply the great deficiency,
which otherwise would necessarily exist in the language of
the present children ; and, of course, in the language of
the future men and women.

Justice, in reference to this subject, has never been
done to the clerical profession. They habitually address
audiences, the most promiscuous in point of attainment,
— and, so far as it regards the various qualities of lan-
guage,— its scope, its majesty, its beauty, its melody, its

* Sesquipedalia verba.

312 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

simplicity, — if they prepare an entertainment of milk
for intellectual babes, the full-grown men die of thin
blood and inanition ; — if, on the other hand, they bring
forward strong meat for men, it cannot be assimilated
by the weak organs of the sucklings. Hence multitudes
abandon the sanctuary altogether ; and the ignorant, who
need its teachings most, are most likely to desert it. How
important, then, it is, for all the divine purposes of this
profession, to teach children the art of reading, in the
true, legitimate, and full sense of that phrase ! and, for
this end, a good school library is indispensable.

I proceed to notice another grand distinction between
a Common School with a library, and a Common School
without one ; and a still more important distinction, be-
tween a State, all of whose Common Schools have li-
braries, and a State in which there are none. This dis-
tinction consists in the power of libraries to enlarge the
amount of useful knowledge possessed by a community.
The State which teaches one new truth to one of its
citizens does something; but how much more, when, by
teaching that truth to all, it multiplies its utilities and its
pleasures by the number of all the citizens ! The saying
of Adam Smith has been quoted thousands of times, that
he who makes two blades of grass grow where but one
grew before is a public benefactor. But he who doubles
the amount of knowledge belonging to a community is a
public benefactor as much greater than he who doubles
the blades of grass on its soil, as immortal, life-giving
truth is better than the perishing flowers of the field.
Could we examine all the nations which are called civil-
ized or Christian, we should not find one individual in a
thousand worthy to bo called intelligent, in regard to
many kinds of knowledge, which might be possessed, and,
for their own safety and happiness, should be possessed by

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 313

all. We should not find one individual in a thousand
who knows any thing instructive or pleasurable re-
specting the wonderful structure of his own body, and
the still more wonderful constitution and functions of his
own mind ; and respecting the laws, — the certain and
infallible laws, — of bodily health and mental growth.
There is not one individual in a thousand who has any
knowledge, so definite as to be beneficial, of the history
of our race ; or who knows any thing of the sublimer
parts of astronomy, or of the magnificent and romantic
science of geology, — a science which leads the mind
backwards into time as far as astronomy leads it out-
wards into space ; — or of chemistry with its applications
to the arts of life ; or of the principal laws of natural and
mechanical philosophy ; or of the origin, history, and pro-
cesses of those useful arts, by which the common and
every-day comforts of life are prepared. Now respecting
most, if not all these subjects, every man and woman
might possess a liberal fund of information, which would
be to them an ever-springing fountain of delight and use-
fulness. But the uniform policy of governments has
been to create a few men of great learning rather than to
diffuse knowledge among the many. Literary insti-
tutions have been founded, and a nation's treasury almost
emptied for their endowment ; and when a rare and
mighty genius has appeared in any part of the kingdom,
he has been summoned to embellish and dignify the
court or university ; and rarely have such men ever sent
back a ray to illumine the dark places of their nativity.
The policy of governments has absorbed all light into the
centre, instead of radiating it to the circumference. And
when, by the combined labor of learned and studious
men, — amid mountains of books, amid museums and ap-
paratus and all the appliances of human art, — some new

314 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

law of nature has been detected, another planet dis-
covered in the heavens, or another curiosity upon the
earth, — the rulers of mankind, the depositaries and
trustees of a people's welfare, have celebrated the event
with jubilee and Te Deum, and written themselves down
the Solomons of the race. Between England and France,
— two kingdoms which now stand and have long stood in
the van of science and art, — a strong national jealousy
exists as to the relative superiority of their great men.
England boasts that it was her Newton whose mighty
hand drew aside the veil from the face of the heavens,
and revealed the stupendous movements of the solar sys-
tem. France retorts, that it was left to her La Place to
perfect the Newtonian discovery, and to make every part
of the celestial mechanism as intelligible as a watch to a
watchmaker. England displays her achievements in the
natural sciences. France flaunts her trophies in the
exact ones. England points to her useful arts ; France
to those which are born of an elegant imagination. Now
all these inventions and discoveries, so far as they go, are
well. I rejoice in the existence of learning, anywhere.
I contemplate with delight those imperial structures,
where, for centuries, a sincere, though often an unintelli-
gent homage has been offered to the divinities of know-
ledge. I gaze with gladdened eye, through the long
vista of those galleries, where the lore of all former times
has been gathered. It charms and exalts me to look
upon cabinets which are enriched with all the wonders of
land and sea ; and upon laboratories, where Nature
comes and submits herself to our rude and awkward ex-
periments, teaching us, as lovingly as a mother teaches
her infant child, and striving to make us understand
some of the words of her omnipotent language. I look
upon all these with delight, for they are treasuries and

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 315

storehouses for the instruction and exaltation of mankind.
Above all, I hail with inexpressible joy whatever dis-
covery may be made in any department of the immense
and in finitely- varied fields of Nature ; for I know that all
truth is of God ancKfrom God, and was sent out to us as
a messenger and guide, to lead our faltering steps up-
wards to virtue and happiness.

But still I mourn. I mourn that this splendid appa-
ratus of means should be restricted to so narrow a circle
in the diffusiveness of its blessings. I mourn that num-
bers so few should be admitted to dwell in the light,
while multitudes so vast should remain in outer darkness.
I mourn that governments and rulers should have been
blind to their greatest glory, — the physical and mental
well-being of the millions whose destiny has been placed
in their hands. God has given to all mankind capacities
for enjoying the delights and profiting by the utilities of
knowledge. Why should so many pine and parch, in
sight of fountains whose sweet waters are sufficiently
copious to slake the thirst of all ? The scientific or lite-
rary well-being of a community is to be estimated not so
much by its possessing a few men of great knowledge, as
by its having many men of competent knowledge ; and
especially is this so, if the many have been stinted in
order to aggrandize the few. Was it any honor to Rome
that Lucullus had Jive thousand changes of raiment in
his wardrobe, while an equal number of her people went
naked to furnish his superfluity ? How does the farmer
estimate the value of his timber-lands ? — surely not by
here and there a stately tree, though its columnar shaft
should shoot up to the clouds, while, all around, there is
nothing but dwarfish and scraggy shrubs. One or a few
noble trees are not enough, though they rise as high and
spread as wide as the sycamore of the Mississippi, but he

316 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

wants the whole area covered, as with a forest of banians.
And thus should be the growth of these immortal and
longing natures which God has given to all mankind.
Each mind in the community should be cultivated, so
that the intellectual surveyor of a people, — the mental
statistician, or he who takes the valuation of a nation's
spiritual resources, — should not merely count a few
individuals, scattered here and there ; but should be
obliged to multiply the mental stature of one by the num-
ber of all, in order to get his product. The mensuration
of a people's knowledge should no longer consist in cal-
culating the possessions of a few, but in obtaining the
sum total, or solid contents, in the possession of all.
And for this end, the dimensions of knowledge, so to
speak, must be enlarged in each geometrical direction ;
it must not only be extended 'on the surface, but deep-
ened, until the whole superficies is cubed.

I say I rejoice that, in former times, facilities and in-
citements for the acquisition of knowledge have been
enjoyed even by a few ; but if this is to be all, and man-
kind are to stop where they now are ; if, while light
gladdens a few eyes, tens of thousands are still to grope
on amid the horrors of mental blindness ; if, while a few
dwell serenely in the upper regions of day, the masses of
mankind are to be plunged in Egyptian night, haunted
by all the spectres of superstition, and bowing down to
the foul idols of appetite and sense ; — if such were the
prospective destiny of the race, I would pray Heaven for
another universal deluge, —

" To make one sop of all this solid globe," —

to sweep all existing institutions away, and give a clear
space for trying the experiment of humanity anew. The

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 317

atrocities and abominations of men have proceeded from
their ignorance as much as from their depravity ; and
rather than that war should continue to devour its
nations ; that slavery should always curse, as it now does,
both enslaved and enslaver; that fraud and perfidy
between man and man should abound, as they now
abound, and that intemperance should rekindle its dying
fires; — rather than all this, I would rejoice to see this
solid globe hurled off into illimitable space, and made a
tenantless wanderer of the " vast inane." Now, who
does not see that to< gem the whole surface of the State
with good schools, and to supply each school with a good
library, will be the most effective means ever yet devised
by human wisdom for spreading light among the masses
of mankind ?

There is another respect in which the establishment of
a library in every school district will add a new and grand
feature to our Common-school system. The whole object
in the foundation and maintenance of our schools, hither-
to, has been the education of children, — of minors.
Ordinarily, and with very few exceptions, when our chil-
dren have reached the age of sixteen, eighteen, or, at
farthest, of twenty-one years, they have been weaned
from the schoolhouse ; and, in a vast proportion of cases,
so thoroughly weaned, too, that the very idea of the milk
of this mother has been bitterness to their palates ever
afterwards. How many, or rather how few, adults ever
revisit the schoolhouse, as the spot of early and endearing
associations ! How few have been drawn to it by the tie
of tender and delightful recollections, as a far wanderer
is drawn homeward to visit, with tearful eyes, the almost
holy spot where his infancy was cradled, where he slept
upon his mother's breast, and listened to the counsels of
his father! No! Vast numbers of our children, when

318 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

they have served out their regular terra in the old, cheer-
less schoolroom, and are leaving it for the last time, have
shaken the dust from off their feet, as a testimony against
it. Were the schoolroom an attractive place, why should
it be considered as so extraordinary an exploit in a
teacher to get the fathers and the mothers of the district
to visit their own children in it ? Even the school com-
mittee, — those whose official duty it was to visit, and
watch over the schools,. — did not, until recently, make
one-fourth part of the visitations required by law. With
very few exceptions, too, it was ascertained by the com-
mittees, that, although the law had prescribed the number
of visitations which they should make, yet it had not
prescribed their length ; and the consequence was, that
the longitude of their visits was inversely as the latitude
of their construction.

But by a good school library, the faculty of the school
will be enlarged. It will be made to extend its enlighten-
ing influences to the old as well as to the young ; because
every inhabitant of the district, under such conditions as
may be deemed advisable, should be allowed to partici-
pate in the benefits of the library. Hence the school-
house will be not only a nursery for children, but a place
of intelligent resort for men. The school will no longer
be an institution for diffusing the mere rudiments or in-
strumentalities of knowledge, but for the bountiful dif-
fusion of knowledge itself. The man will keep up his
relation with the school, after he ceases to attend it as a
scholar. Though he has mastered all the text-books in
the schoolroom, yet he will not have outgrown the school
until he has mastered all the books in the library.

And here I would dispel an apprehension, sometime*
felt, that children, although supplied with suitable books,
will contract no fondness for them. Since submitting the

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBB ABIES. 319

plan to the Board of Education, for the establishment of
school libraries, I have sent out not less than a thousand
letters soliciting information respecting the existence,
magnitude and quality of public libraries of all kinds ;
and I have also availed myself of all opportunities fur-
nished by personal intercourse, to ascertain the habits
and means of our people in regard to reading. After
all these opportunities for information, I am able to say,
that I have never heard of a single instance where a well-
selected library for children has run down or run out
through abandonment or indifference on their part. I
have heard of many instances where grown people, dur-
ing some transient spasm of literature or vanity, have
collected a library for themselves, whose books, after a
short time, were read, as bills are so often read in our legis-
lative bodies, — by their titles only ; and, at last, the office
of librarian has been merged in that of auctioneer. But
I have never known one such case in regard to children's
libraries.

But suppose an unfortunate case of neglect or abuse
of the library privileges should sometimes, or even fre-
quently, occur, would it furnish a valid argument against
the measure ? Does the gardener refuse to plant his
garden, or the husbandman his fields, because every seed
that he casts into the earth does not spring up and yield
its thirty, its sixty, or its hundred fold ? Nay, if, through
accident or misfortune, the whole expected growth fails,
does he not, with undirninished faith and alacrity, com-
mit new seed to the soil, confiding in the veracity of the
Proraiser and the fulfilment of the promise, that, if ye
sow bountifully, ye shall reap also bountifully ?

There is another advantage of a good school library, —
not so obvious, perhaps, as those already mentioned, —
but one which I deem of no small importance. A library

320 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

will produce one effect upon school children, and upon
the neighborhood generally, before they have read one of
the books, and even if they should never read one of
them. It is in this way : — The most ignorant are the
most conceited. Unless a man knows that there is some-
thing more to be known, his inference is, of course, that
he knows every thing. Such a man always usurps the
throne of universal knowledge, and assumes the right of
deciding all possible questions. We all know that a con-
ceited dunce, will decide questions extemporaneously,
which would puzzle a college of philosophers, or a bench
of judges. Ignorant and shallow-minded men do not see
far enough to see the difficulty. But let a man know that
there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant,
and it is so much carved out of his domain of universal
knowledge. And for all purposes of individual character,
as well as of social usefulness, it is quite as important
for a man to know the extent of his own ignorance as
it is any thing else. To know how much there is that we
do not know, is one of the most valuable parts of our at-
tainments ; for such knowledge becomes both a lesson of
humility and a stimulus to exertion. Let it be laid down
as a universal direction to teachers, when students are
becoming proud of their knowledge, to spread open before
them some pages of the tremendous volume of their igno-
rance.

Now those children who are reared without any advan-
tages of intelligent company, or of travel, or of books, —
which are both company and travel, — naturally fall into
the error of supposing that they live in the centre of the
world, that all society is like their society, or, if different
from theirs, that it must be wrong ; and they come, at
length, to regard any part of this vast system of the works
of man, and of the wisdom of God, which conflicts with

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 321

their home-bred notions, as baneful, or contemptible, or
non-existent. They have caught no glimpse of the vari-
ous and sublime sciences which have been discovered by
human talent and assiduity ; nor of those infinitely wise
and beautiful laws and properties of the visible creation,
in which the Godhead has materialized his goodness and
his power, in order to make them perceptible to our
senses ; — and hence they naturally infer that they know
all knowable things, and have " learnt out ;" — that they
have exhausted the fulness of Deity, and into their nut-
shell capacities have drained dry the fountains of Omni-
science. Now, when this class of persons go out into the
world and mingle with their fellow-men, they are found
to be alike useless on account of their ignorance, and
odious for their presumption. And if a new idea can be
projected with sufficient force to break through the in-
crustations of folly and prejudice which envelop their
souls, and with sufficient accuracy of aim to hit such small
globules, they appear as ridiculous, under its influence,
as did the mouse, which was born in the till of a chest,
and, happening one day to rear itself upon its hind-legs
and to look over into the body of the chest, exclaimed,
in amazement, that he did not think the universe so
large ! A library, even before it is read, will teach people
that there is something more to be known.

An incidental advantage will often accrue from this
library enterprise, which I cannot pass by in silence.
Suppose the most intelligent and respectable portion of
the State to be deeply convinced of the expediency of a
school library, and, therefore, to send up an earnest ap-
peal to the Legislature, for some assistance or bounty to
enable the districts to procure one. Suppose that the
Legislature should offer to contribute a certain sum, on
condition that the districts would raise an equal sum, for

VOL. I. 21

322 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

the purpose. Doubtless, on the part of a large number
of districts, there would be great alacrity in complying
with the conditions prescribed. But still, the number of
districts and even of towns will not be inconsiderable,
where Ignorance and Mammon bear such sway, that .the
majority of voters will refuse to grant even this pittance
for the welfare of their children. It is in this class of
cases that the incidental advantages to which I refer will
be realized. In most of such districts or towns, there
will be some individual or individuals, — of narrow means,
but of a boundless soul, — who will at once give the
requisite sum, and thus secure the object. Now these
occasional or special opportunities to do a good deed are
of inestimable value. They stir up the generous emotions
of our nature from a depth, where they might otherwise
have lain stagnant forever. They awaken within us a
delightful surprise at our own capabilities of usefulness
and happiness. Our sordid habit is, to call every unex-
pected occurrence of good fortune happening to ourselves
a god-send ; but there is no such god-send as the divine
prompting to do good to others. Let an unforeseen
occasion of beneficence be presented to a benevolent man,
and let the merits of the case be made visible to him by
their own beautiful light ; — a resolve to act, at once
flashes upon his mind, and the generous deed is done ; —
not done from ostentation, or the love of praise, or from
any low or sordid aim ; but done because it is right and
lovely, and in harmony with his better nature ; and lo !
in the bosom of that man the fountains of immortal joy
burst open, arid such peace and gladness and exaltation
pervade and dilate his soul, that he would not barter one
moment of their fruition for an eternity of selfish pleas-
ures. When a majority of the district belong to the firm
of Hunks, Shirk & Co., then Mr. Goodman must supply

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 323

the library, and the next generation will rise up and bless
him.

The effects of a habit of reading, in furnishing home
and fireside attractions for children, and thus keeping
them from vicious companions, and from places of vicious
resort, are so obvious, that I shall not here dwell upon
them ; but content myself with referring to one more of
the unenumerated and innumerable advantages of a well-
chosen library for our schools ; — I mean the efficacy of
good books in expelling bad ones. A true friend of our
country and our race is not satisfied with knowing that
we are a reading people ; — he asks impatiently, what it
is that we read. That there is an alarming amount of
vain and pernicious reading in our community, no observ-
ing person will deny. For unchastened imaginations and
perverted morals, there is a fascination in accounts of
battles, shipwrecks, murders and piracies ; and many
people gloat over those demoralizing police reports in the
newspapers, in which the foul scenes of darkness and
depravity are brought to light, and made themes for jest
and merriment. But have we taught children to read,
for the sake of enlarging their acquaintance with im-
purity and immorality ? Fiction, too, from the plump
novel of two volumes to the lean newspaper story of two
columns, together with the contents of light and fanciful
periodicals, constitutes the staple reading of a vast num-
ber of our people. Now I believe it to be no exaggeration
to say, that ninety-nine parts in every hundred of all the
novels and romances extant are as false to truth and
nature, to all verisimilitude to history and to the affairs
of men, as though they had been written, not by lunarians,
but by lunatics themselves. I mean, that, if we, as men
and women, were to act as novel-writers make their men
and women act, the results upon our fortunes and lives

324 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

would bear no resemblance to the fortunes and lives
of the fictitious personages they describe. The novelist
makes godlike heroes and benefactors of the race of those
who never studied and toiled and sacrificed for the wel-
fare of mankind ; and, just so far as he does this, he is
contradicted by the testimony of universal history and
experience. His works are often bloated with a maudlin
sentiment, wholly unkindred and alien to that healthy
humanity, which, by the combined action of intellect and
benevolence, not only perceives, but fulfils, the law of love.
Often, too, he robes impurity in the garments of light,
and thus sets at defiance all the laws of the moral universe ;
or he deems it poetic justice to reward the holy sacrifices
of virtue by the base coin of wordly honors or wealth.
The mind, when fed on mere fantasies and etherealities,
has no vigor for the stern duties of life ; it is borne away
by every illusion, like a bulrush upon the tide.

The prevalence of novel-reading creates a host of novel-
writers ; and the readers and writers, by action and re-ac-
tion, increase the numbers of each other. Hence great
capacities for usefulness are lost to the world, and the
most important of human duties remain unperformed.
For many of the sons and daughters of Adam, this is a
world of perplexity and suffering and inexpressible anguish ;
it is a world where innocent nerves are laid bare to all
the aggressions of want and disease, and where men sink
into pitfalls of ruin, which the light of a little knowledge
would have revealed, and from which kindly counsels
would have saved them. What is worst of all, — it is a
world where guiltless children are led, as by the hand,
into dangers and temptations ; or rather they are propelled
into dangers and temptations by forces of which they
are unconscious, and over which they have no control ;
and in these perils they struggle for a moment, and then

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 325

sink into horrible depths of crime and wretchedness,
which, by an unholy influence, harden our hearts against
them as much as they harden their hearts against virtue.
Society is spotted all over with moral leprosy ; and hot
tears, more bitter than the waters of Marah, are furrow-
ing innocent checks ; and while this actual sin and suffer-
ing abound, we cannot spare the finest geniuses of the
race to spend their lives in creating Worlds of Shadow ;
nor can we allow the most educated of our people to
escape from the great work of solacing and redeeming
mankind, to revel in the brilliant but bodiless realms of
fancy. Every hand and every hour should be devoted to
rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage
the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To
pity distress is but human ; to relieve it is Godlike. But
I have never found that those who weep most freely over
fictitious pain have keener susceptibilities than others for
real woe. What an absolute inversion of the whole
moral nature does it suppose, to find delight in tracing
the fortunes of imaginary beings, while living in the
midst of such actual sufferings as ought to dissolve the
soul into a healing balm for their relief, without recog-
nizing their existence. It is said, indeed, that Dickens, —
the last king whom the world of novel-readers has seated
upon its precarious throne, — has attributes of humani-
ty which distinguish him from his predecessors. It ig
said that he looks over and beyond the splendid circles of
opulence and fashion, and selects his objects of interest
and sympathy from among the hitherto outcast and
forsaken of the world. But I must say again, that I have
not seen any fresh outflowing of compassion, any swell-
ing of the scanty rills of benevolence towards the poor,
the ignorant, the helpless, the misguided, among the gay
and affluent circles who vindicate their homage to this

326 DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

new sovereign, because he illumines his pages with the
glow of a kindlier humanity. To those who, — while
surrounded with luxuries and superfluities, and defended
by golden guards against cold and hunger, and all the
privations and temptations of poverty, — read, breath-
less and tearful, the story of " Little Nell," let me say,
there is a " Little Nell" in the next street, or at the next
door, of you all, — some hapless child, cast, desolate and
forlorn, upon the bleak shores of Time, having no friend
in the abandoned mother that bore her, and wandering,
through all the years of infancy and childhood, as in one
perpetual and tempestuous night of fear and suffering ;
while the opulent and the educated, reclining on silken
couches, in splendid saloons, expend a barren sympathy
over woes that never were felt. Throughout our land,
in city and in country, groups and companies of innocent
children, — the offspring of intemperance or profligacy,
— are tossed for an hour upon the weltering tide of life ;
but hearing no voice of sympathy, seeing no hand out-
stretched for their deliverance, they sink to rise no more.

As when the young of land-birds, in the spring,
Quit the warm nest, and spread the untaught wing,
Some whirlwind blast, descending from the north,
Wheels them on high, and drives them furious forth
Far out to sea. Alas, the fated brood !
The empty sky's above ; below, the yawning flood.
Backward they turn to win their native vale,
And strive, with desperate wing, to stem the gale.
In vain ! They fall, by fear and toil opprest,
Till the rude wave assaults their throbbing breast.
Once more ! for life ! they mount with piteous cry,
Then, one by one, they fall, they shriek, they die !

Even thus, by tens and by hundreds, perish innocent chil-
dren, at our own doors, — lost to all the delights of life,
lost in the deeper perdition of the soul, — through lack

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 327

of human sympathy in self-styled Christians. Such chil-
dren are the victims of temptations and exposures, which,,
to all moral intents, they are as incapable of resisting, as
is the half-fledged young of the land-bird to defy the
mingled might of ocean and storm. Is it as noble, is it
as like the Divine Exemplar, to dote over imaginary cre-
ations of loveliness and purity, as to create and foster
that loveliness and purity ourselves in hearts otherwise
perverted and lost ? To describe possible happiness, or
linger over its enchanting delineations, is it, or can it be,
like rescuing children from the very throat of the whirl-
pool which is carrying them down to destruction ; is it
like bestowing happiness, by our own efforts, upon our
sorrowing fellow-mortals ? Look, my friends, for one
moment, around you, and see what things God accom-
plishes without our assistance ; then look again, and see
for the accomplishment of what things God honors us by
demanding our aid. To combine insensate elements into
a flower ; to spread the rainbow across the dark folds of
the retreating storm ; to emblaze the deep recesses of the
firmament with new constellations ; — these works God
has left to blind mechanical and organic laws. But to
rear the amaranth of virtue for a celestial soil ; to pale
the diamond's glow by the intenser effulgence of genius ;
to pencil, as with living flame, a rainbow of holy promise
and peace upon the blackness and despair of a guilty life;
to fit the spirits of weak and erring mortals to shine for-
ever, as stars, amid the Host of Heaven ; — for these di-
viner and more glorious works, God asks our aid ; and
He points to the children who have been evoked into life,
as the objects of our labor and care. One drop of baptis-
mal water poured upon the infant's head, from the holy
font of wisdom and love, will quench more of the fires of
guilt, than an ocean of consecrated waters can afterwards

328 DISTEICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

extinguish. And is it not time for the self-styled disci-
ples of Christ to repel the bitter irony of their name ? Is
it not time for them to imitate the Divine Master on whose
name they call, and, like him, surrender the pleasures of
luxury and sense, that they may go about doing good ?
Is it not time for them to seek out the children of wretch-
edness, — and so much the more as they are the more
wretched, — and fold them in their arms, and bless them
by instruction and example ? The garden of an earthly
paradise for mankind can never be entered but through
the Garden of Gethsemane. Yet where are they who
sweat drops of blood in their agony for the welfare of the
race ; where are they who spurn the honors and distinc-
tions of an earthly ambition, and say, of the proffered
empire of the world, that it is an offence ; where are
they whose striving soul sleep does not visit at the com-
ing-on of night, whose head is pillowless, though sur-
rounded by chambers of Oriental magnificence, and who
enter the path of duty with unfaltering step, although in
the vista's distant perspective there stands the fatal cross V
If Peter were one of us, and should stand unconcerned
in the midst of the rising generation, and put forth no
helping hand to succor them, he would need no oath to
seal his perfidy to his Master, — forsworn by apathy
alone !

Oh ! how forever beautiful and divine in the sight of
man ; how holy in the eye of Heaven ; how gladdening
in the retrospect of all coming ages ; if, instead of sur-
rendering their cultivated powers to the dreams and fan-
tasies of romance, the daughters of opulence and leisure
would awaken to the realities of the only true and worthy
existence, and would seek an enduring happiness, —
where they would be sure to find it, — in carrying knowl-
edge and virtue and joy to the children of poverty and

DISTRICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 329

wretchedness ! Let them lead these darkling wanderers
to the joyful light of knowledge. Let them shake free
the wings of immortal spirits, now so clogged with the
mire of earth, that they cannot soar upward to heaven.
Beneath the feet of such angel ministers, as they go on
their errands of mercy and love, the very earth is hal-
lowed ; and the air is made fragrant and luminous by
their tones and smiles of affection. Surely, no thanks-
giving offered to God can be so grateful as deeds of
charity done to suffering childhood.

But how, I ask, can that pernicious reading, which has
done at least as much as any thing else to separate feel-
ing from action, to sever the natural connection between
benevolent impulses and benevolent deeds, to dissociate
emotions of pity for distress from a desire to succor and
relieve it, — how can the flood of this reading be stayed ?
I answer, that much can be done by the substitution of
books and studies which expound human life and human
duty as God has made them to be. Neither by the force
of public opinion, nor by any enactment of the Sovereign
Legislature, can the noxious works which now infest the
community be gathered into one Alexandrian pile, and
by the application of one torch, the earth be purified from
their contaminations. No ! It must be done, if done at
all, — in the expressive language of Dr. Chalmers, — " by
the expulsive power of a new affection." A purer cur-
rent of thought at the fountain can alone wash the chan-
nels clean. For this purpose, I know of no plan, as yet
conceived by philanthropy, which promises to be so com-
prehensive and efficacious as the establishment of good
libraries in all our school districts, open respectively to
all the children in the State, and within half an hour's
walk of any spot upon its surface.

330 DISTEICT-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.

NOTE. — On the 3d day of March, 1842, the Legislature passed a Resolve
offering a bounty of $15 to each school district in the State which would
appropriate $15, — both sums to be expended for the purchase of a school
library. By subsequent Resolves, enlarging the provisions of the former, it
is now provided that where a district contains more than twice sixty chil-
dren, three times sixty, &c., it may draw as many times $15 from the State
Treasury as the number sixty is contained in the number of its children,
on condition of raising an equal sum. Towns not districted may draw in
the same proportion. A great majority of the districts in the State have
already availed themselves of the privileges of these Resolves.

LECTURE VII.
1840.

LECTURE VII.

ON SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

MY subject is Punishment, arid, more especially, COR-
PORAL PUNISHMENT, in our schools. Important questions
are agitated, respecting its rightfulness and expediency,
under any circumstances ; and, if rightful and expedient
at all, then respecting its mode, its extent, and the circum-
stances under which it should be inflicted. I despair of
reconciling the conflicting opinions which are entertained
on these topics ; but may I not hope to elucidate some
points pertaining to them, and perhaps to lessen the dis-
tance between the extremes of doctrine now existing
amongst us?

All punishment, considered by itself, is an evil. In
other words, all pain, considered by itself, is an evil ; and
the immediate object of punishment is the infliction of
pain. I think that no one who does not altogether deny
the existence of evil will deny that pain, abstracted from
all antecedents and consequences, is evil ; and, if any
one denies that evil exists, I answer him in the language
of Soame Jenyns, " let him have the toothache, or get
into a law-suit." The ultimate object of punishment is
to avert an evil greater than itself. We justify ourselves
for inflicting it, — not because it is a pleasure to us to do
so, — for that would be diabolical ; nor wholly because
the culprit deserves it ; for if we could arrest him and
reform him, as well without the infliction of pain as with
it, no benevolent man would prescribe the pain ; and,

334 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

amongst all civilized nations, when a malefactor, who has
been condemned to death, becomes insane, he is respited
until reason is restored ; although it is clear that the loss
of reason cannot expiate tho past offence, and, there-
fore, that the deserts of the transgressor remain the same
as before. We do not then inflict punishment wholly
because it is deserved ; but we inflict it that we may
ward off a greater evil by a less one, — a permanent evil
by a temporary one. We administer it, only as a physi-
cian sometimes administers poison to a sick man, — not
because poison is congenial to the healthy sj^stem, nor,
indeed, because poison is congenial to the diseased sys-
tem ; but because it promises to arrest a fatal malady
until appropriate remedial measures can be taken. Would
any person be upheld or approved, by a sane community,
for inflicting the pain of punishment upon a child, when
he could have produced the desired object as well without
it ? Punishment, then, taken by itself, is always to be
considered as an evil. The practical deduction from this
principle, is, that the evil of punishment should always
be compared with the evil proposed to bo removed by it ;
and, in those cases only where the evil removed prepon-
derates over the evil caused, is punishment to be tolerated.
The opposite course would purchase exemption from a
less evil, by voluntarily incurring a greater one.

These principles seem clear, and for their support I
believe we have the concurrent opinion of all writers of
any note, on jurisprudence or ethics, and of all sensible
men. In following out these principles to their applica-
tion, I fear I may fall into error ; and I proceed, with
unfeigned diffidence, to a further development of my
views. Should I differ from others, I only ask, — what
I am most ready, on my own part, to give, — a candid
reconsideration of the points of disagreement.

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 335

Let me premise, that there are two or three peculiar
difficulties attending the discussion of this subject. If
the truth lies, as I believe it does, in the mean, and not
in either of the extremes, then those ultraists who believe
in the doctrine either of no-punishment, or of all-punish-
ment, will be prone to seize upon arguments or conces-
sions, on their own side, to reject those on the other side,
and thus confirm themselves in their respective ultraisrns ;
and perhaps, at the same time, bring forward a charge of
inconsistency. Probably there is no subject, which it is
more difficult for a speaker to balance well in his own
mind, and to leave well balanced in the minds of his
hearers.

Again ; it is undoubtedly true that most men have
formed their opinions on the subject of punishment, more
from feeling and less from reflection, than perhaps on
any other subject whatever. In conversing upon this topic,
I have almost uniformly observed, that my collocutor
has advanced positive, decided general opinions, and then
adverted to some particular fact, in his own experience or
observation, on which the general opinions had been
founded. But sound opinions are usually the result of
an extended survey of facts. Here, however, the inten-
sity with which a single fact has been felt is a substitute
for numbers. The judgment of many a man has been
decided, — if not enlightened, — respecting the whole
subject of punishment, by one vivid impression made,
while a schoolboy, on his back or hand. Two boys fight.
One of them gets seriously injured. The schoolmaster
punishes the victor. The vanquished boy and his parents
approve the avenging dispensation, and become strenu-
ous advocates for high-toned discipline. The victorious,
but punished boy, with his parents, question the policy,
perhaps deny altogether the right of chastisement. And

336 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

thus the same fact gives rise to opposite opinions, accord-
ing to the relation sustained towards it by the parties.

Probably on no other subject, pertaining to Education,
is there so marked a diversity or rather hostility of opin-
ion as on this ; nor on any other, such perseverance, not
to say obstinacy, in adhering to opinions once formed.
Where feeling predominates, there is a strong tendency
to ultraism ; and questions respecting punishment are
more often decided by sensation than by reflection.
Hence the extremes to which opinions run, and the posi-
tiveness and dogmatism with which they are advocated
by the partisans of each side. In the public station
which it is my lot to fill, I have been present at many
discussions on this subject, and have held conversation
and correspondence respecting it with a great number of
individuals, in all parts of the Commonwealth ; and I
find one party strenuously maintaining, that improve-
ment in our schools can advance only so far and so fast
as bodily chastisement recedes, while the other party re-
gard a teacher or a parent, divested of his instruments of
pain, as a discrowned monarch. It is no exaggeration to
say, judging from their tone of earnestness and confi-
dence, that there are men who would destroy all trees
and shrubbery in order to abolish the means of flagel-
lation, while others seem devoutly to believe that a good
supply of the materials for whipping is the final cause
for trees growing ; and they would always locate a
schoolhouse in convenient vicinity to a hickory or birchen
grove, — not for the shade, but for the substance.

The first point which I shall consider, is, whether cor-
poral punishment is ever necessary in our schools. As
preliminary to a decision of this question, let us take a
brief survey of facts. We have, in this Commonwealth,
about one hundred and eighty thousand * children be-

* Now, (1845,) above 192,000.

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 337

tween the ages of four and sixteen years. All these
children are not only legally entitled to attend our public
schools, but it is our great desire to increase that attend-
ance, and he who increases it is regarded as a reformer.
All that portion of these children who attend school,
enter it from that vast variety of homes which exist in
the State. From different households, where the widest
diversity of parental and domestic influences prevail, the
children enter the schoolroom, where there must be com-
parative uniformity. At home, some of these children have
been indulged in every wish, flattered and smiled upon,
for the energy of their low propensities, and even their
freaks and whims have been enacted into household laws.
Some have been so rigorously debarred from every inno-
cent amusement and indulgence, that they have opened
for themselves a way to gratification, through artifice and
treachery and falsehood. Others, from vicious parental
example, and the corrupting influences of vile associates,
have been trained to bad habits and contaminated with
vicious principles, ever since they were born ; — some
being taught that honor consists in whipping a bojr larger
than themselves ; others that the chief end of man is to
own a box that cannot be opened, and to get money
enough to fill it.; and others again have been taught,
upon their fathers' knees, to shape their young lips to the
utterance of oaths and blasphemy. Now, all these dispo-
sitions, which do not conflict with right more than they
do with each other, as soon as they cross the threshold
of the schoolroom, from the different worlds, as it were,
of homes, must be made to obey the same general regula-
tions, to pursue the same studies, and to aim at the same
results. In addition to these artificial varieties, there
are the natural differences of temperament and disposi-
tion.

VOL. I. 22

338 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

Again ; there are about three thousand public schools
in the State, in which are employed, in the course of the
year, about five thousand different persons, as teachers,
including both males and females. Excepting a very few
cases, these five thousand persons have had no special
preparation or training for their employment, and many
of them are young and without experience. These five
thousand teachers, then, so many of whom are unpre-
pared, are to be placed in authority over the one hundred
and eighty thousand children, so many of whom have
been perverted. Without passing through any transition
state, for improvement, these parties meet each other in
the schoolroom, where mutiny and insubordination and
disobedience are to be repressed, order maintained, knowl-
edge acquired. He, therefore, who denies the necessity
of resorting to punishment, in our schools, — and to cor-
poral punishment, too, — virtually affirms two things :
— first, that this great number of children, scooped up
from all places, taken at all ages and in all conditions,
can be deterred from the wrong and attracted to the
right, without punishment ; and secondly, he asserts that
the five thousand persons whom the towns and districts
employ to keep their respective schools, are now, and in
the present condition of things, able to accomplish so
glorious a work. Neither of these propositions am I, at
present, prepared to admit. If there are extraordinary
individuals, — and we know there are such, — so singu-
larly gifted with talent and resources, and with the divine
quality of love, that they can win the affection, and, by
controlling the heart, can control the conduct of children,
who, for years, have been addicted to lie, to cheat, to
swear, to steal, to fight, still I do not believe there are now
five thousand such individuals in the State, whose heaven-
ly services can be obtained for this transforming work.

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 339

And it is useless, or worse than useless, to say, that such
or such a thing can be done, and done immediately, with-
out pointing out the agents by whom it can be done.
One who affirms that a thing can be done, without any
reference to the persons who can do it, must be thinking
of miracles. If the position were, that children may be
so educated from their birth, and teachers may be so
trained for their calling, as to supersede the necessity of
corporal punishment, except in cases decidedly monstrous,
then I should have no doubt of its truth ; but such a
position muse have reference to some future period, which
we should strive to hasten, but ought not to anticipate.

Coinciding, then, with those who assert the necessity
of occasional punishment, and even of occasional corpo-
ral punishment, in our schools, it seems to me that the
more strenuous of its advocates are disposed to give too
latitudinarian a construction to one argument in its favor.
They quote and apply, as though there were no qualifica-
tion or limit to their applicability, such passages as these
from the Proverbs of Solomon : — " He that spare th the
rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chastiseth him
betimes." " Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,
but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him."
" Withhold not correction from the child, for if thou
beatest him with the rod, he shall not die." " Thou
shalt beat him with a rod, and shalt deliver his soul from
hell." " The rod and reproof give wisdom," &c., <fec.
Now if these passages, and such as these, are applicable,
in their unqualified and literal sense, to our times, then,
indeed, we must admit that the rod is the emblem of all
the Christian graces. But, by the Mosaic law, he that
smote his father or his mother was to be put to deatli :
and why is there not as much reason to suppose that the
latter of these commands remains unabrogated and un-

340 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

qualified, as well as the former; and, therefore, that the
true remedy for those who now make forcible resistance
to parental control, is, not the House of Reformation
for juvenile offenders, but the gallows ? But can any
one suppose that the passages above cited, and others of a
kindred nature, were to be taken without any qualifica-
tion, even in the age in which they were written ? Can
any one suppose that they were designed for all children
alike, and to be exclusive of all other practicable means
to deter from wrong-doing ? And yet, there is no express
limitation. If alike applicable to all children, at that
time, and if they remain unmodified, then they are ap-
plicable to all children, and alike, at the present time.
But again, I say, can any one suppose that the domestic
discipline of a people, like the stiff-necked Jews, so ac-
customed to spectacles and histories of blood and car-
nage ; by whose code so many offences were capital ; who
massacred men, women and children, — whole cities at
a time, — and sawed asunder their prisoners, and tore
them to pieces under harrows of iron ; — can any one
suppose that modes of parental discipline, in a land rife
and red with such spectacles, are to be literally copied in
a state of civilization so different as ours, without the
most positive and unambiguous injunctions ? One fact is
worthy of remark in passing. If the doctrines of Solo-
mon are to be taken literally, then he must have departed
from them most egregiously, in regard to his own house-
hold ; or those doctrines must have failed of their intend-
ed effect, for his son and his grandson proved to be two
of the most atrocious and heaven-contemning sinners
that ever sat upon the throne at Jerusalem.

There is one school, however, where I would give to
these declarations of Solomon the freest interpretation,
applying them to all its pupils, and shivering rods by the

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 341

bundle, — that is, the School for Scandal. There, let the
motto be, " Lay on, Macduff."

But a conclusion in favor of the rightfulness or admis-
sibility of punishment, in school, does nothing towards
sanctioning an indefinite amount of it. Its rightfulness
is limited by its object ; and its only justifiable object is to
restrain from the commission of offences, until remedial
means can be brought to bear upon the offender. Be-
yond this limit, punishment becomes punishable itself.
The object of punishment is, prevention from evil; it
never can be made impulsive to good. Its office is to
seize upon the contemiier of laws, and stop him in his
career of wrong, and hold him still, until by earnest ex-
postulation, by kind advice, by affectionate persuasion, by
a clear display of the nature of the offence committed,
and the duty and the benefits of an opposite course, the
offender can be led to inward repentance, and to resolu-
tions of amendment. To produce such repentance and
resolutions, is a work of time, of skill, of wisdom, of
sympathy. It is a work which cannot be done in a min-
ute, and it is because it cannot be done in a minute, that
punishment becomes justifiable, as a means of preventing
a continuance or repetition of the wrong, until a refor-
mation can be effected in the culprit's mind. In all cases,
therefore, the very fact of punishment supposes that a
great deal else is to be done. By punishment, the of-
fender is intercepted in the commission or the pursuit of
wrong ; but it is a wholly different task, and accomplished
by wholly different means, to bring him back to the right,
and to make him see it and love it. Whoever, then,
inflicts punishment, and stops there, omits the weighti-
est part of his duty ; and such omission goes far to take
away all justification for the punishment itself.

I have said that puniskment, in itself, and abstracted

342 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

from its hoped-for consequences, is always an evil. I wish
to add a few considerations showing that it is a very
great evil.

Punishment excites fear ; it is, indeed, the primary
object of -punishment to excite fear ; and fear is a most
debasing, dementalizing passion. It may be proper to
say, that I use the word fear, in this connection, as im-
plying an intense activity of cautiousness, or apprehension
for personal safety ; and not as partaking at all of the
idea of reverence or awe, in which sense it is sometimes
used, in reference to the Supreme Being, — as when it is
said, " The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
It is the former species of fear only that is appealed to by
the infliction of pain, and not one of the virtues ever
grows under the influence of that kind of fear. Such
fear may check the growth of vices, it is true ; and this
is the strongest remark that can be made in its defence ;
but it has, at the same time, a direct tendency to check
the growth of every virtue, because fear of pain is not
an atmosphere in which the virtues flourish ; so that even
the negative good which it produces, in deterring from
wrong, is accompanied by the infliction of some positive
harm. Let any person revert to his own experience, and
then answer the question, whether he was as competent
to think clearly, or to act wisely, when under the influ-
ence of fear, as when calm and self-possessed. Fear may
make a man run faster, but it is always from, not towards
the post of duty. Look at a man in an agony of fear ;
he is powerless, paralyzed, bereft of his senses, and almost
reduced to idiocy, so that, for the time being, he might as
well be without limbs and without faculties as to have
them. It is said that even the hair of the head will turn
gray, in five minutes, under the boiling bleachery of a
paroxysm of fear. . There have been many cases where

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 343

adults, — men whose minds had acquired some constancy
and firmness, — have been made fools for life by sudden
fright, — annulled at once, their brains turned into ashes
by its consuming fires. And if such are the consequences
of intense fear in grown men, what must be the effect
upon the delicate texture of a child's brain, when, with
weapon in hand, a brawny, whiskered madman flies at
the object of his wrath, as a fierce kite pounces upon a
timorous dove ? Yet who of us that has reached middle
age has not seen these atrocities committed against chil-
dren, again and again ?

Another consideration, showing punishment to be a
very great evil, is, that the fear of bodily pain, which it
proposes, makes the character pusillanimous and ignoble.
Children should be trained to a disregard, and even a
contempt, of bodily pain ; so that they may not be un-
nerved and unmanned at the very exigencies, when, in
after-life, fortitude and intrepidity become indispensable
to the performance of duty. Some foolishly-tender par-
ents commit a great mistake when they fuss and flurry,
and gather the whole household around, at every little
rub or scratch received by a child ; and bring out their
apparatus of lint and liniment, — enough for the surgeon
of a man-of-war, in a naval engagement. Sensitiveness
to bodily pain should be discountenanced, because it im-
pairs manliness and steadfastness of character. Children
should be taught that corporal suffering, and imprison-
ment, and death itself, are nothing, compared with loyalty
to truth and the Godlike excellence of well-doing, so that
when they become men they will be able to march, with
unfaltering step, to the post of duty, though their path is
enfiladed by a hundred batteries. But keeping the idea
of bodily pain forever present to a child's mind counter-
works this result. Indeed, a child who is whipped much

344 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

will inevitably be driven into one or the other of two
ruinous extremes. Which of the extremes it shall be, will
depend upon the feebleness or the vigor of his natural
disposition. If constitutionally of a timid and irresolute
character, then frequent correction will excite his cau-
tiousness to such a morbid activity that his check will
blanch and his heart quail at the slightest menace of real
dangers, or the imagination of unreal ones ; and he will
go through life trembling with causeless apprehensions,
and incapable of recovering from one shudder of fear
before he will be seized by another ; — incapable of all
manly resolution and heroism. If, on the other hand, the
child has an energetic will, the very vehemence of which
prompts to disobedience and waywardness, then frequency
of chastisement will exasperate his nature, and make him
recklessly bold and fool-hardy. It will make him despise
the gentleness that belongs to a noble spirit, and mistake
ferocity for courage. Now, what requital can any teach-
er make, which shall be an adequate compensation to a
child for causing his dispositions to grow into a deformity
which shall be a torment and a disgrace to him while life
lasts ? Have you never seen an aged tree whose trunk
still bore the mark where some heedless man had struck
his axe while it was yet young, and have you not observed
that, on the wounded side of the tree, the foliage was
sickly and the branches scraggy and misshapen, while a
superabundance of nutriment sent. up on the other side
had made the limbs shoot out into huge disproportions?
Such wounds are inflicted by unnecessary punishment,
upon the whole moral nature of a child.

But there is another consideration, of still more serious
import. A teacher's duty is by no means restricted to the
mere communication of knowledge. He is to superin-
tend the growth of his pupils' minds. These minds con-

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 345

sist of various powers and faculties, by which they are
adapted to the various necessities, relations and duties of
life. Some of them were given us for self-preservation.
The object of these is, ourselves, — our own existence,
our own sustenance, our own exemption from pain, and
protection against danger and loss ; — in fine, our per-
sonal well-being. Other powers are domestic and social
in their nature, — such as the reciprocal love of parents
and children ; the celestial zone of affection that binds
brothers and sisters into one ; and our attachment to
friends, which, under proper cultivation, enlarges into
fraternal affection for the race. We also have moral and
religious sentiments, which may be exalted into a solemn
feeling of duty towards man and towards God. Now, it
is a most responsible part of the teacher's duty to super-
intend the growth of these manifold powers, and to de-
velop them symmetrically and harmoniously ; to repress
some, to cherish others, and to fashion the whole into
beauty and loveliness as they grow. A child should be
saved from being so selfish as to disregard the rights of
others, or, on the other hand, from being a spendthrift of
his own. He should be saved from being so proud as to
disdain the world, or so vain as to go through the world
beseeching everybody to praise and flatter him. He
should be guarded alike against being so devoted to his
own family as to be deaf and dead to all social claims ;
and against being so quixotically social as to run to the
ends of the earth, to bestow the bounty, for which his
own family and neighborhood are suffering. In fine, the
teacher, as far as possible, is so to educate the child, that
when he becomes a man, all his various faculties shall
have a relative and proportionate activity and vigor, in-
stead of his being nervously excitable on one side of his
nature, and palsy-stricken on the other. This task is most

346 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

difficult, and it requires that all the lights possible should
shine upon the work. -'It is very easy to point out de-
formities of character, as they exhibit themselves glar-
ingly and hideously in manhood ; but it requires great
perspicacity to detect the early tendencies to deformity,
and the utmost delicacy and felicity of touch to correct
them. If a full-grown tree is ugly or misshapen, any-
body can see it, but it is only the skilful cultivator who
can foretell and forestall its irregular tendencies while it
is yet young. It is this duty which makes the office of a
teacher a sacred office. The teaching of A, B, C, and the
multiplication-table, has no quality of sacredness in it ;
but if there is a sacred service, a holy ministry upon
earth, it is that of setting a just bound to the animal ap-
petites and sensual propensities of our nature, and quick-
ening into life, and fostering into strength, all benevolent
and devout affections ; for it is by the relative proportions
between these parts of its nature, that the child becomes
angel-like or fiend-like. Now, that the teacher may
cherish what grows too slow, and check what grows too
fast, it is indispensable that he should become acquainted
with the inmost character and tendencies of his pupil.
The pupil's whole mind and heart should be spread out,
like a map, before the teacher for his inspection. The
teacher should be able to examine this map, to survey ii
on all sides and at anytime, — as you see a connois-
seur walk round a beautiful statue or edifice, that he
may commit all its proportions to memory. And here
comes the evil I refer to. The moment a child's mind is
strongly affected by fear, it flies instinctively away and
hides itself in the deepest recesses it can find, — often in
the recesses of disingenuousness and perfidy and false-
hood. Instead of exhibiting to you his whole conscious-
ness, he conceals from you as much of it as he can ; or

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 347

he deceptively presents to you some counterfeit of it, in-
stead of the genuine. No frighted water-fowl, whose
plumage the bullet of the sportsman has just grazed,
dives quicker beneath the surface, than a child's spirit
darts from your eye when you have filled it with the sen-
timent of fear. And your communication with that
child's heart is at an end ; — on whatever side you ap-
proach him, he watches you and flies, and keeps an im-
passable distance between you and himself, until friendly
relations are re-established between you. His body may
be before you, but not his soul ; or, if his soul ventures to
peep from its hiding-place, it is only in some masquerade
dress of deception, which he supposes may avert your
anger. So long as this relation continues, whatever you
do to him, you do in the dark. As he has ceased to show
you what he is, you cannot know what he needs, and
what will best befit his condition. When was there ever
painter or sculptor so skilful, that he could paint or chisel
without seeing the canvas or the marble on which he
wrought ? And when was ever a teacher so omniscient,
that he could cultivate habits and character aright, unless
he was admitted from day to day to see those thoughts
and emotions of the child, whose long indulgence will
result in the habits and character of the man ?

A child should always be encouraged to make known
all his doubts and difficulties, both of an intellectual and
of a moral character ; and, if won to you by confidence
instead of being banished from you by fear, he will gen-
erally do so. If a learner does not state his doubt or
difficulty at the time he feels it, the season will pass by,
perhaps never to return. And certainly no other time
can be so favorable for acquiring correct information, or
for solving a doubt, as the time when the desire or the
doubt arises in the mind. Yet, if a pupil fears even

348 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

a rebuke or a frown, he will allow the proper occasions
to pass by, at the hazard of remaining ignorant forever.

Are not these considerations sufficient to show that
punishment, — I mean more particularly, corporal pun-
ishment,— and the fear which punishment proposes, con-
stitute a great evil ? Yet great as the evil is, I admit
that it is less than the evil of insubordination or disobe-
dience. It is better, therefore, to tolerate punishment, in
cases where the teacher has no other resource, than to
suffer insubordination or disobedience in our schools.
Yet how infinitely better, to secure order and proficiency,
by the power of conscience and the love of knowledge ; —
to supersede the necessity of violence by moral means.
This is already done in a considerable number of schools ;
I trust it is done, with regard to some scholars, in every
school ; — that is, I trust there are at least some scholars
in every school in the Commonwealth who never know
the degradation of the lash. I trust there is no teacher,
with such a vacuum of good qualities and such a plenum
of bad ones, as to create the necessity for indiscriminate
and universal flogging. What, then, ought teachers to
do ? I answer, they should aim to reach those higher
and higher points of qualification, which shall enable them
to dispense more and more with the necessity of punish-
ment. If there is any teacher so low in the scale of fit-
ness or competency as to feel obliged to punish every
day, he should strive to prolong the interval to once a
week. If any teacher punishes but once a quarter, he
should strive to punish but once a year. If any one dis-
graces himself and human nature by punishing fifty per
cent of his pupils, he should either leave the school, or
make a most liberal discount from such an intolerable
percentage. If any one punishes ten per cent of his
pupils, he should strive to reduce the number to five, to

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 340

three, to one per cent, — and then, if possible, to none
at all. If there are five per cent of our teachers who
now keep school without punishment, this number should
be increased, as fast as possible, to ten per cent, to thirty,
to sixty, to ninety per cent.* That the necessity of pun-
ishment, so vehemently urged by some teachers, — and
which is urged most vehemently by those who punish
most, — is found, when analyzed, to be a necessity that
arises from a want of competency, or fitness, in the
teacher himself, rather than from any perversity or un-
governableness in the scholars, is demonstrable from this
fact ; — that certain teachers find it necessary to punish
their pupils abundantly, but, on leaving the schools, and
being succeeded by competent persons, the necessity of
punishment vanishes, — the same schools being governed
without it. Instances have occurred where a teacher
who could not govern without punishment, has been fol-
lowed, through successive schools, by one who could, —
thus proving that the alleged necessity of punishment be-
longed to the teacher and not to the schools. Many a
teacher has been turned out of school, because he could
not govern without punishment, nor even with it ; and
has been succeeded, the next week, by one who found no
occasion to use it, — thus affording demonstrative evi-
dence, that the necessity of punishment, in those cases,
was not in human nature, but only in the nature of Mr.
A. B. Such is the result to be aimed at, longed for,

* There are now (1845) at least ten to one of our teachers, as compared
with the number in 1839 (when this lecture was written), who keep school
without corporal punishment. And in ninety-nine towns in every hundred,
in the State, the flogging of girls, even where it exists at all, is an excecdingly
rare event. Since 1837, the number of schools in the State, annually broken
up through the incompetency of the teachers, or the insubordination of the
scholars, has been reduced from between three and four hundred, to about
fifty.

350 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

toiled for, by all. In the mean time, I blame no teacher
for occasional punishment, nor even for occasional corpo-
ral punishment. But what seems to me utterly unjusti-
fiable, is, the defence of punishment, as though it were
a good ; or the palliation of it, as though it were not a
great evil. What seems to me worthy of condemnation,
is, a resort to punishment, because it may seem to be a
more summary and convenient method of securing obedi-
ence and diligence than such a preparation for lessons ou
the part of the teacher, as would make them attractive
to the pupil ; and such exhibitions of kindness and inter-
est, as would win the affection of a child, and make him
a grateful co-operator, instead of a toiling slave. An
hour spent daily, by the teacher, in the preparation of
lessons, an anecdote, a narrative, an illustrative picture,
would be a far more powerful awakener of dormant or
sluggish minds, than the rod. A private interview with
a neglectful or disorderly pupil, a visit to his family, some
little attention or gratuity bestowed upon him, — any
mode, in fine, of evincing a genuine interest in his wel-
fare, — would oftentimes accomplish what it is not in the
power of blows to do. " By mercy and truth, iniquity is
purged," says Solomon ; "and by the fear of the Lord,"
— not by the fear of man, — "men depart from evil."

As the profession of teaching rises in the estimation of
the public, and as teachers improve in their capacities and
disposition to fulfil the sacred duties of their office, may
we not hope for a gradual change in our schools, in this
respect, equally auspicious to them and to society ? And
may we not expect that those teachers who enjoy the
most of social consideration and of emolument will take
the lead in diffusing a higher spirit and in setting a nobler
example ?

Allow me here to say a word respecting a notion which

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 351

I sometimes hear advocated, but which seems to me un-
tenable. As an argument against corporal punishment,
it is sometimes urged, that it makes the body a vicarious
and involuntary sufferer for the offences of the mind. It
is the mind, say these metaphysicians, which wills, which
offends ; and to punish the body for the offences of the
mind, is as unjust as to punish John for the sins of Peter.
But, if it is the mind which offends, in the guilty act, is it
not also the mind which suffers, in the consequent penal-
ty ? Take away the mind, — that is, leave the body a
corpse, and would its dead members then suffer ? I con-
fess, I cannot fathom the philosophy of this objection.
There is, however, one way in which it can be answered,
even on the principles which it assumes. If body and
mind are to be considered as two, so as to exempt the
former from suffering for the offences of the latter ; —
even then, though the mind may be the original offender,
yet the body becomes a particeps criminis, — a partaker
in the crime, — by consenting to carry the criminal pur-
pose of the mind into execution ; and it may therefore
be lawfully punished as an accessory after the fact.

As to modes of punishment, not much needs be said, for
the savageness of torture formerly practised in our schools
is now nearly discontinued, though it is still retained to a
frightful extent in many families. When I was at the
bar, I knew a father, who was a blacksmith by trade, and
who used to punish his son by confining him in the cellar
and carrying do\vn heated nail-rods with which to punch
and goad him. Before the boy was fifteen years old, he was
tried for a capital offence. I was assigned by the court
as his counsel. He was convicted and sentenced to death,
though the penalty was commuted to imprisonment, in
the state-prison, for life. Such a fate was the natural
result of such an education. If one or the other must

352 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

have gone to the gallows, who can doubt that it should
have been the father, and not the son ? When an angry
man chastises a child, it is not punishment ; it is down-
right fighting, and so much the more criminal and dis-
graceful, as the person assailed is a child, and not a
man.

Blows should never be inflicted on the head. We
observe, every day, how thin the skull of an infant is.
We can see the pulse beat, on the top of its head. The
cranium does not ordinarily become fixed in its shape,
until the age of twenty-five years, — sometimes, not until
a much later period of life. Dr. Griscom, in his excellent
work, entitled " Animal Mechanism," says, " a vibration
of the skull, by communicating a corresponding motion
to the brain, is more dangerous ofttimes than an instru-
ment forced through the bones and piercing the sub-
stance of the brain." And again; "Concussion of the
brain is generally more productive of immediate serious
results, than a puncture of its substance. It is well
known, in fact, that a considerable portion of it [the
brain] may be removed or destroyed, without proving
fatal, or even injuring the mental faculties ; but a sud-
den jar of its whole substance will almost certainly de-
prive the individual of all sense and consciousness, and,
if not speedily recovered from, must terminate in death."
This form of punishment, too, is as foolish as it is danger-
ous. To thwack a child over the head because he does
not get his lesson, is about as wise as it would be to rap
a watch with a hammer because it does not keep good
time. No one, could he but see the delicate texture of
the brain, — that organ where the Deity has brought the
material and the immaterial, the earthly and the immor-
tal substances together, making each atom of the former
so nice, so ethereal, so divinely-fashioned, and suspending

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 353

all, as it were, particle by particle, in the " Dome o.
Thought," so that they might leap, with lightning quick-
ness, at the command of the all-pervading yet invisible
soul ; — no one, I say, who has ever seen this, if he be
not a madman or a fool, will ever again strike a child
upon the head I have no doubt that the intellects of
thousands of children have been impaired for life, by the
blows which some angry parent or teacher has inflicted
upon the head. Nature, foreseeing that the brain would
be exposed to accidents, secured it, on all sides, by the
hard bones of the cranium ; and, to conceal any rugged-
ness in the solid masonry, she caused a silky vegetation to
spring up from and adorn it. Had she foreseen how
brutally it would be assaulted by men, would she not
rather have encircled it with a spherical iron-fender, or
made it bristle, all over, with porcupine's quills, to give
it a defence instead of an ornament ? Even in the British
army and navy, where whipping has been, for frequency,
like their daily bread, certain parts of the frame, such as
the head and loins, have been held sacred from the in-
struments of torture.

Neither should a child ever be subjected to any violent
motion or concussion, such as seizing him by the arm,
holding him out at arm's-length, and shaking him, — the
whole weight of the body being suspended by a single
ligament, and the strain upon that being greatly increased
by the jerking. Most of us have experienced the shock
which even a slight fall may give to the system. When,
in descending a flight of steps, we mistakingly suppose
we have reached the bottom, and so step forward upon
the air, instead of the floor, the jar to the whole body is
always uncomfortable, and sometimes serious ; but how
much more severe must be the effect upon the feebly-
knitted frame of a child, when a strong man seizes him,

VOL. I. 23

354 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

and jerks him forwards and backwards, as a coachman
cracks a whip ; and then dashes him upon the floor, feet
foremost, shortening his dimensions, as one shuts up a
telescope ; and coils him and uncoils him, and crimps him
and stretches him smooth again ! I have seen a man
seize two boys, at a time, in school, for some joint mis-
demeanor, and, holding them by the back of the coat-
collar, make them " chassee " right and left, then "for-
ward and back two" and, at last, bring them together
with a terrific "dos-d-dos" until his own strength or the
tailor's stitching gave way ; and do it all with as much
zest as though it were an exercise in gymnastics.

Corporal punishment should be with a rod, rather than
with a ferrule, and below the loins or upon the legs,
rather than upon the body or hand.

In regard to the extent or severity of punishment, it is
obvious that it must be a reality, and not a sham. If
the lightning never struck, nobody would be afraid of the
thunder. Yet the opposite extreme is to be sedulously
guarded against. In all schools that are rightly gov-
erned, it is the mortification of being punished, quite as
much as the bodily smart or tingling, which causes it to
be deprecated, and gives it efficacy. If the common
standard or average of punishment is fixed low, whatever
exceeds that amount will be equally as formidable as
though the average were higher. Besides, if the penalty
for moderate offences be very severe, what shall be done
in aggravated cases ? Where stealing a shilling is pun-
ishable with death, and murder with nothing more, it is,
virtually, offering a premium on murder. The most dis-
orderly school I ever saw, was one where the teacher car-
ried a rattan in his hand all the time ; and even while the
company was present, there was scarcely any thing done,
except giving a practical synopsis of the verb to whip. A

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 355

universality of whipping defeats itself. Where all share
the same odious fortune, disgrace attaches to none. Like
the inhabitants of Botany Bay, all being rogues, nobody
loses caste. Shame never belongs to multitudes. It is
the separation of one or a few from all others, and affix-
ing a stigma upon them, that begets shame.

In graduating the amount of punishment, we should
regard the motive from which the offence proceeded, and
not the consequences which may have been produced by
it. In the government of children, people are prone to
look at the outward, external consequences of the wrong-
ful act, and to apportion the punishment according to
the mischief done ; — for a small mischief punishing
lightly, for a serious one, severely. This is a false
criterion. An act merely careless may set a house on
fire; and again, an attempt to burn a house may fail,
through the merest accident, and do no injury. The true
rule, in meting out punishment, is, to disregard the ex-
ternal consequences, to look to the intention and motive
from which the offence emanated, and to apportion the
penalty to the wickedness of the intent, whether it took
effect or failed. It is the condition of the mind that is to
be regarded. If that is wrong, all is wrong ; if that is
right, it is of comparatively little consequence what out-
ward effects may have followed. Teach children, that to
die is but a small calamity ; to be depraved, a great one.

One word more as to the extent or amount of punish-
ment. Severe punishments are usually incurred by the
violent outbreak of some passion or propensity. A child
has a quarrelsome disposition, and beats a schoolmate ;
or he has been accustomed to place all pleasure in the in-
dulgence of appetite, and steals fruit or cakes ; or he
wishes to conceal a fault, and lies. In these cases, he
acts under the impulse of an appetite or propensity, and

356 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

these impulses are all blind. They act instinctively.
Remove the temptation, in these cases, — that is, let the
desired object be attainable without the commission of
the offence, — and the offence would not be committed.
The offence is not committed for its own sake, but for the
sake of the gratification or immunity to be purchased by
it. Now, I have no doubt, that when the temptation is
not present, the reason and conscience of most children
tell them plainly enough that the indulgence is wrong.
When the passions are asleep, reason and conscience
affirm their own authority, declare their own rights, and
place themselves in an attitude of defence. But, by and
by, the insurgent passion returns and demands its grati-
fication ; and when reason and conscience place them-
selves in its pathjjt rides them down, as heavy-armed
cavalry ride over unarmed peasantry. In these cases,
reason and conscience are the antagonists of passion ;
but they are not a match for it, and are trodden down by
it. Here, if all other means fail, punishment, that is,
the fear of punishment, may be lawfully called in. as an
ally to duty, so that the child's first thought shall be
this : — However much I desire such or such a pleasure,
I must incur so much pain by obtaining it, that, on the
whole, it is not worth what it will cost. Such is the case
in ten thousand minds, whether of children or of men,
— Fear fighting Desire; — and here the fear, — that is,
the amount of punishment exciting the fear, — should
be strong enough, with such aid as reason and conscience
may contribute, to vanquish the desire. This affords a
rule for the measure of punishment. All beyond this
is wantonness or vindictiveness, and not to be tolerated.
To illustrate what I mean, by an anecdote: Just as a
certain school was closing, one afternoon, a boy named
John, who had become almost crazy with impatience, and

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 357

in whom the steam of discontent had risen almost to the
exploding point, whistled outright. "John," said the
teacher, " was it you who whistled ? " " No, sir," says
John. " Henry," says the teacher, " didn't John whis-
tle?" "Yes, sir," says Henry. "John," says the
teacher, " how dare you say you did not whistle ? " "I
didn't," says John, " it whistle d itself.'" Now, in this
case, if John were to be punished at all, he should only
be punished so much that it would not whistle itself, the
next time.

As to the question, under what circumstances punish-
ment should be inflicted, I think, in the first place, it
should, in ordinary cases, be private, — at recess, or in an-
other apartment, or after the close of the school. Punish-
ment is often braved by audacious natures, and its effect
lost upon them by its publicity. They wish to sustain, or
to win a reputation for hardiness and indomitableness of
spirit, and hence they will bear any punishment, if pub-
licly inflicted, without shrinking or flinching ; — just as
an Indian sings when he is tortured, or as some steel-
fibred malefactors walk unconcernedly up the gallows'
ladder, as though they were going up stairs to bed. So
far as the effect upon other pupils is concerned, it is ob-
vious that their imaginations will be likely to exaggerate
an unknown punishment beyond the reality, unless, in-
deed, it be terribly severe. Under actual inspection,
punishment would have its limits of suffering ; but im-
agination has no limits.

Punishment should never be inflicted without deep so-
lemnity of manner. The teacher should exhibit every
indication that he suffers more pain in giving, than its
object does in receiving it. Because grown persons arc
out of the way of punishment, they are prone to think
of it lightly, to speak of it lightly, and to inflict it lightly.

358 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

But it is a solemn dispensation, and should be treated
with corresponding solemnity. I believe a finely-tempered
child suffers as much, by being kept from his playmates
after school, to be punished, as a high-spirited man would
suffer, in being taken to prison from family and friends.
How obvious then it is, that punishment should never be
inflicted in a passion, — unless, indeed, it be a passion of
tears. Angry feelings in a teacher beget angry feelings
in a pupil, and if these are repeated, day after day, they
will at last rise to obstinacy, to obduracy and incorrigible-
ness. No man can conceive the difference which must be
produced in the future character and happiness of chil-
dren, and eventually upon the future character and hap-
piness of the whole community, if, on the one hand, the
early years of life are filled with' dissocial, morose and
revengeful feelings, or, on the other, with sentiments of
tenderness and affection. I will not cite the case of
barbarous tribes, because they are an extreme ; but
whence did the old Romans derive their inexorableness
and impenetrability of heart ? They rose to the highest
state of ancient civilization, and yet their national em-
ployment was war ; their national resources were plunder,
and their national glory consisted in unrighteous victo-
ries, won over unoffending nations. Under such influ-
ences, their hearts became more impenetrable than the
iron mail that covered them. In their religion, Mars
received ten times more homage than Jupiter. They
prayed and sacrificed to the latter, just enough to retain
his good will, but the former was the god of their affec-
tions. This intense destructiveness in the national char-
acter was cultivated by their exhibitions of fighting wild
beasts, and their gladiatorial contests. One of these
spectacles lasted more than four months ; eleven thousand
animals of different kinds were killed, and ten thousand

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 359

gladiators fought. Think of a people who could give
the appellation of "Games" to these blood-reeking abom-
inations. Every person who manifests cruelty or anger
before the young, does all he can to fashion their un-
formed tempers into this revolting and unchristian shape.

Is not the British nation celebrated, the world over, for
the aggressive spirit of its policy, and, with many beauti-
ful exceptions, for the unamiable character of its people ;
and is it not in the schools of Great Britain that punish-
ments are more frequent and more severe than in any
other part of Christendom ? I know it is said that this se-
verity in the discipline of children is accompanied by great
hardihood of spirit and by distinguished martial bravery
in men. Look into British factories and British mines,
and see by what else it is accompanied !

Punishment should not be inflicted in haste, nor sum-
marily. It should bear every mark of consideration, and
of being administered from the moral compulsion of duty.
Its effects pervade the whole moral nature of a child.
By its application, the disease may not be cured, but only
driven in, to break out with increased violence at another
time, or in another place. The times when a punished
child is dismissed or sent back to his seat are among the
most decisive epochs in his moral history. Often, they
are turning-points in the journey of life, where, for good,
or for evil, he leaves one path and enters upon another ;
and though, at first, their divergency may be slight, yet
their terminations may be as far asunder as the upper
from the nether world. Hence the necessity of learning
the condition of his feelings at those times, in order to
rectify whatever may be wrong in them. I confess that I
have been amazed and overwhelmed, to see a teacher
spend an hour at the black-board, explaining arithmeti-
cal questions, and another hour on the reading or gram-

360 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

mar lessons ; and, in the mean time, as though it were
only some interlude, seize a boy by the collar, drag him
to the floor, castigate him, and remand him to his seat, —
the whole process not occupying two minutes. Such la-
borious processes for the intellect, such summary dealings
with the heart ; — with that part of us, where all motives
reside, whence all actions proceed, and which shall grow
in loftiness, until we become, in moral stature, taller than
archangels, or arch-fiends ! But, says the teacher, in de-
fence of his extempore inflictions, I have no time for your
homilies and moralizings. I should come short of my daily
round of tasks, I must skip or clip my recitations, did 1
spend time to inquire whether the child thought himself
wronged or justly dealt by ; whether he would look back-
ward upon the occasion with repentance, or forward with
revenge ; whether conscience were alive or dead in his
breast. But, for man's sake and for Heaven's sake, let
rne ask, what was time made for, if not for these moral
uses ? — To what holier purpose can time be appropriated,
than, when a child gets lost in error, to set his face to-
wards the right point of the moral compass before he is
started off again? The glass of time contains no sands
more sacred than those which run during these precious
moments. When I look back to the playmates of my
childhood ; when I remember the acquaintance which I
formed with nine college classes ; when I cast my eye
over the circles of men with whom professional and pub-
lic duties made me conversant ; I find amongst all these
examples, that, for one man who has been ruined for
want of intellect or attainment, hundreds have perished
for want of morals. And yet, with this disproportion be-
tween the causes of human ruin, we go on, bestowing at
least a hundred times more care and pains and cost in the
education of the intellect, than in the cultivation of the

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 861

moral sentiments, and in the establishment of moral prin-
ciples. From year to year, we pursue the same course of
navigation, with all these treasure-laden vessels going
down to destruction around us and before us, when, if the
ocean in which they are sunk were not fathomless and
bottomless, the wrecks, ere this, would have rilled it solid
to the surface.

Let me adjure teachers to reconsider this whole sub-
ject ; to apportion anew the appeals to the physical and
to the moral nature of children ; and, if the practice
anywhere still exists of punishing by sections or rjlatoons,
without inquiry and without counsel, to abolish it, instan-
taneously and forever.

A child may surrender to fear, without surrendering to
principle. But it is the surrender to principle only which
has any permanent value. The surrender of a child to
fear, is like a surrender of our purse to a highwayman,
whom, that very instant, we would shoot if we could.
Hence, after the outward demonstrations of the inward
evil have been repressed, let not teacher or parent think
that his labor is done. It is only begun. In a moral
sense, the child is still a valetudinarian. Often, the very
process which quells the rage of the disease, weakens the
constitution of the patient, and special pains become so
much the more necessary to re-establish health. Let the
cordial of love and consolation be administered to the
wounded spirit. This is often the most delicate, always
the most important part of the process. I had almos,t
said, better die of the disease than to expel it by remedies,
which, proving fatal to the constitution, entail a daily
torture upon all subsequent life. The external manifesta-
tion,— the overt acts, — of a passion, may be stifled,
while the passion itself lives on, and broods over its viper-
offspring in the silent breast. Instead of a solemn re-

362 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

solve against further indulgence, it may be nursing its
strength in secrecy for a postponed gratification. It may
have withdrawn from outward view, but be lying in am-
bush, and watching the hour when it can securely leap
upon its victim. Now, no fury of external outbreak is so
much to be dreaded and deprecated as these silent
machinations, or foretastes of revenge. It is, therefore,
no paradox to say, that order and silence and regularity
may be maintained, in a school, by a course of discipline,
which, while it seems to make a good school, shall, in
reality, be a skilfully arranged process for making bad
men. The feelings, with which the child leaves the bar
and the tribunal, — the course which is given to his
future feelings by the executions of the sentence; — this,
as it regards the moral welfare of the child, is the whole ;
— all else is as nothing, compared with it. His moral
nature has been fused in the fires of shame and pain, and
the question is, in what shapes, of good or of evil, it shall
harden as it cools. Everybody is familiar with the story
of Dr. Bowditch, who came near to being inhumanly
punished for an alleged falsehood, because he said he had
solved an arithmetical question, whose solution required
more talent than his tyrannical master supposed him to
possess. Late in life, that great man spoke of the event
in a manner which showed that, after the lapse of half
a century, the feeling of righteous indignation towards
the teacher was still vivid in his breast. How often do
we meet men, who never speak of some former teacher
of theirs, without a contraction of the whole muscular
system ; — without such involuntary motions as would
indicate that they were crushing a viper in their hands,
and had the head of a serpent under their heel ! Punish-
ment inflicted by such teachers may have prevented
whispering in school, but at the expense of a thousand

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 363

muttered curses afterwards. Those whose art it is to
color cloths have a time and a process for what they call
.letting the color. The hour of punishment is the time,
when, perhaps more than at any other time, the com-
plexion of the moral character is set ; — and oh ! how
often it is dyed to that hue of immitigable blackness,
which can neither be purged nor washed away by the
refiner's fire or the fuller's soap !

If angry feelings survive punishment, they can rarely
be concealed from a discerning eye. They will be be-
trayed by the looks, and, especially, by the tones of the
voice. The child will not have the same freedom, or ease
of manner, as before, nor the same zest for accustomed
pleasures. His eye will droop, or turn away, when it
meets that of the teacher, or else it will be fixed upon
him, with a look of defiance. Perhaps he will be even
more punctilious in the discharge of duties, as one of the
concealments for the revenge he is nourishing within.
But that subtlest organ, the voice, will be the great index.
Any of these indications should admonish the teacher
that the realm within is not yet wholly at peace, and that
it needs another visitation from the spirit of duty to calm
its troubled elements. And well may the teacher afford
to spend time and strength for such an object ; for, if he
can effect a thorough reformation, by a change of view or
by the inspiration of a new purpose, it will probably be a
reformation, once for all, — a repentance not to be re-
pented of.

In the management of children, we often aggravate
the obstinacy and incorrigibleness we lament, by perpetu-
ally rebuking and punishing a bad tendency, instead of
expending the same amount of time and means for
inspiring the proper countervailing motives. The relative
strength of any one faculty is as certainly reduced by

364 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

increasing the strength of its antagonist faculties, as by
reducing its own. Remove by introducing. Nourish the
good plant, until it overshadows the bad one, and inter-
cepts its sunshine and absorbs its nutriment. One of the
most efficient means of that revolution which has lately
taken.placc, in the cure of the insane, consists in the sub-
stitution of new trains of thoughts and feelings, until
the former ones die out. While the old physicians strove
to expel the currents of insane thought and emotion, by
scourgings, and drownings, and confinements in dun-
geons, they tried and tortured in vain. They only aggra-
vated the maladies they were appointed to heal. But
from the day that they began to open new sources of
thought and feeling in the minds of their patients, — from
that day, a power to cast out the evil spirits of insanity
was given them. So, in the training of a child, it is
possible to supplant vicious images and vicious desires,
by substituting virtuous images and virtuous desires ; but
it is not possible to create a void by merely removing the
vicious ones.

Another rule is to be observed in administering all re-
bukes and all punishments. Always connect the rebuke
or the punishment with the wrong that incurs it, and not
with the correlative right. Keep the idea of the offence
before the child's mind, as the cause of his suffering. If
you correct a boy for not coming to school half an hour
earlier, he wishes the school was in the Red Sea, because, by
the law of mental association, the punishment is involun-
tarily connected with the school. But correct him for
truancy, in stopping to play at marbles, and the next time
he is tempted to stop and play, the very sight of the
marbles, by the law of association, will make his skin itcli
and tingle. If a boy is convicted of falsehood, and the
teacher, as he lays on the smart, says, " I'll teach you

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 365

how to speak the truth," the boy will hate the very idea"
of truth, for the bad company it comes in. But if the
teacher, in administering the penalty, explains that false-
hood and punishment are Siamese twins, and must go to-
gether, then, when falsehood comes smiling and bland-
ishing along to tempt its victim again, he will see the
terrific form of pain standing by its side. Thus the as-
sociation of pain should always be connected with the
wrong done, and never with the duty omitted. It thus
becomes unconsciously an auxiliary for the right. So,
on the other hand, the rewards of virtue should be always
associated with the virtuous conduct, as though the
former grew naturally from the latter. Every person, at
all conversant with the forum or the senate, knows that
one of the great secrets of an orator's power consists in
his skilful management of the involuntary associations.
If this is an efficient instrument in swaying the minds of
men, how much more so in controlling children !

I cannot close these remarks, without saying a word
upon the general duty of parents whose children are
punished at school. That duty is to espouse the side of
the teacher, to vindicate his conduct, and, especially, to
abstain from all complaint against him in any place where
it may come to the child's ear. They should have an in-
terview with the child himself on the subject ; they should
explain the nature of the misconduct that incurred the
punishment, and they should show them that they, the
parents, suffer shame and mortification, on his account,
sharper than any pain of chastisement can be. They
should strive to close any breach of alienation between
pupil and teacher, which the punishment may have
caused. If the parent has reason to suppose that the
punishment was too severe, or that the mode or spirit of
inflicting it was improper, let him seek a private interview

366 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

with the teacher, frankly state his apprehensions, and
then, like an honest and impartial man, hearken to the
defence that may be made. The punishment of children
at school furnishes the very occasions when that love of
offspring, which Heaven, for the wisest purposes, has
planted in every parental breast, is liable to become inju-
rious and excessive ; and when, therefore, it most needs
the control of reason. Only in cases made flagrant by
their excess, or their frequency, should the conduct of
the teacher receive public animadversion.

I knew a family, in which there were five children, who
received almost all the education they ever had, in the
district school of an obscure country town. It was the
father's custom, during the first week of the winter's
school, to invite the master to dine with him ; and when
the whole family were gathered around the table, to make
the importance of the school, the necessity of good order,
and obedience in it, with other kindred topics, the subject
of conversation ; and then, in the presence of the chil-
dren, to say, as it were incidentally, that he trusted they-
would all behave well ; that they knew no desire was so
near his heart as their welfare ; but that, if they justly
incurred any punishment at school, he should repeat it at
home, because he should consider an offence committed
in school as an offence against himself, as well as against
the teacher. One of the sons, — a boy of such high,
sanguineous temperament that his feelings were subject to
a sort of spontaneous combustion, — one day drew down
punishment upon himself for a practical joke, — which,
if the wit of it had been an atonement, instead of an
aggravation, would have been expiated in the commis-
sion ; — and the fact being known at home, by the very
solemnity of the children's looks, the father inquired into
the circumstances, and, finding the punishment to have

SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS. 367

been well merited, that very night he laid upon the boy's
back what the learned would call a fac-simile, or dupli-
cate original, of the stripes ; and there ended the chapter
of school punishments, in that family, forever. Not
another child, ever afterwards, got sting or tingle at
school ; and this, happening in the old-fashioned times,
when the mischievous system of emulation bore sway, the
children of that family, year after year, swept away all the
prizes, and nobody ever thought of asking who were at
the heads of the classes.

I would conclude with this summary of what has been
said : — that, in the present state of society, and with our
present inexperienced and untrained corps of teachers,
punishment, and even corporal punishment, cannot be
dispensed with, by all teachers, in all schools, and with
regard to all scholars ; that, where a school is well con-
ducted, the minimum of punishment shows the maximum
of qualifications ; that the office of punishment is solely
to restrain transgressors, until other and higher motives
can be brought to bear upon them, and, therefore, that
the great and paramount duty of the teacher, in all cases,
is to regard, as all-essential, the state of mind into which
a child is brought by the punishment, and in which he is
left after it, — the current of thought and feeling intro-
duced being in every respect as important as that which
is turned away ; that, as the object of school is to prepare
for the duties of after-life, it follows that the school is
made for the world, arid not the world for the school ;
and hence, however much any course may seem to pro-
mote the present good appearance or intellectual advance-
ment of the school, yet, if it tends to defeat the welfare
of the future men and women, now composing the school,
its adoption is shortsighted and suicidal ; and finally, that
punishment of no kind is ever inflicted in the right spirit,

368 SCHOOL PUNISHMENTS.

or is likely to be inflicted in the right measure, or with
the right results, unless it is as painful to him who im-
poses as to him who receives it. Let these truths be re-
garded, and Christian teachers and parents, in the few
cases in which they will be called upon to administer
pain, will do it with the noble feelings that animated the
pagan executioner, who gave, as he was commanded, the
cup of poison to Socrates, but wept as he gave it.

" Oh, woe to those who trample on the mind,
That deathless thing ! They know not what they do,
Nor what they deal with. Man, perchance, may bind
'The flower his step hath bruised ; or light anew
The torch he quenches ; or to music wind

_Again the lyre-string from his touch that flew ; —

( But for the soul, oh, tremble, and beware

\ To lay rude hands upon God's mysteries there ! "

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

BOARD OF EDUCATION.

MARCH, 1838.

VOL. I. 24

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

BOARD OF EDUCATION,

The Board of Education, created by an act of the Legis-
lature, approved 2Qth April, 1887, ask permission to
submit their First Annual Report.

THE Board held its first meeting in the Council Cham-
ber in Boston, on the 29th June, 1837. Authority hav-
ing been given, by the law creating the Board, to appoint
a Secretary, the Honorable Horace Mann, late President
of the Senate of the Commonwealth, was elected by bal-
lot to that office. It being provided that the Secretary
should receive a reasonable compensation for his services,
not exceeding one thousand dollars per annum, it was
unanimously agreed by the Board, that this sum should
be allowed as his salary ; - it being understood that he
should devote himself exclusively to the duties of his of-
fice. On this subject, the Board will ask permission to
make a few observations in the sequel of their report.

The duties of the Board, as prescribed by the statute,
are, 1st, to prepare and lay before the Legislature, in a
printed form, on or before the second Wednesday in Jan-
uary, annually, an abstract of the school returns received
by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, and 2d, to make
a detailed report to the Legislature of all their doings,

371

372 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

with such observations as their experience and reflection
may suggest, upon the condition and efficiency of our
system of popular education, and the most practicable
means of improving and extending it.

The first duty has been discharged. The Board at an
early day confided to their Secretary the duty of preparing
an abstract of the school returns. This abstract has been
duly submitted to the Legislature, in a highly convenient
form. The recapitulation at its close, supersedes the
necessity of presenting in this place any summary of its
contents. Imperfect as such a document must nec'essarily
be, it comprises a great amount of valuable information.
The Board are of opinion, that, by such improvements as
experience may suggest, it will be in their power, — if
authority be granted to them, — to render it still more
instructive and useful. It is respectfully recommended,
that power be granted to the Board, by the Legislature,
to direct such amendments in the mode and time of
making the returns, and in the mode of* keeping the
school-register, as will more effectually answer the pur-
poses for which the returns are directed to be made.

It is made the duty of the Secretary, " under the direc-
tion of the Board, to collect information of the actual
condition and efficiency of the common schools and other
means of popular education ; and to diffuse as widely as
possible, throughout every part of the Commonwealth,
information of the most approved and successful methods
of arranging the studies and conducting the education of
the young."

The limited powers conferred on the Board left them
scarce any discretion in the choice of the means, by which
they could enable their Secretary to discharge his duty as
thus prescribed. It was necessary to depend almost ex-
clusively on the voluntary co-operation of the people ;

OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 373

and no way suggested itself in which this co-operation
could be given so effectually, as through the medium *of
conventions, called in each county of the Commonwealth,
to be composed of teachers, school-committee-men, and
the friends of education generally, deputed from the sev-
eral towns to attend these conventions. The conventions
were so arranged as to time, as to be held successively at
convenient intervals throughout the State, in order that
the presence of the Secretary of the Board might be given
at each county convention. It was the purpose of the
Board, that these meetings should also be attended by
such members of their own body, as from their place of
residence were able conveniently to be present ; and this,
when other engagements permitted, has been done. In
pursuance of these views, an address was issued by the
Board to the people of the Commonwealth, a copy of
which will be found subjoined to the Report of the Secre-
tary, herewith presented.

By way of preparation for the county conventions, a
series of questions was prepared by the Secretary, and
widely circulated throughout the Commonwealth, for the
purpose of drawing forth and concentrating information
on the most important points, connected with the subject
of education. A copy of these questions is also sub-
joined.

At the appointed time, the circuit of the county con-
ventions was commenced by their Secretary, and the
Board feel warranted in saying, that his attendance and
public addresses at these meetings were productive of the
happiest effects. Seconded by an enlightened zeal for
the improvement of education, on the part of those by
whom these conventions were attended, it is believed that
his services and efforts have been highly instrumental in
awakening a new interest in the cause of school educa-

374 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

tlon. At the semi-annual meeting of the Board, on the
fii*st day of the present month, a detailed REPORT of his
proceedings was submitted by the Secretary, with various
observations on the leading topics which had engaged his
attention, in the discharge of- his duty. This document
will be found appended to the present report, and the
Board refer to it with great satisfaction, as a result of the
organization of the Board of Education for the first year
of its existence, in the highest degree creditable to its
author, and likely to prove equally beneficial to the cause
of education and acceptable to the people of the Com-
monwealth.

It is not the province of the Board of Education to
submit to the Legislature, in the form of specific projects
of law, those measures, which they may deem advisable
for the improvement of the schools and the promotion of
the cause of education. That duty is respectfully left by
the Board, with the wisdom of the Legislature and its
committees, on whom it is by usage devolved. Neither
will it be expected of the Board, on the present occasion,
to engage in a lengthened discussion of topics, fully
treated in their Secretary's report, to which they beg
leave to refer, as embodying a great amount of fact, and
the result of extensive observation skilfully generalized.
The Board ask permission only to submit a few remarks
on some of the more important topics connected with the
general subject.

1. As the comfort and progress of children at school
depend, to a very considerable degree, on the proper and
commodious construction of schoolhouses, the Board ask
leave to invite the particular attention of the Legislature
to their Secretary's remarks on this subject. As a general
observation, it is no doubt too true, that the schoolhouses
in most of the districts of the Commonwealth are of an

OP THE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 375

imperfect construction. It is apprehended that sometimes
at less expense than is now incurred, and in other cases,
by a small additional expense, schoolhouses much more
conducive to the health and comfort, and consequently to
the happiness and progress of children, might be erected.
Nor would it be necessary, in most cases, in order to in-
troduce the desired improvements, that new buildings
should be constructed. Perhaps in a majority of cases,
the end might be attained to a considerable degree, by
alterations and additions to the present buildings. It is
the purpose of the Secretary of the Board, as early as
practicable, to prepare and submit a special report on the
construction of schoolhouses. When this document shall
be laid before them, it will be for the Legislature to judge,
whether any encouragement can, with good effect, be of-
fered from the school-fund, with a view to induce the
towns of the Commonwealth to adopt those improvements
in the construction of schoolhouses. which experience and
reason show to be of great practical importance in carry-
ing on the business of education.

2. Very much of the efficiency of the best system of
school education depends upon the fidelity and zeal with
which the office of a school-committee-man is performed.
The Board deem it unnecessary to dila.te upon a subject
so ably treated by their Secretary. The difficulties to be
surmounted before the services of able and faithful school-
committee-men can be obtained, in perhaps a majority of
the towns of the Commonwealth, are confessedly great
and various. They can be thoroughly overcome only by
the spirit of true patriotism, generously exerting itself to-
ward the great end of promoting the intellectual improve-
ment of fellow-men. But it is in the power of the Legis-
lature to remove some of the obstacles, among which not
the least considerable is the pecuniary sacrifice involved

376 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

in the faithful and laborious discharge of the duties of
the school committee. The Board have understood, with
great satisfaction, that the subject has been brought before
the House of Representatives. They know of no reason
why the members of school committees should not receive
a reasonable compensation, as well as other municipal
officers, of whom it is not usually expected that they
should serve the public gratuitously. There are none
whose labors, faithfully performed, are of greater moment
to the general well-being. The duties of a member of a
school committee, if conscientiously discharged, are oner-
ous ; and ought not to be rendered more so, by being-
productive of a heavy pecuniary loss, in the wholly unre-
quited devotion of time and labor to the public good.

3. The subject of the education of teachers has been
more than once brought before the Legislature, and is of
the very highest importance in connection with the im-
provement of our schools. That there are all degrees of
skill and success on the part of teachers, is matter of too
familiar observation to need repetition ; and that these
must depend, in no small degree, on the experience of
the teacher, and in his formation under a good discipline
and method of instruction in early life, may be admitted
without derogating, in any measure, from the importance
of natural gifts and aptitude, in fitting men for this as
for the other duties of society. Nor can it be deemed
unsafe to insist that, while occupations requiring a very
humble degree of intellectual effort and attainment de-
mand a long-continued training, it cannot be that the ar-
duous and manifold duties of the instructor of youth
should be as well performed without as with a specific
preparation for them. In fact, it must be admitted, as
the voice of- reason and experience, that institutions for
the formation of teachers must be established among us,

OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 377

before the all-important work of forming the minds of
our children can be performed in the best possible man-
ner, and with the greatest attainable success.

No one who has been the witness of the ease and effect
with which instruction is imparted by one teacher, and
the tedious pains-taking and unsatisfactory progress which
mark the labors of another of equal ability and knowl-
edge, and operating on materials equally good, can enter-
tain a doubt that there is a mastery in teaching as in
every other art. Nor is it less obvious that, within reason-
able limits, this skill and this mastery may themselves
be made the subjects of instruction, and be communicated
to others.

We are not left to the deductions of reason on this sub-
ject. In those foreign countries, where the greatest at-
tention has been paid to the work of education, schools
for teachers have formed an important feature in their
systems, arid with the happiest result. The art of im-
parting instruction has been found, like every other art,
to improve by cultivation in institutions established for
that specific object. New importance has been attached
to the calling of the instructor by public opinion, from
the circumstance that his vocation has been deemed one
requiring systematic preparation and culture. Whatever
tends to degrade the profession of the teacher, in his own
mind or that of the public, of course impairs his useful-
ness ; and this result must follow from regarding instruc-
tion as a business which in itself requires no previous
training.

The duties which devolve upon the teachers even of
our Common Schools, particularly when attended by large
numbers of both sexes, and of advanced years for learn-
ers (as is often the case), are various, and difficult of per-
formance. For their faithful execution, no degree of

378 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

talent and qualification is too great ; and when we reflect
that in the nature of things only a moderate portion of
both can, in ordinary cases, be expected, for the slender
compensation afforded the teacher, we gain a new view
of the necessity of bringing to his duties the advantage of
previous training in the best mode of discharging them.

A very considerable part of the benefit, which those
who attend our schools might derive from them, is un-
questionably lost for want of mere skill in the business
of instruction, on the part of the teacher. This falls
with especial hardship on that part of our youthful popu-
lation, who are able to enjoy, but for a small portion of
the year, the advantage of the schools. For them it is
of peculiar importance, that, from the moment of enter-
ing the school, every hour should be employed to the
greatest advantage, and every facility in imparting knowl-
edge, and every means of awakening and guiding the
mind, be put into instant operation : and where this is
done, two months of schooling would be as valuable as a
year passed under a teacher destitue of experience and skill.
The Board cannot but express the sanguine hope, that
the time is not far distant, when the resources of public
or private liberality will be applied in Massachusetts for
the foundation of an institution for the formation of
teachers, in which the present existing defect will be
amply supplied.

4. The subject of district-school libraries is deemed of
very great importance by the Board. A foundation was
made for the formation of such libraries, by the Act of
12th April, 1837, authorizing an expenditure by each
district of thirty dollars, for this purpose, the first year,
and ten each succeeding year. Such economy has been
introduced into the business of printing, that even these
small sums judiciously applied for a term of years will

OF THE BOARD OP EDUCATION. 379

amply suffice for the desired object. To the attainment
of this end, it is in the power of booksellers and publish-
ers to render the most material aid. There is no reason
to doubt, that if neat editions of books suitable for Com-
mon-School libraries were published and sold at a very
moderate rate, plainly and substantially bound, and
placed in cases well adapted for convenient transporta-
tion, and afterwards to serve as the permanent place of
deposit, it would induce many of the districts in the Com-
monwealth to exercise the power of raising money for
school libraries. A beginning once made, steady prog-
ress would in many cases be sure to follow. Where cir-
cumstances did not admit the establishment of a library
in each district, it might very conveniently be deposited
a proportionate part of the year in each district succes-
sively. But it would be highly desirable that each school-
house should be furnished with a case and shelves, suit-
able for the proper arrangement and safe -keeping of
books. The want of such a provision makes it almost
impossible to begin the collection of a library ; and where
such provision is made, the library would be nearly sure
to receive a steady increase.

Although the Board are of opinion, that nothing would
more promote the cause of education among us, than the
introduction of libraries into our district schools, they
have not deemed it advisable to recommend any measure
looking to the preparation of 'a series of volumes, of which
such a library should be composed, and their distribution,
at public expense. Whatever advantages would belong-
to a library consisting of books expressly written for the
purpose, obvious difficulties and dangers would attend
such an undertaking. The Board deem it far more
advisable to leave this work to the enterprise and judg-
ment of publishers, who would, no doubt, find it for

380 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

their interest to make preparations to satisfy a demand
for district-school libraries in the way above indicated.

In this connection the Board would observe, that much
good might unquestionably be effected by the publication
of a periodical journal or paper, of which the exclusive
object should be to promote the cause of education,
especially of Common-School education. Such a journal,
conducted on the pure principles of Christian philan-
thropy, of rigid abstinence from party and sect, sacredly
devoted to the one object of education, to collecting and
diffusing information on this subject, to the discussion of
the numerous important questions which belong to it, to
the formation of a sound and intelligent public opinion,
and the excitement of a warm and energetic public sen-
timent, in favor of our schools, might render incalculable
service. The Board are decidedly of opinion, that a
journal of this description would be the most valuable
auxiliary which could be devised, to carry into execution
the enlightened policy of the government, in legislating
for the improvement of the schools, and they indulge a
sanguine hope that its establishment will shortly be wit-
nessed.

5. The subject of school-books is perhaps one of more
immediate and pressing interest. The multiplicity of
school-books, and the imperfection of many of them, is
one of the greatest evils at present felt in our Common
Schools. The Board know of no way, in which this evil
could be more effectually remedied, than by the selection
of the best of each class now in use, and a formal recom-
mendation of them by the Board of Education. Such a
recommendation would probably cause them to be gen-
erally adopted ; but should this not prove effectual, and
the evil be found to continue, it might hereafter be
deemed expedient to require the use of the books thus

OP THE BOARD OP EDUCATION. 381

recommended, as a condition of receiving a share of the
benefit of the school fund.

The foregoing observations are all that now occur to
the Board of Education, as proper to be made to the Legis-
lature, in connection with the improvement of our Com-
mon Schools. They beg leave to submit an additional
remark on the subject of their own sphere of operations.
It is evident, from the nature of the case, that much of
the efficiency and usefulness of the Board must depend
on the zeal and fidelity of its Secretary, and that it is all-
important to command, in this office, the services of an
individual of distinguished talent and unquestioned
character. No other qualifications will inspire the con-
fidence generally of the people ; and without that
confidence, it is impossible that his labors or those of the
Board should be crowned with success. The Board ask
permission to state, that they deem themselves very
fortunate in having engaged the services of a gentleman
so highly qualified as their Secretary, to discharge the in-
teresting duties of his trust ; and they respectfully sub-
mit to the Legislature, the expediency of raising his
compensation to an amount, which could more fairly be
regarded as a satisfactory equivalent for the employment
of all his time. The Board also think, that a small
allowance should be made for the contingent expenses of
the Secretary in the discharge of his duties, such as post-
age, stationery, and occasional clerk-hire. It is just,
however, to add, that this proposal for an increase of
salary is made wholly without suggestion on the part
of the Secretary.

In conclusion, the Board would tender their ac-
knowledgments to their fellow-citizens, who, by attending
on the meetings of the county conventions, or in any
other way, have afforded their co-operation in the pro-

382 FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

motion of the great cause of popular education. At
most of these meetings, permanent county conventions
for the improvement of education have been organized.
Spirited addresses have, in almost every case, emanated
from the county meetings, well calculated to impart vigor
and warmth to the public sentiment in reference to the
cause of education. On the whole, the Board have reason
to hope, that an impulse has been given to the public
mind on the subject of education, from which valuable
effects may be anticipated. It will be their strenuous
effort, under the auspices of the Legislature, and as far
as the powers vested in them extend, to encourage and
augment the interest which has been excited, and they
hope, as they shall acquire experience, that their labors
will become more efficient. They do not flatter them-
selves that great and momentous reforms are to be ef-
fected at once. Where the means employed are those of
calm appeal to the understanding and the heart, a grad-
ual and steady progress is all that should be desired. The
schools of Massachusetts are not every thing that we could
wish, but public opinion is sound in reference to their
improvement. The voice of reason will not be uttered in
vain. Experience, clearly stated in its results, will com-
mand respect, and the Board entertain a confident opinion
that the increased attention given to the subject will re-
sult in making our system of Common-School education
fully worthy of the intelligence of the present day, and
of the ancient renown of Massachusetts.

All which is respectfully submitted by

EDWARD EVERETT,
GEORGE HULL,
JAMES G. CARTER,
EDMUND DWIGHT,
GEORGE PUTNAM,
E. A. NEWTON

ROBERT 'RANTOUL, Jus.,

JARED SPARKS.
Boston, February 1, 1838.

OP THE BOARD OP EDUCATION. 383

NOTE. — Rev. Messrs. EMEKSON DAVIS of Westfield, and THOMAS
ROBBINS of Rochester, members of the Board, were prevented, by the
distance of their respective places of residence from Boston, from being
present at the adjourned meeting of the Board at which the foregoing
report was adopted.

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT

SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

To THE BOARD OF EDUCATION : —

GENTLEMEN : — The act of the Legislature, under which
you were constituted, authorized the appointment of a
Secretary, and specifically prescribed his duties in the
following words : — the Secretary "shall, under the di-
rection of the Board, collect information of the actual
condition and efficiency of the Common Schools and other
means of popular education; and diffuse, as widely as
possible, throughout every part of the Commonwealth,
information of the most approved and successful methods
of arranging the studies and conducting the education of
the young, to the end that all children in this Common-
wealth, who depend upon the Common Schools for instruc-
tion, may have the best education which those schools can
be made to impart" Having accepted the office of Sec-
retary of the Board, I entered upon the public discharge of
its duties, about the close of the month of August last.
But before devoting even the brief period of three months
to a beginning of the work of " collecting information of
the actual condition and efficiency " of about three thou-
sand different public schools, and several hundred perma-
nent private schools and academies, I was obliged to return
to this city, in order to prepare the " Annual Abstract of the

884

THE SECRETARY'S FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 385

School Returns," which, by a law of the Commonwealth,
was to be prepared and laid before the Legislature, in a
printed form, on or before the second Wednesday in Jan-
uary inst. : — the labor of that preparation having, by a
vot3 of the Board, been devolved upon me. This last
work has supplied me with almost incessant occupation
ever since my return. It soon became a question, there-
fore, in my own mind, whether I ought not to consider
myself debarred, by the briefness of the time, and the
magnitude of the labor, from attempting, at this early
period, to submit to the Board any report, relative to the
" condition and efficiency of our Common Schools and
other means of popular education." But as I was per-
fectly satisfied that there were a few classes of facts, and
some important views, pertaining to this subject, in re-
gard to which a more thorough examination would only
supply additional facts of the same kind, and corroborate
the same views by additional arguments, I thought it
clearly to be my duty not to delay their communications
for the sake of presenting them in a less imperfect form,
or of fortifying obvious conclusions with cumulative evi-
dence and argument.

I proceed, therefore, to state the principal sources of
information consulted, together with some of the facts
learned and of the conclusions formed.

Between the 28th of August and the 15th of Novem-
ber last, I met conventions of the friends of education
in every county in the State except Suffolk. With the
exception of two counties, these conventions were very
fully attended, almost all the towns in the respective
counties being represented. The character of the con-
ventions for intelligence and moral worth has probably
never been surpassed. Selfish and illaudable motives do
not tempt men to abandon business, and incur expense,

VOL. i. 26

386 THE SECEET ART'S

to attend distant meetings, when no emolument is to be
secured, nor offices apportioned. A desire to promote a
philanthropic object, whose full beneficence will not be
realized until its authors shall have left the stage, must
have been the honorable impulse which assembled them
together.

Statements, uncontradicted and unquestioned, publicly
made at these conventions, by gentlemen worthy of entire
confidence, respecting facts alleged to be within their own
personal knowledge, I have considered as worthy of full
reliance.

Some weeks before commencing this tour of explora-
tion, I addressed to the school committee of every town
a circular letter, specifying a number of topics upon
which information was sought. A copy of that circular,
together with the Address of the Board of Education,
referred to therein, is appended to this report. Direct
written answers have been received from nearly half the
towns in the State, together containing more than half
its population. This information I regard as of an au-
thentic and official character.

Having, fortunately for this purpose, been so situated
as to form a personal acquaintance with very many of
those gentlemen, who, for the last ten years, have been
members of one or the other branch of our State Legisla-
ture, I determined to avail myself, as far as practicable, of
this advantage, to extend into details, and render more
minute and particular, my information upon the great
subject intrusted to me. I think it not unworthy to be
mentioned, that, for this purpose, I adopted a mode of
travelling which made me perfect master of my own move-
ments, and rendered it always convenient for me to stop
and make inquiries, and to turn off my nearest course,
whenever valuable information was supposed to lie on

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 387

either side of my direct route. In this way I have travelled
between five and six hundred miles, besides going to Dukes
County and Nantucket. I have been able, by this means,
to inspect the condition of many schoolhouses; and I
have personally examined, or obtained exact and specific
information regarding the relative size, construction, and
condition of about eight hundred of those buildings, and
general information concerning, at least, a thousand
more. These, together with the school-returns, which
have been received this year from two hundred and
ninety-four out of the three hundred and five towns in
the Commonwealth, and such limited correspondence as
I have been able to conduct, have been the principal
sources of information consulted.

It would be depriving many persons of a most honor-
able tribute to which they are completely entitled, and
it would withhold from the friends of the sacred cause of
education one of the highest satisfactions, did I omit to
declare, that neither at the conventions which have been
held in the several counties, nor in my intercourse or cor-
respondence with any one, has there been infused into this
cause the slightest ingredient of partisan politics. In
regard to this great subject, all have reverted to their
natural relations as fellow-men ; discarding strifes about
objects which are temporary, for interests which are en-
during. In a spirit of harmony and unity, having
brought the facts of individual experience and observa-
tion into common stock, they have regarded them as a
fund, from which the wisest results were to be wrought
out by the aid of common counsels.

The object of the Common-School system of Massa-
chusetts was to give to every child in the Commonwealth
a free, straight, solid pathway, by which he could walk
directly up from the ignorance of an infant to a knowl-

388 THE SECRETARY'S

edge of the primary duties of a man ; and would acquire
a power and an invincible will to discharge them. Have
our children such a way ? Are they walking in it ?. Why
do so many, who enter it, falter therein ? Are there not
many who miss it altogether ? What can be done to re-
claim them ? What can be done to rescue faculties,
powers, divine endowments, graciously designed for indi-
vidual and social good, from being perverted to individual
and social calamity ? These are the questions of deep
and intense interest, which I have proposed to myself, and
upon which I have sought for information and counsel.

Our institutions for the education of our children de-
pend for their success not more upon the perfection of
their individual parts than upon their just adaptation
and concurrent working. The co-operation of many dif-
ferent agents is essential to their prosperity. In exam-
ining the causes of failure, therefore, in a system so ex-
tensive and complex, not only ought its several parts to
be scrutinized and their details mastered, but the relation
and fitness of each wheel to the whole machinery should
be scanned ; because parts, individually perfect, may
counterwork each other from mal-adjustment. and thus
impair or even wholly destroy the desired results. I shall
make no apology, therefore, for discarding all specula-
tion and theory, and for descending at once to more use-
ful, though perhaps less interesting particulars ; because
nothing, however minute, can be unimportant, which will
ultimately affect the value of the product.

I am bound, here, to make a preliminary remark, to be
steadily kept in view as a qualification of this entire re-
port. In pointing out errors in our system, that they
may be rectified, I wish at the same time to aver my
belief in the vast preponderance of its excellences over
its defects. A specification of the latter, therefore, how-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 389

ever extensive, is not to be understood as questioning the
manifold superiority of the former. So, too, in advert-
ing to non-performances of duty in any one class or body
of men, or to adverse influences, exerted by any other
class, I disclaim all. personal implication whatever;
believing that the defects are mainly chargeable on the
system rather than the individual ; and that, in some
points at least, the errors of the system have been recti-
fied by the fidelity of its administrators.

There are four cardinal topics, under which all consid-
erations, relating to our Common Schools, naturally
arrange themselves. First in order is the situation, con-
struction, condition, and number of the school houses. I
mention the number of the schoolhouses under this head,
because, in populous places, there is a temptation to build
too few, and to compact too many scholars into one house;
while towns sparsely populated are beset with the oppo-
site temptation, of making too minute a subdivision of
their territory into districts ; and thus, in attempting to
accommodate all with a schoolhousc near by, the accom-
modation itself is substantially destroyed. In many cases,
this pursuit of the incident works a forfeiture of the prin-
cipal. A schoolhouse is erected near by, but it is at the
expense of having a school in it, so short, as to be of but
little value.

Secondly, the manner, whether intelligent and faithful,
or inadequate and neglectful, in which school-committee-
men discharge their duties.

Thirdly, the interest felt by the community in the edu-
cation of all its children ; and the position in which a
certain portion of that community stand in relation to the
free schools.

Fourthly, the competency of teachers.

First. When it is considered, that more than five-sixths

390 THE SECRETARY'S

of all the children in the State spend a considerable por-
tion of the most impressible period of their lives in our
schoolhouses, the general condition of those buildings, and
their influences upon the young, stand forth, at once, as
topics of prominence and magnitude. The construction of
schoolhouses connects itself closely with the love of study,
with proficiency, health, anatomical formation, and length
of life. These are great interests, and therefore suggest
great duties. It is believed that, in some important par-
ticulars, their structure can be improved without the
slightest additional expense ; and that, in other respects, a
small advance in cost would be returned a thousand-fold
in the improvement of those habits, tastes, and sentiments
of our children, which are so soon to be developed into
public manners, institutions, and laws, and to become un-
changeable history. But this topic of schoolhouse archi-
tecture is too extensive for present examination. It is
my intention, as early as practicable, to prepare a separate
report, which shall comprise under one view, and in some
detail, the essentials of an edifice devoted to the improve-
ment of the whole life, by improving its beginning.

Secondly. School-committee-men, both prudential and
superintending, occupy a controlling position in relation
to our Common Schools. They are the administrators of
the system ; and in proportion to the fidelity and intelli-
gence exercised by them, the system will flourish or de-
cline.

Although it is not always in the power of school com-
mittees to introduce into the schools devoted and accom-
plished teachers ; yet it is in their power, and it is a most
responsible and solemn part of their duty, not to inflict
upon the children of a whole district the calamity of an
ignorant, ill-tempered, or profane teacher. It is no trivial
arbitrament to decide, whether a school shall be a bless-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 391

ing or a nuisance, and therefore the question of a teach-
er's fitness is not to be guessed at, but solemnly pondered.
If the husbandman, by any effort of body or of mind, by
toil or supplication, could foredoom and predestinate
what sort of seasons should spread mildew and barrenness
over his fields, and leave him empty granaries, or what
should make his pastures luxuriant and heap his garners,
he surely would not be content with conjecture, with su-
perficial and scanty inquiry, or with hasty decisions. And
yet what the seasons are to the fields and crops of the
farmer, the teacher is to the children of the school. Nay,
more ; he is season and cultivation also. No part, there-
fore, of the examination of applicants for schools is form.
It is all substance. It is all pregnant with good or evil ;
because the certificate of the committee is a commission
to the teacher, under which he may usurp a place to do
but little good, where another would do much ; or under
which, perhaps, he may do great and remediless harm,
without any admixture of good.

The law of 1826 required school committees to obtain
evidence of the good moral character of all instructors,
and to ascertain, "by personal examination or otherwise,
their literary qualifications and capacity for the govern-
ment of schools." In the Revised Statutes, the words
" or otherwise " were intentionally omitted. Hence the
duty of personal examination became, in all cases, imper-
ative. So great, however, is the tax imposed by this
requirement upon the time of the committees, that from
the best information I have been able to obtain, I am led
to believe, that in a majority of instances, the examination
is either wholly omitted, or is formal and superficial, rather
than intent and thorough.

The engagement of a teacher by the prudential com-
mittee, subject to the approval of the committee of the

392 THE SECRETARY'S

town, is itself a step of great importance ; because there
are intrinsic objections to the use of the veto power by
the latter, and it can never be exercised without reluc-
tance and hazard. The prudential committee ought not,
therefore, to be compelled to close a bargain at the first
offer, but he should have opportunity for full inquiries,
or, at least, for availing himself of such information as
might come in his way, during the season. The la\v
fixes no time for the election of prudential-committee-
men, when chosen by the districts. In some large dis-
tricts, through which I passed late in the autumn, that
officer had not been chosen for the current year. When
chosen, he could have no opportunity for extended in-
quiry or discriminating selection, but would be almost
compelled to employ the first person whom chance should
throw in his way.

Again ; the law expressly requires every teacher to ob-
tain, from the school committee of the town, a certificate
of his qualifications " before he opens the school" This im-
plies, that it is a violation of duty on the part of & teacher
to open a school previously to obtaining such a certificate ;
and also, on the part of the town committee, to examine
a teacher after he has opened his school, for the purpose
of giving him a retro-active certificate. Magistrates and
officers might as well enter upon the discharge of their
duties, with the expectation of being qualified some time
before or after the close of their official term. The reason
for this prohibition upon teachers and committees is un-
answerable. After the teacher has intruded into the
school without a certificate, other considerations, besides
fitness, come in, and strenuously urge, if they do not
morally compel, the committee to give him one. Just
before a school begins, parents generally make arrange-
ments for dispensing with the personal services of their

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 393

children. Some take them away from regular and profit-
able employments. During the first few weeks of a school,
the children never study with the same facility, nor arc
they able to make the same progress, as afterwards. Even
men cannot rally and apply their whole mental forces, on
the first day of commencing an unaccustomed work. It,
is a subject of universal regret with good teachers of short
schools, that as soon as the school has gathered impetus,
it is arrested. A change of teachers, when a school has
just opened, is, in itself, a great misfortune ; because
different persons have different regulations and different
modes of administering them. In all schools, the harness
of good order and discipline will chafe a little at first, and
some time must elapse before it will sit easy. At the
opening of a school, a teacher ought to learn the pro-
ficiency of his scholars, for the purpose of arranging
classes, and as a basis of judicious advice in regard to ad-
vanced studies. In the course of two or three weeks, a
teacher of any discernment will get an insight respecting
the peculiar temperament and disposition of each scholar,
and he will find avenues, or open them, by which a
readier access can be had to his pupils' minds. A school
will but partially develop its powers of advancement, un-
til teacher and pupils become acquainted ; until the
standing relations between them are established, and
their minds are so mutually fitted into each other as to
work without friction. Suppose, at this moment, when the
school ought to be under strong headway, the teacher is
presented to the committee for examination and approval ;
and, in addition to such considerations as those above
suggested, the prudential committee enforces the demand
of a certificate with the plea, that it is now too late in
the season to obtain any better substitute. Now, the
painful alternative may be directly presented, either to

o94 THE SECEETABY'S

approve an incompetent teacher, or to reject him and
break up the school : — two modes about equally efficient
in ruining the school for that season. Between these evils,
however, there is a choice ; — a badly kept school being
worse than none. Yet the first is the branch of the alter-
native far the most likely to be accepted ; because the
evil of breaking up the school is instant and impending,
while that of its continuance, though greater, is remote ;
and it is a rule, lamentably prevalent in the actions of
men, that when a less but immediate evil comes in com-
petition with one far greater, but more remote, the former
prevails. The malignity of the case is, that it enlists all
the good motives of the committee on the bad side.

From facts which have come to my knowledge. I am
constrained to believe, that, in two-thirds at least of the
towns in the Commonwealth, this provision of the law is
more or less departed from. And in the great majority
of the cases where an examination is had, previous to
the opening of the school, it takes place on the very eve
of its commencement, when the evils above enumerated
must partially ensue from a rejection of the candidate,
and, therefore, undue motives in favor of granting a cer-
tificate must have a proportionate force.

Another evasion of much rarer occurrence, though of
a far more mischievous tendency, is, that the school is
kept for the stipulated period, and then the prudential
committee gives the teacher an order on the town treas-
urer, and the town treasurer pays the money, without
any certificate ever having been obtained or applied for.
Indeed, the relation between the prudential and the town
committee, in regard to the employment of teachers, con-
tains in itself an element of variance or hostility, which
is oftentimes developed into open rupture, and more often,
perhaps, suppressed, by injurious yielding and acquies-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 395

cence on the part of the latter. So manifest is this ten-
dency, and so unhappy its consequences, that very many
judicious men maintain the expediency of vesting the
whole power of employing teachers in the town com-
mittee.

Another duty of the town committee is that of direct-
ing what books shall be used in the schools. There is a
public evil of great magnitude in the multiplicity and
diversity of elementary books. They crowd the market,
and infest the schools. One would suppose there might
be uniformity in rudiments, at least ; yet the greatest va-
riety prevails. Some books claim superiority, because
they make learning easy, and others because they make
it difficult. All decry their predecessors, or profess to
have discovered new and better modes of teaching. By
u change of books, a child is often obliged to unlearn
what he had laboriously acquired before. In many im-
portant particulars, the pronunciation, the orthography,
and the syntax of our language changes, according to
the authority consulted. Truth and philosophy, in re-
gard to teaching, assume so many shapes, that common
minds begin to doubt whether there be truth or philoso-
phy under any. The advantages of cheapness, resulting
from improvements in the art of printing, are intercepted
from the public, to whom they rightfully belong, and di-
vided among compilers. Over this, as an expensive pub-
lic mischief, as a general discouragement to learning, and
as a misfortune of the Commonwealth, town committees
have no control. But it is still in their power, and it is
an important and substantial part of their duty, as en-
joined by law, " to direct what books shall be used in the
several schools," in their respective towns. When the
committee fail in directing what books shall be used, a
way is opened for the introduction of books which are

396 THE SECRETARY'S

expressly prohibited by law, as " calculated to favor the
tenets of particular sects of Christians." Under such
omission, also, the schoolhouse may cease to be neutral
ground between those different portions of society, now
so vehemently contending against each other on a variety
of questions of social and national duty. Instances of
both kinds have occurred, and were, under such circum-
stances, to be expected ; because it is the nature of ex-
treme views to make all other truths bow down before
the idolized truth. But the liability and the temptation
should be cut off. Would the disciples of hostile doc-
trines look forward, and foresee to what results a breach
of the truce in regard to the schoolroom must infallibly
lead, it seems scarcely credible that each should not
agree, in good faith, to refrain from every attempt to pre-
occupy the minds of school children with his side of
vexed and complicated questions, whether of state, or
theology ; and that all should not concur, in regard to an
evil so self-propagating and ruinous, in enforcing meas-
ures which would bar out the possibility of its occur-
rence. The only reason urged by school committees for
a non-compliance with the provision of law in relation
to selecting books, is, that parents object to the expense
of purchasing so many new books as would give uniform
sets to the school. Hence the evil is endued with a self-
perpetuating power ; because, as it increases, the obsta-
cle to its removal increases also. Where a diversity of
books prevails in a school, there will necessarily be unut-
nessandmal-adjustment in the classification of scholars.
Those who ought to recite together are separated by a
difference of books. If eight or ten scholars, in geogra-
phy, for instance, have eight or ten different books, as has
sometimes happened, instead of one recitation for all,
there must be eight or ten recitations. Thus the teach-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 397

er's time is crumbled into dust and dissipated. Put a
question to a class of ten scholars, and wait a moment
for each one to prepare an answer in his own mind, and
then name the one to give the answer, and there are ten
mental operations going on simultaneously ; and each
one of the ten scholars will profit more by this social re-
citation than he would by av solitary one of the same
length. But if there must be ten recitations, instead of
one, the teacher is, as it were, divided by ten, and re-
duced to the tenth part of a teacher. Nine-tenths of his
usefulness is destroyed. The same would be true in re-
gard to most other studies. This irretrievable loss is
incurred, merely because parents will not agree to pro-
cure the best books.

It would seem, beforehand, that no duty of school com-
mittees could be more acceptable to parents, than that
of enforcing a uniformity of books in all the schools of a
town. Every school, where there are no regulations upon
this subject, holds out a standing invitation to every book-
peddler and speculator, to foist in his books, which
may be new, or they be books whose sheets may have
been printed for years, but garnished with a new title-
page bearing a recent date. The diversity may be ag-
gravated through the intervention of the teacher, who
often desires to introduce the books from which he, him-
self, learnt, or has been accustomed to teach. But if the
books are prescribed, all applications for a change must
be made directly to the committee, and imposition be-
comes impracticable, or, at least, the chances of it are
very much reduced. While the diversity continues, each
succeeding teacher will urge the children to procure his
favorite books ; the .children will importune their parents,
and enough of them will prevail to perpetuate the mis-
chief. There cannot be a doubt, that the aggregate ex-

398 THE SECRETARY'S

pense of books, for any given number of years, will be
much greater in towns where the committee are thwarted
by the parents in the discharge of this duty, than in
towns where it is duly performed. In this, as in any
other operation or business whatever, the absence of sys-
tem and pre-arrangement doubles cost and halves profits.
Families can rarely remove from one town to another,
and, very often, they cannot, even from one district to
another in the same town, without incurring the expense
of a new set of books for their children. This bears, in
every respect, most hardly upon the poor.

Notwithstanding the manifest advantages of a perform-
ance of this branch of duty, and the grievous mischiefs
resulting from its neglect, it is neglected in about one
hundred torvns, or one-third part of the towns in the
Commonwealth.

The law further provides, that, in case any scholar shall
not be furnished by his parent, master, or guardian, with
the requisite books, " he shall be supplied therewith at
the expense of the town." Few things. seem more pre-
posterous than to send children to school, or to keep them
there, for the purpose of not studying. Half a dozen
children, stationed in different parts of a school, with
nothing to do for want of books, will soon enlist three
times their number in the same service. In not less
than forty towns is this duty wholly omitted. Children
attend school, surrounded by temptations to mischief,
and without any means of occupation.

An inquiry into the " regulation and discipline " of the
schools is another of the duties enjoined upon the town
committee ; and so important is this duty, in the judg-
ment of the law, that its performance is commanded, not
only at the opening and close of the schools, but at each
of the monthly visitations. Under this head, many points

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 399

are embraced, vital to the cause of Common-School edu-
cation. I will give but a single example. The " regula-
tion " of a school comprises the means of insuring as
much punctuality and regularity as possible in the at-
tendance of all the children in the district. Absences
and tardiness are great obstructions to progress. The
punctual are injured by them hardly less than the delin-
quent. In some towns, the excellent practice of keeping
daily registers by the teachers, to be exhibited to the
committee at each visitation, of holding the scholars to
a strict account for all absences, and of discouraging de-
sertion from the school by all other practicable means, has
obviated almost all delinquencies of this kind. In other
towns, where the attendance upon school is prompted by
no motive, nor enforced by any salutary regulation,
habits of idleness and truantship in the present children
are laying the foundations of vagrancy, poverty, and vice
in the future men.

In connection with this topic of the " regulation " of
a school, as one of the means of securing punctuality in
the attendance of scholars, it is material to advert to
another provision of the law, which makes it the joint
and several duty of school committees, resident ministers
of the gospel, and selectmen, " in their several towns, to
exert their influence and use their best endeavors, that
the youth of their towns shall regularly attend the schools
established for their instruction." The success attendant
upon the exertions of these officers, to secure a " regular "
attendance upon schools, will appear by the following
statement : —

The whole number of children, in the 294 towns which have made

returns, who are between four and sixteen years of age, is 177,053

If from this number we deduct twelve thousand, as the number
of children who attend private schools and academies, and do
not attend the public schools at all, there will remain 165,053

400 THE SECRETARY'S

Whole number of scholars of all ages, attending school in winter 141,837

Whole number of scholars of all ages, attending school in summer 1 22,889

The average attendance in winter is 111 ,520

Do. Do. in summer is 94,956
So that the average attendance, in winter, of children of all ages,
falls below the whole number of children in the State between
4 and 1 G years of age, who depend wholly upon the Common

Schools 53,533

And in summer it falls below that number 70,097

That is, a portion of the children, dependent wholly
upon the Common Schools, absent themselves from the
winter school, either permanently or occasionally, equal
to a permanent absence of about one-third of their whole
number ; and a portion absent themselves from the sum-
mer schools, either permanently or occasionally, equal to
a permanent absence of considerably more than two-fifths
of their whole number.

The average length of all the schools in the two hun-
dred and ninety-four towns heard from is six mouths
and twenty-five days each, for the whole year. Were the
winter and summer terms equal in length, this average
would give three months and twelve days and a half to
each. But, on account of the voluntary absences from
school, the winter term is reduced to the scholars, on an
average, to about two months and one week, and the
summer term to two months and an inconsiderable frac-
tion ; or, taking both winter and summer terms, to about
four months and one week in the year. And so much as
some scholars, dependent upon the Common School, actu-
ally attend school more, just so much do others actually
attend less.

Were it certain that the number, one hundred and
seventy-seven thousand and fifty-three, was not an over-
estimate of the children between four and sixteen years
of age, and did the returns embrace all the children of

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 401

all ages attending in all the public schools, it would appear
that forty-two thousand one hundred and sixty-four chil-
dren, wholly dependent upon the Common Schools, have
not, the past year, attended school at all in the summer ;
and twenty-three thousand two hundred and sixteen,
neither in summer nor winter. There is some reason to
believe, that from omissions in the returns, and, perhaps,
from other causes, the total of the children of all ages,
attending all the schools, is rather too low. After mak-
ing every possible allowance, however, the returns exhibit
frightful evidence of the number of children, who either
do not go to school at all, or go so little as not to be
reckoned among the scholars.

In this State, where the traditional habits and usages
of the people exact some term of apprenticeship for all
arts — except for the most difficult of all, the art of teach-
ing— an intelligent and assiduous committee can do
much, by way of counsel and sympathy, to encourage
teachers, if not to capacitate them for the discharge of
their delicate and arduous work. No person, fitted by
Nature even for a temporary guardianship of the young,
if not specially taught and skilled for his office, can re-
main in school a single week, without a deep conscious-
ness of incapacity for interesting, guiding, and elevating
the beings intrusted to his tutelage. In this condition
of things, the committee are his only resource ; and, if
they also are incompetent to counsel and enlighten, acci-
dent and darkness must preside over the education of
our youth.

Another important duty enjoined upon school commit-
tees is the visitation of the schools. Such visitations may
be a moral incitement to the scholars, of great efficacy.
Advice, encouragement, affectionate persuasion, coming
from such of their townsmen as the children have been

402 THE SECRETARY'S

accustomed to regard with respect or veneration, will sink
deep and remain long in their hearts. Wise counsel
from acknowledged superiors makes a deep impress. It
comes with the momentum of a heavy body, falling from
a great height. The same counsel, if the same could be
had, from men whom the children hold in no respect or
esteem, might be remembered only to be ridiculed. The
visitations of the committee break in upon the monotony
of the school. They spur the slothful, and reward the
emulous and aspiring. To suppose that the children in
a school will ever feel a keen, impulsive interest in learn-
ing, while parents and neighbors are disregarded of it, is
to suppose the children to be wiser than the men. The
stimulus of acting under the public eye, though an infe-
rior motive, is still an allowable one amongst adults. To
the mind of the sworn officer, is it not more pleasant than
his oath ? Do not much of the uprightness and thorough-
ness brought to the discharge of public duties depend
upon their being performed under public inspection?
And why, in regard to children, may we not avail our-
selves of this innate sentiment as an auxiliary in the at-
tainment of knowledge ; always holding it subordinate to
the supreme sentiment of duty ? I have heard hundreds
of teachers, with one voice, attest its utility. Such visi-
tations by the committee are not less useful to teachers
than tp pupils. While all due respect should be accorded
to teachers — and certainly no class in the community
are more deserving both of emolument and of social con-
sideration than they — yet, as our school-system is now
administered, we are not authorized to anticipate any
more fidelity and strenuousness in the fulfilment of duty
from them than from the same number of persons en-
gaged in any reputable employment. This State employs,
annually, in the Common Schools, more than three thou-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 403

sand teachers, at au expense of more than four liundred
and sixty-five thousand dollars, raised by direct taxation.
But they have not one-thousandth part of the supervision
which watches the same number of persons, having the
care of cattle or spindles, or of the retail of shop-goods.
Who would retain his reputation, not for prudence, but
for sanity, if he employed men on his farm, or in his fac-
tory, or clerks in his counting-room, month after month,
without oversight and even without inquiry ? In regard
to what other service are we so indifferent, where the re-
muneration swells to such an aggregate ?

Being deeply impressed with these views, I inserted in
the circular an interrogatory upon this subject; and wher-
ever I have been, I have made constant inquiries whether
this duty of visitation were performed, agreeably to law.
I have heard from nearly all the towns in the State. The
result is, that not in more than fifty or sixty towns, out of
the three hundred and five, has there been any pretence
of a compliance with the law ; and in regard to some of
these towns, after a reference to the requisitions of the
statute, the allegation of a compliance has been with-
drawn, as having been made in ignorance1 of the extent
of its provisons.

It would be unjust to attribute the omission even of this
important duty to any peculiar deadness or dormancy, on
the part of committees, towards the great interest of our
Common Schools. No body of men in the community
have performed services for the public, at all comparable to
theirs, for so little of the common inducements of honor
and emolument. In not more than about one-fifth part of
the towns do the committee receive either compensation
or re-imbursement for devoting from six to sixty days of
time to the duties of their office, and for incurring ex-
penses of horse and carriage hire, amounting to ten or

404 THE SECRETARY'S

twenty, ana sometimes even to thirty dollars per annum.
Where any thing is given, it rarely exceeds a quarter of
the lowest wages of day labor. The towns paying most
liberally, I believe, are Falmouth and Sandwich, in the
county of Barnstable, where one dollar a day, and six-
pence a mile for travel, are given. In a very few other
towns, the compensation is fixed at seventy-five cents for
each visit (understood to occupy a full half-day) ; in a few
more, fifty cents a visit is paid ; but in most other cases, it is
a small fixed sum to be given to the chairman or the
secretary of the committee, or to be divided between the
members of the Board ; — as in Lincoln, ten dollars to
chairman ; in HaverMll and Iling-ham, ten dollars to the
clerk or secretary ; in East Hampton, eight dollars for the
whole Board ; in Cummington and Wareham, five dollars
for each member ; in Franklin, three dollars for each ; in
William sburg-, once, nine dollars for all, and so forth.
To the inquiry, Whether paid or not ? the letter of the
answer in some cases, and, in many others, the spirit of
it, has been, " Neither paid nor thanked." In many
cases, where gentlemen have served gratuitously in the
office for several years, and have then presented a bill for
expenses merely, they have been dropped from the board
for the ensuing year : in others, where, after having served
for years in succession, and, having been re-elected, they
have offered to accept, on condition of receiving half as
much as was allowed for working upon the highways, as
a means of defraying their expenses, the offer has been
rejected by a vote of the town, and the vacancy more
cheaply filled. Neither does there seem to be any social
consideration attached to the station. While the office
of selectman and of representative to the general court
is often an object of avidity, the more useful, responsible,
and intrinsically honorable office of school-committee-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 405

man is shunned as thankless and burdensome. It is not
to be disguised, that, in many places, it encounters oppo-
sition and reproach, just in proportion to the fidelity with
which its obligations are observed. In many of the prin-
cipal towns in the Commonwealth, committee-men have
been chosen, year after year, by not more than ten or
twenty votes ; and, upon their declining, the vacancies
have been filled by as small a number. In one town, con-
taining three hundred voters, they were once chosen by
three votes. In many places it is strikingly observable,
that persons desirous of certain other offices are especially
wary of this. In others, again, it has been necessary to
resort to the expedient of electing persons not present at
the meeting, in order that the office might be nominally
filled. Other towns, again, have chosen them, in order
to avoid the penalty of the law, and to obtain their dis-
tributive share of the school-fund, with an express under-
standing that they should discharge none of their duties,
except making their return to the Secretary of State.

Dormancy and deadness, therefore, in regard to this
plastic institution, now moulding and fashioning the
beings upon whom all the interests of society are so soon
to devolve, seem chargeable upon the people, who not only
deny all remuneration for the loss of time, and even all
re-irnbursement for expenses incurred, but many of whom
thwart and baffle the due administration of the office, and
render the duties they impose onerous and unwelcome.
Hence it often happens, that the citizens, best qualified
for the station, decline its acceptance ; or, having ac-
cepted it, they abridge its labors, and thereby curtail its
usefulness. Clergymen allege, that their relation to the
schools has been modified by recent legislation. Their
parishes were once territorial, now they are poll ; and thus
the special relation they once sustained to all the schools

406 THE SECRETARY'S

within their territory is dissolved. Once they owed a
special debt to society for their immunity from taxation ;
now that obligation is cancelled. From this or some
other cause it has happened, that a public school, kept
the whole twelve months, in a place where several clergy-
men were constantly resident, has never been visited by
any of them for a succession of years. Public men and
professional men decline the service on account of their
various engagements. The industrious aver, that " time
is money ; " thus alleging a maxim, designed only to en-
force a lower duty, as a justification for disregarding a
higher-; and forgetting that it is no more true that " time
is money " than it is that " time is knowledge, or wisdom,
or virtue," because it may be converted into the latter, as
easily and certainly as into the former. But, I repeat,
the fault is in the system, more than in the individuals.
At every convention I have attended, from every intelli-
gent individual with whom I have conversed, no opinion
has been so universal and emphatic, as that our institu-
tion of Common Schools will continue to languish and
cannot be revived, until wise boards of school-committee-
men shall, themselves, be a living exposition of the law ;
and shall make all its provisions in regard to the " exam-
ination of teachers," the " selection " and " supply " of
books, the " visitation " and "the regulation and disci-
pline of the schools," and " the habits and proficiency
of the scholars," as legible in their actions as on the
pages of the statute-book.

The law exacts a performance of duty from other
municipal officers, under the sanction of a penalty ; be-
cause, as they receive something by way of fee or per
diem allowance, they may well be held amenable for any
official delinquency. But the trainers of the law pre-
scribing the duties of committee-men must have felt the

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 407

flagrant injustice of denouncing any penalty for derelic-
tions, when the demands upon time and money were so
ample, and the requital nothing. Hence an entire aban-
donment of duty involves no forfeiture, and subjects to
no animadversion. Such abandonment has occurred, and
been tolerated and acquiesced in, if not demanded, by
public sentiment. At one convention it was stated,
openly and without contradiction, by a gentleman of high
respectability, in the presence of his colleagues and
others, who must have known the case, that in his town,
containing about forty school districts, the school-com-
mittee, for eight or more successive years, had never ex-
amined a teacher, nor visited a school. During this long
intermission of duty, the children in the public schools
passed through two-thirds of the whole of their school-
going life. Many other cases have come to my knowl-
edge, calculated to excite the deepest alarm in every
mind which sees the character of the next generation of
men foreshadowed and prophesied in the direction which
is given to the children of this.

I feel it my duty, therefore, to submit to the Board of
Education the expediency of recommending to the gen-
eral court, the appropriation of some portion of the in-
come of the school-fund, when divided among the towns,
as a compensation to school-committees. for the discharge
of duties so laborious and influential. Were this done,
there would then be justice and propriety, certainly in
cases of gross delinquency, in subjecting them to legal
animadversion, or withholding from their respective
towns their share of the annual apportionment. This
course would relieve the towns from the burden of taxing
themselves to pay the committee. The single fact of
being obliged to render a written account to the town, of
their services, at the end of each year, would prompt to

408 THE SECRETARY'S

punctuality and fidelity, and create another impulse to
duty. It may be said, that, in some towns, the money
would be paid without much valuable consideration in
services rendered : but this, it is believed, would happen
in but few cases, even at first, and would not be lastingly
true anywhere. Such a provision might require some
slight modification in the constitution of the board of
town committees. Indeed, is it not worthy of considera-
tion, whether some plan may not be adopted in distrib-
uting the income of the school-fund, which would assist
towns or districts in purchasing apparatus or school
libraries, or in doing some other thing for the benefit of
the schools, which they cannot conveniently, or will not
ordinarily, do without such assistance ? The fund would
then be a stimulant instead of an opiate.

Could the complement of service be secured from com-
mittees as well without compensation as with it, undoubt-
edly such unbought efforts would infuse into the system
a quicker life and a higher energy ; because work is
always better done, just in proportion as it is done from
a higher motive. But in this case, I am satisfied, that
the only alternative presented us is, between a groping
and dilatory performance, on the one hand, and such
faithful, though not wholly disinterested efforts, on the
other, as may be commanded for a moderate requital.

It is obvious, that neglectful school-committees, in-
competent teachers, and an indifferent public, may go on
degrading each other, until the noble system of free
schools shall be abandoned by a people, so self-abased as
to be unconscious of their abasement.

Thirdly. Another topic, in some respects kindred to
the last, is the apathy of the people themselves towards
our Common Schools. The wide usefulness of which
this institution is capable is shorn away on both sides,

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 409

by two causes diametrically opposite. On one side, there
is a portion of the community, who do not attach suffi-
cient value to the system to do the things necessary to its
healthful and energetic working. They may say excellent
things about it, they may have a conviction of its general
utility ; but they do not understand, that the wisest con-
versation not embodied in action, that convictions too
gentle and quiet to coerce performance, are little better
than worthless. The prosperity of the system always re-
quires some labor. It requires a conciliatory disposition,
and oftentimes a little sacrifice of personal preferences.
A disagreement about the location of a schoolhouse, for
instance, may occasion the division of a district, and thus
inflict permanent impotency upon each of its parts. In
such cases, .a spirit of forbearance and compromise, avert-
ing the evil, would double the common fund of knowl-
edge for every child in the territory. Except in those
cases where it is made necessary by the number of the
scholars, the dismemberment of a district, though it may
leave the body, drains out its life-blood. So, through
remissness or ignorance on the part of parent and
teacher, the minds of children may never be awakened
to a consciousness of having, within themselves, blessed
treasures of innate and noble faculties, far richer than
any outward possessions can be ; they may never be sup-
plied with any foretaste of the enduring satisfactions of
knowledge ; and hence, they may attend school for the
allotted period, merely as so many male and female au-
tomata, between four and sixteen years of age. As the
progenitor of the human race, after being perfectly fash-
ioned in every limb and organ and feature, might have
lain till this time, a motionless body in the midst of the
beautiful garden of Eden, had not the Creator breathed
into him a living soul : so children, without ?ome favoring

410 THE SECRETARY'S

influences to woo out and cheer their faculties, may
remain mere inanimate forms, while surrounded by the
paradise of knowledge. It is generally believed, that
there is an increasing class of people amongst us, who
are losing sight of the necessity of securing ample op-
portunities for the education of their children. And
thus, on one side, the institution of Common Schools is
losing its natural support, if it be not incurring actual
opposition.

Opposite to this class, who tolerate, from apathy, a de-
pression in the Common Schools, there is another class,
who affix so high a value upon the culture of their chil-
dren, and understand so well the necessity of a skilful
preparation of means for its bestowment, that they turn
away from the Common Schools, in their depressed state,
and seek, elsewhere, the helps of a more enlarged and
thorough education. Thus the standard, in descending
to a point corresponding with the views and wants of one
portion of society, falls below the demands and the re-
gards of another. Out of different feelings grow dif-
ferent plans ; and while one remains fully content with
the Common School, the other builds up the private
school or the academy. The education fund is thus
divided into two parts. Neither of the halves does a
quarter of the good which might be accomplished by a
union of the whole. One party pays an adequate price,
but has a poor school ; the other has a good school, but
at more than fourfold cost. Were their funds and
their interest combined, the poorer school might be as
good as the best, and the dearest almost as low as the
cheapest. This last-mentioned class embraces a consid-
erable portion, perhaps a majority, of the wealthy persons
in the State ; but it also includes another portion,
numerically much greater, who, whether rich or poor,

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 411

have a true perception of the sources of their children's
individual and domestic well-being, and who consider the
common necessaries of their life, their food and fuel and
clothes, and all their bodily comforts, as superfluities,
compared with the paramount necessity of a proper men-
tal and moral culture of their offspring.

The maintenance of free schools rests wholly upon the
.social principle. It is emphatically a case where men,
individually powerless, are collectively strong. The
population of Massachusetts, being more than eighty
to the square mile, gives it the power of maintaining
Common Schools. Take the whole range of the western
and south-western States, and their population, probably,
does not exceed a dozen or fifteen to the square mile.
Hence, except in favorable localities, Common Schools
are impossible ; as the population upon a territory of con-
venient size for a district is too small to sustain a school.
Here, nothing is easier. But by dividing our funds, we
cast away our natural advantages. We voluntarily re-
duce ourselves to the feebleness of a State, having but
half our density of population.

It is generally supposed, that this severance of interests,
and consequent diminution of power, have increased
much of late, and are now increasing in an accelerated
ratio. This is probable, for it is a self-aggravating evil.
Its origin and progress are simple and uniform. Some
few persons in a village or town, finding the advantages
of the Common School inadequate to their wants, unite
to establish a private one. They transfer their children
from the former to the latter. The heart goes with the
treasure. The Common School ceases to be visited by
those whose children are in the private. Such parents
decline serving as committee-men. They have now no
personal motive to vote for, or advocate, any increase of

412 THE SECRETARY'S

the town's annual appropriation for schools ; to say noth-
ing of the temptation to discourage such increase in in-
direct ways, or even to vote directly against it. If, by
this means, some of the best scholars happen to be taken
from the Common School, the standard of that school is
lowered. The lower classes in a school have no abstract
standard of excellence, and seldom aim at higher attain-
ments than such as they daily witness. All children, like
all men, rise easily to the common level. There the mass
stop ; strong minds only ascend higher. But raise the
standard, and, by a spontaneous movement, the mass will
rise again, and reach it. Hence the removal of the most
forward scholars from a school is not a small misfortune.
Again : the teacher of the Common School rarely visits
or associates, except where the scholars of his own school
are the origin of the acquaintance, and the bond of at-
tachment. All this inevitably depresses and degrades the
Common School. In this depressed and degraded state,
another portion of the parents find it, in fitness and ade-
quacy, inferior to their wants ; and, as there is now a
private school in the neighborhood, the strength of the
inducement, and the facility of the transfer, overbalance
the objection of increased expense, and the doors of the
Common School close, at once, upon their children, and
upon their interest in its welfare. Thus another blow is
dealt ; then others escape ; action and re-action alternate,
until the Common School is left to the management of
those, who have not the desire or the power, either to im-
prove it or to command a better. Under this silent, but
rapid corrosion, it recently happened, in one of the most
flourishing towns of the State, having a population of more
than three thousand persons, that the principal district
school actually ran down and was not kept for two years.
I have been repeatedly assured, where every bias of my

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 413

informants would lead them to extenuate and not to mag-
nify the facts, that, in populous villages and central dis-
tricts, where there is naturally a concentration of wealth
and intelligence, and a juster appreciation of the blessings
of a good education, and where, therefore, the Common
School ought to be the best in the town, it was the poor-
est.

Believing that this subject bears very nearly the same
relation to the healthfulness of our republican institu-
tions that air does to animal life, I must solicit for it, iu
;-ome detail, the consideration of the Board. Our law
enacts, that every town containing five hundred families,
or householders (taken here to be equivalent to three
thousand inhabitants, or six persons to a family, on an
average), shall maintain a school, to be kept by a master
of competent ability and good morals, "for the benefit of
all the inhabitants of the town," ten months, at least, ex-
clusive of vacations, in each year, who, in addition to the
branches of learning to be taught in the district schools,
shall give instruction in the history of the United States,
book-keeping, surveying, geometry, and algebra ; and in
towns of four thousand inhabitants, the master of such
school shall be competent to instruct in the Latin and
Greek languages, and general history, rhetoric, and logic.
Iu this Commonwealth, there are forty-three towns, ex-
clusive of the city of Boston, coming within the provis-
ions above recited. I leave this city out of the computa-
tion, because the considerations, appertaining to it iu
connection with this subject, are peculiar to itself. I need
only mention, that Common Schools, in Boston, valuable
as they are, bear no proportion to the whole means of
education and improvement which they do in the coun-
try. These forty-three towns contain an aggregate of
about two-fifths of all the population of the State, exclu-

414 THE SECRETARY'S

sive of the metropolis. Of these forty-three towns, only
fourteen maintain those schools " for the benefit of all
the inhabitants of the town," which the law requires.
The other twenty-nine towns, in which this provision of
the law is wholly disregarded, contain a very large frac-
tion over one-fifth part of the whole population of the
State, out of Boston. These twenty-nine delinquent
towns, if we leave out the three cities of Boston. Lowell,
and Salem, stand in the very front rank of wealth and
population. They contain thirty-three thousand five
hundred and sixty-six persons between the ages of four
and sixteen years. And while the two hundred and
ninety-four towns, heard from, raise by taxes, for the sup-
port of Common Schools, a sum equal to two dollars and
eighty-one cents for each of the one hundred and sixty-
five thousand and fifty-three persons supposed to be wholly
dependent upon the Common Schools, these twenty-nine
rich and populous towns raise but two dollars and twenty-
one cents each for the thirty-three thousand five hundred
and sixty-six children they contain between the ages of
four and sixteen years. And so much as these wealthy
towns fall short of their contributive share of the two
dollars and eighty-one cents, so much must the other
towns overrun theirs. In these twenty-nine towns, which
do not keep the " town school " required by law, the sum
of forty-seven thousand seven hundred and seventy-^ix
dollars is expended in private schools and academies,
while only seventy-four thousand three hundred and
thirteen dollars is expended for the support of public
schools.

The average expense for tuition of all those attending
private schools and academies, inclusive of those small
and short private schools which are kept in the districts
between the winter and summer terms, and which com-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 415

prise, probably, more than one-half of the scholars attend-
ing the whole number, is more than fourfold the average
expense of those attending the public schools.

In the above computation, respecting towns obliged by
law to maintain a school " for the benefit of all the in-
habitants," I have included in the class, observant of the
law, one town where no such school is yet established,
but preparations only are making to open one the ensu-
ing season ; and two other towns, where, though such
schools exist, yet their accommodations for room, and
their provisions for instruction, are so limited as to ren-
der the adoption of arbitrary rules absolutely indispen-
sable, for the exclusion of many children desirous of
attending them. The results would have been far more
criminating, had I not adopted this most exculpatory
construction.

The refusal of the town to maintain the free town school
drives a portion of its inhabitants to establish the private
school or academy. When established, these institutions
tend strongly to diminish the annual appropriations of
the town ; they draw their ablest recruits from the Com-
mon Schools ; and, by being able to offer higher compen-
sation, they have a pre-emptive right to the best qualified
teachers ; while, simultaneously, the district schools are
reduced in length, deteriorated in quality, and, to some
extent, bereft of talents. competent for instruction.

Some objections are urged, on both sides, to a restitu-
tion of our system to its original design ; but, as they are
anti-social in their nature they must be dissipated by a
more enlarged view of the subject. Citizens, living re-
mote from the place where the town school would proba-
bly be kept, allege the difference in the distances of resi-
dence, and the consequent inequality of advantages de-
rivable from it, as arguments against its maintenance.

416 THE SECRETARY'S

They, therefore, resist its establishment, and thus extin-
guish all chances of a better education for a vast major-
ity of the children in the town, whatever may be their
talents or genius. They debar some, perhaps their own
offspring, from the means of reaching a higher sphere
of usefulness and honor. They forbid their taking the
first steps, which are as necessary as the last, in the as-
cension to excellence. They surrender every vantage-
ground to those who can and will, in any event, com-
mand the means of a higher education for their children.
Because the balance of advantages cannot be mathemat-
ically adjusted, as in the nature of things it cannot be,
they cast their own shares into the adverse scale ; as
though it were some compensation, when there is not an
absolute equality, to make the inequality absolute. The
cost of education is nothing to the rich, while the means
of it are every thing to the poor.

Even if the argument against the town school, thus
broadly stated, had validity, its force is essentially im-
paired by the consideration, that this class of schools
need not be confined to one fixed place ; as the statute
expressly provides, that they may be kept " alternately at
such places in the town, as the inhabitants at their an-
nual meeting shall determine."

On the other hand, the patrons of the private school
plead the moral necessity of sustaining it, because, they
say, some of the children in the public school are so ad-
dicted to profanity or obscenity, so prone to trickishness,
or to vulgar and mischievous habits, as to render a
removal of their own children from such contaminating
influences an obligatory precaution. But would such
objectors bestow that guardian care, that parental watch-
fulness, upon the Common Schools, which an institution,
so wide and deep-reaching in its influences, demands of

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 417

all intelligent men. might not these repellent causes be
mainly abolished ? Reforms ought to be originated and
carried forward by the intelligent portion of society ; by
those who can see most links in the chain of causes and
effects ; and that intelligence is false to its high trusts,
which stands aloof from the labor of enlightening the
ignorant and ameliorating the condition of the unfortu-
nate. And what a vision must rise before the minds of
all men, endued with the least glimmer of foresight, in
the reflection, that, after a few swift years, those children
whose welfare they now discard, and whose associations
they deprecate, will constitute more than five-sixths of
the whole body of that community, of which their own
children will be only a feeble minority, vulnerable at
every point, and utterly incapable of finding a hiding-
place for any earthly treasure, where the witness, the
juror, and the voter cannot reach and annihilate it !

The theory of our laws and institutions undoubtedly
is, first, that in every district of every town in the Com-
monwealth, there should be a free district school, suffi-
ciently safe, and sufficiently good, for all the children
within its territory, where they may be well instructed in
the rudiments of knowledge, formed to propriety of de-
meanor, and imbued with the principles of duty ; and
secondly , in regard to every town, having such an in-
creased population as implies the possession of sufficient
wealth, that there should be a school of an advanced
character, offering an equal welcome to each one of the
same children, whom a peculiar destination, or an im-
pelling spirit of genius, shall send to its open doors, —
especially to the children of the poor, who cannot incur
the expenses of a residence from home in order to attend
such a school. It is on this common platform, that a
general acquaintanceship should be formed between the

VOL. i. 27

418 THE SECRETARY'S

children of the same neighborhood. It is here that the
affinities of a common nature should unite them together
so as to give the advantages of pre-occupancy and a sta-
ble possession to fraternal feelings, against the alienating
competitions of subsequent life.

After the State shall have secured to all its children
that basis of knowledge and morality which is indispensa-
ble to its own security ; after it shall have supplied them
with the instruments of that individual prosperity, whose
aggregate will constitute its own social prosperity ; then
they may be emancipated from its tutelage, each one to
go whithersoever his well-instructed mind shall determine.
At this point, seminaries for higher learning, academies
and universities, should stand ready to receive, at private
cost, all whose path to any ultimate destination may lie
through their halls. Subject, of course, to many excep-
tions,— all, however, inconsiderable, compared with the
generality of the rule, — this is the paternal and compre-
hensive theory of our institutions ; and is it possible,
that a practical contradiction of this theory can be wise,
until another shall be devised, offering some chances at
least of equally valuable results ?

Amongst any people, sufficiently advanced in intelli-
gence to perceive that hereditary opinions on religious
subjects are not always coincident with truth, it cannot
be overlooked, that the tendency of the private-school
system is to assimilate our modes of education to those
of England, where Churchmen and Dissenters, — each
sect according to its own creed, — maintain separate
schools, in which children are taught, from their tender-
est years, to wield the sword of polemics with fatal dex-
terity ; and where the gospel, instead of being a temple
of peace, is converted into an armory of deadly weapons,
for social, interminable warfare. Of such disastrous con-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 419

sequences, there is but one remedy and one preventive.
It is the elevation of the Common Schools. Until that is
accomplished (for which, however, they ought to co-op-
erate), those who are able, not only will, but they are
bound by the highest obligations to, provide surer and
better means for the education of their children.

It ought not to be omitted, that it is urged, in defence
of the private-school system, that it is preparing a class
of better teachers for the Common Schools than they
could otherwise obtain. Suppose, however, that the
Common Schools were what they should be, could not
they prepare the teachers as well ?

I trust I shall not be deemed to have given an undue
importance to the different interests involved in this topic,
when it is considered, that more th&n five-sixths of the chil-
dren in the State are dependent upon the Common Schools
for instruction, and would have no substitute if they be-
came valueless ; while less than one-sixth are educated
in the private schools and academies, and these would be
educated, even if the Common Schools were abolished.
To hold one-sixth of the children to be equal to five-sixths,
I should deem to be as great an error in morals as it
would be in arithmetic.

The number of scholars attending private schools and
academies (if we allow four thousand for Boston, which
omitted to make any return respecting that fact the pres-
ent year, but which returned four thousand as the num-
ber last year) is twenty-seven thousand two hundred
and sixty-six, and the aggregate paid for their tuition,
$328,026.75, while the sum raised by taxation, for all the
children in the State, is only $465,228.04.

Fourthly. Another component element in the pros-
perity of schools is the competency of teachers. Teach-
ing is the most difficult of all arts, and the profoundest

420 THE SECRETARY'S

of all sciences. In its absolute perfection, it would in-
volve a complete knowledge of the whole heing to be
taught, and of the precise manner in which every possible
application would affect it ; that is, a complete knowledge
of all the powers and capacities of the individual, with
their exact proportions and relations to each other, and a
knowledge, how, at any hour or moment, to select and
apply, from a universe of means, the one then exactly
apposite to its ever-changing condition. But in a far
more limited and practical sense, it involves a knowledge
of the principal laws of physical, mental, and moral
growth, and of the tendency of means, not more to im-
mediate than to remote results. Hence to value schools,
by length instead of quality, is a matchless absurdity.
Arithmetic, grammar, and the other rudiments, as they
are called, comprise but a small part of the teachings in
a school. The rudiments of feeling are taught not less
than the rudiments of thinking. The sentiments • and
passions get more lessons than the intellect. Though
their open recitations may be less, their secret rehearsals
are more. And even in training the intellect, much of
its chance of arriving, in after-life, at what we call soand
judgment, or common sense, much of its power of per-
ceiving ideas as distinctly as though they were colored
diagrams, depends upon the tact and philosophic sagacity
of the teacher. He has a far deeper duty to perform
than to correct the erroneous results of intellectual pro-
cesses. The error in the individual case is of little con-
sequence. It is the false projecting power in the mind, —
the power which sends out the error, — that is to be dis-
covered and rectified ; otherwise the error will be re-
peated as often as opportunities recur. It is no part of
a teacher's vocation to spend day after day in moving
the hands on the dial-plate backwards and forwards, in

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 421

order to adjust them to the true time : hut he is to adjust
the machinery and the regulator, so that they may indi-
cate the true time ; so that they may be a standard and
measure for other things, instead of needing other things
as a standard and measure for them. Yet how can a
teacher do this, if he be alike ignorant of the mechanism
and the propelling power of the machinery he superin-
tends ?

The law lays its weighty injunctions upon teachers, in
the following solemn and impressive language : " It shall
be the duty of all instructors of youth to exert their best
endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth,
committed to their care and instruction, the principles of
piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their
country, humanity, and universal benevolence, sobriety,
industry, and frugality, chastity, moderation, and tem-
perance, and those other virtues, which are the ornament
of human society, and the basis upon which a republican
constitution is founded ; and it shall be the duty of such
instructors to endeavor to lead their pupils, as their ages
and capacities will admit, into a clear understanding of
the tendency of the above-mentioned virtues to preserve
and perfect a republican constitution, and secure the bless-
ings of liberty, as well as to promote their future happi-
ness, and also to point out to them the evil tendency of
the opposite vices" Is it not worthy of the most solemn
deliberation, whether, under our present system, or rather
our present want of system, in regard to the qualifications
and appointment of teachers, we are in any way of real-
izing, to a reasonable and practicable extent, a fulfilment
of the elevated purposes contemplated by the law ? And
will not an impartial posterity inquire what measures
had been adopted by the lawgiver to insure the execution
of the duties which he had himself so earnestly and sol-
emnly enjoined ?

422 THE SECRETARY'S

Wherever the discharge of my duties has led me
through the State, with whatever intelligent men I have
conversed, the conviction has been expressed with entire
unanimity, that there is an extensive want of competent
teachers for the Common Schools. This opinion casts no
reproach upon that most worthy class of persons, engaged
in the sacred cause of education ; and I should be unjust
to those, whose views I am here reporting, should I state
the fact more distinctly than the qualification. The
teachers are as good as public opinion has demanded.
Their attainments have corresponded with their opportu-
nities ; and the supply has answered the demand as well
in quality as in number. Yet, in numerous instances,
school committees have alleged, in justification of their
approval of incompetent persons, the utter impossibility
of obtaining better for the compensation offered. It was
stated publicly by a member of the school committee of a
town, containing thirty or more school districts, that one-
half at least of the teachers approved by them would be
rejected, only that it would be in vain to expect better
teachers for present remuneration. And, without a
change in prices, is it reasonable to expect a change in
competency, while talent is invited, through so many
other avenues, to emolument and distinction ? From the
Abstract of the School Returns of this Commonwealth
(which I have this day submitted to the Board), includ-
ing Boston, Salem, Lowell, Charlestown, and other towns,
with their liberal salaries, it appears that the average
wages per month paid to male teachers throughout the
State, inclusive of board, is twenty-five dollars and forty-
four cents ; and to female teachers, eleven dollars and
thirty-eight cents. Considering that many more than
half of the whole number of "teachers are employed in the
counties bordering on the sea, it is supposed that two

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 423

dollars and fifty cents a week for males, and one dollar
and fifty cents a week for females, would be a very low
estimate for the average price of their board, respectively,
throughout the State. In the country, there would not
be this difference between males and females, but in the
populous towns arid cities it would probably be greater.
That of females is purposely put rather low, because there
were several towns where it was not included, by the re-
turns, in the wages. On this basis of computation, the av-
erage wages of male teachers throughout the State is fif-
teen dollars and forty-four cents a month, exclusive of
board, or at the rate of one hundred and eighty -five dollars
and twenty-eight cents by the year; — and the average
wages of female teachers, exclusive of board, is five dollars
and thirty-eight cents a month, or at the rate of sixty-four
dollars and fifty-six cents by the year.

In regard to moral instruction, the condition of our
public schools presents a singular, and, to some extent at
least, an alarming phenomenon. To prevent the school
from being converted into an engine of religious prose-
lytism ; to debar successive teachers in the same school
from successively inculcating hostile religious creeds, until
the children in their simple-mindedness should be alien-
ated, not only from creeds, but from religion itself; the
statute of 1826 specially provided that no school-books
should be used in any of the public schools, " calculated
to favor any particular religious sect or tenet." The
language of the Revised Statutes is slightly altered, but
the sense remains the same. Probably, no one would de-
sire a repeal of this law while the danger impends which it
was designed to repel. The consequence of the enactment,
however, has been, that among the vast libraries of books,
expository of the doctrines of revealed religion, none
have been found, free from that advocacy of particular

424 THE SECRETARY'S

" tenets " or " sects," which includes them within the
scope of the legal prohibition ; or, at least, no such books
have been approved by committees, and introduced into
the schools. Independently, therefore, of the immeasura-
ble importance of moral teaching, in itself considered,
this entire exclusion of religious teaching, though justifi-
able under the circumstances, enhances and magnifies, a
thousand-fold, the indispensableness of moral instruction
and training. Entirely to discard the inculcation of the
great doctrines of morality and of natural theology has
a vehement tendency to drive mankind into opposite ex-
tremes ; to make them devotees on one side, or profligates
on the' other ; each about equally regardless of the true con-
stituents of human welfare. Against a tendency to these
fatal extremes, the beautiful and sublime truths of ethics
and of natural religion have a poising power. Hence
it will be learnt with sorrow, that of the multiplicity of
books used in our schools, only three have this object in
view ; and these three are used in only six of the two
thousand nine hundred and eighteen schools from which
returns have been received.

I have adverted to this topic in this connection, not
only on account of its intrinsic importance, but on ac-
count of its relationship to the one last considered. Under
our present system, indeed, this is only a branch of the
preceding topic. If children are not systematically in-
structed in the duties they now owe, as sons and daugh-
ters, as brothers and sisters, as school- fellows and asso-
ciates ; in the duties also which they will so soon owe,
when, emerging from parental restraint and becoming a
part of the sovereignty of the State, they will be enrolled
among the arbiters of a nation's destiny ; is not the im-
portance immeasurably augmented, of employing teach-
ers, who will, themselves, be a living lesson to their pupils,

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 425

of decorous behavior, of order, of magnanimity, of jus-
tice, of affection ; and who, if they do not directly teach
the principles, will still, by their example, transfuse and
instil something of the sentiment of virtue ? Engaged in
the Common Schools of this State, there are now, out of
the city of Boston, but few more than a hundred male
teachers, who devote themselves to teaching as a regular
employment or profession. The number of females is a
little, though not materially, larger. Very few even of
these have ever had any special training for their voca-
tion. The rest are generally young persons, taken from
agricultural or mechanical employments, which have 110
tendency to qualify them for the difficult station ; or they
are undergraduates of our colleges, some of whom, there
is reason to suspect, think more of what they are to re-
ceive at the end of the stipulated term, than what they
are to impart during its continuance. To the great ma-
jority of them all, however, I concede, because I sincerely
believe it is their due, higher motives of action than those
which govern men in the ordinary callings of life ; yet
still, are they not, inevitably, too inexperienced to under-
stand and to act upon the idea, that the great secret of
insuring a voluntary obedience to duty consists in a skil-
ful preparation of motives beforehand ? Can they be ex-
pected, as a body, to be able to present to their older pupils
a visible scale, as it were, upon which the objects of life,
so far forth as this world is concerned, are marked down,
according to their relative values ? Among the pagan
Greeks, the men most venerated for their wisdom, their
Platos and Socrates, were the educators of their youth.
And after such teachers as we employ are introduced
into the schools, they address themselves to the culture
of Ihe intellect mainly. The fact that children have
moral natures and social affections, then in the most

426 THE SECRETARY'S

rapid state of development, is scarcely recognized. One
page of the daily manual teaches the power of commas ;
another, the spelling of words ; another, the rules of ca-
dence and emphasis ; but the pages are missing which
teach the laws of forbearance under injury, of sympathy
with misfortune, of impartiality in our judgments of men,
of love and fidelity to truth ; of the ever-during relations
of men, in the domestic circle, in the organized govern-
ment, and of stranger to stranger. How can it be ex-
pected that such cultivation will scatter seeds, so that, in
the language of Scripture, "instead of the thorn shall
come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier shall come
up the myrtle-tree " ? If such be the general condition
of the schools, is it a matter of surprise, that we see lads
and young men thickly springing up in the midst of us,
who startle at the mispronunciation of a word, as though
they were personally injured, but can hear volleys of pro-
fanity, unmoved ; who put on arrogant airs of superier
breeding, or sneer with contempt, at a case of false spell-
ing or grammar, but can witness spectacles of drunken-
ness in the streets with entire composure ? Such eteva-
tion of the subordinate, such casting-down of the supreme,
in the education of children, is incompatible with all that
is worthy to be called the prosperity of their manhood.
The moral universe is constructed upon principles, not
admissive of welfare under such an administration of its
laws. In such early habits, there is a gravitation and
proclivity to ultimate downfall and ruin. If persevered
in, the consummation of a people's destiny may still be
a question of time, but it ceases to be one of certainty.
To avert the catastrophe, we must look to a change in
our own measures, not to any repeal or suspension of the
ordinances of Nature. These, as they were originally
framed in wisdom, need no amendment. Whoever wishes

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 427

for a change in effects without a corresponding change in
causes, wishes for a violation of Nature's laws. He pro-
poses, as a remedy for the folly of men, an abrogation of
the wisdom of Providence.

One of the greatest and most exigent wants of our
schools at the present time, is a hook, portraying, with
attractive illustration and with a simplicity adapted to
the simplicity of childhood, the obligations arising from
social relationships ; making them stand out, with the
altitude of mountains, above the level of the engross-
ments of life ; — not a book written for the copy-right's
sake, but one emanating from some comprehension of the
benefits of supplying children, at an early age, with sim-
ple and elementary notions of right and wrong in feeling
and in conduct, so that the appetites and passions, as they
spring up in the mind, may, by a natural process, be con-
formed to the principles, instead of the principles being
made to conform to the passions and appetites.

It is said, by a late writer on the present condition of
France, to have been ascertained, after an examination
of great extent and minuteness, that most crimes are per-
petrated in those provinces where most of the inhabitants
can read and write. Nor is this a mere general fact, but
the ratio is preserved with mathematical exactness ; the
proportion of those who can read and write, directly rep-
resenting the proportion of criminals, and conversely.
Their morals have been neglected, and the cultivated
intellect presents to the uncultivated feelings, not only a
larger circle of temptations, but better instruments for
their gratification.

It is thought by some, that the State cannot afford any
advance upon the present salaries of teachers, which we
have seen to be on an average, exclusive of board, fifteen
dollars and forty-four cents per month for males, and five

428 THE SECRETARY'S

dollars and thirty-eight cents for females. The valuation
of the State, according to the census of 1830, was $208,-
860,407.54. During the past season, it has been repeatedly
stated, in several of the public papers, and, so far as I have
seen, without contradiction or question, that it is now equal
to three hundred millions. The amount raised by taxes
tlie current year, for the support of Common Schools, in
the towns heard from, is four hundred and sixty-five thou-
sand two hundred and twenty-eight dollars and four cents,
which, if we assume the correctness of the above estimate
respecting the whole property in the State, is less than
one mill and six-tenths of a mill on the dollar.

Would it not seem, as though the question were put,
not in sobriety, but in derision, if it were asked, whether
something more than one six-hundredth part of the wel-
fare of the State might not come from the enlightenment
of its intellect and the soundness of its morals ? and yet
this would, to some extent certainly, involve the question
whether the State could afford any increase of its annual
appropriations for schools.

There are other topics, connected with this subject,
worthy of exposition, did time permit. I can enumerate
but one or two of them in closing this report.

The law of 1836, respecting children employed in fac-
tories, is believed to have been already most salutary in
its operation. I have undoubted authority for saying,
that, in one place, four hundred children went to school,
last winter, who never had been before, and whose attend-
ance then was solely attributable to that law. Sufficient
time has not yet elapsed (as the law took effect April 1,
1837) to determine whether there is a general disposition
to comply with its requirements. So far as I have learned,
the accounts hold out an encouraging prospect of compli-
ance on the part of the owners and agents of manufactur-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 429

ing establishments, notwithstanding attempts to evade it
by some parents, who hold their children to be articles of
property, and value them by no higher standard than the
money they can earn.

From the best information I have been able to obtain.
I am led to believe that there are not more than fifty
towns in the State, where any thing worthy the name of
apparatus is used in schools. With few exceptions, Hoi-
brook's Common - School apparatus, and occasionally a
globe, conclude the list. Thus the natural superiority of
the eye over all the other senses, in quickness, in precision,
in the vastness of its field of operations, in its power of
penetrating into any interstices where light can go and
come, and of perceiving, in their just collocations, the
different parts of complex objects, is foregone. Children
get dim and imperfect notions about many things, where,
with visible illustrations, they might acquire living and
perfect ones at a glance. This great defect will undoubt-
edly be, to a considerable extent, supplied by the law of
April 12, 1837, which authorizes school districts to raise
money by taxation, to be expended for the purchase of
apparatus and Common - School Libraries, in sums not
exceeding thirty dollars the first year, and ten for any
succeeding year.

In every county where I have been, excepting two,
county associations for the improvement of Common
Schools have been formed. In the two excepted coun-
ties, there were teachers' associations previously existing.
Measures were taken to make these associations auxiliary
to the Board of Education in the general plan of State
operations. These county associations will open a chan-
nel of communication in both directions, between the
Board as a central body, and the several towns and school
districts in the State ; and through the Board, between

430 THE SECRETARY'S

all the different parts of the State ; so that improvements,
devised or discovered in any place, instead of being wholly
lost, may be universally diffused, and sound views, upon
this great subject, may be multiplied by the number of
minds capable of understanding them. Several excellent
addresses have already emanated from committees, ap-
pointed by these associations, or by the conventions which
originated them.

If, in addition to these county associations, town asso-
ciations could be formed, consisting of teachers, school-
committee-men, and the friends of education generally,
who should ^meet to discuss the relative merits of differ-
ent modes of teaching, — thus discarding the worst, and
improving even the best, — but little, perhaps nothing
more, could be desired in the way of systematic organiza-
tion. It should be a special duty of all the members of
the town associations, to secure, as far as possible, a reg-
ular and punctual attendance of the children upon the
schools.

Some means of obtaining more precise information re-
specting the number of scholars attending the public
schools, and the regularity of that attendance, is most
desirable. The practice of keeping registers in the
schools, indispensable as it is to statistical accuracy,
seems to be very often neglected. In preparing the ab-
stract, evidence has been constantly occurring of the
want of information, which such registers would have
supplied. Sometimes, the committee resort to conject-
ure ; sometimes they frankly avow their ignorance of the
desired fact ; and sometimes all the sums, set down in
several columns of considerable length, have a common
multiple, which is incompatible with the diversity of
actual occurrences. On the whole, there is, undoubtedly,
a very close approximation of truth ; and where particu-

FIRST ANNUAL REPORT. 431

lars are so numerous, errors on one side will often balance
and cancel errors on the other ; excepting where there is
some standing bias, when the errors will all be on the
gravitating side. Still exactness should be aimed at, as
statistics are every day becoming more and more the
basis of legislation and economical science. While the
State, in the administration of its military functions,
establishes a separate department, fills the statute-books
with pages of minute regulations and formidable penal-
ties, commissions various grades of officers, so that the
fact of every missing gun-flint and priming-wire may be
detected, transmitted, and recorded among its archives,
it prescribes no means of ascertaining how many of its
children are deserters from what should be the nurseries
of intelligence and morality. This is mentioned here
with no view of disparaging what is done, but only to
contrast it with what is omitted.

Not a little inconvenience results from the fact, that
school committees are elected at the annual town-meet-
ings in the spring, and are obliged to make their returns
in October following. Their returns, therefore, cover
but half the time of their own continuance in office, while
they cover half the time of the official existence of their
predecessors. It is for the Legislature to say whether
there be any good reason, why the time covered by these
returns should not be coincident with their duration in
office.

In closing this report, I wish to observe, that, should it

ever fall under the notice, either of individuals or of

classes, who may suspect that some imputation is cast

upon them by any of its statements, I wish to assure them,

vat no word of it has been dictated by a feeling of un-

viidness to any one. The object of whatever has been

said was to expose defects in a system so substantially

432 THE SECRETARY'S FIRST ANNUAL REPORT.

excellent, as to requite any labor for its reformation ;
and all the remarks which may seem accusatory of
persons connected with it have caused ine more pain to
write, than they can any one to read. To have spoken in
universal commendation of the system and of its admin-
istrators would have been most grateful, could it have
been, also, true ; but, in the discharge of a duty, respect-
ing one of the most valuable and enduring of human
interests, I have felt that it would be unworthy the sacred
character of the cause, if, to purchase any temporary
gratification for others or for myself, I could have sacri-
ficed one particle of the permanent utility of truth.

HORACE MANN,

Secretary of the Board of Education,
Boston, January 1, 1838.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OP THE BOARD OP EDUCATION
ON THE SUBJECT OP SCHOOLHOUSES.

SUPPLEMENTARY TO HIS FIRST ANNUAL REPORT.

To THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

Gentlemen, — In the Report, which I lately submitted
to you on the subject of our " Common Schools and
other means of popular education," I mentioned school-
house architecture, as one of the cardinal points in the
system, and I reserved the consideration of that topic for
a special communication.

In my late tour of exploration, made into every county
in the State, I personally examined or obtained exact and
specific information, regarding the relative size, construc-
tion, and condition of about eight hundred schoolhouses ;
and, in various ways — principally by correspondence —
I have obtained general information respecting, at least,
a thousand more.

As long ago as 1832, it was said by the Board of Cen-
sors of the American Institute of Instruction, that " if
we were called upon to name the most prominent defects
in the schools of our country, — that which contributes
most, directly and indirectly, to retard the progress of
public education, and which most loudly calls for a
prompt and thorough reform, — it would be the want of
spacious and convenient schoolhouses." As a general
fact, I do not think the common, district schoolhouses are

VOL. I. 28 «3

434 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

better now than when the above remark was written. I
have, therefore, thought, that I could, at this time, in no
other way more efficiently subserve the interests of the
cause in which we are engaged, than in bringing together,
and presenting under one view, the most essential points
respecting the structure and location of a class of build-
ings, which may be said to constitute the household of
education.

I do not propose to describe a perfect model, and to
urge a universal conformity. It is obvious that some
difference in construction is necessary, according to the
different kind of school to be kept. In each case, it must
be considered, whether the schoolroom be that of an
academy or of an infant school ; whether it be in the
city or in the country ; for males or for females, or both ;
whether designed to accommodate many scholars, or only
a few ; or, whether the range of studies to be pursued
is extensive, or elementary only. The essentials being
understood, the plan can be modified for adaptation to
each particular case.

The schoolhouses in the State have a few common
characteristics. They are, almost universally, contracted
in size ; they are situated immediately on the road-side,
and are without any proper means of ventilation. In
most other respects, the greatest diversity prevails. The
floors of some are horizontal ; those of others rise in the
form of an amphitheatre, on two, or sometimes on three
sides, from an open area in the centre. On the horizontal
floors the seats and desks are sometimes designed only
for a single scholar ; allowing the teacher room to ap-
proach on either side, and giving an opportunity to go
out or into the seat, without disturbance of any one. In
others, ten scholars are seated on one seat, and at one
desk, so that the middle ones can neither go out nor in

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 435

without disturbing, at least, four of their neighbors. In
others, again, long tables are prepared, at which the
scholars sit face to face, like large companies at dinner. In
others, the seats are arranged on the sides of the room,
the walls of the house forming the backs of the seats, and
the scholars, as they sit at the desks, facing inwards ;
while in others, the desks are attached to the walls, and
the scholars face outwards. The form of schoolhouses
is, with very few exceptions, that of a square or oblong.
Some, however, are round, with an open circular area in
the centre of the room, for the teacher's desk and a stove,
with seats and desks around the wall, facing outwards,
separated from each other by high partitions, which pro-
ject some distance into the room, so that the scholars
may be turned into these separate compartments, as into
so many separate stalls. In no particular does chance
seem to have had so much sway as in regard to light. In
many, so much of the walls is occupied by windows, that
there is but little difference between the intensity and the
changes of light within and without the schoolroom :
while in some others, there is but one small window on
each of the three sides of the house, and none 011 the
fourth. Without specifying further particulars, however,
it seems clear that some plan may be devised, combining
the substantial advantages and avoiding the principal
defects of all.

In the Report, above referred to, it was observed, that
" when it is considered, that more than five-sixths of all
the children in the State spend a considerable portion of
the most impressible period of their lives in the school-
house, the general condition of those ouildings and their
influences upon the young stand forth, at once, as topics
of prominence and magnitude. The construction of
schoolhouses connects itself closely with the love of study,

436 REPOBT OP THE SECRETARY

with proficiency, health, anatomical formation, and length
of life. These are great interests, and therefore suggest
great duties. It is believed, that, in some important par-
ticulars, their structure can be improved, without the
slightest additional expense ; and that, in other respects,
a small advance in cost would be returned a thousand-
fold in the improvement of those habits, tastes, and senti-
ments of our children, which are so soon to be developed
into public manners, institutions, and laws, and to become
unchangeable history."

The subject of schoolhouse architecture will be best
considered under distinct heads.

VENTILATION AND WARMING.

Ventilation and warming are considered together, be-
cause they may be easily made to co-operate with each
other in the production of health and comfort. It seems
generally to have been forgotten, that a room, designed
to accommodate fifty, one hundred, and, in some cases, two
hundred persons, should be differently constructed from
one intended for a common family of eight or ten only.
In no other particular is this difference so essential as in
regard to ventilation. There is no such immediate, in-
dispensable necessary of life as fresh air. A man may
live for days, endure great hardships, and even perform
great labors, without food, without drink, or without
sleep ; but deprive him of air for only one minute, and
all power of thought is extinct ; he becomes as incapable
of any intellectual operation as a dead man, and in a few
minutes more he is gone beyond resuscitation. Nor is
this all; — but just in proportion as the stimulus of air
is withheld, the whole system loses vigor. As the ma-
chinery in a water-mill slackens when the head of
water is drawn down ; as a locomotive loses speed if the

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 437

fire be not seasonably replenished ; just so do muscle,
nerve, and faculty faint and expire, if a sufficiency of
vital air be not supplied to the lungs. As this Report is
designed to produce actual results for the benefit of our
children ; and as it is said to be characteristic of our
people, that they cannot be roused to action, until they
see the reasons for it, nor restrained from action when
they do, I shall proceed to state the facts, whether pop-
ular or scientific, which bear upon this important subject.
The common, or atmospheric, air, consists, mainly,
of two ingredients, one only of which is endued by
the Creator with the power of sustaining animal life.
The same part of the air supports life and sustains com-
bustion ; so that in wells or cellars, where a candle will
go out, a man will die. The vital ingredient, which is
called oxygen, constitutes only about twenty-one parts in
a hundred of the air. The other principal ingredient,
called azote, will not sustain life. This proportion is
adapted by omniscient wisdom, with perfect exactness, to
the necessities of the world. Were there any material
diminution of the oxygen, other things remaining the
same, every breathing thing would languish, and waste,
and perish. Were there much more of it, it would stim-
ulate the system, accelerating every bodily and mental
operation, so that the most vigorous man would wear out
in a few weeks or days. This will be readily understood,
by all who have witnessed the effects of breathing exhila-
rating gas, which is nothing but this oxygen or vital por-
tion of the air, sorted out and existing in a pure state.
Besides, this oxygen is the supporter of combustion, and,
were its quantity greatly increased, fire would hardly be
extinguishable, even by water. But the vital and the
non-vital parts of the air are wisely mingled in the exact
proportions, best fitted for human utility and enjoyment ;

438 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

and all our duty is not to disturb these proportions.
About four parts of the twenty-one of vital air are de-
stroyed at every breath ; so that, if one were to breathe
the same air four or five times over, he would substan-
tially exhaust the life-giving principle in it, and his bodily
functions would convulse for a moment, and then stop.
As the blood and the air meet each other in the lungs,
not only is a part of the vital air destroyed, but a poison-
ous ingredient is generated. This poison constitutes
about three parts in a hundred of the breath thrown out
from the lungs. Nor is it a weak, slow poison, but one
of fatal virulence and sudden action. If the poisonous
parts be not regularly removed (and they can be re-
moved only by inhaling fresh air), the blood absorbs
them, and carries them back into the system. Just
according to the quantity of poison forced back into the
blood, follow the consequences of lassitude, faintness, or
death. The poisonous parts are called carbonic acid.
They are heavier than the common air, and as the lungs
throw them out at the lips, their tendency is to fall
towards the ground or the floor of a room, and if there
were no currents of the air, they would do so. But the
other parts of the air, being warmed in the lungs, and
rarefied, are lighter than the common air, and the mo-
ment they pass from the lips, their tendency is to rise
upward towards the sky. Were these different portions
of the air, as they come from the lungs, of different
colors, we should, if in a perfectly still atmosphere, see
the stream divided, part of it falling and part ascending.
A circulation of the air, however, produced out of doors
by differences of temperature, and in our apartments by
the motion of their occupants and by other causes, keeps
the poisonous parts of the air, to some extent, mingled
with the rest of it, and creates the necessity of occfisionally

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 439

changing the whole. Though the different portions of
the air have the same color to the bodily eye, yet in the
eye of reason their qualities are diametrically opposite.

Although there is but the slightest interval between
one act of breathing and another, yet, in a natural state
of things, before we can draw a second breath, the air of
the first is far beyond our reach, and never returns,
until it has gone the circuit of nature and been reno-
vated. Such are the silent and sublime operations, go-
ing on day and night, without intermission, all round the
globe, for all the myriads of breathing creatures that
inhabit it, without their notice or consciousness. But,
perhaps some will suppose, that, in this way, the vital
portion of the air, in process of time, will be wholly con-
sumed or used up ; or that the poisonous portion, thrown
off from the lungs, will settle and accumulate upon the
earth's surface, and rise around us, like a flood of water,
so high as eventually to flow back into the lungs, and
inflict death. All this may be done ; not however in the
course of nature, but only by suicidal or murderous con-
trivances. In the Black Hole of Calcutta, in the year
1756, one hundred and forty-six persons were confined to
a room only eighteen feet square for ten hours ; and
although there was one aperture for the admission of air
and light, one hundred and twenty-three had perished at
the end of that time. Only twenty-three survived, and
several of these were immediately seized with the typhus-
fever. In the Dublin Hospital, during the four years
preceding 1785, out of seven thousand six hundred and
fifty children, two thousand nine hundred and forty-four
died within a fortnight after their birth ; that is, thirty-
eight out of every hundred. TRe cause of this almost
unexampled mortality was suspected by Dr. Clarke, the
physician, who caused fresh air to be introduced by

440 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

means of pipes, and during the three following years, the
deaths were only one hundred and sixty-five out of four
thousand two hundred and forty-three, or less than
four in a hundred ; that is, a diminution in the propor-
tion of deaths of more than than thirty-four per cent.
Hence it appears, that, through a deficiency of pure air.
in one hospital, during the space of four years, there per-
ished more than twenty-six hundred children. In Na-
ples, Italy, there is a grotto, where carbonic acid issues
from the earth, arid flows along the bottom in a shallow
stream. Dogs are kept by the guides who conduct trav-
ellers to see this natural curiosity, and, for a small fee,
they thrust the noses of the dogs into the gas. The con-
sequence is, that the dogs are immediately seized with
convulsions, and, if not released, they die in five minutes.
But let us not cry, Shame! too soon on those who are
guilty of this sordidness and cruelty. We are repeating
every day, though in rather a milder fashion, the same
experiment, except that we use children instead of dogs.

But why, in process of time, it may still be asked, is
not the vital principle of the air wholly exhausted, and
the valleys and plains of the earth, at least, filled with
the fatal one ? Again, Divine Wisdom has met the exi-
gency in a manner fitted to excite our admiration and
wonder. The vegetable world requires for its growth
the very substance which the animal world rejects as its
death ; and in its turn, all vegetable growth yields a por-
tion of oxygen for the support of animal life. One flour-
ishes upon that which is fatal to the other. Thus the
equilibrium is for ever restored ; or rather it is never
disturbed. They exchange poison for aliment ; death
for life ; and the elements of a healthful existence flow
round in a circle for ever. The deadly poison thrown
from the lungs of the inhabitants of our latitudes, in the

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 441

depths of winter, is borne in the great circuit of the at-
mosphere to the tropical regions, and is there converted
into vegetable growth ; while the oxygen, exhaled in the
processes of tropical vegetation, mounts the same car of
the winds, and, in its appointed time, revisits the higher
latitudes.* Why should we violently invade this beauti-
ful arrangement of Providence ?

There is another fact, impossible to be overlooked in
considering this subject. Who can form any just concep-
tion of the quantity of air which has been created ?
Science has demonstrated, that it is poured out between
forty and fifty miles deep all round the globe. It was to
prevent the necessity of our using it, second-hand, that it
was given us by sky-fuls. Then, again, it is more liquid
than water. It rushes into every nook and crevice, and
fills every unoccupied place upon the earth's surface. All
the powers of art fail in wholly excluding it from any
given space. We cannot put our organs of breathing
where some of it will not reach them. All we can do is
to corrupt it, so that none but fatal or noxious air shall
reach them. This we do. Now if the air were a product
of human pains-taking ; if laborers sweated or slaves
groaned to prepare it ; if it were transported by human
toil from clime to clime, like articles of export and im-
port, between foreign countries, at a risk of property and
life ; if there were ever any dearth or scarcity of it ; if
its whole mass could be monopolized, or were subject to
accident or conquest, then economy might be commend-
able. But ours is a parsimony of the inexhaustible. We
are prodigals of health, of which we have so little, and
niggards of air, of which we have so much. In the State
Lunatic Hospital at Worcester, there are eight hundred
feet cubic measure to each apartment, for one patient

* See Appendix B and C.

442 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

only. Iii the Prison at Charlestown, one huncred and
seventy-one and a half cubic feet are allowed to each
prisoner's cell. In addition to this, free ingress and egress
of the air is allowed, by means of apertures and flues in
the walls. In the Penitentiary, erected at Philadelphia
a few years since, thirteen hundred cubic feet were al-
lowed to each prisoner, solitarily confined ; while in some
of our schoolrooms, less than forty cubic feet is allowed
to a scholar, without any proper means of ventilation ;
und in one case, a school has been constantly kept, for
thirteen years, in a room which allows less than thirty
feet of air to the average number of scholars now attend-
ing it ; and even this schoolroom, contracted as it is, is
besieged by such offensive effluvia from without, that the
windows are scarcely opened, even in summer.

I know of but three causes which can have led to these
opprobrious results. In populous and crowded places,
the price of land may have been thought to justify the use
of small rooms for many scholars. Bat this can never
have been even a pecuniary argument of any weight with
a financial mind ; for the ultimate public expense of the
sickness and poverty engendered would overbalance, a
thousand-fold, the requisite original outlay. Besides,
even if there were limit and constraint horizontally, there
can have been none perpendicularly.

A motive of some efficacy may have been felt in the
increased expense of erecting a house of adequate size.
This is a tangible motive. But how feeble is it, when
compared with the health and comfort of children, their
love of study, and their consequent proficiency in it !
Should a case of necessity actually arise, where children
were obliged to undergo some privation, far better would
it be to stint them in their clothes, their food, or their
fuel, than in their air. But in regard to schoolhouses

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 443

which are built at the public expense, such a necessity
never can occur. Besides, these considerations affect size
only, not ventilation.

An economy of the air, which has once been warmed,
is the only remaining motive for using foul air. But if
the warm air is saved, the foul air must be breathed ;
for they are the same. For several years past, high ceil-
ings have been strenuously recommended as a compro-
mise of the difficulty. But when the room is high, it is
necessary, in the first place, to warm a much greater
quantity of air than is required for breathing, and when
it has all been once breathed, it becomes as necessary to
remove it and supply its place with pure air as though
the quantity had been small. Besides, pure air at a lower
temperature will warm the human system more than im-
pure air at a higher. In our climate, a moderately low
ceiling is preferable to a high one, because, with such, a
much larger portion of the air which we have been at the
expense to heat can be used.

But it is believed, that, in the vast majority of cases,
this habitual use of foul air is not the result of calcula-
tion, but of oversight. And it is worthy of especial at-
tention, that many of our schoolrooms, where the greatest
privation of healthful air is now suffered, were constructed
originally with a large open fireplace, which was of itself
a sufficient ventilator ; and that afterwards close stoves
were introduced to overcome the coldness of the rooms,
without any reflection, that what was gained in warmth
and comfort was lost in the purity of the atmosphere,
and consequently in bodily health and mental vigor.

In regard to this most immediate of all the necessaries
of life, that arrangement would be perfect which should
introduce the life-sustaining air just as fast as it should be
wanted for breathing ; and, when b: eathed, should carry

444 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

it off, not to be breathed again, until it should be reno-
vated and purified in the laboratory of Nature. If one
washes himself in running water, he will never dip up
the same water a second time. So should it be with the
air we respire. An arrangement producing this effect is
perfectly practicable and easy. By examining a most
valuable communication, placed at the end of this report,
from Dr. Woodward, the Superintendent of the Lunatic
Hospital at Worcester, it will appear, that fifty persons
will consume the entire body of air in a room, thirty feet
square and nine feet high, in about forty minutes. If,
however, the room be perfectly tight, the air, once re-
spired, will be partially mingled with the whole mass of
air in the room, and will offer itself to be breathed again.
What is wanted, therefore, is a current of fresh air flow-
ing into the room, while a current of the respired air flows
out of it ; both to be equal to the quantity required for
the occupants. Under such circumstances, if there be
but little motion in the room, the poisonous part of the
air will settle towards the floor as soon as it is cast from
the lungs, while the other part of it, being raised almost
to a blood-heat in the lungs, will rise to the ceiling. In
the ceiling, therefore, should be an aperture for its escape.
The carbonic acid will tend to flow out under the door,
or when it is opened. If the ceiling be concave or dome-
shaped, only one aperture will be necessary ; — if horizon-
tal, and the room be large, several may be required. The
number will depend upon the manner in which the room
is heated. If the house be of one story only, the aper-
tures will open into the attic. On the upper side of
the aperture let a trap-door be hung, to be raised by a
cord, running over a pulley, and coming down into the
room, or (which is more simple) by wires, after the man-
ner of house-bells. This door should be prevented from

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 445

opening to a greater angle than eighty degrees, so that
when the cord is loosened it will fall by its own weight, and
dose the orifice. The door will be opened, more or less,
according to the temperature of the weather and the de-
gree of wind prevailing without, so as always to carry off
the impure air just as fast as it is fouled by the lungs.
Any person, by stepping into the open air and inhaling it
for half a minute, can, on returning into the room, deter-
mine the state of the air within it. If the apertures
through the ceiling open into the attic, the air can be let
off, either through fan-windows at the ends, or through
sky-lights ; or an opening can be made into the chimney,
and a flue carried up to its top. In the last case, the floor of
the attic, immediately under the flue, should be plastered,
or covered with something incombustible, to make it per-
fectly secure against cinders coming down through the
flue. If the building be two stories high, the apertures
for ventilation in the lower story, instead of being in the
upper ceiling of the room, should be in the side walls,
next the ceiling, and so ascend, by flues, through the
walls of the second story until they open into the attic.
Sliding dampers can be used, in order to open or close
these lower orifices, so as to regulate the escape of air
from the room. Where a schoolhouse two stories in height
has been built in disregard of the laws of health and life,
the lower room may be ventilated by making apertures in
its upper ceiling, next to the walls of the room, and car-
rying up flues through the second story in tight boxes,
attached to the walls, and opening into the attic through
similar apertures in the upper ceiling of the second story.
These boxes will appear, in the second story, to be only
casings of posts or pilasters, and will not materially dis-
figure the room.

The best apparatus for expelling foul air from a room

44C REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

consists in the proper means of introducing a supply of
fresh warm air. Undoubtedly, the best mode of warming
a room is to have a cellar under it, and to place a furnace
in the cellar. Some place of storing wood seems indis-
pen sable for every schoolhouse, and a cellar could ordina-
rily be dug and stoned as cheaply as a woodhouse could
be built. I suppose, also, that a schoolhouse would be
much less exposed to take fire from a furnace well set,
than from a common fireplace or stove. But the great
advantage of warming by a furnace is, that all parts of
the room are kept at the same temperature. The air
presses outward instead of inward, through every crack
and crevice in door or window. No scholars are injured
by being forced to sit in the vicinity of a stove or fireplace :
nor is any part of the room encumbered by either. When
the latter are used, many scholars, who sit in exposed sit-
uations, will spend half an hour a day, and often more, in
going to the fire to warm themselves ; and, in addition to
those whose comfort requires them to go, idlers, from all
sides of the house, will make it a rendezvous or halfway
place, for visiting. With an unequal diffusion of heat in
a school warmed by a stove, or fireplace, I believe it is al-
ways true, that diligent scholars will stay in their seats and
suffer, while the lazy will go to the fire to drone. Some
other advantages of setting a furnace in a cellar to warm
a school are mentioned in the excellent communication
of Dr. Woodward, above referred to. Feet can be warmed
or dried at the orifices for admitting the heated air from
a furnace, as well as at a stove. There may be two of these
orifices, one for the boys and one for the girls. The set-
ting of a furnace requires some skill and science. We
often meet with a prejudice against furnaces, which be-
longs not to the furnaces themselves, but to the ignorance
of those who set them. There seems to be no objection,

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 447

except it be that of appearance, against setting the furnace
so high in the cellar, as that its brick or soapstone top
shall be on a level with the floor of the room, and consti-
tute a part of it.

If a common stove must be used for warming the room,
then let it be enclosed in a case of sheet-iron, rising from
the floor on three sides of the stove and bending over it ;
not, however, so as to close over its top, but leaving an
opening in the case, greater or less, according to the size
of the stove and of the room. The sides of the case
should be two or three inches from the sides of the stove.
The stove should stand on legs a few inches from the floor,
and fresh air should be introduced from out of doors, and
conducted under the stove in a tube or trough, which, as
it rises around the stove, will be warmed, and enter the
room through the opening in the case at the top. A slide
in the tube or trough will regulate the quantity of air to
be admitted. The sensations experienced in a room into
which the external air is directly introduced, and warmed
in its passage, belong to a class entirely distinct from
those engendered by air warmed in the ordinary way.
They will be grateful to the pupils, and will promote elas-
ticity and vigor of mind. It would be well to place the
stove directly in the current of air caused by opening the
door.

The common expedient of letting down windows from
the top, so that the noxious air may escape, and the vacuum
be filled with the pure, accomplishes the object in a very
imperfect, and, at the same time, an objectionable manner.
If there be any wind abroad, or if there be a great dif-
ference in temperature between the external air and the
air of the room, the former rushes in with great violence
and mingles with the heated and corrupted air, so that,
unless several roomfuls of air be admitted, a portion of

448 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

that which has been rendered unfit for use will still re-
main, while some that has been partially warmed will es-
cape. But the greatest objection is, that the cold air
drops like a shower-bath upon the scholars' heads : — a
mode which all agree in pronouncing unhealthful, and
sometimes dangerous.

Some schoolrooms are heated by a common close stove,
the front part of which is placed in the wall, so that the
door, where the stove is filled, is in an entry, while the body
of the stove is in the schoolroom. It depends on other
circumstances, whether this arrangement is beneficial or
injurious. Where the air which keeps up the fire in the
stove is taken from an entry, it passes through the funnel
and chimney, and leaves the body of air in the room
unchanged. This is no objection, provided the air in the
room is changed otherwise. But if no other provision is
made for changing the air in the room, the draught
of the stove becomes important for that purpose. And
although this may involve the evil of drawing in just as
much air, through the crevices and openings, as is car-
ried off through the stove, yet it is a less evil than that
of stagnant air in the room. If, however, the room is
warmed by introducing a current of air from without,
which is heated in its passage, then the arrangement of
feeding the stove in an entry is unobjectionable, and may,
often, be very commodious.

If the room be so warmed that the air presses from
within, outwards, the doors should be hung so as to open
inwards ; if, on the other hand, the room be warmed by a
common stove or fireplace, the external air will press in-
wards, and therefore the doors should be hung so as to
open outwards. Where the schoolroom has been so fault-
ily constructed, that a current of air blows directly upon
a row of scholars every time the door is opened, the door

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 449

should be rehung, or have a spring to prevent its being
left open.

A thermometer should be kept in every schoolroom,
and hung on the coolest side of it. The proper tempera-
ture should be determined by unchangeable laws ; not by
the variable feelings or caprice of any individual. With-
out a thermometer, — if the teacher be habituated to live
in the open air ; if he be healthy, vigorous, and young ;
if he walk a mile or several miles to school ; and espe-
cially if he keep upon his feet during school-hours ; —
the scholars will be drilled and scolded into a resignation
to great suffering from cold. If, on the other hand, the
teacher lead a sedentary life ; if his health be feeble ; if
he step into the schoolroom from a neighboring door, he
will, perhaps unconsciously, create an artificial summer
about himself, and subject the children to a perilous tran-
sition in temperature, whenever they leave his tropical
regions. In this way, a child's lungs may get a wound
in early life, which neither Cuba nor the south of France
can ever afterwards heal. A selfish or inconsiderate mas-
ter will burn a whole roomful of children during the
chill, and freeze them during the fever, of his own ague-
fits. They must parch or congeal, as he shivers or
glows.

It should be remembered, also, that even the thermom-
eter ceases to be a guide, except in pure air. When pure
air enters the lungs, it evolves heat. Its oxygen carries on
the process (supposed to be combustion) necessary for
that purpose. This keeps our bodies warm. It is the
reason why the blood remains regularly at a temperature
of ninety-eight degrees, though the air by which we are
surrounded rises to that heat but a few times in a year.
The a-'r constantly supplies to the body, through the me-

VOL. I. 29

450 EEPOBT OP THE SECRETARY

dium of the lungs, the heat which it is constantly ab-
stracting by contact with its surface. But it is only
through the agency of the oxygen, or life-sustaining por-
tion of the air, that this heat is supplied. A thermome-
ter, however, is insensible to this difference. It will in-
dicate the same degree of heat in azote, i.e., iu that por-
tion of the air which will not sustain life, as in oxygen ;
although a man immersed in azote at seventy or eighty
degrees would die of cold, if he did not of suffocation.
I reiterate the first position, therefore, that even a ther-
mometer ceases to be a guide, except in pure air.

Ordinarily, we can undergo a change of a few degrees
in temperature, without danger or serious inconvenience ;
but there is a limit, beyond which the change becomes
perilous and even fatal. Suppose in a school, having a
winter term of only four months, and consisting of but fifty
scholars, one-quarter of an hour in a day, on a'n average, is
lost for all purposes of study, in consequence of the too great
heat or cold of the room ; the aggregate loss, allowing six
hours to a day, will be two hundred days, or more than
eight months. And yet, in many of our schools, half the
day, for all purposes of improvement, is, by this cause
alone, substantially lost.

Every keeper of a greenhouse regulates its heat by a
thermometer. The northern blasts which come down
upon the blossoms of a farmer's orchard or garden chill
him as much as them. When shall we apply the same
measure of wisdom to the welfare of children as to that
of fruits and vegetables ? I am told by physicians, that
from sixty-five to seventy degrees is a proper temperature
for a room. Something, however, must depend upon the
habits of the children. In cities, there is generally less
exposure to cold than in the country ; and factory chil-
dren would suffer from cold, when those employed in the

ON SCHOOLHOUSES 451

outdoor occupations of agriculture would be comfortably
warm.*

* We give below two letters, one from Col. JENKINS, an experienced
architect in the City of Boston, the other from Dr. WOODWARD, the
Superintendent of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester, on the subject
of the construction of schoolhouses. The suggestions will be found very
important. Though published in the 8th No. of our Journal, we deem
them worthy of a re-insertion here. — ED.

"Boston, Jan. 21, 1839.

"Dear Sir, — Your favor of the 19th is just received. In answer to
your question, ' whether it is a healthful way of finishing rooms, to plaster
them upon a solid brick wall, without furring,' I think, in a word, that it
is not.

" It is almost, perhaps quite, impossible that walls will not be penetrated
by water, and conduct it through to the inner surface ; some expedients
have been adopted, in order to obviate this evil — as in prisons and hos-
pitals, where it is unsafe to attach any finish to the walls, which could be
removed by the inmates, and made the instruments of mischief in their
hands. One method has been, to construct the walls with an interstice, or
separation in the wall, between the outer and inner courses of the brick-
work, when made of brick, and on the same principle when of stone.
The objections to this are obvious. Unless the walls are made mueh
thicker than otherwise necessary, their strength is materially lessened, and
their liability to be penetrated by the weather proportionably increased.
The outer and inner parts of the wall must be banded together by separate
stones or bricks, which, in themselves, are conductors of moisture; the
vacuum also is liable to be filled with rubbish or other nuisances. I sup-
pose your inquiry has reference more especially to schoolrooms, and yon
will permit me to remark, that walls plastered upon the brick- work, without
furring, are not only liable to dampness, but always cold, and, next to iron or
marble, conductors of heat. Now, the youth in school are always allowed,
and much enjoy and improve, recesses for play and exercise ; they return
to their studies, glowing with a brisk circulation of vital warmth, and it is
clear, if in this state they come in contact with such a wall or any other
powerful conductor, a sudden change is produced, and the subject is injured
in health. Add to this, the uncomfortableness of such a wall : — it is also
cheerless and unpleasant, and nothing of this kind should come in contact
with the mental or physical sense of the student. Will you pardon me,
sir, if I mention also, though aside from your inquiries, that the proportion*
and ventilation of schoolrooms are of vast moment to the well-being and
improvement of the pupil? I think there is native taste in every we.U-
baiunced mind, though uneducated; whatever, therefore, is brought m

452 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

SIZE.

•

The next thing in point of importance in regard to a
schoolhouse is its dimensions. In almost every thing

constant contact with that of the learner, should be symmetrical and agree-
able.

" The gas which is generated in assemblies of youth will arise and
escape through attic ventilators, while that produced by adults is more
dense, and of such a nature as to require apertures below to allow its escape.
These last hints are gratuitous, but your efforts in the cause of Education
will lead you to favor any auxiliary, however humble.

" I remain, sir, very respectfully, your ob't serv't,

" J. JENKINS."

" Worcester, Feb. 27, 1839.

" Dear Sir, — I received your favor of the 25th instant, in which you
propose the inquiry, 'whether you think it a safe or proper mode of con-
structing brick buildings, to plaster the inside of the exterior walls, directly
upon the bricks, or without furring.'

" Many persons object to brick houses, because they are damp ; others
think them colder than houses built of wood. The reason for both ob-
•jections lies in the fact, that many houses are plastered on the brick walls.
It' the walls of a brick house are furred or built hollow, they are nearly or
quite as dry as a house built of wood, and quite as warm.

" A brick wall, eight inches thick, is rarely so tight as to exclude the
external air or the rain in a driving storm, and of course should never be
plastered on the inside, but be furred so as to leave a space for air between
the wall and plastering. All brick walls, but particularly thick ones, are
generally colder than the atmosphere of the rooms, and will transmit the
heat so rapidly as to form a condensation of the vapor of the atmosphere
upon them, rendering them damp, and this moisture frequently accumulates
in such quantity as to be visible in drops and currents upon the wall. Such
houses can neither be comfortable nor healthful.

" If the walls of a house are not constructed so as to be hollow, or
have a vacant space of an inch or two in the brick-work, they ought to be
furred, lathed, and plastered, so as to leave a space for air between the brick
and plastering, which makes the house both warmer and dryer than it can
otherwise be made.

" Some years ago, I was frequently in a very handsome brick house,
built at great expense, but the exterior walls were plastered on the brick.
It had many occupants, all of whom concurred in the statement, that the
house was damp, and that articles of clothing, in closets no way connected

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 453

heretofore written on this subject, the size of the school-
room, in proportion to the number of scholars, has been a
very leading topic. And certainly, if there be no special
means provided for changing the air in the room, the im-
portance of liberal dimensions cannot be exaggerated.
But if, instead of forcing foul air back again and again
into the children's lungs, we permit Nature to perform her
gratuitous and beneficent labor, by carrying it beyond
their reach, as soon as it has once been respired, then one
main object of increasing the size of the room is already
accomplished. The great end of a supply of heathful air
being secured, the dimensions of the room are left to be
determined by other considerations. These are, the con-
venient arrangement of the seats, so that the teacher can
survey the whole school with a single look ; so that each
scholar can have an easy access to his own seat, without
disturbing or being disturbed by any other ; and so as
to remove the temptations to communicate, to play, or to
aggress.

In regard to the size of the rooms, it may be observed,
generally, that in addition to the room requisite for seats
and desks, as described below, there should be an open
space all round the walls, at least two feet and a half in
width, besides room for common recitations, and for the
teacher's desk. Seats may be attached to the walls for
the accommodation of visitors, or for the scholars, should
it ever be desirable, for any purpose, to arrange them in
a continuous line. Movable benches may be provided,

with the outer walls of the house, would become mouldy, and spoil, if not
attended to frequently ; and that all clothing and bedding in rooms not
constantly occupied would be so damp as to be quite unsafe and unfit
for use.

" Yours very truly and affectionately,

" SAMUEL B. WOODWARD."

454 EEPORT OP THE SECRETARY

— instead of seats fastened to the wall, — to be taken
away, when not wanted for use, and so to leave that space
entirely unoccupied. Joseph Lancaster, in making ar-
rangements for great numbers of the children of the poor,
where cheapness was a main object, allows nine feet area,
on the floor, to each scholar. His rooms were fifteen
or twenty feet high. If only fifteen feet high, an area
of nine feet would give one hundred and thirty-five cubic
feet of space to each scholar; and one hundred and
thirty-five cubic feet in a room ten feet high would give
to each scholar an area four feet in length and almost
three feet and a half in width. Even at this rate, a
family of six persons would have a room only about eight
feet by ten.

DESKS, SEATS, &c.

It seems to be a very prevalent opinion, at the present
day, amongst all professional teachers, that seats on a
horizontal floor are preferable to those which rise on the
sides or at the end of a room, or both, in the form of an
amphitheatre. And it is obviously a great fault in the
construction of a room, if, when a class is brought upon
the floor to recite, the teacher is obliged to turn his back
upon the school, when he looks at the class, or upon the
class when he looks at the school. A level floor also
increases the space for air, and as the room is warmed
downwards, it makes the temperature more equable. The
seats with desks should be arranged in parallel lines,
lengthwise of the room, with aisles between, each seat to
accommodate one scholar only. Although it would be
better that they should be movable, yet as this cannot,
perhaps, ordinarily be done for district schools, the front
side of one seat may be the back of the next in the row.
Eighteen inches is, perhaps, a suitable width for the aisles.

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 455

Each desk should be two feet long, and not less than one
foot and six inches wide. A width of one foot and nine
inches would be better. In some houses, the seats con-
nected with single desks are one foot square, and are
placed behind the middle of the desks ; in others the
seats are one foot wide and as long as the desks. It may
sometimes be desirable to place two scholars temporarily
on the same seat, as for the purpose of reading from the
same book. The former arrangement would make this
impracticable. The children will sit more easily and
more upright, if the back of the seats slope a little from
them, at the shoulder-blades ; and also, if the seats them-
selves incline a little — the front part being a little tho
highest. The forward part of the desk should be level
for about three or four inches. The residue should have
a slight inclination. A slope of an inch and a half in a
foot would, probably, be sufficient. It should not be so
great, as that books and slates would slide off. For the
deposit of books, and so forth, there may be a shelf under
the desk, or the desk may be a box, with a cover, hung
upon hinges for a lid. The first method supersedes the
necessity of raising a lid, by which books, pencils, and so
forth, are sometimes thrown upon the floor or upon the
front neighbor. The shelf, however, is far less convenient,
and the contents are liable to be perpetually dropped out.
The bo"x and lid, on the whole, seem much preferable, the
sloping part of the cover to constitute the lid. For the
security of the desks, locks and keys are sometimes used.
But the keys will occasionally be lost, by accident ; and
sometimes, by bad scholars, on purpose. Besides, what
appalling images throng the mind, at the reflection, that
the earliest associations of children in regard to the
security of property amongst themselves, must be of locks
and hiding-places, instead of honesty and justice ! The

456 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

board which makes the front of one seat and the back of
the next should rise, perhaps a couple of inches, above
the level of the horizontal part of the desk, to prevent
things from sliding off forwards. Into this horizontal
part of the desk, the inkstands may be let : so loosely,
however, as to allow of their being taken out to be filled ;
and so deep, that their tops will be on a level with the
desks. They may be covered, either with a metallic lid,
resembling a butt hinge, to rise and fall ; or, which is
better, with a common slide, or with a flat circular piece
of pewter, having a stem projecting on one side, like the
stem of a watch, through which a nail or screw may be
driven, not tightly, but so that the cover may be made to
slide over or off the orifice of the inkstand, on the nail or
screw, as a hinge.

Instead of the form of desks, above described, I have
seen some, constructed after the plan of Mr. Alcott's
Prize Essay, in which the box or case for the books, and
so forth, is in the front part of the desk ; that is, in the
horizontal and not the sloping part of the desk above
described. They are made about eight inches in width,
and deep enough to receive the largest atlases, slates, and
writing-books, when placed edgewise, for which purpose,
an inch or two on one side of the box is partitioned off.
The lid is hung on hinges, as above described, and when
shut forms a part of the desk.*

Last year, a gentleman in Hartford, Conn., offered a
handsome premium for the best form of a desk for schools.
Several plans were submitted to the judges selected to
award the premium. They decided in favor of a desk,
designed to accommodate two scholars, upon one seat.

* Mr. Alcott's Prize Essay may be found at the end of the second vol.
ume of the Lectures, published by the American Institute of Instruction, in
1831, and is a very valuable paper.

ON SCHOOLHOUSE8. 457

The desk was a tight box, without any lid, but having an
oblong opening, at each end, large enough to admit books,
slates, <fec. In this way, whatever was put in or taken out
of the desk would be exposed to the view of the teacher
and scholars.

The edge of the desk and of the seat should be in the
same perpendicular line. This will not allow the scholar
to stand up in front of his seat ; but if the seats and desks
are single, he can stand on one side of the seat. If
the seats and desks are designed for two scholars, then the
corner of each scholar's seat may be cut off, as in the
representation below.

Here each scholar can stand up in the corner a, or sit
upon the seat b.

In regard to the height of the seats, it is common to
give exact measurements. But inflexible rules will never
fit varying circumstances. Some schoolrooms are for
females ; others for boys only. In factory villages, usu-
ally, a great portion of the scholars are young ; while, in
one county in the State, great numbers of the males
attending school, during the winter term, are more than
sixteen years of age. To follow unvarying rules, there-
fore, would aggrieve as many as it would accommodate.
But the principles to be observed are few, and capable of
a definite exposition. A live child cannot be expected to
sit still, unless he has a support to his back, and a firm
resting-place for his feet. As a scholar sits upright in his
seat, the knee-joint forming a right angle, and the feet
being planted horizon tally on the floor, no pressure what-
ever should come upon the thigh-bone where it crosses

458 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

the edge of the seat. If obliged to sit upon too high a
seat, a foot-board or block should always be provided for
the feet to rest upon. Children sometimes go to school
at an age when many of their bones are almost as limber
as a green with, when almost any one of the numerous
joints in the body may be loosened or distorted. They
go almost as early, as when the Chinese turn their chil-
dren's feet into the shape of horses' hoofs ; or when some
tribes of Indians make their children's heads as square as
a joiner's box. And, at this period of life, when portions
of the bones are but little more than cartilage, and the
muscles will stretch like sheep's leather, the question is,
whether the seats shall be conformed to the children, or
the children shall be deformed to the seats. I wish to
fortify myself on this subject, by making a few extracts
from a lecture on Physical Education, by that celebrated
surgeon, Dr. John C. Warren. "When children are sent
to school, care should be taken, that they are not confined
too long. Children under fourteen should not be kept in
school more than six or seven hours in a day ; and this
period should be shortened for females. It is expedient
that it should be broken into many parts, so as to avoid a
long confinement at one time. Young persons, however
well disposed, cannot support a restriction to one place
and one posture. Nature resists such restrictions ; and
if enforced, they are apt to create disgust with the means
and the object. Thus children learn to hate studies, that
might be rendered agreeable, and they take an aversion
to instructors, who would otherwise be interesting to
them.

"The postures they assume, while seated at their
studies, are not indifferent. They should be frequently
warned against the practice of maintaining the head and
neck long in a stooping position, and the disposition to

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 459

it should be lessened by giving a proper elevation and
slope to the desk, and the seat should have a support or
back.

" The influence of an upright form and open breast has
been sufficiently explained ; and what may be done to
acquire these qualities, is shown by many remarkable
facts, one of which I will mention. For a great number
of years, it has been the custom in France to give to
young females of the earliest age, the habit of holding
back the shoulders, and thus expanding the chest. From
the observation of anatomists, lately made, it appears that
the clavicle or collar bone is actually longer in females
of the French nation, than in those of the English. The
French have succeeded in the development of a part, in
a way that adds to health and beauty, and increases a
characteristic, that distinguishes the human being from
the brute.

" While all of us are desirous of possessing the excel-
lent qualities of strength, hardiness, and beauty, how
defective are our own systems of education in the means
of acquiring them !

" In the course of my observations, I have been able
to satisfy myself, that about half the young females,
brought up as they are at present, undergo some visible
and obvious change of structure ; that a considerable
number are the subjects of great and permanent devia-
tions ; and that not a few entirely lose their health from
the manner in which they are reared.

" I feel warranted in the assertion, that, of the well-
educated females, within my sphere of experience, about
one-half are affected with some degree of distortion of
spine.

" The lateral distortion of the spine is almost wholly
confined to females, and is scarcely ever found existing

460 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

in the other sex. The difference results from a difference
of habits during the school education. The immediate
cause of the lateral curve of the spine to the right is the
elevation and action of the right arm in drawing and
writing."

Much more might be quoted, apposite to this important
subject. It seems only necessary to add, that nothing so
essentially tends to aggravate these evils, as the want of
a proper resting-place for the feet. Let any man try the
experiment, and see how long he can sit in an upright
posture, on a narrow bench or seat, without being able to
reach the floor with his feet, and consequently witli the
whole weight of his feet, boots, and the lower parts of
the lirnbs, acting with the power of a lever across the
middle of the thigh-bones. Yet, to this position, hun-
dreds of children in this State are regularly confined,
month after month ; and while condemned to this unnat-
ural posture, Nature inflicts her punishments of insup-
portable uneasiness and distress on every joint and muscle
if they do sit still, and the teacher inflicts his punishments
if they do not. A gentleman, extensively known to the
citizens of this State for the benevolence of his charac-
ter, and the candor of his statements, who, for the last
twenty years, has probably visited more of our Common
Schools than any other person in the State, writes to me
as follows : " I have no hesitation in repeating what I
have often publicly declared, that, from the bad construc-
tion of our schoolhouses, there is more physical suffering
endured by our children in them than by prisoners in our
jails and prisons." * The following is an extract of a
letter, addressed to a "Common- School Convention" held
at Northampton in February, 1837, by Dr. Joseph H.
Flint, of that place : " For want of attention to the

* The Rev. Gardiner B. Perry, of Bradford.

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 461

subject," (the construction of schoolhouses,) " I have the
means of knowing, that there has been annually loss of
life, destruction of health, and, in numberless instances,
anatomical deformities, that render life hardly worth
having. In the construction of schoolhouses, there are
many considerations, involving the comfort, and health,
and life, of the young," &c.

I am informed by surgeons and physicians, that a pupil,
when writing, should face the writing-desk squarely. This
position avoids all unequal lateral pressure upon the spinal
column, and of course all unequal tension of the muscles
on either side of it. It also interferes least with the free
play of the thoracic viscera, which is a point of great
importance. The edge of the desk should then be an
inch or two above the bend of the elbow, as the arm
hangs nearly by the side. Any slight want of exact
adjustment can be corrected, by extending the elbow
farther from, or bringing it nearer to, the body.

The height of the seats and desks should of course be
graduated, to fit the different sizes of the scholars ; the
smallest scholars sitting nearest the teacher's desk.

The arrangement of seats without desks, for small
scholars, when needed, is too obvious to require any expla-
nation. Their proper position will depend upon the
other arrangements of the schoolroom. Long benches,
having separate chair-shaped seats, but with a continuous
back, are sometimes used.

The place for hanging hats, bonnets, and so forth, will
also depend upon the general construction of the house.
It should be such as to encourage habits of neatness and
order.

The instructor's desk should be upon a platform, raised
so high as to give him a view of the persons of the pupils
above their desks. When the school is not large, it

462 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

should be at the end of the room. It should overlook
the play-ground. Cases for the deposit and preservation
of the apparatus and library should be near the desk,
except where a separate apartment is provided. A teacher
without apparatus, — however numerous may be hi*
books, — is like a mechanic with but half a set of
tools.

The average number of scholars in the schools in Mas-
sachusetts is about fifty. When the school is large,
there should be a separation of the older from the
younger children, and the latter, at least, placed under
the care of a female teacher. The opinion is almost
universal, in this State, that female teaching for young
children is. in every respect, superior to male. If the
number of the older scholars be large, there should be a
separate recitation-room, and a door and an entry for the
entrance and accommodation of each sex.

In very large schools, it may be thought expedient to
have desks, sufficiently long to accommodate six or more
scholars, with chairs, fastened to the floor, for seats, and
a space between the chairs and the next tier of desks, for
passing in and out. In such cases, the desks may be
placed longitudinally, and the teacher's platform for him-
self and assistants extend the whole length of the room,
in front of them.

I now come to a subject, which I think of primary
importance. It is the almost universal practice of teach-
ers to call their classes out upon the floor for reading and
recitation. If there were no other reason, the change of
position it gives them is a sufficient one. The seats in
schoolrooms are, almost without exception, so arranged,
that these proceedings take place in full view of all the
scholars ; and they are often so, that when the teacher
turns his face towards the class, he must turn his back

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 463

upon the school. The idle and disorderly seize upon such
occasions to violate the rules of the school. This they
can generally do with perfect impunity. They can screen
themselves from observation, by moving the head so that
an intermediate scholar shall intercept the teachqr's view;
or by holding up a book, slate, or atlas before themselves,
and under such shield, can whisper, eat, or grimace.
But the effect upon the attentive is worse than upon the
idle ; and its tendency is to turn the former into the
latter. The eye is the quickest of all the senses, and
the minds of children always yield instant obedience to
it, and follow wherever it leads. Every one must have
observed, that when a class is reciting in presence of a
school, if any thing unusual or incongruous transpires,
such as the falling of a book or slate, or the ludicrous
pronunciation of a word, the attention of every scholar
is broken off from his study. The blunder or stammer-
ing of a four-years-old child, learning letters, will strike
every hand in the school off its work. While the senses,
and especially the eye, are bringing vivid images to the
mind, it is almost impossible for men, and quite so for
children, to deny them access. Much of what the world
admires as talent, is only a power of fixing attention upon
an object, and of looking steadily at it until the whole of
it is seen. The power of concentration is one of the
most valuable of intellectual attainments, because it is
the principal means of achieving any other; and the
pupil, with but little positive knowledge, in whom this
has become a habit of mind, has a far higher chance of
success in any walk of life, than one with a thousand
times the knowledge, but without the habit. This power
is an acquired one as much as any other, and as suscep-
tible as any other of improvement. But overtasking de-
stroys it, just as overloading the limbs crushes, instead of

464 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

strengthening them. Reference must be had, therefore, to
the ordinary powers of children's minds, or we shall have
distraction instead of abstraction. Much fixedness of
thought ought not to be expected from the giddiness and
volatility of children. In rooms of the common construc-
tion, I do not believe that more than one-half of the time is
available for study. Not only, therefore, ought the desire
of strengthening this power to be inspired, but the ar-
rangement of the room and the tactics of the school
should be made to contribute, unconsciously to the chil-
dren, to the same effect. Although the habits of the
mind are the main thing to be regarded in education, yet
it cannot be denied that one hour of concentrated atten-
tion on any subject is worth more than a week's listless
hovering and floating around it. Hence, where there is
no separate recitation-room, (which, however, every large
school ought to have,) the area for that purpose should
be behind the scholars who remain in their seats. The
teacher can then take such a position at the end of the
room, opposite his desk, as to command at once a view
of the reciting class and the rest of the school. He will
then see, without being seen. The scholars can interpose
nothing between themselves and him. Every scholar
would be convinced, by strict vigilance on the part of the
teacher, during the first week of the school, that he had
no power of violating rules without detection. They
would, therefore, yield to the necessity of the case. The
temptation would die with the opportunity to gratify it.
The ear only of the scholars would be solicited to notice
the voices behind them, while the stronger attraction of
visible objects, the book, the slate, the map, would rivet
eye and mind upon the subjects of study. This slight
interruption in the rear, while the mind enjoyed such
advantages for overcoming it, would increase its power

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 465

of continuous attention, and enable it, in after-life, to
cany on processes of thought in the midst of conversa-
tion or other disturbing occurrences. Still, it is thought,
that the teacher's desk should always face those of
the scholars ; so that when a class recites in the seats,
when the whole school joins in any exercise, or when they
are to be addressed, each party should be able to see the
other face to face. The social principle will never, other-
wise, flow freely.

LOCATION OF SCHOOLHOUSES.

All philosophers agree that external objects affect tem-
per and character. If their influences are imperceptible,
the results will be so much the surer, because impercep-
tible influences are never resisted. Because children
cannot analyze and state in propositions the feelings,
which outward circumstances breathe into their suscepti-
ble minds, it is no proof that they are not undergoing
insensible changes. Everybody recognizes the silent influ-
ences of external nature, if exerted only for a few days,
in the case of those religious sects who use the forest for
a temple. Fatal contagions enter through the skin or
lungs, without sending forward any herald. Subtile
influences upon such delicate tissues as the nerves and
brain are not seen in the process, but only in the result.
But experience and reason enable us to foresee such con-
sequences, and, foreseeing, to"control them. Adults alone
can perform such a duty. If they neglect it, the children
must suffer.

It has been often objected to the people of our State,
that they insist upon having the schoolhouse in the geo-
graphical centre of the district. And, other things being
equal, surely it ought to be in the centre. But the house
is erected for the children, and not for the acres ; and

VOL. I. 80

466 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

the inconvenience of going fifty or even eighty rods
farther is not to be compared to the benefit of spending
a whole day in a healthful, comfortable, pleasing spot, —
one full of salutary influences upon the feelings and
temper. Place a schoolhouse in a bleak and unsheltered
situation, and the difficulty of attaining and preserving a
proper degree of warmth is much increased ; put it upon
a sandy plain, without shade or shelter from the sun, and
the whole school is subjected to the evils of heat and dust ;
plant it in low marshy grounds, and it exposes to colds
or to more permanent diseases of the lungs, and impairs
habits of cleanliness both in dress and person ; make one
side of it the boundary of a public road, and the persons
of the children are endangered by the travel, when out,
and their attention, when in, called off the lesson by
every passer-by ; place it on a little remnant or delta of
land, where roads encircle it on all sides, without any
place of seclusion from the public gaze, and the modesty
of nature will be overlaid with habits of indecorum ; and
a want of decency, enforced upon boys and girls, will
become physical and moral turpitude in men and women.
But build it where some sheltering hill or wood mitigates
the inclemency of winter ; where a neighboring grove
tempers the summer heat, furnishing cool and shady
walks : remove it a little from the public highway, and
from buildings where noisy and clattering trades are
carried on ; and, above all, rescue it from sound or
sight of all resorts for license and dissipation, and a
sensibility to beauty, a purity of mind, a sentiment of
decency and propriety, will be developed and fostered,
and the chances of elevated feelings and correct conduct
in after-life will be increased manifold. Habits of mental
order and propriety are best cherished amidst external
order and propriety. It is a most beautiful trait in the

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 467

character of children, that they take the keenest delight
in the simplest pleasures. Their desires do not tax com-
merce for its luxuries, nor exhaust wealth for its embel-
lishments. Such pleasures as are imparted by the cheer-
ful light and the quickening air, by the wayside flowers,
the running stream, or the music of birds, are sufficient
for the more gentle and pensive ; and the impetuous and
exuberant of spirit only want a place to let off the
redundant activity of their arms and legs. And how
cheaply can these sources of gratification be purchased !
Sometimes a little of the spirit of compromise ; some-
times a little forgetfulness of strifes among the parents,
engendered on other subjects, would secure to the children
the double boon of utility and enjoyment. Yet how often
are the unoffending children ground between the col-
lisions of their parents !

It seems not unconnected with this subject to inquire,
whether, in many places out of our cities, a plan may not
be adopted to give greater efficiency to the means now
devoted to common-school education. The population of
many towns is so situated as conveniently to allow a gra-
dation of the schools. For children under the age of
eight or ten years, about a mile seems a proper limit, be-
yond which they should not be required to travel to school.
On this supposition, one house, as centrally situated as
circumstances will permit, would accommodate the popu-
lation upon a territory of four square miles, or, which is
the same thing, two miles square. But a child above that
age can go two miles to school, or even rather more, with-
out serious inconvenience. There are many persons, whose
experience attests, that they never enjoyed better health,
or made greater progress, than when they went two miles
and a half or three miles, daily, to school. Supposing,
however, the most remote scholars to live only at about the

468

distance of two miles from the school, one house will then
accommodate all the older children upon a territory of
about sixteen square miles, or four miles square. Under
such an arrangement, while there were four schools in a
territory of four miles square, i. e. sixteen square miles,
for the younger children, there would be one central
school for the older. Suppose there is $600 to be divided
amongst the inhabitants of this territory of sixteen square
miles, or $150 for each of the four districts. Suppose
further, that the average wages for male teachers is $25,
and for female $12.50, per month. If, according to the
present system, four male teachers are employed for the
winter term, and four female for the summer, each of
the summer and winter schools may be kept four months.
The money would then be exhausted ; i. e. four months
summer, at $12.50 =$50, and four months winter, at $25
= $100; — both = $150. But according to the plan
suggested, the same money would pay for six months'
summer school, instead of four, in each of the four dis-
tricts, and for a male teacher's school eight months, at
$35 a month, instead of four months, at $25 a month,
and would then leave $20 in the treasury.

4 miles.

Territory four miles
square, or of six-
teen square miles.

2 m.

a

a. a. a. a. District
school-houses for
female teachers.

A. Central school-
bouse for a male
teacher.

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 469

By this plan, the great superiority of female over male
training, for children under eight, ten, or twelve years of
age, would be secured ; the larger scholars would be sep-
arated from the smaller, and thus the great diversity of
studies and of classes in the same school, which now crum-
bles the teacher's time into dust, would be avoided ; the
female schools would be lengthened one-half; the length
of the male schools would be doubled, and for the in-
creased compensation, a teacher of fourfold qualifications
could be employed. Undoubtedly, in many towns, upon
the Cape or among the mountains, the course of the roads
and the face of the territory would present insuperable
obstacles to the full reduction of this scheme to practice.
But it is as unquestionable, that in many others no physical
impediments exist to its immediate adoption ; especially
if we consider the legal power of different towns to unite
portions of their territory for the joint maintenance of
schools. We have not yet brought the power of united
action to bear with half its force upon the end or the
means of education. I think it will yet be found more em-
phatically true in this department of human action, than
in any other, that adding individual means muliplies social
power. If four districts cannot be united, three may. If
the central point of the territory happen to be populous,
a schoolhouse may be built, consisting of two rooms ; one
for the large, the other for the small scholars ; both upon
the same floor, or one above the other. It ought to be
remarked, that where there are two schoolrooms under
the same roof, care should be taken to have the walls
well deafened, so that neither should ever be incommoded
by any noises in the other.

The above enumeration of requisites in a schoolhouse
is considered absolutely essential and indispensable. Just
so far as they are disregarded, that nursery for the rear-

470 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

ing of vigorous, intelligent, and upright men, must fail
of its object. If the children's lungs are fed only with
noxious and corrupted air, which has once performed its
office, and is, therefore, incapable of performing it again,
without renovation, it may generate positive and incura-
ble disease, and impair the energies both of body and mind
for the residue of life. " In looking back upon the lan-
guor of fifty years of labor as a teacher," said the vener-
able Mr. Woodbridge, " reiterated with many a weary day,
I attribute a great proportion of it to mephitic air ; nor
can I doubt that it has compelled many worthy and prom-
ising' teachers to quit the employment. Neither can I
doubt that it has been the great cause of their subsequent
sickly habits and untimely decease." People, who shud-
der at a flesh-wound and a trickle of blood, will confine
their children like convicts, and compel them, month after
month, to breathe quantities of poison. It would less
impair the mental and physical constitutions of our chil-
dren, gradually to draw an ounce of blood from their
veins, during the same length of time, than to send them
to breathe, for six hours in a day, the lifeless and poisoned
air of some of our schoolrooms. Let any man, who votes
for confining children in small rooms and keeping them
on stagnant air, try the experiment of breathing his own
breath only four times over ; and, if medical aid be not
at hand, the children will never be endangered by his
vote afterwards. Such darkening and benumbing of the
mind accustoms it, in its first beginnings, to look at
objects, as it were, through a haze, and to seize them with
a feeble grasp, and robs it of the pleasure of seeing things
in a bright light. Children always feel a keen delight in
the consciousness of overcoming difficulties, and of fully
comprehending any subject. This pleasure is the most
legitimate of all rewards, and one which Nature always

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 471

pays down on the spot. But, instead of this, after filling
their brains with bird-lime, we taunt or chastise them if
they stick or get posed. If a child suffer from heat or
cold, from a constrained or unnatural position ; if his
attention be perpetually broken off by causes beyond his
control ; it tends to make his temper fretful and irritable,
and compels him to go back, again and again, to the begin-
ning of his problem or exercise, like a traveller obliged
to return home and commence his journey anew after
having completed half its distance.

LIGHT. — WINDOWS.

The manner in which a schoolhouse is lighted is of no
inconsiderable consequence. The additional cost of obey-
ing philosophical principles is, at most, trivial. We ought
also to remember, that the laws of Nature are never vio-
lated with impunity. In modern times the eye is much
more used than it formerly was. Civilization has imposed
multiplied and difficult labors upon that organ. Perhaps
the eye gives fewer monitions of being overworked, than
any other bodily power. It seems more to exhaust its
strength, and then fail irrecoverably. If so, it should be
protected by the foresight of reason. When provision is
not made for admitting into a schoolroom a good deal more
light than is ordinarily wanted, there will frequently be too
little, and no remedy. Hence the windows should be
such, as to furnish sufficient light at all times, and means
should be provided for excluding any excess. Window-
blinds and curtains, therefore, are essential. The transi-
tions of light in the open air are very great ; but it is to
be observed, that there is no out-of-door occupation which
severely tasks the eye. But in a schoolroom, without
blinds or curtains, when the sun is allowed to shine
directly upon a child's head, book, or desk, the transition

472 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

is greater and more sudden than in the open air ; while,
at the same time, the eye, being intensely engaged in look-
ing at minute objects, has its pupil widely distended, so that
the greatest quantity of light falls upon the optic nerve.

The following is extracted from a lecture, delivered by
Dr. Edward Reynolds, of Boston, before the American
Institute of Instruction, in 1833. " How much talent
lies dormant by the morbidly sensitive eyesight, occasioned
by inordinate and untimely use of the eyes ! This last-
mentioned evil is increasing to a fearful amount among
the young. Accurate inquiries have convinced me, that
a large number of these individuals must go back to the
schoolroom to find the source of their infirmities."

No persons, going with their eyes unprotected, ever
cross the Andes, without losing their sight. The glare
of light from the snow destroys it. Such facts admonish
us to beware of exposing the eyes of the young, either to
very intense light, or to great transitions, while engaged
in looking at small letters, or in making fine marks on
white paper. To say that the loss or impairing of sight
is an evil too contingent and uncertain to demand precau-
tion, is neither philosophical nor humane. Admit, that it
is a contingent and uncertain evil, in regard to any par-
ticular individual so exposed ; as it is uncertain, which
of the children, in Egypt, shall be blind men ; yet that
some one out of a given number, subjected to the danger,
shall be blind, is as certain as any law of Nature. Laws
applicable to classes of men are just as infallible in their
operation as those applicable to individuals, though we
cannot foresee upon which of the individuals in the class
the law is to be verified. In a multitude of cases, each
tendency, however slight, will have its quota of the
results. Hence the necessity of meeting tendencies with

prevention.*

* See Appendix D.

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 473

In order that passing, out-door objects and events may
not draw off the attention of the scholars, it is usually
recommended to insert the windows so high, that such
objects and events will be invisible in the schoolroom. It
cannot, however, be denied, that this gives to the room a
prison or cellar-like appearance. May not such interrup-
tions be better avoided by selecting a retired situation,
and by arranging the seats, so that the scholars shall sit
facing from the road ? Nor can there be any necessity
for having the windows very high for this purpose. As
scholars sit in their seats, the eyes of but few will be more
than three feet and a half from the floor. This would
allow of windows six feet deep in a room ten feet high.
So, too, it would be a perfect security against the evil, if
the lower sash, or the lowest part of it, were glazed with
ground glass. The windows should be made so that the
upper sash can be lowered. This may be very desirable
in summer, independently of the considerations, above
urged, in regard to ventilation.

YAEDS OR PLAY-GROUNDS.

On this subject, I have never seen, nor am I able to
prepare, any thing so judicious, and apposite to the con-
dition of the districts in Massachusetts, as the following
paragraphs, taken from a Report, published in 1833, " by
order of the Directors of the Essex-County Teachers'
Association."

" As the situation should be pleasant and healthful, so
there should be sufficient space around the building. With
the number who ordinarily attend these institutions, not
less than a quarter of an acre should ever be thought of
as a space for their accommodation ; and this should be
enclosed from the public highway, so as to secure it from
cattle, that the children may have a safe and clean place

474 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

for exercise at recess and at other times. We believe it
no uncommon thing for a district to meet with difficulty
in procuring a place for a house ; for while most wish it
to be near, they are unwilling to have it stand on a notch,
taken out of their own field. This reluctance to accom-
modate the district may have been carried too far ; the
actual may be less than the imagined evils. Yet it is
not without foundation ; for in most instances, from
the scanty and niggardly provision made by the district, the
man knows that his own cultivated fields must and will
be made the place of the scholars' recreation. We do
not overstate, when we say, that more than half the
inconveniences which persons thus experience in their
property from the contiguity of a schoolhouse, arises from
the insufficient provision made for the children by the
district. While all the district may think that a neigh-
bor is unaccommodating, because he is unwilling to let
them have just land enough to set their house upon, the
real truth is, that the smallness of the lot is the very thing
which justifies his reluctance ; for whether he theorize or
not on the subject, he well understands that he will have
to afford accommodations, which the district are unwill-
ing on their part to purchase. Every schoolhouse lot
should be large enough for the rational exercise which
the children ought to have, and will take. It would be
well to have it large enough to contain some ornamental
and fruit trees, with flower-borders, which we know chil-
dren may be taught to cultivate and enjoy ; and by an
attention to which their ideas of property, and common
rights, and obligations, would become more distinct. By
attention to what belonged to themselves, they would be
kept from many of those wanton injuries too often done
to the possessions of those near them.

" In regard to space, no one can be ignorant of the gen-

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 475

eral practice. We believe it would be difficult, in this
county, to find a score of these buildings, where the lot
is as large as the most inexperienced on the subject
would judge necessary.

" In by far the greater number of instances, there is
no more ground than that which is occupied by the build-
ing ; while many of them actually stand partly or wholly
in the highway. The children, therefore, have no resort
but to the public highway, or the private property of their
neighbors, for amusement. Healthful and vigorous exer-
cise is restrained ; the modesty of nature is often out-
raged ; and, not unfrequently, a permanent and extensive
injury done to the finer and better feelings, which ought,
at that age, to be cultivated and confirmed by the most
careful attention, not only as a great security from sin,
but as a most lovely ornament through life. Besides this,
there being no place for pleasant exercise for the boys
out of doors, the schoolroom, during the intermission at,
noon, becomes the place of noise and tumult, where, not
from any real intention, but in the forgetfulness of gen-
eral excitement, gentlemanly and lady-like feelings are
turned into ridicule, and an attempt to behave in an
orderly and becoming manner subjects the individual to
no small degree of persecution. We have often witnessed
such instances, and known those who refused to engage
in these rude exercises forced out of the room, and kept
out during the greater part of an intermission, because
their example cast a damp upon a course of rude and
boisterous conduct, in which they could not take a part.
Whatever others may think, it is our belief, that this
noise and tumult are, in a great measure, the natural
overflowing of youthful buoyancy, which, were it allowed
to spend itself in out-door amusements, would hardly
ever betray itself improperly in the house."

476 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

There is another topic of primary importance, the
merits of which are so well developed in a portion of the
Report above referred to, that I shall need no apology
for transferring it to these pages. It regards

THE DUTY OF INSTRUCTORS IN RELATION TO
SCHOOLHOUSES.

" Though Instructors may, ordinarily, have no direct
agency in erecting and repairing the buildings where they
are employed to keep school, yet by a little carefulness,
ingenuity, and enterprise, they can do much to avoid
some of the evils connected with them. When about to
open a school, they can look at the house, as a mechanic
at his shop, and adapt their system to the building, and
not carry into a house, ill adapted to its development, a
system of operations, however speculatively just it may
appear in their own minds. The buildings are already
constructed, and of materials not over plastic, and often
as incapable of accommodating a system got up in some
other place, as the house of the Vicar of Wakefield was
for the family painting. Instructors should make the
most of what is comfortable and convenient, and remedy,
as far as possible, what is bad. If the pupils are uncom-
fortably seated, they can allow them occasionally to
change their seats, or alter their position, which, though
attended with some inconvenience, cannot be compared
with the evils growing out of pain and restlessness, and
the effects which are likely to be produced upon the
health, the disposition, morals, and progress in learning,
from a long confinement in an uneasy position. Instruct-
ors can and ought to use their influence and authority
to preserve the buildings from injuries, such as cutting
the tables, loosening and splitting the seats, breaking the
doors and windows, by which most houses of this class

ON SCHOOLHOUSE8. 477

are shamefully mutilated, and their inconveniences, great
enough at first, are increased. The extent to which
injuries of this kind are done, and the inconveniences
arising from them in respect of writing-books and clothes,
are great beyond what is ordinarily thought ; and, as it
is possible in a considerable degree to prevent them, they
should not be tolerated. So far as the scholars are
concerned, they may arise from a mixture of causes ;
thoughtlessness, idleness, a restless disposition, or real
intent to do injury. But, whatever may be the cause,
it argues an imperfection in the moral principle, which,
were it in wholesome exercise, would teach them that it
is equally iniquitous to damage public as private prop-
erty. The practice we refer to is actual injustice, a real
trespass, for which, in almost all other cases, the offender
would be called to an account. And we must confess
that it is matter of just surprise, that more efforts have
not been made to prevent it. A high responsibility rel-
ative to this concern rests on the instructors. The power
of preventing this lies principally with them. It is
obvious then to remark, if they have much reason to com-
plain for want of better accommodations, they have some
reason to reform ; and in measuring out the blame which
justly rests somewhere, to take a little portion to them-
selves. We are persuaded that schoolhouses will be more
readily built and repaired, when instructors shall use
more exertions to save them from the folly and indiscre-
tion of children. The injuries complained of, we are
persuaded, if not wholly, yet to a great extent, can be
prevented ; and it is high time that parents and teachers
should bring together their fixed and operative determi-
nation, to suffer them no longer. Separate from the
inconveniences which scholars themselves experience from
them, a licentious and irresponsible feeling, in regard to

478 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

public property, is encouraged. If the well-known loose
sense of obligation in respect to public interests, and the
wanton injuries which are so frequently done to institu-
tions of a public nature of every description, so pre-
eminently common throughout this country, do not
spring up in the habits referred to, they are certainly
most powerfully fostered by them; and there is great
reason to apprehend, that a principle so loose in respect
to public property, must extend itself by easy transitions
to private. In every view, the practice is wrong, and the
effect corrupting ; and it is high time that the attention
of the community was directed to it, the obligations of
men on this subject more fully taught, and, when neces-
sary, enforced in all our institutions of learning, from the
Infant School to the Professional Hall, not excepting our
Theological Seminaries, where, if in any place, we should
expect regard would be paid to public rights, and the
bestowments of private munificence ; and we could wish
the evil complained of, stopped here ; but truth con-
strains us to say, that the tables and seats of the Bench
and Bar in our court-houses, the pews, and even the pul-
pits, in our places of religious worship, bear evident
marks, that neither the ' ermine nor the lawn ' is suffi-
cient to restrain this most shameful, deforming, and
mischievous practice.

" Teachers should take the management of the fire
entirely under their own control ; for though their own
feelings may not be the thermometer of the room, yet,
if they are at all qualified to teach, they must possess
more discretion on the subject than those under them.
They should see that the room is in a comfortable con-
dition by the time the exercises commence. Many a half-
day is nearly wasted, and sometimes, from the disorder
consequent upon the state of things, worse than lost,

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 479

because, when the children collect, the room is so cold,
that they cannot study, nor can they be still. Nothing
short of the master's being in the house a half-hour
before the school commences, can, ordinarily, secure the
object referred to. It may be objected, that instructors
are not employed to build fires. We do not ask them to
do it ; but we ask them to see that fires are seasonably
built. And we must think those who can define so
nicely the limits of their obligations, as to excuse them-
selves from this care, have not the spirit of high-minded
and enterprising teachers, and that, however worthy they
may be, and however well qualified for other employ-
ments, they should never offer themselves for that of
school-keeping.

" Instructors should see, also, that the schoolroom be,
in all its parts, kept in a clean and comfortable condition.
Cleanliness is not ordinarily ranked so high, nor is the
contrary habit ranked so low, in the scale of moral worth
and sinful defilement, as they should be, nor do they, as
we fear, enter so fully into the account when men are
estimating their own moral state, or when others are
estimating it for them, as they ought. We will not say,
as a very able and careful observer of men once said, that
he did not believe any person could be a true Christian,
who was not becomingly neat in his person and in his
business ; yet we are free to say, that every additional
year's intercourse with the world in moral and religious
concerns, deepens the conviction, that cleanliness is in-
separable from any considerable advancement in a reli-
gious life, and that where its requirements are disregarded,
there is much reason to apprehend that other and impor-
tant defects of a moral nature do, most probably, exist.
Cleanliness in one's person, and the various occupations,
is intimately connected with manly and upright conduct,

480 REPORT OP THE SECRETARY

chaste and pure thoughts, and sensible comfort in any
situation ; and, as a service exacted, or a habit estab-
lished, would go far to secure good order and agreeable
conduct in any school. We are persuaded that one of
the most powerful helps towards good government, and
consequent orderly conduct among the pupils, is over-
looked, through inattention or ignorance, where this prin-
ciple is not called in ; and where an exertion to establish
a principle and habit of neatness has not been put forth,
one of the strong bonds to a future worthy moral conduct
is lost, and a most important and legitimate object of
instruction and education neglected. Great exertions
should be used to cultivate among the pupils a taste for
cleanliness, decency, and elegance in all things, and their
particular responsibility in respect to the proper state of
the house, and all its outward connections. This is their
home, for the good and decent state of which, their char-
acter is at stake, and their comfort involved. They
should firmly and perseveringly resolve, that the school-
room should be kept clean ; not simply swept, but often
washed, and every day dusted. Without this attention,
it is impossible their own persons, their clothes, or books,
can be preserved in a decent and comfortable state. The
room they should consider as their parlor, and those that
occupy it, company to one another. The room must,
therefore, always be in a visiting condition. And what
should prevent this ? Cannot a number of young people,
all of whom, it must be presumed, are trained to order
and neatness at home, bring the principles of order and
neatness into an apartment, where they are to spend so
much time together, and where any one, who knows much
of the business of common families, must know there is
less excuse for any disorder or dirt, than there is in most
of our houses ? We know it is practicable to have a

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 481

schoolroom kept in a comfortable condition, and that
youth instructed and encouraged to do this, and having
their attention sufficiently directed to it, will soon become
interested in the subject, and manifest a commendable
disposition to have things as they ought to be, and a will-
ingness to make all the personal efforts which are
required to accomplish it. And we are persuaded, that,
when this is attempted, it will be found, perhaps, to
the surprise of many, that from the less injury done
to the clothes of scholars and to the books, as well as from
the better conduct which will invariably ensue, many of
the evils, connected with our Common Schools, would
be removed.

" It is a fact, susceptible of as perfect demonstration
as any moral proposition, that filth and dirt, if they be in
part the effect, are, at the same time, among the most
efficient causes of corrupt morals and debased conduct.
Gisborne, in one of his works, has a remark of this kind,
(we do not pretend to quote his words,) that in a part
of London, more young families, who, at setting out in
life, promise well, are made corrupt, and led into wretched
and destructive habits, from the unhappy location of
houses, which renders all attempts to keep them in a
pure and comfortable condition ineffectual, than from any
other single cause. Ineffectual efforts to keep things
neat lead to neglect, neglect to filthy habits, and filthy
habits to low and degraded vice. If such be the opera-
tion of a want of neatness in families, and we apprehend
the justness of the remark will find support in instances
which must have fallen within the knowledge of every
attentive observer, are there not reasons to fear, that the
same effects will follow the same course in school ? There
can be no doubt that, in many instances, a sense of pro-
priety is destroyed, in more, greatly weakened, by the

VOL. I. 31

482 EEPORT OP THE SECRETARY

state of things in and about the houses of education. A
disregard to this subject, too common among scholars,
often settles down into a confirmed habit, and gradually
spreads itself over the whole surface of action, and
through life ; the individual becomes less interesting in
his appearance, less agreeable in his manners, less honor-
able in his conduct, and less moral and upright in his
principles.

" Instructors should also guard against the bad influ-
ence upon the dispositions and manners of scholars,
which the inconveniences they experience are apt to pro-
duce. The pain and uneasiness which a child experi-
ences from an uncomfortable situation in school, he will
very likely associate with his books and studies, or with
the instructor and regulations of school ; he may connect
them with those who sit near him, and who may be just
as uneasy as himself, and be ready to hate the whole and
quarrel with all, because he feels pain, and cannot, or
does not, rightly understand the occasion of it. The local
situation of children in school has a most obvious bearing
upon the conduct and temper. Place them a little out
of the observation of the instructor, and they will play ;
put them where they are crowded, or sit with inconve-
nience, and they will quarrel. ' It has often been a subject
of interest to me,' says one of the committee, ' when
visiting schools, to observe the operations of local circum-
stances upon the mind and conduct of children ; and the
more I have observed, the more importance am I con-
strained to attach to these things. In one house where I
have many times called, I do not recollect ever passing
a half -hour, without seeing contention among those
placed in a particular part of the room, and play in
another. I distinctly recollect the same thing in the sem-
inary where I pursued my preparatory studies. It was

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 483

as obvious in the lecture-room in college. In the semi-
nary which I had the care of for some years, it was so
apparent that I often changed the situation of those who
were unfavorably placed, to prevent the feelings and
conduct likely to be produced from settling down into con-
firmed habits. For permanent bad effects may and have,
in fact, grown out of these circumstances. Quarrels, also,
which have sprung up between children, and which had
no other legitimate cause than their being placed to-
gether in school, on uncomfortable seats, have led to a
state of unkind feelings, and unfriendly conduct through
life. The influence has sometimes extended beyond the
individuals ; families and neighborhoods have been drawn
into the contention ; and in not a few instances whole
districts thrown into disorder, only because at first some
little twig of humanity had become restless and quarrel-
some, in consequence of his uneasy position in school.'

"But if the effect be confined to the individual, yet it
may be sufficiently unhappy. Suppose, from one of the
causes above named, the child acquire a habit of loose
and foolish playfulness, or of restless discontent — sup-
pose he acquire a disrelish for schools, his books, or un-
kind feelings towards his instructor, or his fellows — will
there not be much personal loss, and is there no danger
of future consequences — is there no danger that these
feelings will go into future life, and the individual prove
less comfortable to himself, and less comfortable to others ?
Youth is the season when the character is formed, and
direction given to the feelings and the conduct. It is a
matter of no small interest to the man himself, or those
with whom he is to act in future life, that these be of a
gentle and accommodating character.

" Since, therefore, from the construction of many of
our schoolhouses, it is not possible for the scholars to bo

484 REPOET OF THE SECRETARY

altogether free from suffering, it is a subject well worthy
the special attention of instructors, carefully to guard
against the consequences which it is like to produce upon
their temper and conduct. This may be done, in some
degree, by allowing the children occasionally to change
their situation, to rise and stand up a few minutes ; or,
at convenient seasons, giving them a short additional re-
eess. To remove, in some degree, the gloom and deform-
ities of the house, and at the same time to draw off the
attention from their bodily pains, scholars should be al-
lowed to ornament it with greens and flowers, and other
things of an innocent nature, attracting to the minds of
youth. Agreeable objects originate agreeable feelings.
and pleasant feelings lead to good conduct. We would
also recommend to instructors to encourage the children,
in places where there is the least prospect of security, to
cultivate flower-borders upon the schoolhouse-grounds,
and certainly in boxes set in the house. Should it be
objected, that their attention would in this way be with-
drawn from their books, we must reply, that we doubt
the fact, and would in turn ask whether the feelings, the
taste, and the understanding would not be most essen-
tially improved by attention to the works of Nature, and
efforts to bring to the highest perfection those things
which a wise Providence, who knows by what means the
character of man is to be formed, has made beautiful to
the eye. Our own feelings have often been hurt, and our
views of expediency entirely crossed, when we have seen,
as we have on many occasions, a handsome branch, or
beautiful flower, or well-arranged nosegay, torn in a cen-
sorious and ruthless manner from the hand of a child, or
the place where his love for ornament and beauty had
placed it. We would encourage the children to make
the room of confinement as pleasant to them as they can,

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 485

consistently with other duties ; and if at any time it be
observed, that these things are gaining an undue influ-
ence over them, to check it, as any other practice not
evil in itself, but only in excess, should be corrected. It
should be done in such a manner, that the child should
be left free to enjoy, as far as it is safe to enjoy, and feel,
too, that he does it with the full approbation and good-
will of his instructor.

" There is one subject more to which we must be per-
mitted to refer ; one with which the morals of the young
are intimately connected, one in which parents, instruct-
ors, and scholars should unite their efforts to produce a
reform. There should be nothing in or about the school-
houses calculated to defile the mind, corrupt the heart,
or excite unholy and forbidden appetites ; yet, considering
the various character of those brought together in our
public schools, and considering also how inventive are
corrupt minds, in exhibiting openly the defilement which
reigns within, we do not know but we must expect that
schoolhouses, as well as other public buildings, and even
fences, will continue to bear occasional marks both of
lust and profaneness. But we must confess, that the
general apathy which apparently exists on this subject
does appear strange to us. It is an humbling fact, that
in many of these houses, there are highly indecent, pro-
fane, and libidinous marks, images, and expressions, some
of which are spread out in broad characters on the walls,
where they unavoidably meet the eyes of all who come
into the house, or, being on the outside, salute the trav-
eller as he passes by, wounding the delicate and annoying
the moral sensibilities of the heart ; while there is still a
much greater number, in smaller character, upon the ta-
bles and seats of the students, and even, in some instances,
of the instructors, constantly before the eyes of those

486 REPOKT OF THE SECRETARY

who happen to occupy them. How contaminating these
must be, no one can be entirely insensible. And yet how
unalarmed, or, if not entirely unalarmed, how little is
the mind of the community directed to the subject, and
how little effort put forth to stay this fountain of corrup-
tion ! Such things ought not to be ; they can, to a con-
siderable extent, be prevented. The community are not,
therefore, altogether clear in this matter.

" When we regard the deleterious effect which the want
of accommodation and other imperfections, in and about
these buildings, must have upon the growth, health, and
perfectness of the bodily system, upon the mental and
moral powers, upon the tender and delicate feelings of
the heart, we must suppose there is as pressing a call for
the direct interference of the wise and benevolent, to
produce an improvement, as there is for the efforts of the
Prison Discipline Society, or for many of the benevolent
exertions of the day. And we do most solemnly and
affectionately call upon all, according to their situation in
life, to direct their attention to the subject; for the
bodies, the minds, the hearts of the young and rising
generation require this. It is a service due to the pres-
ent and future generation, — a service due to their bodies
and souls."

I will now bring this long statement to a close by the
enumeration of a few further particulars, which could not
well be arranged under any of the preceding heads ; and
shall omit such things only as no CIVILIZED people can ever
forget.

Where the expense can be afforded, every schoolhouse
should be provided with a bell. If not the only mode, it
is probably the best one for insuring punctuality ; and
the importance of punctuality can hardly be overstated,

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 487

either as it regards the progress of the school collectively,
or the habits of the individual pupils. If morals were to
be divided into the greater and the less, the virtue of
punctuality should be set down in the first class. Prob-
ably there are few districts, which would not obtain a full
equivalent, every year, for the price of a bell, in the im-
proved habits and increased progress of the children.

It is also very desirable to have a time-piece placed in
some part of the schoolroom, where it can be seen by all
the scholars. It is both encouragement and relief to
them. It has an effect upon pupils, just like that of mile-
stones upon travellers. Men and children have a wonder-
ful power of adapting themselves to circumstances ; but,
with all their flexibility, neither child nor man can ever
adapt himself to a state of suspense or uncertainty. All
the large schools in the city of Lowell are provided with
a clock, which strikes after stated intervals. This is a
signal for classes to take their places for recitation, and
for reciting-classes to return to their seats.

Many schoolhouses in the country are situated a hun-
dred rods or more from any dwelling-house. In all cases
it is desirable, but in such cases it seems almost indispen-
sable, to have a pump or well, where water for drink and
so forth can be obtained. In the summer, children
usually require drink once in half a day. A hundred
rods is too far for them to run in a brief intermission, or
for water conveniently to be carried ; — to say nothing of
the inconvenience to a neighbor of having his premises
invaded year after year, and, perhaps, his gardens and
fruit-trees thereby subjected to petty depredations.

No children or teacher ought ever to be blamed for
having a mud-plastered floor, if mats and scrapers are not
placed at the doors of the house.

If there be not a cellar for wood when that species

488 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

of fuel is used, a shed in which to house it is indispen-
sable.

In the year 1831, the censors of the American Institute
of Instruction submitted to that body a " Plan of a Vil-
lage Schoolhouse." As the object of this Report is, not
so much to present a model for universal adoption, as
to explain the great principles which should be observed,
whatever model may be selected, I have thought it might
be acceptable to accompany this Report with the " Plan "
which was submitted by the censors as above stated,
together with all the material parts of their explanation
of it. They are therefore appended. [See the 2d vol-
ume of the Lectures of the American Institute of Instruc-
tion, p. 285, et seq.]

It will be perceived, that the " Plan " of the censors
exhibits a Doric portico in front of the house. Such an
ornament would be highly creditable to the district which
should supply it. It would be a visible and enduring
manifestation of the interest they felt in the education of
their children. And what citizen of Massachusetts would
not feel an ingenuous and honorable pride, if, in whatever
direction he should have occasion to travel through the
State, he could go upon no highway, nor towards any
point of the compass, without seeing, after every interval
of three or four miles, a beautiful temple, planned accord-
ing to some tasteful model in architecture, dedicated to
the noble purpose of improving the rising generation, and
bearing evidence, in all its outward aspects and circum-
stances, of fulfilling the sacred object of its erection ?
What external appearance could impress strangers from
other States or Countries, as they passed through our
borders, with such high and demonstrative proofs, that
they were in the midst of a people, who, by forecasting
the truest welfare of their children, meant nobly to seek

ON SCHOOLHOUSES. 489

for honor in the character of their posterity, rather than
meanly to be satisfied with that of their ancestors ? And
how different would be the feelings of all the children
towards the schools, and through the schools towards all
other means of elevation and improvement, if, from their
earliest days of observation, they were accustomed always
to look at the schoolhouse, and to hear it spoken of, as
among the most attractive objects in the neighborhood !

In the preceding remarks, I have suggested defects in
the construction of our schoolhouses only for the purpose
of more specifically pointing out improvements. I would
not be understood as detracting from, but as attesting
to, their usefulness, as they are. Although often injudi-
ciously located, unsightly without, and uncomfortable
within, yet, more than any thing else, they tend to convert
the hope of the philanthropist into faith, and they fill him
with a gratification a thousand times nobler and more
rational than the sight of all the palaces in the Old
World.

HORACE MANN,
Secretary of the Board of Education.
Boston, March 27, 1838.

SECOND ANNUAL REPOET OP THE SECRETARY

BOARD OF EDUCATION.

DECEMBER, 1838.

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT

SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

To THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

GENTLEMEN : — I hereby respectfully submit some ac-
count of my proceedings during the last year, in dis-
charging the duties of the office you have confided to me.
I should deem it an encroachment upon the province of
the Board to advert to such topics in the administration
of the school law, as are equally as well known to the
Board as to myself; — such, for instance, as the measures
they have taken for establishing Normal Schools, for caus-
ing school libraries to be prepared, and the designation of
the form and time for making the School Returns. I
shall, therefore, confine myself to such facts as have come
more immediately within my own knowledge, and to the
considerations suggested by them.

During the past season, after having given seasonable
notice by sending circulars to the school committee of
each town in the Commonwealth, I visited the fourteen
counties in the State, and, at convenient and central
places, have met such of the friends of Education as
chose to attend. At a majority of these meetings I have
been aided by the presence and co-operation of one or
more of the members of the Board. Other distinguished
citizens, who, for many years, have received the fullest

493

494 THE SECRETARY'S

testimonials of the people's confidence, have been present,
and have taken an active and most useful part in the
proceedings. Except in the three counties of Hampden,
Berkshire, and Essex, the conventions have been well
attended by school committees, teachers, and other friends
of Education. The time of the meetings has been occu-
pied by statements, respecting the condition of the public
schools, by discussions in regard to the processes of
teaching, and by the delivery of one or more addresses.

It appeared from facts ascertained during the last part
of the year 1837, and communicated by me to the Board
iu the report of Jan. 1, 1838, that the Common-school
system of Massachusetts had fallen into a state of general
unsoundness and debility ; that a great majority of the
schoolhouses were not only ill adapted to encourage
mental effort, but, in many cases, were absolutely peril-
ous to the health and symmetrical growth of the chil-
dren ; that the schools were under a sleepy supervision ;
that many of the most intelligent and wealthy of our
citizens had become estranged from their welfare, and
that the teachers of the schools, although, with very few
exceptions, persons of estimable character and of great
private worth, yet in the absence of all opportunities to
qualify themselves for the performance of the most diffi-
cult and delicate task, which, in the arrangements of
Providence, is committed to human hands, were, necessa-
rily, and therefore without fault of their own, deeply and
widely deficient in the two indispensable prerequisites for
their office, viz., a knowledge of the human mind, as the
subject of improvement ; and a knowledge of the means
best adapted wisely to unfold and direct its growing
faculties. To expect that a system, animated only by a
feeble principle of life, and that life in irregular action,
could be restored at once to health and vigor, would be a

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 495

sure preparation for disappointment. It is now twenty
years, since the absolute government of Prussia, under
the impulse of self-preservation, entered upon the work
of entirely remodelling their Common Schools, so as to
give them a comprehensiveness and an efficacy which
would embrace and educate every child in the kingdom.
In this undertaking, high intelligence has been aided, at
every step, by unlimited power ; and yet the work is but
just completed ; — in some places and in some circum-
stances of detail, I believe, not yet completed. Their
engine of reform is the command of the sovereign, en-
forced by penalties ; ours is the intelligence of the
people, stimulated by duty. Their plan has the advan-
tage of efficiency and despatch, but it has this disad-
vantage, that what the ruler may decree to-day, his
successor may revoke to-morrow ; ours has the disad-
vantage of slowness in execution, but the compensatory
advantage of permanency, when accomplished. Besides,
if our schools are voluntarily advanced, through the intel-
ligence of the people, the agents themselves will be bene-
fited almost as much as the objects. These considera-
tions ought to satisfy those persons who seem impatient
of delay, and who think that any Board of Education
could re-animate our system in one, or even in a few
years.

Considering, then, the description of the means to be
employed for raising our schools to a reasonable and prac-
ticable point of usefulness, it may be confidently stated,
that the efforts, which have been made, in different
places, have accomplished something already, and have
given sure auguries of a speedier progression hereafter.

In my circuit this year, Nantucket was the first place
visited. The town contains almost 10,000 inhabitants.
When there, the previous season, there was but one set

49 G THE SECRET ARY7S

of public schools for all the children. To them, only
children over the age of six years were admitted, and no
public provision existed for the education of those below.
During the last year, the town has established two pri-
mary schools for small children, and also a school (as it
is denominated in the statute) for the benefit of all the
inhabitants of the town. To the last, pupils are admitted
on passing an examination in the branches required to
be taught in the middle or secondary schools. The
organization, therefore, is now perfect. The small chil-
dren are provided for, by themselves. This is an advan-
tage, which can hardly be over-estimated. For the
purpose of preserving order and silence in schools, com-
posed of scholars of all ages, it becomes almost necessary
to practise a rigor of restraint and a severity of discipline
upon the small children, which is always injurious and
often cruel. The youngest scholars are, constitutionally,
most active. Their proportion of brain and nervous sys-
tem, compared with the whole body, is much the great-
est. Their restlessness does not proceed from volition,
but from the involuntary impulses of nature. They
vibrate at the slightest touch ; and they can no more help
a responsive impulse at every sight and sound, than they
can help seeing and hearing with open eyes and ears.
What aggravates the difficulty is, that they have nothing
to do. At a time when nature designs they shall be
more active than at any other period of life, a stagna-
tion of all the powers of mind and body is enforced. But
while the heart beats and the blood flows, the signs of
life cannot be wholly suppressed ; and therefore the
steady working of nature's laws is sure to furnish
the teacher with occasions for discipline. If it would be
intolerably irksome for any of the large scholars to sit
still for half a day, in a constrained posture, with hands

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 497

unoccupied, arid eyes looking straight into vacancy, how
much more intolerable is it for the small ones ! Hence
the importance of having such a gradation of schools, in
every place where it is practicable, as has been lately
established in Nantucket. Another invaluable advantage
of having three grades of schools is, that while it dimin-
ishes, at least one-half, the number of classes in each
school, it increases the number in each class, and thus
allows the teacher to devote more time to the recitations
and to the oral instruction of his enlarged classes. An-
other point, of great importance to the schools, was well
illustrated in the change at Nantucket. When I was
there in 1837, a private school was in operation, kept by
one of the most accomplished instructors in the State,
and sustained at great expense to its patrons. When the
arrangement, above referred to, was made, this gentleman
was employed by the town to keep the town school. The
private school was, of course, given up ; but he carried
with him, into the town school, most of his former pupils.
And he now educates many others, who could not afford
the expense of the private school. Although, in such
cases, the compensation of the teacher may not be quite
as great, nominally, yet it will probably be worth as
much ; as he will receive it directly from the town, in
regular instalments, and will have none of the trouble of
collecting bills.

Within the last year, also, every schoolhouse in Nan-
tucket has been provided with a good ventilator and with
new and comfortable seats. This leaves little to be
desired in that town, in regard to the places where the
processes of education are carried on. Competent teach-
ers, fidelity in the committee, suitable school-books, libra-
ries and a good apparatus, and bringing all the children

VOL. I. 32

498 THE SECRETARY'S

within the beneficent influences of the school, will com-
plete the work.

For the town school, an extensive and valuable appa-
ratus has been provided, and also some of a less costly
description for the primary schools. To accomplish
these praiseworthy purposes, the town, last year, almost
doubled its former appropriation.

Another highly gratifying indication of increased at-
tention to the welfare of the schools has been given by
the city of Salem. A year ago, the schoolhouses in that
city were without ventilation, and many of them with
such seats as excited vivid ideas of corporal punishment,
and almost prompted one to ask the children for what
offence they had been committed. At an expense of
about two thousand dollars, the seats in all the school-
houses, except one, have been reconstructed, and provi-
sions for ventilation have been made. I am told, that
the effect in the quiet, attention and proficiency of the
pupils, was immediately manifested.

In many other places, improvements of the same kind
have been made, though to a less extent and in a part
only of the houses. It would be a great mistake, how-
ever, to suppose, that nothing remains to be done in this
important department of the system of public instruction.
The cases mentioned are the slightest exceptions, com-
pared with the generality of the neglect. The urgent
reasons for making the report on schoolhouses, the last
year, still continue. In the important point of ventila-
tion, so essential to the health, composure, and mental
elasticity of the pupils, most of the houses remain without
change ; except, indeed, that very undesirable change
which has been wrought by time and the elements ; — or
such change as has been effected by stripping off the ex-
ternal covering of the house, on some emergency for fuel.

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 499

The children must continue to breathe poisonous air, and
to sit upon . seats, threatening structural derangement,
until parents become satisfied that a little money may
well be expended to secure to their offspring the bless-
ings of sound health, a good conformation, and a strong,
quick-working mind.

A highly respectable physician, who, for several years,
has attended to the actual results of bad internal ar-
rangements and bad locations for schoolhouses upon the
health of the pupils, took measures, during the past
summer, to ascertain with exactness the relative amount
of sickness suffered by the children, in a given period of
time, in two annual schools. The schools were selected
on account of their proximity, being but a short distance
from each other ; they consisted of very nearly the same
number of children, belonging to families in the same
condition of life, and no general physical causes were
known to exist, which should have distinguished them
from each other, in regard to the health of the pupils.
But one house was dry and well ventilated; the other
damp, and so situated as to render ventilation impracti-
cable. In the former, during a period of forty-five days,
five scholars were absent, from sickness, to the amount in
the whole of twenty days. In the latter, during the same
period of time and for the same cause, nineteen children
were absent, to an amount in the whole of one hundred
and forty-five days ; — that is almost four times the num-
ber of children, and more than seven times the amount
of sickness ; and the appearances of the children not thus
detained by sickness, indicated a marked difference in
their condition as to health. On such a subject, where
all the causes in operation may not be known, it would
be un philosophical to draw general conclusions from a
particular observation. No reason, however, can be di-

500 THE SECRETARY'S

vined, why this single result should not fairly represent
the average of any given number of years. Similar re-
sults for successive years must satisfy any one, respecting
the true cause of such calamities ; if, indeed, any one can
remain sceptical in regard to the connection between good
health and pure air.

' The committee who take charge of the Primary Schools
in the city of Boston, established, in the month of Septem-
ber last, a " Model School." To this school it is intended
to devote an unusual share of attention. It is under the
immediate supervision of gentlemen, intelligent and highly
interested in its success. Their object is to select the best
books, to learn, as far as possible, the true periods of alter-
nation between study and exercise for young children,
and to improve upon existing processes for moral and
intellectual training. When their plans are somewhat
matured by observation and experience, it is their inten-
tion to bring the teachers of the other Primary Schools
(of which there are more than eighty in the city) in
regular succession into this school, to familiarize them
with whatever, upon experiment, shall be found to suc-
ceed well. Although it cannot be doubted, that this en-
terprise, under the judicious management of the commit-
tee, will prove very beneficial, yet it is hardly rational to
anticipate, that it will supersede the necessity of a Normal
School for the city.

I cannot doubt, that the Board will hear, with lively
gratification, other evidence of an increased interest in
this subject. Considering how inadequate to the wants
of the whole community a county meeting — annual
only — on the subject of Education, must necessarily be,
several of the county conventions appointed large and
most respectable committees to prepare and deliver, or
cause to be prepared and delivered, a lecture in the dif-

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 501

ferent towns of the respective counties ; — or, where
towns were large, then in different places in the same
town. In pursuance of this excellent plan, such lectures
have already been delivered, or lecturers are now engaged
in delivering them, in the counties of Nantucket, Hainp-
den, Hampshire, Franklin, Worcester, and to some extent
in Essex.

During the last summer, too, a few gentlemen in the
city of Boston adopted measures to procure the delivery
of a course of weekly lectures for the benefit of teachers
in the city. This course commenced about the middle of
October last, and still continues. Engaged, in country and
city, in this voluntary and gratuitous labor, are gentle-
men, who have been, or are, members of the State and
National Legislatures, counsellors at law, physicians,
clergymen of all denominations, experienced and long-
approved teachers, and some of the most popular writers
in the State. All these intelligent and forecasting men,
who see that future consequences can alone be regulated
by attention to present causes, are profoundly convinced,
that unless juvenile feelings, in this State and Country,
are assiduously trained to an observance of law and a
reverence for justice, it will be impossible to restrain
adult passions from individual debasement and public
commotion. The course of a stream, which a thousand
men cannot obstruct, as it flows into the ocean, may be
turned by a child at the fountain. Above, it will yield to
the guidance of a hand ; below, its flood will sweep works
and workmen away.

There are other indications, that public opinion on this
subject is advancing in the right direction. More com-
mittees are inquiring into the qualifications of candidates
for teaching, instead of taking such qualifications for
granted. Persons who had taught school a dozen win-

502 THE SECRETARY'S

ters have been set aside for incompetency in the element-
ary branches. The law, requiring committees to visit
the schools, has been better observed than ever before ;
and teachers are realizing the benefit of such visitations,
in the encouragement and stimulus they have supplied to
the pupils. Many teachers are more justly appreciating
the true elevation and responsibleness of their vocation ;
and are animated by those high motives, whose preroga-
tive it is to convert toil into pleasure.

On the reverse side of this picture, however, it is my
duty to present, that of the twenty-nine rich and popu-
lous towns, bound by law to keep a school, at least ten
months in each year, " for the benefit of all the inhabit-
ants of the town," and which were reported, last year,
as violating this law, by non-compliance, only two, viz.
Nantucket and Taunton, have since established the
schools required. It will be recollected, that this class
of towns takes precedence of almost all the others in
wealth ; that they expend a far less proportion of money,
per scholar, for the support of public schools, than the
poorer and more sparsely populated towns, while, at the
same time, they expend a far greater proportion of money
for private schools. At the rate of two in a year, it will
take about fifteen years for all the towns in this class to
comply with the law ; — a length of probation, it is to be
feared, which will tend to harden rather than reform the
delinquents.

Sufficient time has not yet elapsed to allow the practi-
cal results of last winter's legislation to be developed.
The law for the compensation of school committees was
not enacted, until after the committees for the current
year had been elected. The reasons, which, in former
years, had deterred so many competent men from accept-
ing that meritorious office, still existed. The ensuing

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 503

annual elections will show how far the public will con-
sent, that any man, incompetent for, or heartless in, the
performance of this responsible duty, shall be intrusted
with it and receive its compensation. Nor has the time
yet arrived, at which all school committees are to make to
their respective towns a report, " designating particular
improvements and defects in the methods or means of
education, and stating such facts and suggestions in rela-
tion thereto, as, in their opinion, will best promote the
interests and increase the usefulness of the schools."
Great good will unquestionably result from each of these
provisions.

The " Register," prescribed by the law of last winter,
" to be faithfully kept, in all the town and district schools
in the Commonwealth," has been almost universally (one
or two places only, so far as I have learned, undertaking
to absolve themselves from a compliance with the law)
introduced into the schools, with excellent effect. Skilful
teachers find it a valuable auxiliary in securing greater
regularity in the attendance of the scholars. By the
Report of last year, it appeared that " a portion of the
children, dependent wholly upon the common schools,
absented themselves from the winter school, either per-
manently or occasionally, equal to a permanent absence
of about one-third part of their whole number ; and a
portion absented themselves from the summer schools,
either permanently or occasionally, equal to a permanent
absence of considerably more than two-fifths of their whole
number." Thus after all the labor and expense of estab-
lishing, maintaining, and supervising the schools have
been incurred, after the schools have been brought to
the very doors of the children, the school itself is made
to suffer in all its departments by the inconstant attend-
ance of the children, and the children suffer, in habits

504 THE SECRETARY'S

and character, from inconstant attendance upon the
school. Whatever diminishes this evil is cheaply bought,
though at much cost. The keeping of a daily Register is
also the only means by which the committees can be
enabled to make accurate, instead of conjectural, returns,
for the Annual Abstracts. The "Register" and the
" Annual Abstract " are so far parts of a whole, that both
should be continued or both abolished. The Abstracts
are prepared as statistics for legislative action and eco-
nomical science. If true, they will evince philosophical
principles to be the basis of wise measures. But if false,
they lead to practical errors, with scientific certainty;
and they annul the chance which ignorance enjoys of
being sometimes right by accident or mistake.

The Board are already aware that the '•'•Form " of the
Register, prepared this year, was sent out in single sheets,
and for one year only, that its fitness might be tested ;
and that " in order to establish a more perfect and per-
manent Register, all persons were invited to suggest im-
provements." In the circulars sent to the school commit-
tees, this invitation was repeated. Verbally or in writing,
I have received a variety of suggestions for modifying
its form. Some of these suggestions are diametrically
opposite to each other, even w'here they come from towns
lying side by side, and whose general circumstances
(except in the amount of attention bestowed upon their
schools) are similar. The number of towns in the
country is precisely equal, which, on one side, declare it
to be too complicated and particular; and, on the other,
suggest, as improvements, the addition of a number of
new items. I mention these particulars, that the towns
may know how impossible is a conformity to views so
conflicting. As some teachers and school committees do
not seem to be aware of the advantages of keeping so

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 505

full a Register as has been proposed, perhaps it may be
expedient to prepare a Form, embracing those facts only,
of which a record should be kept, in every school ; and
then to leave it to those who more fully appreciate its
uses, to keep such a supplementary Register as they may
think best.

The report on Schoolhouses, made by me to the Board
in March last, detailing, among other things, a plan for
a union of school districts and a gradation of schools,
in places where the compactness of the population would
allow, was followed by the act of the Legislature of
April 25th, authorizing a union of school districts for
the important purposes specified. A few towns have
already acted upon that plan, and the public mind is
earnestly called to it by the friends of education in other
places. Wherever it can be adopted, it will tend to
diminish the evils and to increase the efficiency of our
educational system.

But were all the territory of the State judiciously
divided into districts ; were there a just gradation in the
schools ; were every schoolhouse good ; had every school
the best teacher that could be found, and the guidance
and encouragement of the most wise and assiduous school
committee ; — still, all these would be only preliminary
steps in the numerous and complicated processes of Edu-
cation. The true medium in the government of schools,
between austere demeanor and severity on the one hand,
and, on the other, a facile temper, yielding to every press-
ure and just according to the pressure ; — the great
questions of rewards and punishments, whose influence
spreads out over such wide tracts of feeling and charac-
ter in after-life ; — the selection of motives to enkindle
the ardor of children in their studies, together with the
precedents of these motives in regard to each other, that

506 THE SECRETARY'S

is, whether the minds of children should be forever turned
outwards to the worldly advantages of wealth, office, rank,
display, as incitements to duty ; or inwards, towards the
perception of right and wrong in their own hearts, and
to the noiseless, boundless rewards which nature gives
for conscientious conduct, in spite of the laws, or power,
or hate of men ; — the one course, setting the applause
of the world before rectitude, the other reversing their
position : — and in regard to processes, more intellectual
in their character; — such as the succession of studies
best tending to cultivate the mental powers, in the order
of their natural development ; — the question of a more
or less rapid alternation from one study to another ; —
the degrees in which either the instruction or government
of a school should be modified so as to be adapted to
peculiarities of individual character ; — all these, and
many more points, would remain to be settled, before the
outlines were filled up of any thing worthy to be called
a philosophical plan of Education. Surveying the subject,
therefore, in the extent and diversity of its parts, the Only
practicable and useful course seemed to be, to select some
particular topic, and, as far as possible, to collect facts,
educe principles, and offer hints for practice. Science
must grow out of observation, art out of science.

From the earliest observations made on visiting schools,
(and such as I have visited were, probably, above the
average of schools in the State,) I have been impressed
with the obvious want of intelligence, in the reading-
classes, respecting the subject-matter of the lessons. With
some exceptions, I regret to say, that the eyes, features,
and motions of the readers have indicated only bodily
sensations, not mental activity ; while the volume of voice
emitted has too closely resembled those mechanical con-
trivances for the transmission of fluids, which, with ad mi-

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 607

rable precision, discharge equal quantities in equal times.
At the same time, I was sure, that, had the subject-matter
of the reading-lesson been understood, it would have
opened a fountain of pleasurable emotions within, whose
streams would have flowed out through every channel of
expression. And, on examination, I have often found
that the black and white page of the book was the outer
boundary of the reader's thoughts, and a barrier to arrest
their progress, instead of being a vehicle to carry them
onward or upward into whatever region the author might
have expatiated. When the pupils were directed to the
subject-matter of the reading-lesson, to the orderly un-
folding of its parts, as branches proceeding from a com-
mon trunk, I have found them committing mistakes
which, though ludicrous as facts, were most lamentable
as indications.

Deeming the mode, and the degree of success found to
attend it, of teaching our children the orthography and
significance of their mother-tongue, to be the most im-
portant question which could be put in regard to their
intellectual culture, I determined to make those points
the main objects of inquiry in my annual visit into the
different counties. For distinctness' sake, I proposed,
among others, the two following questions to the school
committees of the several towns in the State.

1st. " Are scholars in your schools kept in spelling
classes from the time of their earliest combination of let-
ters, up to the time of their leaving- school ; or what is the
course ordinarily pursued in regard to teaching orthog-
raphy, and how long is it continued? "

2d. " Are there defects in teaching scholars to read?
Tliis inquiry is not made in regard to the pronunciation
of words and the modulation of the voice. But do the
scholars fail to understand the meaning of the words they

THE SECRETARY'S

read ? Do they fail to master the sense of the reading-
lessons ? Is there a presence in the minds of the schol-
ars, when reading, of the ideas and feelings intended to
be conveyed and excited by the author ? "

lu answer to another question, not here quoted, relative
to the ages within which children attend our public
schoots, I have learnt, that exclusive regulations, founded
on age, exist in but very few towns — probably in not
more than fifteen or twenty — in the State. And although
the great majority of the children in the schools are
between the ages of four and sixteen, yet in almost all
the towns they are allowed to attend both earlier and
later, and they are found from three, and sometimes from
two years of age, up to twenty-one years, very frequently,
and sometimes to twenty-four or twenty-five. I learn,
also, that, with scarcely a single exception in the whole
State, the scholars are kept in spelling-classes, or they
spell daily from their reading-lessons, from the time
of their earliest combination of letters, up to the time of
their leaving school ; and yet, if testimony, derived from
a thousand sources, and absolutely uniform, can be relied
on, there is a Babel-like diversity in the spelling of our
language.

It is impossible to ascertain with any considerable
degree of precision the percentage of words in ordinary
use which the children are unable to spell ; but it seems
to be the general opinion of the most competent observers,
that the schools have retrograded within the last genera-
tion or half-generation in regard to orthography. Nor
is the condition of the schools better in regard to read-
ing, as will hereafter be shown.

The evil of incorrect spelling and unintelligent reading
is, by no means, wholly imputable to teachers. It springs,
in part, from the use of books ill adapted to the different

8ECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 509

stages of growth in youthful minds. Another cause con-
sists in a most pernicious error on the part of parents in
regard to the true objects of reading. Many teachers
have assured me that they are perfectly aware that the
time spent in reading is mainly lost ; but that the usages
of the school and the demands of the district prohibit
them — perhaps under penalty of dismission — from adopt-
ing a better mode. It is said, that the first and only in-
quiry made by parents of their children is, " how many
times and how much have you read ? " not " what have you
read about ? " A question like the last presupposes some
judgment and some ability to follow it up with further
inquiries ; but anybody can put the first, for it is an easy
problem which solves the ratio of mental progress by the
number of pages mechanically gone over. The children's
minds are not looked into, to see what new operations
they can accurately perform ; but the inquiry relates only
to the amount of labor done by the organs of speech ; —
as though so many turns of the bodily machine would
yield, perforce, a corresponding amount of mental prod-
uct. It is characteristic of the learned professions, that
the person employed directs the employer ; and it is ear-
estly to be hoped, that teachers will soon deservedly win
so much of the confidence of the community, that they
will no longer feel constrained to practise methods they
know to be valueless, in order to harmonize with opinions
they know to be pernicious.

It is probable, also, that this mischief may have been
aggravated, in those places where there is a gradation of
schools, by the conditions, prescribed in their regulations,
for advancing from one school to another. One important
fact, I have learned, is, that in places containing in the
aggregate not less than one hundred thousand inhabitants,
(about one-seventh of the population of the State,) a con-

510 THE SECRETARY'S

dition for rising from one school to another is, either in
express words or in substance, that the candidate shall be
able to " read fluently." Under such a rule, should a
strong desire exist to advance children to a higher school,
there is great danger that the value of intelligent reading
will be sacrificed to the worthlessness of mere "fluent "
reading.

In this State, where the schools are open to all, an in-
ability to spell the commonly used words in our language
justly stamps the deficient mind with the stigma of illit-
eracy. Notwithstanding the intrinsic difficulty of master-
ing our orthography, there must be some defect in the
manner of teaching it ; — otherwise, this daily attention
of the children to the subject, from the commencement
to the end of their school-going life, would make them
adepts in the mystery of spelling, except in cases of men-
tal incapacity. Anomalous, arbitrary, contradictory, as
is the formation of the words of our language from its
letters, yet it is the blessing of the children, that they
know not what they undertake, when they begin the labor.

But, however deeply we may be mortified at the general
inability of our youth to spell well, it is the lightest of all
regrets, compared with the calamity of their pretending to
read what they fail to understand. Language is not merely
a necessary instrument of civilization, past or prospective,
but it is an indispensable condition of our existence as
rational beings. We are accustomed to speak with admi-
ration of those assemblages of things, we call the neces-
saries, the comforts, the blessings of life, without thinking
that language is a pre-necessary to them all. It requires
a union of two things, entirely distinct in themselves, to
confer the highest attribute of human greatness ; — in
the first place, a creative mind, revolving, searching, re-
forming, perfecting, within its own silent recesses ; and

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 511

then such power over the energy and copiousness of lan-
guage, as can bring into life whatever was prepared in
darkness, and can transfer it to the present or the absent,
to contemporaries or posterity. Thucydides makes Peri-
cles say, that " one who forms a judgment upon any point,
but cannot explain himself clearly to the people, might
as well have never thought at all on the subject." The
highest strength of understanding and justness of feeling,
without fitting language to make themselves manifest, are
but as the miser's hoard, without even the reversion of
benefit we may ultimately expect from the latter. And
for all social purposes, thought and expression are de-
pendent, each upon the other. Ideas without words are
valueless to the public ; and words without ideas have
this mischievous attribute, that they inflict the severest
pains and penalties on those who are most innocent of
thus abusing them.

This is not a place to speak of the nature and utility
of language, any further than is rigidly necessary to an
exposition of the best mode of acquiring and the true
object in using it. Within this limit, it may be ob-
served, that we arrive at knowledge in two ways : first,
by our own observation of phenomena without, and our
own consciousness of what passes within us ; and we
seek words aptly to designate whatever has been observed,
whether material or mental. In this case, the objects and
events are known to us, before the names, or phrases,
which describe them ; or, secondly, we see or hear words,
and through a knowledge of their diversified applications
we become acquainted with objects and phenomena, of
which we should otherwise have remained forever igno-
rant. In this case, the words precede a knowledge of
the things they designate. In one case we are introduced
to words through things ; in the other, to things, through

512 THE SECRETARY'S

words ; but when once both have been strongly associated
together, the presence of either will suggest its correla-
tive. The limited fund of knowledge laid open to us by
the former mode bears no assignable proportion to the
immense resources proffered us by the latter. Without
language, we should know something of the more obtru-
sive phenomena, within reach of the senses, but an im-
penetrable wall of darkness would lie beyond their narrow
horizon. With language, that horizon recedes until the
expanse of the globe, with its continents, its air, its oceans,
and all that are therein, lies under our eye, like an adja-
cent landscape. Without language, our own memory
dates the beginning of time, and the record of our own
momentary existence contains all that we can know of
universal history. But with language, antiquity re-lives ;
we are spectators at the world's creation ; we are present
with our first progenitors, when the glory of a new life
beamed from their inanimate frames ; the long train of
historic events passes in review before us ; we behold the
multiplication and expansion of our race, from individu-
als to nations, from patriarchs to dynasties ; we see their
temporal vicissitudes and moral transformations ; the bil-
lowy rise and fall of empires ; the subsidence of races,
whose power and numbers once overshadowed the earth ;
the emergence of feeble and despised tribes into wide-ex-
tended dominion ; we see the dealings of God with men,
and of men with each other ; — all, in fine, which has
been done and suffered by our kindred nature, in arms,
arts, science, philosophy, judicature, government ; and
we see them, not by their own light only, but by the
clearer light reflected upon them from subsequent times.
What contrast could be more striking, than that between
an unlettered savage and a philosopher, — the one im-
prisoned, the other privileged, — in the halls of the same

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 513

library ; — the one compelled by fear to gaze upon the
pages of a book, the other impatient for the pleasure of
doing it ! As the former moves his reluctant eye down-
wards over successive lines, he sees nothing but ink and
paper. Beyond, it is vacancy. But to the eye of the
philosopher, the sombre pages are magically illuminated.
By their light he sees other lands and times. All that
filled his senses before he opened the revealing page is
only an atom of the world, in which he now expatiates.
He is made free of the universe. A sentiment, uttered
thousands of years ago, if touched by the spirit of human-
ity, falls freshly upon his responsive bosom. The fathers
of the world come out of the past and stand around him
and hold converse with him, as it were, face to face. Old
eloquence and poetry are again heard and sung. Sages
imbue him with their wisdom ; martyrs inspire him by
their example ; and the authors of discoveries, each one
of whom won immortality by the boon he conferred upon
the race, become his teachers. Truths which it took
ages to perfect and establish, sciences elaborated by the
world's intellect, are passed over to him, finished and
whole. This presents but the faintest contrast between
the savage and the philosopher, looking at the same books,
and, to a superficial observer, occupied alike.

To prepare children for resembling the philosopher,
rather than the savage, it is well to begin early, but it is
far more important to begin right ; and the school is the
place for children to form an invincible habit of never
using the organs of speech, by themselves, and as an
apparatus, detached from, and independent of, the mind.
The school is the place to form a habit of observing dis-
tinctions between words and phrases, and of adjusting the
language used to various extents of meaning. It is the
place where they are to commence the great art of adapt-

514 THE SECRETARY'S

ing words to ideas and feelings, just as we apply a meas-
uring instrument to objects to be measured. Then, in
after-life, they will never venture upon the use of words
which they do not understand ; and they will be enabled
to use language, co-extensive with their thoughts and feel-
ings, — language which shall mark off so much of any
subject as they wish to exhibit, as plainly as though they
could have walked round it and set up landmarks.

There is time enough devoted to exercises on language
in our schools, to have enabled every one of that numer-
ous class of citizens, whose attainments and good sense
entitle them to be elected to municipal offices or to some
station in the government, to prepare written documents,
to draught petitions, reports and so forth, upon all ordinary
subjects, not professional or technical. Yet how many
men of excellent judgment find themselves unable to
express their thoughts clearly and forcibly, in speech or
writing, because they have never been accustomed to
apply language to mental operations. Every man, con-
versant with the profession of the law, knows that no
inconsiderable portion of those litigated cases, which
burden courts and embroil neighborhoods, arises from
some misapprehension of the meaning of the language,
used by the parties, in oral or written contracts. The
time spent by the scholars in reading, from the age of
eight or ten to sixteen years, is amply sufficient to enrich
their minds with a great amount of various and useful
knowledge, without encroaching one hour upon other
accustomed studies.

There is another fact, most pertinent to this part of
the subject. It is well known that science itself, among
scientific men, can never advance far beyond a scientific
.language in which to record its laws and principles. An
unscientific language, like the Chinese, will keep a peo-

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 515

pie unscientific forever. So the knowledge of a people
on any subject cannot far exceed the compass of the
language which they fully comprehend. If what arc
called the exact sciences do not depend upon the exact-
ness of the language they use, all exactness in other
sciences does. Nor is it a fact of less importance, that
language re-acts upon the mind that uses it. It is like
the garments in which some nations clothe themselves,
which shape the very limbs that draw them on. Men
are generally very willing to modify or change their
opinions and views, while they exist in thought merely,
but when once formally expressed, the language chosen
often becomes the mould of the opinion. The opinion
fills the mould, but cannot break it and assume a new
form. Thus errors of thought and of life originate in
impotence of language.

The English language has been estimated to contain
seventy or eighty thousand words in reputable use. A
knowledge of so many of these words as are in common
use, with a power of summoning them, like trained
bands, to come at the bidding of thought, arises from the
smallest beginnings. The distance is so immense be-
tween the first, rude articulation of an infant, and the
splendid and law-giving utterance of an eloquent man,
that we could hardly believe, beforehand, that the two
extremes had reference to the same individual. To gain
time, by shortening the distance between these extremes,
or by removing obstacles and thus accelerating progress
from the former to the latter, is one of the most appro-
priate labors of education. The hints which follow are
offered with diffidence ; in the hope, however, that they
may prove useful themselves, or be suggestive to other
minds of that which is better.

The process of learning to spell our language is so im-

516 THE SECRETARY'S

perceptibly lost in that of learning to read it, that the
two can best be considered together.

One preliminary truth is to be kept steadily in view in
all the processes of teaching, and in the preparation of
all its instruments ; viz., that, though much may be done
by others to aid, yet the effective labor must be per-
formed by the learner himself. Knowledge cannot be
poured into a child's mind like fluid from one vessel into
another. The pupil may do something by intuition, but
generally there must be a conscious effort on his part.
He is not a passive recipient, but an active, voluntary
agent. He must do more than admit or welcome ; he
must reach out, and grasp, and bring home. It is the
duty of the teacher to bring knowledge within arm's-
length of the learner; and he must break down its
masses into portions so minute, that they can be taken
up and appropriated, one by one ; but the final appropri-
ating act must be the learner's. Knowledge is not
annexed to the mind like a foreign substance, but the
mind assimilates it by its own vital powers. It is far less
true, that each one must earn his own bread by the sweat
of his own brow, than it is that each one must earn his
own knowledge by the labor of his own brain ; for,
strictly speaking, nature recognizes no title to it by inher-
itance, gift or finding. Development of mind is by
growth and organization, not by external accretion.
Hence all effective teaching must have reference to this
indispensable, consummating act and effort of the learner.
The feelings may undoubtedly be modified by external
impressions, and, therefore, the mind is sometimes spoken
of as passive, recipient, adoptive ; and the objects around
us have a fitness and adaptation to awaken mental activ-
ity ; but the acquisition of positive knowledge is not
effected by a process of involuntary absorption. Such a

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 517

notion belongs to the philosophy by which, a few years
ago, a grammatical chart was published and pretty exten-
sively sold in some of the States, whose peculiar virtue it
was, that, if hung up somewhere in a house, the whole
family would shortly become good grammarians, by mys-
teriously imbibing, as it were, certain grammatical efflu-
via. The distinction should bcome broader and broader,
between the theory of education which deals with mind
as living spirit, and that which deals with it as a lifeless
substance. Every scholar, in a school, must think with
his own mind, as every singer, in a choir, must sing
with his own voice.

If then, in learning, all wills and desires, all costs,
labors, efforts, of others, are dependent, at last, upon the
will of the learner, the first requisite is the existence in
his mind of a desire to learn. Children, who spend six
months in learning the alphabet, will, on the play-
ground, in a single half-day or moonlight evening learn
the intricacies of a game or sport, — where to stand,
when to run, what to say. how to count, and what are
the laws and the ethics of the game ; the whole requiring
more intellectual effort than would suffice to learn half a
dozen alphabets. So of the recitation of verses, mingled
with action, and of juvenile games, played in the chimney-
corner. And the reason is, that for the one, there is de-
sire ; while against the other, there is repugnance. The
teacher, in one case, is rolling a weight up hill ; in the
other, down ; for gravitation is not more to the motions
of a heavy body, than desire is to the efficiency of the in-
tellect. Until a desire to learn exists within the child,
some foreign force must constantly be supplied to keep
him agoing; but from the moment that a desire is ex-
cited, he is self-motive, and goes alone.

Perhaps the best way of inspiring a young child with a

518 THE SECRETARY'S

desire of learning to read, is to read to him, with proper
intervals, some interesting story, perfectly intelligible,
yet as full of suggestion as of communication ; for the
pleasure of discovering is always greater than that of
perceiving. Care should be taken, however, to leave off
before the ardor of curiosity cools. He should go away
longing, not loathing. After the appetite has become
keen, — and nature supplies the zest, — the child can be
made to understand how he can procure this enjoyment
for himself. The motive of affection also may properly
be appealed to, that is, a request to learn in order to
please the teacher ; but this should never be pressed so
far as to jeopard its existence, for it is a feeling more
precious than all knowledge. The process of learning
words and letters is toilsome, and progress will be slow,
unless a motive is inspired before instruction is at-
tempted ; and if three months are allowed to teach a
child his letters, there is greater probability, that the
work will be done at the end of the time, even though
ten weeks of it should be spent in gaining his voluntary
co-operation during the residue of the time. A desire
of learning is better than all external opportunities,
because it will find or make opportunities, and then
improve them.

Such are the difficulties in acquiring the orthography
of our language, that it is said we have but two or three
classes of uniformly correct spellers. Almost all, except
publishers or printers and proof-readers, are more or less
deficient in this acquisition. While some other languages,
as the Italian, French and German, assign to individual
letters a power, which is scarcely varied whenever they
recur ; the power given to the letters, in the English
alphabet, bears little resemblance to their power, when
combined in words. In a vast number of words, there is

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 519

a uniformity of pronunciation with diversity in spelling,
or a diversity in pronunciation with similar spelling.
The same letter has many different sounds, while differ-
ent letters have the same sound, so that the learner, after
learning the sound of a letter in one place, has no assur-
ance of being right in giving it the same sound in
another. The letters seem to change work with each
other. Added to this, many words have silent letters ;
and in words, otherwise of a formation exactly similar,
some have silent letters, others none. Were it not for
our familiarity with it, no fact would be more striking
than that which always presents itself to the eye, upon
opening an English dictionary ; viz., the double column
of words for the same language, — one for a guide in
spelling, the other, in pronunciation. But it is no part
of this report to analyze our language and expose its
unscientific structure and anomalous composition. It is
either very much too late or too early to reform its arbi-
trary constitution. To adapt the pronunciation to the
orthography would be to make a new spoken language ;
to adapt its orthography to its pronunciation would be to
make a new written one.

When a motive to learn exists, the first practical ques-
tion respects the order in which letters and words are to
be taught ; i.e., whether letters, taken separately, as in
the alphabet, shall be taught before words, or whether
monosyllabic and familiar words shall be taught before
letters. * In those who learnt, and have since taught, in
the former mode, and have never heard of any other, this
suggestion may excite surprise. The mode of teaching
words first, however, is not mere theory ; nor is it new.
It has now been practised for some time in the primary
schools of the city of Boston, — in which there are four
or five thousand children, — and it is found to succeed

520 THE SECRETARY'S

better than the old mode. In other places in this coun-
try, and in some parts of Europe, where education is suc-
cessfully conducted, the practice of teaching words first,
and letters subsequently, is now established. Having no
personal experience, I shall venture no affirmation upon
this point ; but will only submit a few remarks for the
consideration of those, who wish, before countenancing
the plan, to examine the reasons on which it is founded.

During the first year of a child's life, he perceives,
thinks, and acquires something of a store of ideas, with-
out any reference to word or letters. After this, the won-
derful faculty of language begins to develop itself. Chil-
dren then utter words, — the names of objects around
them, — as whole sounds, and without any conception of
the letters of which those words are composed. In speak-
ing the word " apple," for instance, young children think
no more of the Roman letters which spell it, than, in eat-
ing the fruit, they think of the chemical ingredients —
the oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon — which compose it.
Hence, presenting them with the alphabet, is giving them
what they never saw, heard, or thought of before. It is
as new as algebra, and, to the eye, not very unlike it. But
printed names of known things are the signs of sounds
which their ears have been accustomed to hear, and their
organs of speech to utter, and which may excite agree-
able feelings and associations, by reminding them of the
objects named. When put to learning the letters of the
alphabet first, the child has no acquaintance with them,
either with the eye, the ear, the tongue, or the mind ;
but if put to learning familiar words first, he already
knows them by the ear, the tongue, and the mind, while
his eye only is unacquainted with them. He is thus in-
troduced to a stranger through the medium of old ac-
quaintances. It can hardly be doubted, therefore, that a

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 521

child would learn to name any twenty-six familiar words
much- sooner than the twenty-six unknown, unheard, and
unthought-of letters of the alphabet.

For another reason, the rapidity of acquisition will be
greater, if words are taught before letters. To learn the
words signifying objects, qualities, actions, with which
the child is familiar, turns his attention to those objects, if
present, or revives the idea of them, if absent, and thus
they may be made the source^ of great interest and pleas-
ure. We all know, that the ease with which any thing is
learned, and the length of time it is remembered, are in
the direct ratio of the vividness of the pleasurable emo-
tions which enliven the acquisition.

But there is another consideration far more forcible
than the preceding. The general practice is founded upon
the notion that the learning of letters facilitates the cor-
rect combination of them into words. Hence children
are drilled on the alphabet, until they pronounce the
name of each letter at sight. And yet, when we combine
letters into words, we forthwith discard the sounds which
belonged to them as letters. The child is taught to sound
the letter a, until he becomes so familiar with it, that the
sound is uttered as soon as the character is seen. But
the first time this letter is found, even in the most familiar
words, — as in father, papa, mamma, apple, peach, walnut,
hat, cap, bat, rat, slap, pan, &c., &c., — it no longer has the
sound he was before taught to give it, but one entirely
different. And so of the other vowels. In words, they
all seem in masquerade. Where is the alphabetic sound
of o in the words word, dove, plough, enough, other, and
in innumerable others ? Any person may verify this by
taking any succession of words, at random, in any English
book. The consequence is, that whenever the child meets
his old friends in new company, like rogues, they have

522 THE SECRETARY'S

all changed their names. Thus the knowledge of the
sounds of letters in the alphabet becomes an obstacle to
the right pronunciation of words ; and the more perfect
the knowledge, the greater the obstacle. The reward
of the child, for having thoroughly mastered his letters, is
to have his knowledge of them cut up in detail, by a reg-
ular series of contradictions, just as fast as he brings it
forward. How different, for instance, is the sound of the
word is, from the two alphabetic sounds, i and s; — of the
word we, from the two sounds, w and e; — of the word two,
from the three sounds, t, w, and o. We teach an honest
child to sound the letters, e, y, e, singly, until he utters
them at sight, and then, with a grave face, we ask him what
e, y, e, spells ; and if he does not give the long sound of i,
he is lucky if he escapes a rebuke or a frown. Nothing
can more clearly prove the delightful confidence and
trustfulness of a child's nature, than his not boldly char-
ging us, under such circumstances, with imposition and
fraud.

There is a fact, however, which may, perhaps, in part,
cancel the differences here pointed out. The alphabet
must be learned, at some time, because there are various
occasions, besides those of consulting dictionaries or cyclo-
pedias, where the regular sequence of the letters must
be known ; and possibly it may be thought, that it will be
as difficult to learn the letters, after learning the words, as
before. But the fact, which deprives this consideration
of some part at least of its validity, is, that it always
greatly facilitates an acquisition of the names of objects,
or persons, to have been conversant with their forms and
appearances beforehand. The learning of words is an
introduction to an acquaintance with the letters com-
posing them. ,;,*•'•

To obviate the inconsistency of teaching children the

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 523

names of letters, which are to be untaught as soon as
they are combined into words, some persons instruct them
in the vocal elements of the letters only ; — that is, to
utter, for each letter, that part of the sound of a whole
word, which belongs to the letters, respectively, — as to
give a single breathing for the letter h, instead of the
sound of aytch. This practice is very limited.

The next step in the acquisition of our language is the
spelling of its words. The arbitrary and capricious for-
mation of words from letters, is, undoubtedly, one great
cause, that, with all our attention to the subject, we have
so few good spellers.

One fact has been often remarked, that if children do
not learn to spell pretty correctly before the age of ten
or twelve years, they rarely become good spellers after-
wards. This fact supplies us with a useful hint, in regard
to making other studies give place, a little, to this, before
the favorable season is passed. Another consideration,
derived from the order in which the intellectual powers
are developed, strongly corroborates the same position.
Language is an early developed intellectual power ; —
reason is one of the latest. The spelling of a tongue, so
anomalous as ours, depends upon a verbal memory. It is
not a subject to be reasoned about. The more one relies
upon his reason to determine the true spelling of English
words, the oftener he will mistake. The discovery and
correct application of principles and analogies would gen-
erally exclude correctness. I presume it has happened
to many persons, when writing, that if they could write
one of the less common words, without thinking how it
should be spelt, they would write it correctly ; but if, by
any chance, the inquiry how it should be spelt arose
in their minds, they would immediately be involved in
doubts, which no reasoning could solve, and be obliged to

524 THE SECRETARY'S

turn to a dictionary. These facts indicate also, that spell-
ing should be pursued at an age when more is learned by
perception and imitation than by reflection.

But one thing should be insisted upon,/rom the begin-
ning, and especially at the beginning. No word should
be taught, whose meaning is not understood. The teacher
should not count out words faster than ideas. The foun-
dation of the habit should be laid, in the reading of the
very first lesson, of regarding words as the names of
things ; as belonging to something else, and as nothing by
themselves. They should be looked at as a medium, and
riot as an end. It is as senseless for a child to stop at the
sign of the printed word, in reading, as it would be to stop
at the sound of the spoken word, in conversation. What
child would not repel the intercourse of a person, who
spoke to him only words of which he knew nothing ? No
personal charms would be long sufficient to compensate
for speaking to a child in an unknown tongue. How is
it possible, then, that an active-minded child should not
disdain the dreary pages of a book which awaken no
thought or emotion within him ; — which are neither
beauty to the eye, nor music to the ear, nor sense to the
uaderstanding ? As reading is usually taught, the child
does not come into communication with his lesson by
any one of all his faculties. When a child looks into a
mirror, or at a picture where the perspective is strikingly
marked, he will reach around to look behind the mirror,
or behind the picture, in hope of finding the objects in the
place where they appear to be. He cares nothing for
the mirror, nor for the canvas ; — his mind is with the
things presented to his senses. In reading, the page
should be only as the mirror, or picture, through which
objects are beheld. Thus there would be far more delight
in looking at the former, than at the latter ; because

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 525

words can present more circumstances of variety, beauty,
life, amplitude, than any reflecting surface or dead pic-
ture. Should we not revolt at the tyranny of being
obliged to pore, day after day, upon the outer darkness
of a Chinese manuscript ? But if the words are not
understood, the more regular formation of the Chinese
characters gives them a decided advantage over our own
letters. Give a child two glasses, precisely similar in
every respect, except that one shall be opaque, the other
a magnifier. Through the former nothing can be teen,
and it therefore degenerates into a bawble ; but the latter
seems to create a thousand new and brilliant objects, and
hence he is enamoured of its quality. There is precisely
the same difference in the presentation of words. Yet
we punish children because they do not master words
without any regard to their being understood.

But how can this plan be executed ? In this way.
During the first year of a child's life, before the faculty
of speech is developed, — before he has ever uttered a
word, — he has obtained a considerable stock of ideas re-
specting objects, qualities, and motions. During the next
year or two, and before it is usual to teach letters, he is
employed through every waking hour, both in learning
the words expressive of known phenomena, and also in
acquiring a knowledge of new things and events ; so that
before the age of four, or even three years, the items of
his inventory of elementary knowledge swell to thou-
sands. In his memory are not merely playthings, but
catalogues of furniture, food, dress, insects, animals, vehi-
cles, objects in natural scenery, divisions of time, and so
forth, with various motions and appearances belonging to
them all. Numbers, sounds, events, feelings, also come
into the list. This is a stock not readily exhausted. By
first teaching the names or phrases exoressive of these,

526 THE SECRETARY'S

the substance is always present to his mind, and the
words are mere signs or incidents ; and a habit is formed
of always keeping the mind, in after-life, intent upon
tilings and their relations, — a habit of inestimable value,
and the only foundation of intellectual greatness.

I am not unaware of what is said by Locke, Burke,
and others, of our using words and phrases, without at
all summoning into the mind the particular ideas signi-
fied. This is undoubtedly true, to some extent, but it
belongs to a later period in life. It is only after having
used words, times almost innumerable, with an accom-
panying conception of the things signified, that we, at
last, transfer to the words a general conception of what
originally belonged to the ideas. If comparisons may be
allowed to illustrate a point somewhat obscure, the words
have been so long used as a vehicle of the things, that,
at last, when we see the vehicle, we presume the con-
tents ; — or, as in the case of those persons who are ac-
customed to count large masses of specie, over and over
again, in branded boxes or labelled bags ; having opened
them many times, and found them to contain the quantity
stamped, they afterwards count by the mark. So it is
with words in relation to ideas. But, if the ideas have
never been compared with the words, that is, if the spe-
cie has never been counted and compared with the stamp,
then the latter has no signification. Hence the compari-
sons are the very first steps in the operation, and it is
only by virtue of having made them that we can after-
wards venture to facilitate the operation by relying upon
the index. And an early habit of associating every word
with an idea is rendered so much the more necessary,
because words are only arbitrary and artificial signs of
thoughts and feelings. Were they natural signs, then
the whole stress of observation and experience through

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 527

life would serve to connect and bind together, more and
more closely, the signs and the things signified. There
would be a perpetual and strong tendency to coalescence
between them. But as the relation is wholly conven-
tional, if the habit is not formed of uniting the sound to
the sense, an opposite habit of separating them is neces-
sarily established. For an obvious reason, therefore, a
correct habit is more easily formed at the commencement
than ever afterwards.

Were this process observed, it would reduce almost to
nothing two classes of men amongst us ; one of whom
are greatly impaired in their usefulness, because, though
they think much, they can never speak ; the other abso-
lutely noxious, because, though speaking much, they
never think. The latter class, indeed, seem to be re-
taliating upon that early period of their life, when they
thought without speaking, by speaking without thinking
during the residue.

When it is said, however, that a child should not be
put to reading what he cannot understand, it is to be
taken with that reasonable qualification which springs
from the nature of the case, and which every candid mind
will supply. There are certain words in every-day use,
of whose comprehension all finite intellect must fall
almost infinitely short. Such are the words immensity,
infinity, absolute perfection, and so forth. These are
used, as mathematicians use algebraic signs, to express
unknown quantities. There are other words also, of
whose meaning no man has any thing more than a proxi-
mate apprehension. But a child of three years may per-
fectly understand what is meant, if he reads the word
newspaper, and he may know many things respecting it,
such as title, outside, inside, columns, margin, top, bottom,
size, length, breadth, fy-c., — and these constitute a palpa-

528 THE SECRETARY'S

ble idea of a newspaper, — without knowing that it is a
microcosm, and that, for its production, there may have
been required an effort of all the human faculties, work-
ing on the three kingdoms, mineral, vegetable, and ani-
mal. So a child may have a clear conception of the
meaning of such words as home, parent, affection, guilt,
conscience, without penetrating one line's length into
their unfathomable depth of meaning. What is insisted
upon is, that the child should have a clear conception of
what is meant, that such conception should be correct as
far as it goes, and that it should be as extensive as his
ability will allow.

Were a child skilfully taught, with only a due alterna-
tion between physical and mental exercise, and with an
inspection of as many of the objects of nature and art as
common opportunity would allow, it is believed that he
might acquire a knowledge of the spelling and of the
primary meanings of substantially all the unscientific and
untechnical words, in ordinary use, before passing the
age when orthography becomes more difficult of attain-
ment. If, however, owing to early neglect in education,
or to mental inefficiency, the most favorable season for
learning to spell is passing away, and it is deemed advi-
sable to hasten this acquisition at the expense of other
studies, or (if any one so prefers) even of the meaning
of words, then it is believed that the words may be so
classified in the spelling-book, as greatly to facilitate
the labor. For this purpose, let words be arranged to-
gether, whose difficult syllables agree in formation ; as,
for instance, syllable, sycophant, sylvan, symbol, syna-
gogue, syntax, in which y has the sound of i, short ; or
in words where ch has the sound of k, as in machination,
chronological, bacchanalian ; or in words where qu has
the sound of k, as in mosque, opaque, liquor ; or where

SECONP ANNUAL REPORT. 529

ei has the sound of a, as in eight, weight, inveigh, &c.
This list might be almost indefinitely extended ; the above
are given as specimens merely. The great advantage of
this system is, that when the true formation of the diffi-
cult syllable is known for one word, it is known for the
whole table, and frequent repetitions of the table will fix
the order of the letters in the memory, which, by the law
of association, will afterwards involuntarily recur, like
products in the multiplication-table, or successive notes
in a well-learned piece of music. Habit, founded on this
association, will command the successive letters in writ-
ing, as unconsciously as it does successive steps in walk-
ing. An excellent spelling-book has lately been published
in this city, in which words are arranged with reference
to their intelligibleness to children ; and Webster and
Fowle have made close approximation, certainly, to ar-
rangements of words, in conformity with the law of men-
tal association, above referred to. It is believed that a
spelling-book may be prepared which shall combine the
first, greatest, and most indispensable of all requisites,
that of addressing the innate and universal love of learn-
ing new things, — with such a philosophical adaptation to
the successive periods of mental development, as shall, as
a general rule, present what is to be learned during the
epoch in which it can be most easily and pleas urably
acquired.

Would my limits permit, I should be glad to enter into
some detail with regard to the modes, now practised in
our schools, of teaching orthography. I will, however,
only observe, that spelling, by writing (when the pupil
can write), appears to have great advantages over spell-
ing orally. In the business of Life, we have no occasion
to spell orally, and thousands of cases have made it cer-
tain, that the same person may be a good speller with the

VOL, I. 84

530 THE SECRETARY'S

lips, who is an indifferent one with the pen. Nor is this
any more strange, than that a man should not be able to
do dexterously with his left hand what he has always
been accustomed to do with his right.

It is obvious, that even in regard to orthography, the
book-maker is the great auxiliary of the teacher. It
is not less emphatically true of reading, that the book-
maker and the teacher are performing different parts
of one work. In this division of labor, the book-maker's
part is first to be performed, and it is impossible for the
best teacher wholly to make amends for what is untoward
or preposterous on the author's part ; because clumsy
and defective implements will baffle the ingenuity of the
most perfect workman. While measures are in progress,
therefore, to increase the competency of teachers, through
the medium of Normal Schools, the principles on which
school-books should be prepared should receive careful
attention, that good agents may have good instruments.
I avail myself of this occasion to make a few suggestions
upon the subject of reading-books.

Reading is divisible into two parts. It consists of the
mechanical and the mental. The mechanical part is
the utterance of the articulate sounds of a language, on
inspecting its written or printed signs. It is called
mechanical, because the operation closely resembles that
of a machine, which may receive the best of materials,
and run through a thousand parcels of them every year ;
— the machine itself remaining just as bare and naked
at the end of the year as it was at the beginning. On
the other hand, one portion of the mental part of reading
consists in a reproduction in the mind of the reader of
whatever was in the mind of the author ; so that whether
the author describes atoms or worlds, narrates the history
of individuals or nations, kindles into sublimity, or melts

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 531

in pathos, — whatever was in the author's mind starts
into sudden existence in the reader's mind, as nearly
as their different mental constitutions will allow. An
example of the purely mechanical part is exhibited in
reading a foreign language, no word of which is under-
stood ; as in the case of Milton's daughters, who read the
dead languages to their blind father ; — they, with eyes,
seeing nothing but black marks upon white paper, — he,
without eyes, surveying material and spiritual worlds, —
at once charmed by their beauties, and instructed by
their wisdom.

With the mental part, then, reading becomes the
noblest instrument of wisdom ; without it, it is the most
despicable part of folly and worthlessness. Beforehand,
it would seem quite as incredible, that any person should
compel children to go through with the barren forms
of reading, without ideas, as to make them perform
all the motions of eating, without food. The body would
not dwindle under the latter more certainly than the
mind under the former. The inevitable consequences are,
that all the delight of acquisition is foregone ; the reward
which nature bestows upon the activity of the faculties
is forfeited, — a reward which is richer than all prizes,
and more efficient than all chastisement ; — and an invet-
erate habit is formed of dissociating thought and lan-
guage. " Understandest thou what thou readest,"
therefore, is a question quite as apposite when put by a
teacher to a child in his horn-book, as when asked by an
Apostle of the ambassador of a Queen.

Entertaining views of the importance of this subject,
of which the above is only the feeblest expression, I have
devoted especial pains to learn, with some degree of
numerical accuracy, how far the reading, in our schools,
is an exercise of the mind in thinking and feeling, and

532 THE SECRETARY'S

how far it is a barren action of the organs of speech upon
the atmosphere. My information is derived, principally,
from the written statements of the school committees
of the respective towns, — gentlemen who are certainly
exempt from all temptation to disparage the schools they
superintend. The result is, that more than eleven-
twelfths of all the children in the reading-classes, in our
schools, do not understand the meaning of the words they
read ; that they do not master the sense of the reading-
lessons, and that the ideas and feelings intended by the
author to be conveyed to, and excited in, the reader's
mind, still rest in the author's intention, never having yet
reached the place of their destination. And by this it
is not meant that the scholars do not obtain such a full
comprehension of the subject of the reading-lessons, in
its various relations and bearings, as a scientific or erudite
reader would do, but that they do not acquire a reason-
able and practicable understanding of them. It would
hardly seem that the combined efforts of all persons
engaged could have accomplished more in defeating the
true objects of reading.

How the cause of this deficiency is to be apportioned
among the legal supervisors of the schools, parents,
teachers or authors of school-books, it is impossible to
say ; but surely it is an evil, gratuitous, widely prevalent,
and threatening the most alarming consequences. But
it is not a remediless one. There is intelligence enough
in this community to search out the cause, and wisdom
enough to find and apply a remedy.

It has been already stated, that we may acquire a
knowledge of a very few things, — such as are placed
within the range of our senses, — without the use of
language ; but that language is the only medium by
which any thing, prior to our own memory and expe-

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 533

rience, or beyond our own vision, can be made known to
us. Although, therefore, the words which our language
is said to contain, seem to be many ; yet when we think
of all the relations of human life, — domestic, business,
and social ; — of the countless objects in the different
kingdoms of nature, with their connections and depend-
encies ; — of the sciences which have been founded upon
them, and of the arts to which they have been made
subservient ; — of all, in fine, external to ourselves,
within the circle of time and beneath the arch of heaven ;
and of our own conscious hopes, fears, desires, to which
that arch is no boundary ; we shall see, at once, that the
words of our language, numerous as they are, are only
as one to infinity, compared with the number of the
objects to which they are daily applied. And yet these
words are sufficient not only to present us with an image
and a record of past and present existences, but they are
capable of outrunning the course of time, and describing
the possibilities of the future, and of transcending the
limits of reality, and portraying the fancy-peopled worlds
created by the imagination. And, what is still more
wonderful is, that, with the aid of these comparatively
few words, we can designate and touch, as it were with
the finger, any one fact or event in this universe of facts
and events, or parcel out any groups of them, from tens
to tens of myriads ; or we can note any period on the
dial-plate of by-gone centuries, just as easily as we refer
to the hours of the passing day. Now to accomplish this,
it is obvious that language must be susceptible of com-
binations indefinitely numerous ; that most of its single
words must assume different meanings, in different collo-
cations, and that phrases, capable of expressing any one
or any millions of these facts, vicissitudes, relations, must
be absolutely inexhaustible. Then, again, language has

534 THE SECRETARY'S

various, strongly marked forms, as colloquial, philo-
sophical, poetical, devotional ; and in each of these
divisions, whatever subject we wish to separate from the
rest, language can carve it out, and display it distinctly
and by itself, for our examination. It handles the most
abstruse relations and affinities, and traces the most sub-
tile analogies to their vanishing-point; or, with equal
ease, it condenses the most universal principles into brief
sentences, or, if we please, into single words. Hence, in
using it, to express any greater or smaller part of what
is perceived by the senses, by intellect, or by genius, the
two conditions are, that we must discern, mentally, what
individual object or quality, or what combinations of
objects and qualities, we wish to specify ; and then we
must select the words and form the phrases, — or volumes,
if need be, — which will depict or designate by name
the individual objects we mean, or will draw a line round
the combination of objects we wish to exhibit and de-
scribe. All true use of language, therefore, necessarily
involves a mental act of adjustment, measure, precision,
pertinency ; otherwise it cannot fix the extent or gauge
the depth of any subject. Language is to be selected
and applied to the subject-matter, whether that subject-
matter be business, history, art or consciousness, just as
a surveyor applies his chain to the measurement of areas,
or as an artist selects his colors to portray the original.
But what must be the result, if the surveyor knows
nothing of the length of the chain he uses, and if the
artist selects his colors by chance, and knows not to what
parts he applies them?

Hence, the acquisition of language consists far less in
mastering words as individuals, than it does in adjusting
their applications to things, in sentences and phrases. And
one great object — there are others not less important —

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 535

of teaching the children in our schools to read, is, that
they may there commence this habit of adjustment, of
specifying and delineating with precision, whatever is
within the range of their knowledge and experience.
All attempts, therefore, to teach language to children,
are vain, which have not this constant reference to the
subject-matter intended to be specified and described.
If the thing signified is not present to the mind, it is
impossible that the language should be a measure, for,
by the supposition, there is nothing to be measured. It
becomes a mere hollow sound ; and with this disadvan-
tage, that, from the parade which is made in administer-
ing the nothingness, the child is led to believe he has
received something. The uselessness of such a process
would seem to be enough, without the falsity. The fact,
that many children may not be able to make great
progress in this adjustment of words to things, so far
from being any reply to this view of the subject, only
renders it so much the more important that what is done
should be done rightly.

Notwithstanding the immense treasures of knowledge
accumulated in the past six thousand years, and the im-
mense difference between the learned men of our own
and of ancient times, yet no one denies that children are
now brought into the world in the same state of igno-
rance as they were before the flood. When born, only a
single instinct is developed, — that of appetite for food.
Weeks pass, before the quickest of all the senses — the
sight — takes note of any object. At about the age of a
year, the faculty of language dimly appears. One after
another, other powers bud forth ; but it seems to be the
opinion of the best metaphysicians, that the highest facul-
ties of the intellect — those which, in their full develop-
ment and energy, make the lawgivers of the race, and

5-J6 THE SECRETARY'S

the founders of moral dynasties — hardly dawn before
the age of twelve or fourteen years. And yet, in many
of the reading-books now in use in the schools, the most
pithy sayings of learned men ; the aphorisms in which
moralists have deposited a life of observation and expe-
rience ; the maxims of philosophers, embodying the high-
est forms of intellectual truth, are set down as First Les-
sons for children; — as though, because a child was born
after Bacon and Franklin, he could understand them of
course. While a child is still engrossed with visible and
palpable objects, while his juvenile playthings are yet a
mystery to him, he is presented with some abstraction or
generalization, just discovered, after the profoundest study
of men and things, by some master intellect. But it mat-
ters not to children, how much knowledge or wisdom
there may be in the world, on subjects foreign to them-
selves, until they have acquired strength of mind suffi-
cient to receive and appropriate them. The only interest
which a child has in the attainments of the age in which
he is born, is, that they may be kept from him until ho
lias been prepared to receive them. Erudite and scientific
men, for their own convenience, have formed summaries,
digests, abstracts, of their knowledge, each sentence of
which contains a thousand elements of truth, that had
been mastered in detail ; and, on inspection of these ab-
breviated forms, they are reminded of, not taught, the
individual truths they contain. Yet these are given to
children, as though they would call up in their minds the
same ideas which they suggest to their authors. But
while children are subjected to the law of their Creator,
that of being born in ignorance, their growth is the desid-
eratum, which Education should supply, and their intel-
lect cannot thrive upon what it does not understand ; —
nay, more, the intellect carries as a burden whatever it

SECOND ANNUAL EEPORT. 537

does not assimilate as nourishment. An indispensable
quality of a school-book, then, is its adjustment to the
power of the learner. No matter how far, or how little,
advanced from the starting-point of ignorance a child
may be, the teacher and the book must go to him. And
this is only saying, that he cannot proceed upon his jour-
ney from a point not yet reached, but must first go
through the intermediate stages. A child must know in-
dividual objects of a species, before he can understand a
name descriptive of the species itself. He must know
particulars, before he can understand the relations of
analogy or contrast between them ; he must be accus-
tomed to ideas of visible and tangible extension, before it
is of any nse to tell him of the height of the Alps or the
length of the Amazon ; he must have definite notions of
weight, before he can understand the force of gravitating
planets ; he must be acquainted with phenomena, before
he can be instructed in the laws which harmonize their
conflicting appearances ; and he must know something
of the relations of men, before he is qualified to infer the
duties that spring from them.

Nor should the first lessons be simple and elementary,
in regard to the subject only ; but the language of the
earliest ones should be literal. All figurative or meta-
phorical expression is based upon the literal, and can
have no intelligible existence without it. After a clear
apprehension of the literal meaning of words, there is a
charm in their figurative applications ; because a com-
parison is silently made between the figurative and the
literal meanings, and the resemblance perceived awakens
a delightful emotion. And this pleasure is proportioned
to the distinctness of the related ideas. But how can a
child understand those figures of speech, where a part is
put for the whole, or the whole for a part, when he knows

538 THE SECRETARY'S

nothing either of whole or part; — where sensible objects
are put for intelligible, or animate things for inanimate,
when he is wholly ignorant of the subjects likened or
contrasted ? How can there be any such thing as tautol-
ogy to a child, who is unacquainted with what went be-
fore ; or how can he perceive antithesis if both extremes
are invisible ? In writings, beautiful from the richness
of their suggestion, the tacit reference to collateral ideas
is wholly lost ; and yet it is the highest proof of a master,
to interweave ideas with which pleasurable emotions have
become associated. Hence, a child, put into reading-les-
sons which are beyond his ability, not only reads with a
dormant understanding, but all the faculties, productive
of taste, refinement, elegance, beauty, are torpid also.
The faculties being unemployed, the reading, which other-
wise would have been a pleasure, becomes irksome and
repulsive. There is another pernicious consequence, in-
separable from the practice of depositing, in the memory
of children, those general and synoptical views which
they do not understand. It leads to an opposite extreme
in instruction ; for when children, whose memory only
has been cultivated, are really to be taught any subject
with thoroughness, and for practical application, it then
becomes necessary to simplify and degrade it to the level
of their feeble apprehension. But why cannot the facul-
ties be strengthened by exercise, so that, in process of
time, they can master more difficult subjects, as well as to
degrade subjects to the level of weak faculties ?

In communicating the elements of knowledge to chil-
dren, there is, at first, but little danger of being too
minute and particular. Expansion, explanation, illustra-
tion, circumlocution, — all are necessary. But, as the
child advances, less diffuseness is requisite. The prolix
becomes concise. Different and more comprehensive

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 539

words are used, or the same in an enlarged signification.
What was pulverized and examined in atoms is now col-
lected and handled in masses. Care, however, is to be
taken at every step, in the first place, that what is pre-
sented to the learner should demand a conscious effort on
his part, for, without such an effort, there will be no in-
crease of strength ; and, in the next place, that what is
presented should be attainable by an effort, for, without
success, discouragement and despair will ensue. School-
books, however, are made for classes, and not for indi-
vidual minds, and hence the best books will be more pre-
cisely adapted to some minds than to others. This differ-
ence it is the duty of the teacher to equalize, by giving
more copious explanations to the dull and unintelligent,
and by tasking the strong and apprehensive with more
difficult questions connected with the text. Every sen-
tence will have related ideas of cause and effect, of what
is antecedent, consequent or collateral, which may be ex-
plored to the precise extent indicated by different abili-
ties. The old Balearic islanders of the Mediterranean,
famed among the ancients for being the best bowmen and
slingsmen in the then known world, had in this respect
a true idea of Education. They placed the food of their
children upon the branches of the trees, at different
heights from the ground, according to age and profi-
ciency, and when the children had dislodged it, by bow
or sling, they had their meals, but not before.

Tested by this criterion, are not many of the reading-
books in our schools too elevated for the scholars ? It
seems generally to have been the object of the compilers
of these books to cull the most profound and brilliant
passages, contained in a language, in which the highest
efforts of learning, talent, and genius have been em-
balmed. Had there been a rivalry, like that at the

540 THE SECRETARY'S

ancient Olympic games, where emulous nations, instead
of individuals, had entered the classic lists, as competitors
for renown, and our fame as a people had been staked
upon our eloquent, school-book miscellanies, we should
have questioned the integrity of the umpire, had we not
won the prize. Certainly from no ancient, probably from
no other modern language, could such a selection of lite-
rary excellences be made, as some of them exhibit, —
demonstrative arguments on the most abstruse and re-
condite subjects, tasking the acuteness of practised logi-
cians, and appreciable only by them ; — brilliant passages
of parliamentary debates, whose force would be irresisti-
ble, provided only that one were familiar with all con-
temporary institutions and events ; — scenes from dramas,
beautiful if understood, but unintelligible without an
acquaintance with heathen mythology ; — wit, poetry,
eloquence, whose shafts, to the vision of educated minds,
are quick and refulgent as lightning, but giving out to
the ignorant only an empty rumbling of words ; — every
thing, in fine, may be found in their pages, which can
make them, at once, worthy the highest admiration of the
learned, and wholly unintelligible to children. If I may
recur to the illustration of the Balearic islanders, given
above ; the prize of the young slingers and archers is in-
valuable, if it can be obtained ; but it is placed so high as
to be wholly invisible. Children can advance from the
proposition, that one and one make two, up to the meas-
urement of planetary distances, but an immense number
of steps must be taken in traversing the intermediate
spaces. And it is only by a similar gradation and pro-
gressiveness, that a child can advance from understanding
such nursery talk as "the ball rolls," "the dog barks,"
"the horse trots," until his mind acquires such compass
and velocity of movement, that when he reads the brief

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 541

declaration of the Psalmist, " 0 Lord, how manifold are
thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all!" his
swift conception will sweep over all known parts of the
universe in an instant, and return glowing with adoration
of their Creator.

Using incomprehensible reading-books draws after it
the inevitable consequence of bad reading. Except the
mental part is well done, it is impossible to read with any
rhetorical grace or propriety. Could any one, ignorant
of the Latin and French languages, expect to read a Latin
or French author with just modulations and expressive-
ness of voice, at the first or at the ten thousandth trial ?
And it matters not what language we read, provided the
mechanical process is animated by no vitality of thought.
Something, doubtless, depends upon flexibility and pli-
ancy of physical organs ; but should they be ever so per-
fect, a fitting style of delivery is born of intelligence and
feeling only, and can have no other parentage. Without
these, there will be no perception of impropriety, though
epitaphs and epigrams are read in the same manner. If
the pieces of which the reading-books consist are among
the most difficult in the English language, is it not absurd
to expect that the least instructed portion of the people,
speaking English — the very children — should be able to
display their meaning with grace and fulness ? To en-
courage children to strive after a supposed natural way
of expressing emotions and sentiments they do not feel,
encourages deception, not sincerity ; a discord, not a har-
mony, between the movements of mind and tongue. No
rules, in regard to reading, can supply a defect in under-
standing what is read. Rhetorical directions, though they
should equal the variety of musical notation, would not
suffice to indicate the slower or swifter enunciation of
emphatic or unemphatic words, or those modulations

542 THE SECRETARY'S

of the human voice, which are said to amount to hun-
dreds of thousands in number. Inflections and the rate
of utterance are too volatile and changeful to be guided
by rules ; though perceptible, they are indescribable. All
good reading of dramatic or poetic works springs from
emotion. Nothing but the greatest histrionic power can
express an emotion without feeling it. But, once let the
subject-matter of the reading-lesson be understood, and,
almost universally, nature will supply the proper varia-
tions of voice. A child makes no mistakes in talking,
for the simple reason, that he never undertakes to say
what he does not understand. Nature is the only master
of rhetoric on the play-ground. Yet there, earnestness
gives a quick and emphatic utterance ; the voice is rough-
ened by combative feelings ; it is softened by all joyous
and grateful emotions, and it is projected, as by the accu-
racy of an engineer, to strike the ear of a distant play-
fellow. Nay, so perfect are undrilled children in this
matter, that if any one of a group of twenty makes a
false cadence or emphasis, or utters interrogatively what
he meant to affirm, a simultaneous shout proclaims an
observance of the blunder ; yet, if the same group were
immediately put to reading from some of our school-
books, their many-sounding voices would shrink from their
wide compass into a one-toned instrument ; — or, what is
far worse, if they affected an expression of sentiment,
they would cast it so promiscuously over the sentences as
to make good taste shudder. Occasionally, in some of the
reading-books, there are lessons which the scholars fully
understand ; and I presume it is within the observation
of every person, conversant with schools, that the classes
learn more from those lessons than from the residue of
the book. The moment such lessons are reached, the
dull machinery quickens into life ; the moment they are

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 543

passed, it becomes droning machinery again. Even the
mechanical part of reading, therefore, is dependent for all
its force, gracefulness and variety upon the mental.

There are other features of our reading-books too im-
portant to be unnoticed, even in a brief discussion of
their merits. Two prominent characteristics are, the in-
completeness of the subjects of the reading-lessons, con-
sidered each by itself; and the discordance between them,
when viewed in succession. Lord Kaimes maintains, in
substance, that there is an original, instinctive propensity
or faculty of the mind, which demands the completion or
finishing of what has been begun, and is displeased by an
untimely or abrupt termination. Other metaphysicians
attest the same doctrine. Whether such mental tendency
be native or superinduced, its practical value can hardly
be overestimated ; and whatever conduces to establish or
confirm it, should be sedulously fostered. In our state
of civilization, all questions have become complex. Hence,
an earnest desire to learn all the facts, to consider all the
principles, which rightfully go to modify conclusions, is a
copious and unfailing source of practical wisdom. Error
often comes, not from any mistake in our judgments upon
the premises given, but from omitting views, as much
belonging to the subject as those which are considered.
We often see men, who will develop one part of a case
with signal ability, and yet are always in the wrong,
because they overlook other parts, equally essential to a
sound result. Thus error becomes the consequence of
seeing only parts of truth. Often, the want of the hun-
dredth part to make a whole, renders the possession of the
other ninety-nine valueless. If one planet were left out
of our astronomical computations, the motions of the solar
system could not be explained, though all about the others
were perfectly known. Children, therefore, should not

544 THE SECRETARY'S

only be taught, but habituated, as far as possible, to com-
pass the subject of inquiry, to explore its less obvious
parts, and, if I may so speak, to circumnavigate it ; so
that their minds will be impatient of a want of complete-
ness and thoroughness, and will resent one-sided views
and half-presentations. Merely a habit of mind in a child
of seeking for well-connected, well-proportioned views,
would give the surest augury of a great man. Now, if
there be such a tendency in the human mind, urging it
to search out the totality of any subject, and rewarding
success, not only with utility, but with a lively pleasure,
is not the reading pupil defrauded both of the benefit and
the enjoyment, by having his mind forcibly transferred, in
rapid succession, from a few glimpses of one subject to as
few glimpses of another ? On looking into a majority of
the reading-books in our schools, I believe it will be found,
that they contain more separate pieces than leaves. Often,
these pieces are antipodal to each other in style, treat-
ment, and subject. There is a solemn inculcation of the
doctrine of universal peace on one page, and a martial,
slaughter-breathing poem on the next. I have a reading-
book, in which a catalogue of the names of all the books
of the Old and New Testaments is followed immediately,
and on the same page, by a " receipt to make good red
ink." But what is worst of all is, that the lessons, gen-
erally, have not, in any logical sense, either a beginning
or an end. They are splendid passages, carved out of an
eloquent oration or sermon, without premises or conclu-
sion ; — a page of compressed thought, taken from a
didactic poem, without the slightest indication of the sys-
tem of doctrines embodied in the whole ; — extracts from
forensic arguments, without any statement of the facts of
the case, so that the imagination of the young reader is
inflamed, while those faculties which determine the fitness

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 545

and relevancy of the advocate's appeals are wholly unex-
ercised ; — forty or fifty lines of the tenderest pathos,
unaccompanied by any circumstances tending to awaken
sympathy, and leaving the children to guess both at cause
and consolation ; — and while no dramatist dares violate
an absurd rule, that every tragedy written for the stage
shall have five acts, a single isolated scene, taken from
the middle of one of them, seems to be considered a fair
proportion for a child. Probably in a school of an average
number of scholars, three or four of these pieces would be
read at each exercise, so that, even if the pieces were in-
telligible by themselves, the contradictory impressions will
effectually neutralize each other. Surely, if, according to
Lord Kaimes, there be an innate desire or propensity to
finish, we should expect that the children would manifest
it, in such cases, by desiring to have done with the book
forever.

What the ancient rhetoricians said of a literary work,
— that it should always have a beginning, a middle, and
an end, — is more emphatically true of reading-lessons
for children. Each piece should have the completeness
of a fable or an allegory. Were a single figure cut from
the historic canvas of some master-painter, and presented
to us by itself, we should suffer vexation from the blank-
ness of the mutilated part, instead of enjoying the pleas-
ure of a perfect whole.

But, perhaps it will be said that children like variety,
and therefore a diversity of subjects is demanded. But
there is a wide distinction between what is variegated and
what is heterogeneous or conflicting. Quite as well may
it be said, that children like continuity, not less than
variety. Agencies working to a common end, elements
expanding and evolving into a full and symmetrical devel-
opment, present a variety more accordant to nature than

VOL. i. 86

546 THE SECRETARY'S

that of patchwork. An easy and gliding transition from
topic to topic is far preferable to a sudden revulsion,
which seems, as it were, to arrest the mental machinery,
and work it backwards. Besides, all needful variety is
as attainable in long pieces as in short ones. An author
may pass from grave to humorous, from description to
narration, from philosophizing to moralizing, or even from
prose to poetry, without shocking the mind by precipitous
leaps from one subject to another.

Another mental exercise of the highest value is not
only overlooked, but rendered wholly impossible, by this
violent transference of the mind through a series of
repugnant subjects. The true order of mental advance-
ment is, from the primitive meaning of words to their
modified meaning in particular connections, and then to
a clear apprehension of the import of sentences and para-
graphs. After these come two other mental processes,
which are the crowning constituents of intellectual great-
ness. The first process is a comparison with each other
of all the parts presented, in order to discern their agree-
ment or repugnance, and to form a judgment of their
conduciveness to a proposed result. For this purpose,
the mind must summon the whole train of thought into
its presence, and see for itself whether the conclusion is
authorized to which its assent is demanded. Here the
reader must see whether the part he now reads, as
compared with the preceding, is consistent or contradic-
tory. Otherwise he may be marched and counter-
marched through all regions of belief, and even be made
to tread backwards in his own footsteps without knowing-
it. How can a juror judge of the soundness or fallacy of
an advocate's argument, if he cannot reproduce it and
compare its different points ; if he cannot, if a military
phrase may be used, bring up the long column of argu-

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 547

merits and deploy them into line, so as to survey them
all at a glance ? Such a habit of mind confers a wonder-
ful superiority on its possessor ; and therefore it should
be cultivated by all practicable means. Great as it is in
some men, it has grown up, under favoring circum-
stances, from the feeblest beginnings ; and the minds of
all children may be managed so as to stifle or strengthen
it. Of course, all consecutiveness of thought is dispersed
by a scrap-book.

I will take a few examples from a reading-book now
in use in some of our schools. A most humorous disqui-
sition " On the head-dress of ladies " is immediately
followed by another disquisition, " On a future state of
eternal happiness or perdition ; " a passage from Mil-
ton's " Creation of the world " leads on " The facetious
history of John Gilpin ; " Thomson's " Hymn to the
Deity " ushers in " Merrick's chameleon ; " and two
minutes' reading from Blair's " Sermon on the Death of
Christ " precedes Lord Chesterfield's " Speech on Pen-
sions." Surely, the habit of mind I have endeavored to
describe is here impossible. There is no continuity in
the subject-matter for the mind to act on.

The preceding remarks contemplate the reader or
hearer, as engaged in fixing the whole train of the
author's thought in his own mind, for the purpose of
comparing its different parts. But to make reading
in the highest degree valuable, another mental process
still is necessary. It is not enough merely to discern the
agreement or disagreement of the associated parts, heard
or read ; but in the progress of the exercise, we ought to
look to the right and left, and compare the positions of
the speaker or writer with our own observation, experi-
ence and former judgment, so as to obtain new argu-
ments for our own opinions where there is a coincidence,

548 THE SECRETARY'S

and be led to re-examine them with conscientious impar-
tiality when opposed. In this way only can we modify
and correct our own views by the help of other minds.
In this way only can we give permanence to our acquisi-
tions ; and what is rapidity in acquisition, without
durability in retention ? It is the absence of these two
mental exercises which makes so vast a portion of the
reading of our community utterly barren. Of course,
only the older scholars can fairly realize this degree of
intelligent reading. But after a little practice, all chil-
dren are capable of reading with such an open and
inquiring mind, that if any thing occurs in the lesson,
which is connected with their own recent experience or
observation, the two things will be immediately associ-
ated. This will grow into a habit of thinking not only
of what they read, but of associating and comparing their
previous knowledge upon the same subject with it ; and
it will be the best possible stimulant to the inventive
powers. It will also prevent them from blindly adopting
whatever is communicated to them by others. They
will acquire such a power, at once, of expanded views
and of thorough investigation, that if afterwards, in the
practical business of life, any plan or course of policy is
presented to them, and there be a difficulty in it, they
will see it; and if there be any way of obviating that
difficulty, they will see that also.

To mitigate the calamity of unintelligent reading,
various inventions have been sought out ; by some of
which it may have been slightly relieved, while others
seem wholly illusive. Spelling-books have been pre-
pared, purporting to give synonymous words, arranged
in parallel columns. On some pages two columns, on
others three columns, are found, where the words, which
are placed horizontally, in regard to each other, are

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 549

alleged to be synonymous. Thus single words are sup-
posed to be defined by single words, as in the following
example, which is taken from one of them : —

" comedy, tragedy, drama."

It is a remark of Dr. Blair, that " hardly in any lan-
guage are there two words that convey the same idea."
Dr. Campbell, also, the author of that^able work, " The
Philosophy of Rhetoric," observes, that " there are few
words in any language, (particularly such as relate to
operations and feelings of the mind,) which are strictly
univocal." To teach children that any considerable
number, even of the primitive words in the English lan-
guage, can be reduced to doublets and triplets of syno-
nymes, or that there are many cases where words can be
interchangeably used, would subject them to the cer-
tainty, both of being mistaken by others, and of mistak-
ing whatever they might hear or read ; and it would
destroy the power of aptness in the selection of words,
upon which all the accuracy, elegance and force of
diction depend. Surely, if a large majority of the words
of our language have, each, one or two synonymous
words, it would seem advisable for the government of
the " Republic of Letters," at once to reduce it to one-
half or one-third of its present bulk, by discarding the
superfluous parts, and thus save the young the labor of
learning and the old the trouble of writing and reading
a double or treble-sized vocabulary. But if, as is further
observed by Dr. Blair, any person, " conversant with the
propriety of the language, will always be able to observe
something that distinguishes any two of its words," then
a book would be greatly to be preferred which should
show that it has no synouymes. Even if our language

550 THE SECRETARY'S

furnished synonymes, and these were carefully collated,
according to the above plan, it would seem quite as possi-
ble for the learner, with a little additional labor, to get
two or three words, without any glimmer of meaning, as
to get one. It is rarely possible to explain any word of
unknown meaning by any other single word. Our most
common words are susceptible, probably, of a hundred
significations, according to the connection in which they
are used. Their value is constantly changing, according
to the context. It is like the value of pieces upon a
chess-board; the same- piece, in one position, being
almost worthless, in another position commanding the
game. It is this fact which makes it such vanity and
uselessness to read words, without reference to their
significations.

Another method for teaching significations consists in
the use of the dictionary. This is far less fallacious
than the former, because no dictionary ever defines by a
single word. It usually gives a number of words and
short sentences, from a comparison of which, the princi-
pal idea, common to them all, can be separated from the
accessory ideas peculiar to each. Although, therefore,
it is a meagre resource for a learner, it is far better than
any definition, by a single inflexible word, can be. There
are. however, very serious objections to this mode.
Should the pupil take the words of the dictionary, in
course, he would study double the number which he
will have occasion to use in after-life ; and it seems a
misfortune, that scholars, who do not go to school half
long enough to learn what is needful, should spend
half their time while there in learning what is superflu-
ous. Nor do dictionaries indicate what words are in
reputable use, what are more appropriate to poetical,
what to prose writings, and so forth. But should the

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 551

words to be studied or omitted be marked for the
learner, or a dictionary be prepared, containing the for-
mer only ; still an insuperable objection would remain,
in consequence of the order, or rather the entire want of
order, in regard to meaning, in which the words are
presented. For, while the words come alphabetically,
the ideas come chaotically. The learner is whirled back-
wards and forwards, carried through time and space,
presented witli matter and mind, principal and incident,
action and passion, all in a single column. Nothing can
be conceived more heterogeneous than the ideas neces-
sarily resulting from an alphabetical arrangement of the
words ; and were children to be drilled at much length
on such exercises, it would argue great soundness of
mind if their intellects were not a little unsettled. Sup-
pose a professor in the natural sciences, instead of teach-
ing his sciences in a natural order, should go into the
fields, and halting anywhere, at random, should take a
spot no larger than is sufficient for the growth of a single
blade of grass, and should proceed to lecture upon what-
ever was found at that single point. He would be
obliged to run over the subjects of geology, mineralogy,
chemistry, botany, and perhaps entomology, without
leaving the spot. Nor would this be a course half so
devious and erratic, as that of studying definitions
through the columns of a dictionary.

Another device to fill vacuity by pouring in vacuity, is
this ; — a book is prepared, in which the spelling and read-
ing lessons alternate. First come a few columns of words,
and then a page of apothegms and synopses of universal
truths, not occupying, perhaps, more than a line each ;
some one word in the spelling-columns being incorporated
into each of these short sentences. The force of the rea-
sons against the preceding mode is but little abated when

.552 THE SECRETARY'S

applied to this. This motley company of sentences repels
all interest on the part of the learner. Topics, more
alien from each other, and more bewildering to the mind,
could not be found, if one were to stick a pin through all
the leaves of a book, and then to read continuously all the
sentences through which the puncture was made. As
many-colored and diverse-shaped objects, flitting swiftly
before the eye, will make no stable impression upon the
retina ; so a multitude of incongruous ideas and feelings,
trooping hurriedly before the mental vision, can leave no
enduring traces of outline, aspect or quality upon the
mind. A rapid succession of discordant images will inflict
distraction upon the mind of an adult ; — how much more
certain are they to do it upon that of a child ! The power
of passing abruptly from one subject of thought to an-
other, without mental disturbance, requires long 'habit
and familiarity with the matters presented. Children can
have neither.

But I will not occupy further time in exposing empiri-
cal plans for acquiring a ready and apposite use of our
language. After experimenting with every scheme, I
believe we shall be driven back to a single resource ; —
and not reluctantly, for that resource is sure and adequate.
Language is to be learned, where it is used, as skill in
handling the implements of an art is acquired by prac-
tising with them upon their appropriate objects. It is to
be learned by conversation, and by the daily reading of
such books, as with the aid of free questioning on the part
of the pupil, and full explanations on that of the teacher,
can be thoroughly mastered. The ideas of the learner
are to be brought out, and set, objectively, before his own
eyes, like a picture. Any error can then be pointed out.
The boundary-line can be traced between his knowledge
and his ignorance. A pupil may recite a lesson with

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 553

literal correctness, respecting the boundaries of the differ-
ent States in the Union ; and it may be impossible for the
teacher to determine whether this is done by a mental
reference to divisional lines and adjacent territory, or
whether it is done by remembering the words as they
stand in the geography. But if the pupil can delineate
a correct map of the United States on a blackboard, it is
then certain that he has the prototype of it in his mind.
So if the pupil applies language to something known to
both parties, the teacher can then perceive whether the
language is adjusted to the thing ; and, if it is not, he can
ascertain whether the error arises from a misconception of
the thing, or from an unskilful use of words in describing
it. Oral instruction, therefore, to some extent, respecting
known objects and such as can be graphically described,
should precede reading; and should accompany it ever
afterwards, though, perhaps, with diminishing frequency.
Early practice, in noting the real distinctions in the quali-
ties of sensible substances, will give accuracy to language ;
and when the child passes from present and sensible
objects to unseen or mental ones, a previously acquired
accuracy of language will impart accuracy to the new
ideas. Hence, too, the scenes of the first reading-lessons
should be laid in the household, the play-ground, among
the occupations of men, and the surrounding objects of
nature, so that the child's notions can be rectified at every
step in the progress. This rectification will be impossible,
if the notions of the pupil can be brought to no common
and intelligible standard. We must believe, too, that the
Creator of the human mind, and of the material world in
which it is placed, established a harmony and correspond-
ence between them ; so that the objects of nature are pre-
adapted to the development of the intellect, as the tempers,
dispositions and manners of the family are to develop the

554 THE SECRETARY'S

moral powers. The objects of natural history, — descrip-
tions of beasts, birds, fishes, insects, trees, flowers, and
unorganized substances, should form the subjects of the
earliest intellectual lessons. A knowledge of these facts
lays the foundation for a knowledge of the principles or
sciences which respectively grow out of them. We are
physically connected with earth, air, water, light ; we are
dependent, for health and comfort, upon a knowledge of
their properties and uses, and many of the vastest struc-
tures of the intellect are reared upon these foundations.
Lineally related to these is the whole family of the useful
arts. These classes of subjects are not only best calcu-
lated to foster the early growth of the perceptive, inven-
tive and reasoning powers ; but the language appropriate
to them excludes vagueness and ambiguity, and compels
every mistake to betray itself. Voyages and travels, also,
accompanied as they always should be with geography,
present definite materials both for thought and expres-
sion. Just as early as a habit of exactness is formed in
using words to express things, all the subjects of con-
sciousness may be successively brought within the domain
of instruction. The ideal world can then be entered, as
it were with a lamp in the hand, and all its wonders por-
trayed. Affection, justice, veracity, impartiality, self-sac-
rifice, love to man and love to God, — all carried out into
action, — can be illustrated by examples, after the learner
has acquired a medium through which he can see all the
circumstances which make deeds magnanimous, heroic,
god-like. Here the biography of great and good men
belongs. This is a department of literature, equally vivify-
ing to the intellect and the morals; — bestowing useful
knowledge and inspiring noble sentiments. And much
of the language appropriate to it almost belongs to an-
other dialect ; — fervid, electric, radiant. At the earliest

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 555

practicable period, let composition or translation be com-
menced. By composition, I do not mean an essay " On
Friendship," or " On Honor ; " nor that a young Miss of
twelve years should write a homily " On the duties of a
Queen," or a lad, impatient of his nonage, " On the short-
ness of human life ;" — but that the learner should apply,
on familiar subjects, the language he thinks best, to the
ideas and emotions he perceives clearest and feels strong-
est, to see how well he can make them fit each other, — first
in sentences, or short paragraphs, then in more extended
productions. If the pupil's knowledge outruns his lan-
guage, — as is often the case with the most promising, —
then a more copious diction is to be sought ; but if lan-
guage overgrows ideas, it is to be reduced, though it be
by knife and cautery.

It is only in this way, — by reading or translating good
authors, aided by oral instructions and by lexicographers,
but, most of all, by early habit, — that any one can
acquire such easy mastery over the copiousness and flexi-
bility of our mother-tongue, as to body forth definitely,
and at will, any thought or thing, or any combination of
thoughts and things, found in the consciousness of men,
or in the amplitude of nature ; — in no other way can
any one acquire that terseness and condensing force of
expression, which is a constituent in the highest oratory,
which clusters weightiest thoughts into briefest spaces,
reminding without repeating, each sentence speeding
straight onward to the end, while every salient epithet
opens deep vistas to the right and left ; — and in this way
alone can any one ever learn the picture-words of that
tongue, wherewith the poet repays nature fourfold for all
her beauties, giving her back brighter landscapes, and
clearer waters, and sweeter melodies, than any she had
ever lent to him. By such processes alone can one of

556 THE SECRETAEY'S

the most wonderful gifts of God, — the faculty of speech,
— be dutifully cultivated and enlarged.

It would be rendering a useful service, to follow out,
rightly, and in detail, the natural consequences of this
imperfect manner of teaching our language, after the chil-
dren have passed from the enforced routine of the school-
room to a free choice of their own intellectual amuse-
ments and recreations. I can here only hint at them,
The mere language of sensation and of appetite is com-
mon to all. Even the most illiterate are familiar with it.
Every one, too, either from his own experience, or from
the observation of others, is made acquainted with the
emotions of fear, hope, jealousy, anger, revenge, and with
the explosive phraseology in which those passions are
vented. Now the diction, appropriate and almost peculiar
to the manifestations of the coarser and more animal part
of our nature, is almost as distinct as though it were a
separate language from the style in which questions of
social right and duty, questions of morals, and even of
philosophy, when popularly treated, are discussed. Young
minds love excitement, and, to very many of those who
are just entering upon the stage of life, books furnish the
readiest and the most reputable means for mental stimulus.
What else, then, can reasonably be expected, than that
the graduates of our schoolrooms, who, by acquiring a
knowledge of the coarser and more sensual parts of our
language, possess a key to that kind of reading which is
mainly conversant with the lower propensities of human
nature, should use the key with which they have been
furnished, to satisfy desires which nature has imparted ?
But, having no key wherewith to open the treasures of
intellect, of taste, of that humane literature which is
purified from the dross of base passions, they turn away
from these elevating themes in weariness and disgust,

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 557

and thus stifle the better aspirations of their nature.
These treasures are locked up in a language they do not
understand ; and no person will long endure the weariness
of reading without thought or emotion. May not this
explain, in part at least, why our youth of both sexes,
who wish to know something, or to appear to know some-
thing, of what is called the literature of the day, spend
months and years over the despicable " love and murder "
books, by which the reading portion of mankind is so
sorely afflicted? — books which inflame passions and
appetites that are strong enough by nature, while they
blind and stupefy every faculty and sentiment which exalt
the character into wisdom and excellence. The most
limited fund of words, and a mere intellectual pauperism
in powers of thought, are abundantly sufficient to enable
one to understand a buccaneer's history, and all its intoxi-
cating incidents of piracies, murders, and scuttled ships ;
— or to get vivid notions of loathsome crimes, perpe-
trated by the unfortunate victims of ignorance and of
vicious institutions. For the readers of such books, the
best minds in the world might as well have never been
created. By a different course of training, many of our
youth, whose imaginations are now revelling over these
flagitious works, might have been prepared for high en-
joyment won from companionship with noble characters,
from a study of their own spiritual natures, or from an
investigation of the sublime laws of the material universe,
and the operation of its beneficent physical agencies.

Another large class of our citizens scarcely consult any
oracle, either for their literature or for their politics, but
the daily newspaper. Wholly ignorant of the language
in which argumentative and profound disquisitions, on
subjects of policy or questions of government, are carried
on, why should we wonder that so many of them feel

558 THE SECRETARY'S

less interest in dispassionate, instructive appeals to reason,
than in the savage idioms of party warfare ? The states
of mind thus excited are wholly incompatible with dis-
criminating judgment, with impartiality, with that delib-
eration and truth-seeking anxiety, which are indispensable
to the formation of correct opinions, and which lead to
conduct worthy of free citizens. I would not attribute
too efficient an agency to this cause, but if it only tends
to such disastrous results by the slightest approximation,
it furnishes another powerful argument for a thorough
reform in our practice.

During the first year of my officiating as Secretary of
the Board, very numerous applications were made to me.
from almost all parts of the State, to recommend class-
books for the schools, or to state what books were consid-
ered best by the Board, or by myself. As the Board had
adopted no order, nor were invested with any express
authority, by law, upon the subject, I uniformly abstained
even from expressing my opinion : but for the purpose of
learning, authentically, what were the prevalent views
of the community, I inserted, in my last circular to the
school committees, the following question : " Would it be
generally acceptable to the friends of Education in your
town, to have the Board of Education recommend books
for the use of the Schools?" This gave to school com-
mittees ample opportunity to consult with the friends of
Education, in their respective towns, and opened a way
to obtain a full and fair representation of the wishes of
the public. From this, as the principal source of infor-
mation, somewhat corroborated and extended by other
means, it appears that the friends of Education, in twenty
towns, containing, in the aggregate, a population of about
thirty-five thousand inhabitants, declare that such a recom-
mendation would not be acceptable. In one, containing

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 559

eighteen thousand inhabitants, they say, " we feel so well
satisfied with our own selection of books, as to have no
wish, farther than to see how far the views of different
practical men agree." Ten towns wish to have the Board
recommend, but not prescribe; two towns, to have the
Board recommend and prescribe ; and one, that the Board
may be directed to prescribe by an act of the Legislature.
It also appears that the friends of Education in towns
containing more than seven-eighths of the population of
the State are in favor of having the Board of Education
recommend books for the use of the Schools.

The expediency of a recommendation, by the Board, of
class-books for the schools, leaving it optional with the
committees to adopt such recommendation or not, is a
question so exclusively within the competency of the
Board, that I shall not presume to express any opinion
concerning it. Considerations for and against such rec-
ommendation may be supposed to bear with different
degrees of force, in regard to different species of books ;
— as geographies, grammars, and spelling or reading
books. In my Report of last year, I set forth some of
the very serious inconveniences resulting from the multi-
plicity of books now in use. I will here only add, that
if the Board should assume the labor of examining and
recommending any kind of school-books, I trust they will
not allow so favorable an opportunity to pass, without
securing a better quality of materials and workmanship
than go to the formation of some books now in use. It
is too obvious to be mentioned, that in case of a uniform-
ity of books, they would be furnished much cheaper than
at present, as measures would, of course, be taken to
prevent monopoly.

As the law now stands, in order to entitle a town to
receive its distributive share of the income of the School

560 THE SECRETARY'S

Fund, the committee must make oath, that the town, " at

their last annual meeting, raised the sum of dollars,

to pay the wages of instructors solely" In preparing the
last "Annual Abstract," I found this certificate the sub-
ject of frequent alteration. Although the law prescribed
a certain form of oath as a condition precedent, the
school committees altered the form, and then made oath
to a form unknown to the law. The reason was, that
very few towns raised money " to pay the wages of in-
structors solely," and, therefore, though they had raised
a sufficient sum for schools to entitle them to a share of
the fund, they had not raised it in the particular form
contemplated by the certificate.

I endeavored this year to ascertain the form of the
vote, adopted by the towns, in raising school-money.
Owing, however, to a non-compliance on the part of many
school committees with my request, I have obtained a
copy of the form used the current year, from only one
hundred and ten towns. But six of these one hundred
and ten towns raised money " to pay the wages of instruct-
ors solely." In almost all the others, the terms used are
" for the support of schools," or some equivalent expres-
sion. It is very desirable that the certificate should be
conformed to the vote, or the vote to the certificate.

In my Report of last year, I exposed the alarming defi-
ciency of moral and religious instruction then found to
exist in our schools. That deficiency, in regard to re-
ligious instruction, could only be explained by supposing
that school committees, whose duty it is to prescribe
school-books, had not found any books at once expository
of the doctrines of revealed religion, and also free from
such advocacy of the " tenets " of particular sects of
Christians, as brought them, in their opinion, within the
scope of the legal prohibition. And hence they felt

SECOND ANNUAL REPORT. 561

obliged to exclude books, which, but for their denomina-
tional views, they would have been glad to introduce.
No candid mind could ever, for a moment, accept this as
evidence of an indifference to moral and religious instruc-
tion in the schools; but only as proof that proper manuals
had not been found, by which the great object of moral
and religious instruction could be secured, without any
infringement of the statutory regulation. The time for
the committees to make another return not having yet
arrived, it is impossible to say, whether books, having the
above object in view, have been since introduced into any
more of the schools. I am happy, however, to say, that
a knowledge of that deficiency, then for the first time ex-
posed to the public, has turned the attention of some of
the friends of Education to the subject, and that efforts
are now making to supply the desideratum. Of course,
I shall not be here understood as referring to the Scrip-
tures, as it is well known that they are used in almost all
the schools, either as a devotional or as a reading book.

I close this second Report, inspired by opposite reasons
to renewed exertions in this sacred cause ; — being not
more encouraged by what has already been accomplished,
than stimulated by what remains to be done.

BOSTON, Dec. 26, 1838.
VOL. i. 36

HORACE MANN,
Secretary of the Board of Education.

APPENDIX.

(A) p. 94.

THE detailed reports made to the Board of Education in compli-
ance with this provision proved to be the most important act of the
movement that created it. The Secretary was occupied three months
of every alternate year in collating from these reports such extracts as
were necessary to show the 9ondition of the schools ; and these were
published in a book called " Abstract of School Returns," which were
distributed to each town, and enabled all to see what improvements
or what deficiencies existed. This work has gone over the world, and
has been considered the most valuable educational document ever
printed. From it was subsequently gathered a statistical pamphlet
called the " Graduated Tables," which, Mr. Mann used to say, was the
only stroke of genius that characterized the administration of his office.
It recorded the towns in the order of the appropriations of money for
education made by each ; and such was the stimulating effect, that
from year to year the totvns changed places in a very striking manner.
It was found that many small towns appropriated far more money in
proportion to the population than even some of the large cities. The
transformation of the list was sometimes so great as to show the name
of a town that stood at the foot of the list one year, at the head of it
the next. So eloquent are figures.

(B.)

Letter from DR. SAMUEL B. WOODWARD, Superintendent of the
State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. — See p. 441.

Worcester, March 14, 1838.
HON. HORACE MANN, Secretary of the Board of Education :

DEAR SIR, — Your note and queries, respecting the construction
of schoolhouses, came to hand yesterday. I improve the earliest
opportunity to reply. 663

564 APPENDIX.

First, as to the ill effects of high and narrow benches, and seats
without backs.

High and narrow seats are not only extremely uncomfortable for the
young scholar, tending constantly to make him restless and noisy, dis-
turbing his temper, and preventing his attention to his books, but they
have also a direct tendency to produce deformity of the limbs.

If the seat is too narrow, half the thigh only rests upon it; if too
high, the feet cannot reach the floor ; the consequence is, that the
limbs are suspended on the centre of the thigh. Now, as the limbs
of children are pliable or flexible, they are easily made to grow out of
shape, and become crooked, »y such an awkward and unnatural posi-
tion.

Seats without backs have an equally unfavorable influence upon the
spinal column. If no rest is afforded the backs of children while seated,
they almost necessarily assume a bent and crooked position ; such a posi-
tion often assumed, or long continued, tends to that deformity which has
become extremely common with children in modern times, and leads
to disease of the spine in innumerable instances, especially with deli-
cate female children.

The seats in schoolrooms should be so constructed that the whole
thigh can rest upon them, and at the same time the foot stand firmly
upon the floor ; all seats should have backs high enough to reach the
shoulder-blades ; low backs, although better than none, are far less easv
and useful than high ones, and will not prevent pain and uneasiness after
sitting a considerable time. Young children should be permitted to
change their position often, to stand on their feet, to march, and to visit
the play-ground. One hour is as long as any child, under ten years of
;>ge, should be confined at once ; and four hours as long as he should be
confined to his seat in one day.

Second Query. — " What general effects will be produced upon the
health of children by stinting their supply of fresh air through defects
in ventilation ? "

An answer to this query will involve some chemical principles, in
connection with the animal economy, not extensively and fully under"
stood

The blood, as it circulates through the vessels in our bodies, accumu-
lates a deleterious principle called CARBON, which is a poison itself,
and must be discharged frequently, or it becomes dangerous to life.
[u the process of respiration or breathing, this poisonous principle
unites in the lungs with a proportion of the oxygen of the air, and

APPENDIX. 565

forms carbonic acid, which is expelled from the lungs at each expira-
tion. The proportion of oxygen in the air received into the lungs is
about twenty-one in the hundred ; in the air expelled, about eighteen
in the hundred ; — the proportion of carbonic acid in the inhaled
air is one part in the hundred, in the exhaled air about four parts in
the hundred. By respiration, an adult person spoils, or renders unfit
for this vital process, about one gallon of air in a minute. By this
great consumption of pure air in a schoolroom, made tight and filled with
scholars, it will be easily seen that the whole air will soon be rendered
impure, and unfit for the purpose for which it is designed. If we con-
tinue to inhale this contaminated air, rendered constantly worse the
longer we are confined in it, this process in the lungs will not be per-
formed in a perfect manner ; the carbon will not all escape from the
blood, but will be circulated to the brain, and produce its deleterious
effects upon that organ, to which it is a poison. If no opportunity be
afforded for its regular escape, death will take place in a few minutes,
as in strangulation by a cord, drowning, and immersion in irrespirable
air. The cause of death is the retention and circulation of this poison-
ous principle in all these cases.

If a smaller portion is allowed to circulate through the vessels than
will prove fatal, it produces stupor, syncope, and other dangerous
effects upon the brain and nerves. In still less quantity, it produces
dulness, sleepiness, and incapacitates us for all mental efforts and
physical activity. The dulness of a school, after having been long in
session in a close room, and of a congregation, during a protracted
religious service, are often attributable to this cause mainly, if not
soldi/. Both teacher and scholar, preacher and hearer, are often
greatly affected in this way, without being at all sensible of the cause.
Fifty scholars will very soon contaminate the air of a schoolroom at
the rate of a gallon a minute.

Suppose a schoolroom to be thirty feet square and nine feet high. »t
will contain 13,9'JG,000 cubic inches of atmospheric air. According to
Davy and Thompson, two accurate and scientific chemists, one indi-
vidual respires and contaminates 6,500 cubic inches of air in a minuto.
Fifty scholars will respire 325,000 cubic inches in the same time. In
about forty minutes, all the air of such a room will have become con-
taminated, if fresh supplies are not provided. The quantity of carbonic-
acid produced by the respiration of fifty scholars will be about 750
cubic inches in an hour.

From these calculations, we must see how soon the air of a school-

566 APPENDIX.

room becomes unfit to sustain the animal powers, and how unfavorable
to vigorous mental effort such a contaminated atmosphere must prove
to be. To avoid this most serious evil, is a desideratum, which has not
yet been reached in the construction of schoolhouses.

In my opinion, every house and room which is closed for any con-
siderable time upon a concourse of people should be warmed by pure
air from out of doors, heated by furnaces placed in a cellar, (and every
schoolhouse should have a cellar,) or in some contiguous apartment,
so that the supply of air for the fire should not be from the schoolroom.
Furnaces for warming external air may be constructed cheaply, so as
effectually to answer the purposes of warmth and ventilation.

When a quantity of warm fresh air is forced into a schoolroom by
means of a furnace, the foul air is forced out at every crevice, and
at the ventilating passages; the currents are all warm, quite to these
passages.

But if the room is warmed by a stove or fireplace, the cold air from
without rushes in at every passage and every crevice, and while the
parts of the body nearest the fire are too warm, the currents of cold
air rushing to the fire to sustain the combustion keep all the other
parts cold and uncomfortable. This is a most direct way to produce
disease ; nothing can affect the system more unfavorably than currents
of cold air coming upon us when quite warm.

I have said that schoolhouses should have cellars under them. The
tioor of a building without a cellar is always cold, and often damp ;
this tends to keep the feet of scholars cold, while the head, in a region
of air much warmer, will be kept hot. This is both unnatural and
unhealthful. The feet should always be kept warm and the head cool.
No person can enjoy good health whose feet are habitually cold. In
schoolrooms heated by stoves, the feet are very liable to be cold, while
the upper stratum of air, kept hot and dry by a long reach of pipe,
produces a very unpleasant and unfavorable state of the head — head-
ache, vertigo, and syncope often take place in such a room.

The human body is so constituted, that it can bear almost any
degree of heat or cold, if the change be not too sudden, and all parts
of it be subjected to it alike. We find no particular inconvenience
from respiring air at the temperature of ninety degrees on the one
hand, or at zero on the other ; but inequalities of temperature, at the
same time, affect us very differently, and can never be suffered for a
long time without danger.

There is one consideration in the preparation of furnaces for warm-

APPENDIX. 5G7

ing rooms, that should not be overlooked. The object should be to
force into the room a large quantity of air, heated a tew degrees above
the temperature required, rather than a small quantity at a much
higher temperature. The air-chamber should be capacious, and the
passages free. The air should always be taken from out of doors, and
never from a cellar. The air of a cellar is often impure itself, and, if
pure, a cellar that is at all tight cannot furnish an adequate supply.
The whole air of a schoolroom should be changed at least every hour :
if oftener, it would be better. If a cellar is not much larger than the
room above it, this supply will soon be exhausted also. The air of the
cellar may be sufficient to supply the combustion of the fuel ; this is
all it should do — and for this purpose it is better than air from out
of doors, as the coldness of this checks the heat, and diminishes the
temperature of the fire, and its power of heating the furnace.

In giving my views on this subject, I have been so desultory as to
embrace nearly all that I can say on the other queries proposed to
me. At any rate, my letter is already of an unreasonable length,
and I must come to a close. Wishing you every success in the
arduous duties of your present station, I remain truly and afleutionutely
yours,

S. B. WOODWARD.

(C.)

Extract of a letter from BENJAMIN SILUMAN, Professor of Chemistry
in Yale College, in reply to an inquiry similar to the SECOND pro-
posed to Dr. Woodward. — See p. 441.

OF our atmosphere, only one-fifth part, by volume, is fitted to sus-
tain life. That portion is oxygen gas ; the remaining four-fifths being
azote or nitrogen gas, which, when breathed alone, kills by suffocation.
The withdrawing of the oxygen gas, by respiration or otherwise,
destroys the power of the atmosphere to sustain life, and this alone
furnishes a decisive reason why fresh air must be constantly supplied,
in order to support animal life. But this is not all. Every contact
of the air with the lungs generates in the human subject from six to
eight per cent of carbonic-acid gas — the same gas that often destroys
the lives of people who descend incautiously into wells, or who remain
in close rooms, with a charcoal fire not under a flue. This gas — the

568 APPENDIX.

carbonic acid — kills, it is true, by suffocation, as azote does, and as
•water acts in drowning. But this is not all. It acts positively, with a
peculiar and malignant energy, upon the vital powers, which, even
when life is not instantly destroyed, it prostrates or paralyzes, probably
through the nervous system.

I find by numerous trials made with my own lungs, that a confined
portion of air, — sufficient, however, to fill the lungs perfectly with a
full inspiration, — is so contaminated by a single contact, that a candle
will scarcely burn in it at all ; and, after three contacts, the candle will
then go out, and an animal would die in it as quickly as if immersed
in azote, or even in water.

It is evident, therefore, that a constant renewal of the air is indispen-
sable to safety as regards life, and no person can be compelled to
breathe, again and again, the same portions of air. without manifest
injury to health, and, it may be, danger to life.

It follows, then, that the air of apartments, and especially of those
occupied by many persons at once, ought to be thrown off by a free
ventilation ; and, when blown from the lungs, the same air ought not
to be again inhaled until it has been purified from the carbonic-acid
gas, and its due proportion of oxygen gas restored. This is effected
by the upper surface of the green leaves of trees and plants, when
acted upon by the direct solar rays. The carbonic-acid gas is then
decomposed, the carbon is absorbed, to sustain, in part, the life of the
plant, by affording it one element of its food, while the oxygen gas is
liberated, and restored to the atmosphere.

(D.)

Extract of a letter from DR. SAMUEL G. HOWE, Director of the

Institution for the Education of the Blind, in Pearl Street, Boston. —

See p. 472.

I TAKE it for granted, that the existence of blindness in the human
race, like every other physical infirmity, is the consequence of departure
from the natural laws of God ; that the proportion of blind persons in
every community is dependent upon the comparative degree of viola-
tion of the natural laws ; and that scientific observation can in almost
every case point to the kind and degree of violation.

Imperfect vision, partial av.d total blindness, are more common

APPENDIX. 569

among men than animals, and in civilized than in savage or barbarous
nations. It seems to be well ascertained, that blindness is more com-
mon as we approach the equator ; and that on the same parallel it is
more frequent in dry, sandy soils, than in humid ones.

It is supposed by some, that, in very high latitudes, blindness is more
frequent than in the temperate zones, on account of the strong reflec-
tion of the sun's rays by the snow ; but besides that we have no statisti-
cal returns to confirm this opinion, there are other causes which make
it doubtful ; the solar rays are much less powerful, the days are short,
and the tendency to local or general inflammations and congestions of
blood is much less in cold than in warm climates. Without, however,
dwelling upon general rules, I will come at once to causes operating in
our own climate.

Any one who has reflected that man was created with a perfect
physical organization — that his eye, the noblest organ of sense, was
fitted to reach to a distant star, or to examine the texture of the gossa-
mer's web, will be struck by the fact that every tenth man he meets is
either near-sighted, or far-sighted, or weak-eyed, or has some affection
or other of the vision. Now, the frequency of this departure from the
natural state of the vision is not a fortuitous circumstance ; if there
were but a single case, it must be referable to a particular cause ; and.
a fortiori, when it prevails in every section of the country, and in every
generation. Let us consider the greatest derangement of vision —
blindness ; there are very few cases where the eye is totally insensible
to light ; let us call every person blind whose organ of vision is so per-
manently deranged, that he cannot distinguish the nails upon his fin-
gers ; for many persons can see how many fingers are held up between
the eye and a strong light, who cannot see the nails. Of persons
blind to this degree, and of those totally blind, there are about one in
two thousand in the United States. This calculation is warranted by
statistical returns, which are liable to error, only in putting down too
few.

Of these six thousand five hundred persons, but very few lose their
vision by wounds, injuries, or acute inflammation : the great majority
are blind in consequence of violation of the natural laws, either by
themselves or their parents ; for I hold it to be indisputable, that
almost every case of congenital blindness is the penalty paid by the
sufferer for the fault of the parent or progenitor. The number of
cases of hereditary blindness, and of hereditary tendency to diseases
of the eye, which have come under my observation, have established
this beyond all doubt in my own mind.

570 APPENDIX.

I have known many cases, where a parent, with defective vision,
has had half his children blind ; and one case, where both parents
had defective vision, and all their children, seven in number, were
blind.

There are, then, causes at work in our own community, which
destroy the vision of one two-thousandth part of our population, and
impair the vision of a much greater part ; and although each indi-
vidual thinks himself secure, and attributes the blindness, or defective
vision of his neighbor, to some accidental or peculiar circumstance,
from which he himself enjoys immunity, yet the cause will certainly
have its effect; the violation of the natural laws must have their
penalty and their victim — as a ball, shot into a dense crowd, must hit
somebody. It is incumbent, then, upon each one, in his individual
capacity, to avoid the remote and predisposing, as well as the immedi-
ate causes of impaired vision ; and it is incumbent on those, who have
an influence upon the condition and regulations of society, to use that
influence for the same end.

It would lead to tedious details to consider the various modes in
which each individual or each parent should guard against the impair-
ment of vision ; but there are some obvious dangers to which children
are exposed in schools, which may be pointed out in a few words.

You will often see a class of children reading or writing with the
sun shining on their books, or writing in a dark afternoon with their
backs to the window, and their bodies obstructing its little light ; and
if you tell the master he is perilling the eyesight of his scholars, he
thinks he gives you a complete discomfiture by saying, that he has
kept school so for ten years, and never knew a boy to become blind ;
nevertheless, it is a cause of evil, and so surely as it exists it will be
ibllowed by its effect.

A boy reading by twilight, or by the blaze of a fire, or by moonlight
even, will tell you he does not feel the effects ; nevertheless, they follow
as closely as the shadow upon the substance ; and if, ten years after-
wards, you see the boy selecting glasses at an optician's, and ask him
what caused his imperfect vision, he will tell you that there was no
particular cause ; that is, the amount of evil done at any particular
time was not perceptible — as a toper, whose system is tottering to
ruin, cannot believe that any particular glass of brandy ever did him
any harm.

We should never read but in the erect posture ; we should never
read when the arterial system is in a state of high action ; we should

APPENDIX. 57 1

never read with too much or too little light; we .should never read
with a da/zling light of the sun. or fire, striking on our face.

Schoolrooms should be arranged in such a manner, that the light
of the sun can be admitted in the right direction — not dazzling the
eyes, but striking unon the books : there should be facilities for admit-
ting the light fullv in dark weather, and for excluding it partly when
the sun shines brilliantly.

I believe an attention to the physiology and laws of vision, by parents
and instructors, would be of great benefit to children, and diminish
the number of opticians : for as surely as a stone thrown up will come,
down, so surely does exposure to causes of evil bring the evil, at some
time, in some way, upon somebody. Truly yours,

SAMUICI, G. HOWH.
HORACK MANN, ESQ.,

Secretary of the Board of Education.

U»*\:llI.I. I'KX.H.,

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