In the School-Room Part 13

You are about to leave school. The occasion is one certainly that cannot fail to awaken reflection. I suppose that no young lady, who had been at a place of education as long as you have been here, ever left it without serious thought. The excitement of the examination, the busy whirl of preparation for leaving, even the exhilarating antic.i.p.ations of home-going, cannot entirely shut out from your mind the sober truth that the end of school-days is only the beginning of another career,--a career, the issue of which you can neither foresee, nor can you be indifferent to it. Let us talk a little about this.

The day on which a young man ends his College course is called, by an apparent misnomer, "Commencement" day; that is, the day of commencing, or beginning. I understand very well that the name has a definite historical origin,--that in the old English Colleges, from which our American Colleges were modelled, the young man, on this day, begins his career as a Bachelor of Arts. His academical rank "commences" and dates from this point. But there would be a beautiful appropriateness in the term, even if it had no such special historical origin. The exit from the curriculum of the College or School, is, in truth, only the entrance into a more extended course. When your studies are nominally ended, they have really only begun. The longer you live, the more will you understand that the period of school-going is not the only, or even the main time of learning. The more thoroughly you have been taught here, the more certainly will you be a learner hereafter. I want no better test of the character of a school than the extent to which the idea prevails among its pupils and alumni, that it is a place for "finishing"

one's studies. The idea is on a par with that of the young Miss who reported that she had read through Latin!

There is, it is true, in this School, a definite curriculum of studies, and that curriculum you have honorably completed. You have just been received by public acknowledgment into the community of educated women.

But you will be false to the honorable sisterhood, false, I am sure, to all the teachings you have received here, if you entertain for a moment the thought that no further intellectual acquisitions are before you.

The branches which you have learned thus far are chiefly valuable to you for the power they have given you to make still further improvement. The studies pursued at school, and during the period of youth, are mainly intended for promoting intellectual growth, for giving us power, for perfecting our mental machinery. Our real acquisitions come afterward. I speak, of course, of those who occupy the higher stations in society. To one who has to earn his bread by mere bodily toil, the few studies for which he has leisure in youth, must, of course, be such as are directly serviceable in his calling. But to those who claim to belong to the educated portion of the community, school studies are of right directed more to the development of the mental and moral powers, than to positive acquisition. Your instructors return you to your friends and your home with a mind enlarged, with a taste refined, with a judgment corrected, ready to take your place and act well your part, as an educated woman.

But remember, she is not an educated woman, who knows no more this year than she did last. True education is growth, and it never stands still.

The tree which has ceased to grow, has begun to decay.

This, then, is the one thought that I would have you take away with you from school. Give no place to the idea that henceforth books and study and elegant culture are to be laid aside. It would be a dishonor to your School, and a mistake of the first magnitude for yourself.

Perhaps you will appreciate this point more adequately, if you will turn your thoughts inward for a moment, and reflect upon the change which has been quietly going on in your own self and during your residence here. One whose occupation calls him almost daily to communicate his ideas to young persons, either by formal address, or by more familiar ways, feels to a greater degree, perhaps, than any other person can, the change to which I refer. I mean that increased quickness of intellectual apprehension produced by a judicious and symmetrical course of study.

Let me give you an instance. It fell to my lot, not long since, to address a School containing three hundred young ladies, all boarders, all over seventeen years of age. They were the best audience I ever had.

Among them was not one, who did not appear to be intelligent and thoughtful, and with a mind more or less disciplined. But there were perceptible differences among them, and it is to this point that I would direct your attention. They were divided into four distinct cla.s.ses, having attended the School severally one, two, three, and four years, and they were arranged before me in the order of their seniority as cla.s.ses. The discourse was long and didactic, and portions of it were not easy to follow, containing a discussion of a rather abstruse point in mental philosophy. Now it seemed to me, on concluding the address, that I could have gone through that a.s.sembly, and marked with tolerable accuracy, cla.s.s by cla.s.s, just where each cla.s.s ended and another cla.s.s began, simply by what I had read in the faces of my young auditors. It was written as plainly upon those upturned faces, as was the discourse itself upon the ma.n.u.script before me. Those who had been four years in the School, undoubtedly learned manifold more from the exercise than the junior cla.s.ses did. I could see it in the delivery of every paragraph. Such is the uniform result of a proper course of study. It enables the student to grasp new truths with increased ease and readiness. We, who are teachers, feel this the moment we undertake to communicate our thoughts to an audience. The consequence is, we involuntarily measure what has been done educationally for a cla.s.s of young persons, by the development which has been given to their powers,--by the manifest facility which they have gained for making further gains. That young woman is best educated who is best prepared to learn.

Let me, then, renew the appeal to your own consciousness. Think for a moment upon the change which has been wrought in your own self during your career here. Compare your present self with that other self that you may remember some three or four years back. How much more you can accomplish now than you could then! How much more clearly you can follow out a train of reasoning! How much more easily you can compa.s.s an argument! How much more you can enjoy what is beautiful! How much more quickly and accurately you can remember! How much more you can command your attention! Whence this change, and what does it purport? It means that you are educated. You have now a degree of mental power that you had not then. Your own consciousness tells you that you are now just in the condition to enter upon your harvest. The field is before you. You are girded for the work. And will you now indolently lay aside the sickle, and let the golden grain fall to the ground ungathered? Could there be a more egregious mistake? Last week, I saw from my window two parent birds tempting their young fledglings from the nest. Day by day, week by week, I had seen the child-birds growing and gaining strength.

Their muscles were now well developed, their bodies were clothed with feathers, they had learned to use their wings,--they could fly. Would it not have been pa.s.sing strange, had they continued as they were, contented to cower and to crawl, when they had acquired the power to soar? And will _you_ be content to remain forever only a fledgling, satisfied with having acquired the power of rising, but never actually using the wings which these years of honorable industry have given you?

Some of your s.e.x are willing to admit the force of this argument when applied to men. A man, after graduating, is expected of course to continue his studies. His whole profession is one continued study. But somehow, it is thought, this truth does not hold good for women. Let me hope that _you_ at least will not harbor such a notion. Whatever may be said of "women's rights," one right certainly, and one duty, is to keep yourself abreast of the other s.e.x in continued mental growth and culture, and in general intelligence. If you would awaken true respect in my s.e.x, and I hold it a not unworthy ambition, you must in this matter do as we do, at least as those of us do who are worth your consideration at all. You must perseveringly, every year, add to your intellectual acquisitions. You must continue steadily to grow in knowledge and mental power. Do not cease your studies, because you have ceased going to school. Manage to have some elegant accomplishment or acquisition always in hand. A woman who is wise in this matter, never pa.s.ses her prime. I speak not, of course, of the decrepitude of old age and of the decay of the faculties. But so long as the faculties remain unimpaired, a woman may become, and should aim to become, increasingly attractive, as she advances in years. Poets sing of sweet sixteen. Let me a.s.sure you, a woman may be charming at sixty. Mrs. Madison even at seventy was the most attractive woman in Washington.

In society, how soon one feels the difference between a person who reads, and one who does not read. Two ladies may be of the same age.

They may dress alike. They may have the same advantages of person. They may move in the same social circle. Yet you will not have been ten minutes in their society, though the conversation has been on only the most common topics of the day, before you will feel that the one woman, though at thirty or forty, is still only a superannuated school-girl, with even less resources than when she left the seminary, while the other is a delightful companion for persons of any age, with ready knowledge for whatever turn the conversation may take, and so abounding in resources as not even to be open to the temptation of making a display of them. The one can talk only so long as the conversation turns on dress, gossip, or the discussion of private character. In listening to the talk of such a woman, you hardly hear a sentence which is not based upon personalities. Her mind has not been fed and nurtured from day to day with beautiful and n.o.ble thoughts, with history and science and general knowledge. She may be amiable. She may have personal beauty. But you find her empty and vapid, and you weary of her, in spite of the very best intentions of being interested. How different the woman who, in spite of social exactions, and even of acc.u.mulating domestic duties, and of the time-consuming tax of dress, still keeps her mind fresh and growing, by means of reading and culture,--who is ever adding to her stores of knowledge some new science, to her varied skill some new attainment,--who has ever in hand some new book. It is true, indeed, that some ladies are blessed with more leisure for this purpose than others. But I fear it is not a question of more and less. It is too much a question of some and _none_. I hold that every woman is ent.i.tled to have, and by proper determination she may have, _some_ time for personal improvement. Remember, we have duties to ourselves, as well as to others, and we have no duty to ourselves more sacred than this,--to rescue from our time some portion for the purpose of making ourselves more worthy of regard.

To undertake to suggest what particular studies you should pursue, in this larger school to which you are now admitted, would lead me into a train of remark entirely too extended. One single practical suggestion may perhaps be pardoned. Do not willingly relinquish the acquisitions already made. They are to you the true foundations for future improvement. You have fairly entered upon several important fields in the domain of science. You are familiar with the elements of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, Mental Philosophy, Rhetoric, and with the foundations of Mathematical Science. My advice is that in coming years you give to each of these branches, and of whatever else you have studied here, a stated systematic review. You have some skill in drawing and painting. Let not so graceful an accomplishment die out from your fingers. You excel in music. I need not say, if you would retain this excellence, you must give time to practice and study. So, whatever talent or attainment you now have, let it be your fixed purpose not to let it pa.s.s from your possession. Keep what you have, whatever else you may fail to do. To this end, as I said before, give to each of your school studies an occasional well-considered review. You will then always have in your mind certain fixed points, to which the miscellaneous knowledge picked up in your general reading will adhere, and around which it will acc.u.mulate in organized form. New studies, too, will naturally affiliate with the old, and will be easy and pleasant just in proportion as you keep the knowledge that you now have, fresh and bright.

Besides this general advice, there is one accomplishment in particular, which I would earnestly recommend to you, as I am in the habit of doing to all of your s.e.x. Cultivate a.s.siduously the ability to read well. I stop to particularize this, because it is a thing so very much neglected, and because it is so very elegant, charming, and lady-like an accomplishment. Where one person is really interested by music, twenty are pleased with good reading. Where one person is capable of becoming a skilful musician, twenty may become good readers. Where there is one occasion suitable for the exercise of musical talent, there are twenty for that of reading. The culture of the voice necessary for reading well, gives a delightful charm to the same voice in conversation. Good reading is the natural exponent and vehicle of all good things. It is the most effective of all commentaries upon the works of genius. It seems to bring dead authors to life again, and makes us sit down familiarly with the great and good of all ages.

Did you ever notice what life and power the Holy Scriptures have, when well read? Have you ever heard of the wonderful effects produced by Elizabeth Fry among the hardened criminals of Newgate, by simply reading to them the parable of the Prodigal Son? Princes and peers of the realm, it is said, counted it a privilege to stand in those dismal corridors, among felons and murderers, merely to share with them the privilege of witnessing the marvellous pathos which genius, taste, and culture could infuse into that simple story.

What a fascination there is in really good reading! What a power it gives one! In the hospital, in the chamber of the invalid, in the nursery, in the domestic and the social circle, among chosen friends and companions, how it enables you to minister to the amus.e.m.e.nt, the comfort, the pleasure of dear ones, as no other art or accomplishment can. No instrument of man's devising can reach the heart, as does that most wonderful instrument, the human voice. It is G.o.d's special gift and endowment to his chosen creatures. Fold it not away in a napkin. If you would double the value of all your other acquisitions; if you would add immeasurably to your own enjoyment, and to your power of promoting the enjoyment of others, cultivate with incessant care this Divine gift. No music below the skies is equal to that of pure, silvery speech from the lips of a man or woman of high culture.

4. _To a Pupil on Entering a Normal School._

You have entered upon a new and untried path. As one having been often over this way, and well acquainted with the features of the country before you, its lights and shadows, its roses and its thorns, its safe walks and its hidden pitfalls, I desire to talk with you a while before you enter upon the untried scene.

1. First of all let me say to you, we give you a most hearty welcome. We are glad to see you here, and we tender to you in advance a warm and ready sympathy in the many little worries, annoyances, and discouragements that surely await you. For myself I may truly say, that, outside of my own home, I have no greater happiness than to be among my pupils, and few things could pain me more than to believe that any one who had been for any considerable time my pupil would not almost unconsciously claim me as a friend; and it is an unceasing well-spring of joy for me to know that among your companions are many who, in time of trouble or difficulty or anxiety of any kind, would come to the Princ.i.p.al of the School, as sure of sympathy as if going to their own mother.

This freedom of intercourse between teachers and their pupils, this mutual exchange of confidence on one side and of sympathy on the other, is a source of good and a source of pleasure, which neither you nor we, my young friend, can afford to forego; and if in the expression of this thought I have indulged in a rather unseemly use of the first person singular, it is not because I would claim for myself anything peculiar in this matter, but because, from my years and my position, I can perhaps, better than my a.s.sociates, afford to speak out thus the inward promptings of the heart. We _all_ give you the right hand of fellowship, and trust it will not be many weeks, or days even, before you shall feel that you have here a home as well as a school, friends as well as teachers.

2. A very common feeling at the beginning of a course of study, is a feeling of discouragement. Nearly all the studies are new, and you enter upon each with fresh eagerness. Now, it is in the nature of every study while it is new, to seem boundless. Under the guiding hand of a skilful teacher, its limits and capabilities are stretched out in one direction and another, interminable vistas spread out in the distance, and portentous difficulties rise up before the imagination, until the mind is bewildered.

There is not one, of the formidable lists of studies before you, that might not of itself, so great are its capabilities, occupy your whole time. When you find yourself called to grapple at once with four or five such studies, to measure yourself with compet.i.tors, many of whom have had opportunities of preparation greatly superior to your own, and in the presence of teachers to whom the whole subject is as familiar and as plain as the alphabet, and when, in addition, the methods of recitation are for the most part new and strange, you are very apt to become discouraged, to feel that you shall never learn to recite in the manner required, that you can never master the difficulties before you. This feeling arises most frequently in the best cla.s.s of minds, those most conscientious in regard to duty and most capable of comprehending the full length and breadth and depth of a subject. The shallow and the trifling are never troubled with the kind of difficulties now under consideration.

I address myself to you, my young friend, because I know you have come here with an earnest purpose, with a mind acute enough to see something of the vast work before you, and I say to you, as one who has had large experience in conducting other pilgrims over the same track, never lose heart. Difficulties which now seem insurmountable, will gradually disappear; subjects which now seem impenetrable, will soon lighten up.

Did you never enter a room in the dark? At first the apartment is a universal blank. After a while, as your eyes become adjusted to the place, one article after another of the furniture becomes outlined to the vision, until at length, especially if approaching day lends some additional rays of light, the whole scene stands out perfectly defined.

So it is in entering upon a new study. Many a pa.s.sage in it will seem to you at first a worse than Serbonian bog--a cave of impenetrable and undistinguishable darkness. But draw not back. Look steadily on. Light will come in time. Your power of seeing will, with every new trial, receive adjustment and growth, and you will in the end see with full and open vision where now you have only dim glimpses and guesses. Do not be discouraged, therefore, if at first you fail, or seem to yourself to fail, in almost every recitation you undertake. What seems impossible to-day, will be only next to impossible to-morrow, and only very difficult the day after. Your failures are often only the proofs that you have a glimpse at least of something below the surface of things. A discouraged pupil is never a source of anxiety to me. It is only the self-confident and over-wearing that are hopeless.

3. I have spoken of recitations. Let me urge you to form some definite idea of what a recitation is, and what kind of a recitation you, as a pupil of a Normal School, should aim to make. And first of all, on this point, let me say, the mere answering of questions, and especially, the mere response of yes and no to questions, is not reciting,--a.s.suredly not such reciting as is to fit you for the office of a teacher. And, in the next place, let me say, that repeating verbatim the words of the book, is not the method of recitation at which you should aim. I do not agree with those who would dissuade you entirely from cultivating the faculty and enriching the stores of memory. Not only memory, in its general exercise, but a purely verbal memory, is important. In your lessons, are many things, rules, definitions, and so forth, that should be learned with the most literal exactness, and should be so fixed in the memory that they will come at your bidding, in any place, at any moment. There are, too, in some of your books, pa.s.sages from n.o.ble authors, which furnish food and nourishment to the soul, and which the mind craves in the very form and lineaments of their birth--pa.s.sages which are like nuggets of virgin gold, or coins from the mint of some great sovereign in the realms of thought. They form a part of your wealth, and you want them, neither clipped, nor defaced, nor alloyed, but with every word and point exactly as it came from the hand of the master. These precious gems of thought, the garnered wealth of the ages, will not be neglected by any one who is wise. Treasure up in your intellectual storehouse as many of them as you can possibly compa.s.s, only with this proviso, be careful to select for this purpose the very best out of the great abundance that is before you, and make thorough work in what you do attempt to commit to memory. The act of memorizing will at once strengthen the faculty of memory itself, and will enrich you otherwise. By all means, therefore, learn by heart the leading definitions and rules of your text-books, and choice pa.s.sages from all famous authors. But do not attempt in this way to commit to memory, or to recite verbatim, the pages of your history, geography, rhetoric, and so forth. Such a practice would be a most unwise waste of your time, and would cause a weakening, rather than a strengthening, of your faculties.

Let me tell you exactly what I mean by reciting. Your teacher goes to the board and, chalk in hand, explains to the cla.s.s some point which they seem not to have apprehended. That is my idea of reciting. First get thorough possession of the thoughts or facts of the lesson, and then, imagining the cla.s.s and the teacher to be ignorant of the subject, explain it to them, just as you will expect to do when the time comes that you will have a cla.s.s of your own to instruct. It will aid you in preparing thus to recite a lesson, if in your rooms you will go over it aloud to each other, you and your room-mate, taking alternate portions.

Such a method of preparation will doubtless require some time. But one lesson so prepared will be worth more to you than a whole week of study conducted in the ordinary manner. Remember, that in a Normal School your object is, not merely to get knowledge, but to learn how to communicate what you have learned. First then go over a topic till you are sure you understand it. Then go over it again and again until you can recite readily and perfectly every part of it, in its order. Then practise yourself in telling it in your own words, aloud, if possible, to somebody else, until you can make the narration or explanation continuously, from beginning to end, and without the possibility of being thrown out or confused by any amount of interruptions. Then at length are you prepared to recite.

Is this standard of recitation too high? Is it not what every one of your teachers does daily, and what you yourself will have to do the very first time you take your position as a teacher of others?

4. This leads me by a natural transition to the subject of _study_. You need to learn how to study, as much as you need to learn how to recite.

Endeavor then to get some definite idea in your mind of what it is really to study. Mere reading is not study. Muttering the words over in a low, gurgling tone, or letting them glide in a soft, half-audible ripple upon your lips, is not study. Going over the lesson in a listless, dreamy way, one eye on the book and one eye ready for whatever is going on in other parts of the room, is not study. Study is work.

Study is agony. The whole soul must be roused, its every energy put forth, with a fixed, rapt attention, like that of a man struggling with a giant. Study, worthy of the name, forgets for the time every thing else, excludes every thing else, is incapable of being diverted by any thing else, the whole internal and external man being bent upon making just one thing its own. Such study of course soon exhausts the energies.

It cannot be long protracted, nor need it be protracted. Take rest in the season of rest; but, when you study, study with all your might.

Throw your whole soul into it. One hour of such study accomplishes more than whole days of listless poring over books. And, remember, you cannot study in this manner by merely willing to do it. It is an art, requiring training and practice, and thorough mental discipline. You might as well, on seeing the Writing-Master executing those marvels of penmanship, or the Drawing-Teacher with deft fingers limning with ease forms of grace and beauty, resolve to go forthwith to the board and do the same thing, as expect, by a mere _sic volo_, to become a student.

You are here to learn how to study, and the art will come to you only by slow progress, and after many trials.

Give up the illusion that absolute seclusion and silence are necessary to study. I do not say that they are not at times desirable. But they do not of themselves generate earnest thought. The vacant mind, that has not yet learned to think, is when thus left to solitude and stillness, quite as likely to go a wool-gathering, or to fall asleep, as to wrestle with some hard uninviting train of thought. The appliances and the invitations to mental application, if we have really learned to study, must be mainly in ourselves, not in our surroundings. Besides, the greater part of the actual thinking and study, that has to be done by those in professional life, that will have to be done by you, when you enter upon the practice of your profession as a teacher, must be done in circ.u.mstances not of your own choosing, just as time and opportunity may offer, by s.n.a.t.c.hes, and at odd intervals, and often in the midst of distracting sights and sounds. I venture to say that three fourths of the graduates of this school, who are now teaching, have no opportunity for daily study and preparation for the duties of the school-room, except that afforded by a seat in the evening in the common sitting-room of the family, surrounded by children that are not always models of behavior, and within sight and hearing of all the petty details of household life. It is not therefore in itself undesirable that a part at least of your study at school should be performed in a common room, where there are some temptations to be resisted, some distractions to be ignored. Acquiring the ability to study without distraction in the presence of others and in the midst even of confusion and noise, is as important to you as is the learning how to think aloud, in the presence of a cla.s.s, which I have defined to be the true nature of a recitation.

The ability to study and the ability to recite are intimately correlated, and the symptoms of both are unmistakable to the practised eye and ear. I know just as well, by a glance of the eye on entering a study-room, what pupils are making intellectual growth, as I do on entering the cla.s.s-room and listening to the recitations. One might as well feign to be in a fever, as to feign study. Nothing but the thing itself can a.s.sume its appearance.

5. I approach my next subject of remark with some hesitation. Yet on no point, in the whole theory of mental action, have I a more fixed and a.s.sured conviction. Perhaps I may explain my meaning better, if I introduce it with one or two comparisons.

Action of every kind, mental or material, is to be aided or accelerated, if at all, by forces of the same kind with the primary force. If a certain amount of weight avoirdupois will not make the scale kick the beam, we may produce the effect by laying on the requisite number of additional pounds,--by adding force of the same kind with the original.

If the flame of one candle does not produce the illumination required for a particular effort, the addition of a second or a third will. If we wish to increase the speed of a locomotive, we do not whistle to it, or whip it, or say "get up;" we add steam. If on the other hand we wish our horse to travel faster, we use a motive addressed to his nature. We appeal to his generosity, his pride, or his fear. So mental action is influenced and induced by forces of the same nature with itself. One mind influences powerfully another mind, working upon us often, too, by mysterious influences that elude a.n.a.lysis. The influence of mind upon mind, other things being equal, is in proportion to the degree of perfection in which these three conditions exist, to wit, the fulness of accord and sympathy between the minds that are brought into contact, the closeness of the contact, and the greatness and power of the influencing and controlling mind. These three points hardly need explanation or argument. Nothing is more obvious than that a mind fully in sympathy with another, does by that very circ.u.mstance exercise an increased mental power on that other. In like manner we all feel daily how our minds are lifted up, enlarged, enlightened, strengthened, by intercourse with one of powerful intellect. And how often have we felt, when ourselves wishing to influence any one, particularly when wishing to influence one much younger and weaker than ourselves, that we might accomplish our ends the better, if we could only know certainly and exactly what he was thinking, if we could as it were actually get into the chamber of his soul. This indeed we can never do. We think sometimes that we come very near to each other. But after all we never touch.

Between my mind and yours, between yours and that of the most intimate friend you have in the world, there is a barrier, high as heaven, deep as h.e.l.l, impenetrable as adamant. Thus far can we come and no farther.

We can never enter into the soul of any human being. No human being can ever enter into ours. Yet, my dear pupil, did it never occur to you, that there is One Mind, and that a mind of infinitely great and transcendent power, to which there is no such barrier, and that this transcendent, all-knowing, all-powerful mind, is continually in direct contact with the very essence of your mind? Can I influence your thinking faculties, and cannot the infinite G.o.d, who made those faculties? Can He who gave our bodies all their power of growth and strength, not give growth and strength to our minds? I do not profess to understand how the divine mind acts upon the human mind. I cannot always understand even how one human mind acts upon another. But of the fact I make no more question, than I do of the powers of flame, of steam, or of gravitation. And, as one set here to guide you in your mental progress, in all sober earnestness, I exhort you devoutly to invoke the aid of the Holy Ghost in the promotion of your studies--not merely to help you to use your acquisitions rightly, for his honor and the good of your kind, but to help you in making those acquisitions. If you would rise superior to discouragement, if you would acquire that mental discipline which is to enable you to study, and to recite and to teach in the very best and highest manner, pray. Call mightily upon G.o.d the Holy Ghost, who is after all the great educator and teacher of the human race. Carry your feeble lamp to the great fountain of light and radiance. Put your heart into full accord and sympathy with that of your dear elder Brother.

Wrestle mightily with G.o.d in secret, as one that feels the burden of a great want. Thus, my dear pupil, will you best fit yourself for the duties of a student and of a teacher. For, believe me, there is sound philosophy as well as religion, in the utterance of the wise man, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." Surely that man is a fool, who in cultivating mind, whether his own or that of another, neglects to invoke the aid of the Infinite Mind.

XXIX.

AN ARGUMENT FOR COMMON SCHOOLS.

The argument for popular education is familiar and trite, and yet it needs to be occasionally re-stated and enforced. There is no community in which there is not a considerable number of persons grossly and dangerously ignorant, and there are many communities in which the majority of the people are in this condition. There is no community in which the importance of general education is over-estimated; there are unfortunately many communities in which education is held to be the least important of public interests. A brief discussion of the subject, therefore, can never be entirely out of place.

Before proceeding to the direct argument, let me notice some of the most common objections.

It is a not uncommon opinion, that the business of education should be left, like other kinds of business, to the laws of trade. It is said if a carpenter is wanted in any community, or a blacksmith, or a tailor, or a lawyer, or a doctor, carpenters, blacksmiths, tailors, lawyers, and doctors will make their appearance. If a store is wanted, a store will spring up. Why not a school-house? Those who use this argument forget the essential difference between the two cla.s.ses of wants to be supplied. All men equally feel the distress, if naked, or hungry, or sick, or suffering from any material want. The poor man, no less than the rich, feels the pinchings of hunger, and will exert himself to remedy the evil. The sick man, even more than the well, appreciates the value of medicine and the necessity of a physician. Not so in the matter of knowledge. A man must himself be educated, to understand the value of education. There are exceptions, of course. Yet it is substantially true, that the want of education is not one of those felt and pinching necessities that compel men's attention, and that consequently may be left to shift for themselves. A man who has himself enjoyed the blessing of a good education, expects to provide schools for his children, as much as he expects to provide for them food and clothing. The wants of their minds are to him pressing realities, as much as are the wants of their bodies. Not so with the ignorant and debased neighbors, who live within stone's throw of his dwelling. They, from their own experience, know nothing better, and are quite content, both for themselves and their children, to live on in the debased condition in which we see them. If these wretched creatures are ever moved to seek a higher style of living and being, the movement must originate outside of themselves.

It is a case in which the man of higher advantages must think and act for those below him. It is a case in which people have a pressing need without knowing it, and in which consequently the laws of supply and demand do not meet the emergency.

Another common opinion on this subject is that private enterprise is adequate to meet the want. Private enterprise in education is not indeed to be discarded. Where the community as a whole, in its organized capacity, will do nothing, let individuals do what they can. In such cases, let those who appreciate the advantages of education, concert measures for the establishment of schools and the employment of teachers, and for inducing parents who are indifferent to send their children. By these private efforts, the community may be gradually awakened to the importance of the subject, and so be induced to take it up on their own account. But private benevolence is not sufficient for so great a work. Private benevolence besides is apt to be fitful. It is at best subject to interruption by death and by reverses of fortune, while the cause is one which especially demands steadiness and continuity. The means for educating a community or a city should no more be subject to interruption, than the means of lighting it, or of supplying it with water.

The argument for depending upon private enterprise for devising and providing the means for popular education, would apply equally well to matters of police, and to the protection of property. The strong-armed and the sagacious can take care of themselves. The stout-hearted and the good, by due concert and combination, could keep criminals in some check, even in a country where there were no courts of justice, or prisons, or detective police. But this is not the ordinary or the best mode of accomplishing the end, nor could it in any case be thoroughly efficient. The restraint and punishment of crime belong to society as a whole, in its sovereign capacity. To the same society belongs the duty of seeing that its members do not fall into degrading ignorance and vice. G.o.d, in ordaining human society, had something higher in view than merely providing for the punishment of crime. Our Heavenly Father would have his children raised to the full enjoyment of their privileges as social and rational beings, and he seems to have established society for this very end, among others, that there may be an agency and a machinery adequate and fitted to drag even the unwilling out of the mire into which they have fallen. Without such an interposition on the part of society as a whole, the work will not be done. The ma.s.s of the people will remain in ignorance in every community, in which the community as such does not provide the means of education and general enlightenment.

It is often urged against common schools, that they tend to impair parental obligation. Let us look this objection fairly in the face. The argument is stated as follows. If the community, in its organic capacity as a civil government, provides systematically for the instruction of the young, the system, just so far as it is successful and complete, does away with the necessity for any other provision. The parent, finding this work done to his hands, feels no necessity of looking after it himself, and so gradually loses all sense of obligation on the subject. Such a result, it is contended, is in contravention of the plainest dictates of nature and the most positive teachings of religion, both nature and religion requiring it as a primary duty of every parent to give his child a suitable education.

In meeting this objection, the friends of common schools agree with the objector to the fullest extent in a.s.serting the imperative, universal, irrepealable duty of the parent to educate his own child. The duty is not the less binding on the parent, because a like duty, covering the same point, rests also on the community. The interests involved are so momentous, that G.o.d in his wise ordination has given them a double security. It is a case in which two distinct parties are both separately required to see one and the same thing done. It is like taking two indorsers to a note. The obligation of one indorser is not impaired, because another man equally with himself is bound for payment If a child grows up in ignorance and vice, while G.o.d will undoubtedly hold the parent responsible, he will also not hold the community guiltless. Both parties will be guilty before him, both parties will be punished. A man is bound to maintain a certain amount of cleanliness about his habitation. If he fails to do so, and if in consequence of this failure the atmosphere around him becomes tainted and malarious, he and his will suffer. Disease and death will visit his abode. But the consequences will not end here. The infection will extend. The whole community will be affected by it. The whole community, equally with the individual, are bound to see that the cause of the infection is removed. The infection will not spare the community because the individual has generated it, nor will it spare the individual because the community has failed to remove it. Each party has a duty and a peril of its own in regard to the same matter.

The fact is, individuals and the community are so bound together, that on many points their obligations lie in coincident lines. The matter of education is one of these points. G.o.d has ordained the parental relation, and has implanted the parental affections, for this very reason, among others, that the faculties of the helpless young immortal may have due training and development,--that this development may not be left to chance, like that of a worthless weed, but may have the protection and guardianship which are the necessary birthright of every rational creature brought into being by the voluntary act of another.