Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

or vicinity where it is located. And thus the whole school population are more or less directly benefited. It is time, however, to bring the discussion of this branch of the subject to a close, as I do by observing that there are three principal methods or ways by which the State can directly promote the cause of education :

First, By the endowment and management of schools by the State itself;

Secondly, By grants to schools established by individuals or private corporations; and,

Thirdly, By authorizing and requiring the people to support schools by general and equal taxation.

In some of the States of this Union the first method has been adopted so far as to establish what are called State Universities. And why should not every State, not now furnished with such a university or its equivalent, maintain within its borders an institution so richly endowed that the youth of the State might there pursue, with the aid of every appliance and improvement of modern art, science, research, and letters, every useful branch of human knowledge? How has it come to pass that countless millions have been freely expended within recent years, and that, too, in part by the direct aid of the State and Federal Governments, to develop the material wealth of the State and nation, while many, if not most of our colleges and higher seminaries of learning, have been left to struggle on in comparative poverty? This is due, in part, I have no doubt, to the failure of those intrusted with the management of public affairs to discern the real connection between the enduring prosperity and true glory of a people and superior knowledge; but more largely still to a misapprehension of the true grounds on which these public grants to institutions of learning are to be claimed and justified.

It is too late to deny that superior education is necessary to the State, and it is precisely on this ground. of State necessity that the grants to, and public support of, schools should be made and given, and not on the ground that they are mere benefactions to the grantors.

But whatever may be said or done in relation to State aid to schools of the highest grade, the American people can never safely surrender the principle or practice, that schools must be maintained at the public expense for the education of all youth who will avail themselves of these advantages, up to that degree of knowledge and virtue which will enable them to discharge with intelligence and fidelity their duties as citizens of a free and self-governing republic.

"By the word education," says Horace Mann, "I mean much more than the 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. I mean also to include such a cultivation of the intellect as shall enable it to discern those permanent and mighty laws which pervade all parts of the created universe, whether material or spiritual; and finally, by the term education, I mean such a culture 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, propensities, and sentiments to the will of heaven."

And this is the education for which the State should make adequate provision; and there is no other agency by which the great work can be accomplished. The magnificent gifts of Mr. Peabody for promoting popular

education in the South, when actually applied to that vast region of ignorance and vice, seems only like the prelusive drops of a promised shower falling upon the arid waste of a mighty desert. The education of a whole people can only be adequately provided for by an annual or periodical taxation of the entire wealth of the country. It never has been done in any other way, and unless all the conditions of social and civil life are changed, it never will be. John Adams, as long ago as 1785, in a letter to one of his foreign correspondents, said, writing upon the subject of education: "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, aud must be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the expense of the people themselves. They must be taught to reverence themselves, instead of adoring their servants, their generals, admirals, bishops, and statesmen." These noble sentiments are fit to be inscribed in golden letters over the portals of every school-house in the land, as a standing rebuke and protest against the destructive teachings which would place our schools under the control of sects, or found them upon the infinitely belittling and degrading distinction growing out of the possession of a little more or less of wealth by their immediate patrons.

Our fathers valued institutions of learning, and said they ought to be favorites with every free people, be- . cause they throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty, and therefore they did not fail to employ the power, influence, and property of the State to found and support these institutions.

Let us build on their foundations, and not attempt to lay others less broad and less permanent.

In closing, I cannot forbear to make a single additional remark upon the glaring inconsistency, not to say folly, of that policy which would expend millions from the public treasury upon military and naval schools, wherein, as has been shown, a limited number only of young men may be instructed in the arts of war, and yet deny to other technical schools, wherein the arts of peaceful industry are taught, all State aid or governmental support. Multiply the latter, fill the land with their light and influence, and you will dispense to a great extent with the necessity of the former. It is knowledge, large and liberal, and not the mere rudiments of it, that is essential to a free government, and to purity and efficiency in its peaceful administration; and we should never forget that the great end and object of secular education is, not to make grammarians and literary critics, but to prepare the young for the sturdy and manly duties of citizenship, and to make them the intelligent and inflexible defenders of rational liberty.

LECTURE V.

THE PLACE OF HISTORY IN EDUCATION, AND HOW TO TEACH IT.

BY E. R. RUGGLES, A. M.,
HANOVER, N. H.

From the time of Tacitus down to the last quarter of -the 18th century, we find no great European historian. In the Byzantine Empire, and later, in England and France especially, there were many writers on historic subjects; but they confined themselves mainly to the Roman world, or were mere chroniclers, recording chiefly matters of local and temporary character. During the intellectual ferment of the 15th and 16th centuries, that brilliant period in which printing, 'gunpowder, and the mariner's compass became known to the Western world, in the general revival of letters, history received a new impulse and direction. Another century passed before it began to be written in a philosophic spirit, and to be rated at its true worth. The founder of the new school of historic writing was the Neapolitan, Vico, who, in 1725, published his great work on the Science of History. Since this time there have appeared, both in the Old World and the New, a long list of historians, many of whom are likely to remain as permanent authorities on the subjects they have treated.

« AnteriorContinuar »