Part 6

Let me not be deemed unfilial or irreverent, if I expose, somewhat freely, the deficiencies of our venerable commonwealth in this one particular. It is done in a dutiful spirit, with a view purely to their amendment: and may not children, in such a spirit and with such a view, commune frankly with one another?

A great and obvious difference between our primary school system, and the _common_-school systems of the northern states, is, that _they_ take in ALL children: while we aim to instruct only the children of the _poor; literary paupers_. We thus at once create two causes of failure: first, _the slight value which men set upon what costs them nothing_, as was evinced in the case of Connecticut; second, _the mortification to pride_ (an honest though mistaken pride,) in being singled out as an object of charity.[6] As if these fatal errors had not sufficiently ensured the impotence of the scheme, the schools themselves are the least efficient that could be devised. Instead of teachers retained expressly for the purpose,--selected, after strict examination into their capacities, and vigilantly superintended afterwards, by competent judges--the poor children are _entered_ by the neighboring commissioner (often himself entirely unqualified either to teach or to direct teaching,) in the private school which chance, or the teacher's unfitness for any other employment, combined always with cheapness of price, may have already established nearest at hand. There, the little _protegé_ of the commonwealth is thrown amongst pupils, whose parents pay for them and give some heed to their progress; and having no friend to see that he is properly instructed--mortified by the humiliating name of _poor scholar_--neglected by the teacher--and not rigorously urged to school by any one--he learns nothing, slackens his attendance, and soon quits the temple of science in rooted disgust.

[Footnote 6: "What you say here, is verified" (said a venerable friend to me, on reading these sheets as they were preparing for the press--a friend who at the age of 72, has taken upon him to teach 12 or 14 boys; more than half of them without compensation--) "what you say here, is verified in my school. Those who do not pay, attend hardly half their time; and one, who is anxious to learn, and would learn if he came regularly, is kept by his father to work at home, and has not _been to school_ now for more than a fortnight. And it was just so," continued he, "when I managed the W. trust fund for a charity school, 20 odd years ago. The parents could not be induced to send their children. Sometimes they were wanted at home: sometimes they were too ragged to go abroad: sometimes they had no victuals to carry to school. And when we offered to furnish them provisions if they would attend, the parents said 'no, _that_ was being too dependent.' In short, the school produced not half the good it might have done. There was the most striking difference between the charity scholars, and those who paid." Similar testimony as to such schools may be obtained of hundreds.]

Observe now, I pray you, how precisely the results agree with what might have been foretold, of such a system. In 1833, nearly 33,000 _poor children_ (literary paupers) were found in 100 counties of Virginia; of whom but 17,081 _attended school at all: and these 17,081 attended on an average, but_ SIXTY-FIVE DAYS OF THE YEAR, EACH! The average of _learning_ acquired by each, during those 65 days, would be a curious subject of contemplation: but I know of no arithmetical rule, by which it could be ascertained. That it bears a much less proportion to the _reasonable_ attainments of a full scholastic year, than 65 bears to the number of days in that year, there can be no doubt.

Ranging, out of the schools, through the general walks of society, we find among our poorer classes, and not seldom in the middling, an ignorance equally deplorable and mortifying. Judging by the number met with in _business_ transactions, who cannot write their names or read, and considering how many there are whose poverty or sex debars them from such transactions, and lessens their chances of scholarship; we should scarcely exceed the truth, in estimating the _white adults of Virginia who cannot read or write, at twenty or thirty thousand_. {20} And of many who can read, how contracted the range of intellect! The mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, all unexplored, though presented hourly to the eye; the glorious heavens, their grandeur, their distances, and the laws of their motion, unthought of; man himself--his structure, so fearful and so wonderful--those traits in his bodily and mental frame, attention to which would the most essentially conduce to bodily and mental health--all unnoted; History, Geography, _tabulæ rasæ_ to them! And for political knowledge, upon which we of Virginia mainly pride ourselves--choose, at random, a man from the throng in any court-house yard, and question him touching the division of power between our two governments, and its distribution among the departments of each: the probabilities are ten to one, that he will not solve one in ten of your questions--even of those which are to be answered from the mere faces of the two constitutions. Take him then into that wild, where _construction_ has been wont to expatiate, and you will find him just able to declare _for_ or _against_ this or that controverted power or measure: not because his reason has discerned it to be constitutional or otherwise, but because it is approved or disapproved by a chief of his own party, or by the leader of a hostile one. And the aggregate of opinions thus caught by accident, is the basis of the _popular will_: and it is the voice prompted by this will, that is called "_The voice of God!_"

Do not misapprehend me. Never would I have the voice of the people other than "the voice of God"--other than all-powerful--within its appropriate sphere. I am as loyal to their sovereignty as the most devout of their flatterers can be: and it is from my desire to see it perpetuated, that I speak out these unpalatable truths. Some roughness of handling is often necessary to heal a wound. The people, like other sovereigns, are sometimes misled by flattery: they should imitate also the wisdom of those monarchs we occasionally meet with in history, who can hear unwelcome truths, and let the speaker live; nay, hearken kindly to his discourse, and let it weigh upon their future conduct. Do I overrate the portion of the people I now address, in classing them with such monarchs?

Sagacious men have not been wanting among us, to see the radical defects of our primary school system: and in 1829, the late Mr. Fitzhugh[7] of Fairfax, stimulated the Legislature to a feeble effort towards correcting them, by _empowering_ the school commissioners of any county to lay it off into districts of not less than three nor more than seven miles square; and to pay, out of the public fund, _two-fifths_ of the sum requisite for building a school house, and half a teacher's salary, for any one of those districts, whenever its inhabitants, by _voluntary subscription_, should raise the residue necessary for these purposes: and the schools thus established were to be open, gratuitously, alike to rich and poor. But the _permissive_ phraseology of this statute completely neutralized its effect. It might have been foreseen, and it _was_ foreseen, that _empowering_ the commissioners to act, and leaving the rest to _voluntary contributions_, would be unavailing, where the workings of the school system had so long been regarded with apathy. The statute has been acted upon, so far as I have learned, in but _three_ counties of the State; remaining, as to the other 107, a dead letter. I have the strongest warrant--that of _actual experiment_, in New York and in Massachusetts--for saying, that had the law _commanded_ the commissioners to lay off districts in all counties where the census shewed a sufficiently dense white population; and had it then organized in the districts some local authorities, whose _duty_ it should be to levy the needful amount upon their people;--I should have been saved the ungracious task of reproaching my country with her want of parental care; and Virginia would now be striding onward, speedily to recover the ground she has lost in the career of true greatness.

[Footnote 7: William H. Fitzhugh--whose death cannot yet cease to be deplored as a public calamity; cutting short, as it did, a career, which his extraordinary means and his devoted will alike bade fair to make a career of distinguished usefulness.]

If a sense of interest, and of duty, do not prompt her people, and her legislature, immediately, to supply defects so obvious, to correct evils so glaring; surely, very shame at the contemplation of her inferiority to those, above whom she once vaunted herself so highly, will induce measures which cannot be much longer deferred without disgrace as well as danger.

In addition to _normal schools_ (for training teachers,) an able writer in the Edinburgh Review (to which[8] I owe the particulars of the Prussian, German, and French school systems) suggests, in my opinion very judiciously, the attaching of a Professorship to Colleges, for lecturing upon the _art of instruction_; to be called the professorship of _Didactics_. Such a chair, ably filled, would be invaluable for multiplying enlightened teachers, and for enhancing the dignity of that under-estimated pursuit. Conjointly with the normal schools, it would soon ensure an abundant supply of instructors for all the common schools.

[Footnote 8: Nos. 116, 117--July and October, 1833--reviewing several works of _M. Cousin_, who went as commissioner from France, to explore and report upon the Prussian and German systems of public instruction.]

_The kinds of knowledge_ which should be studied in the schools, and diffused by books, tracts, and oral lectures, among the people, form an important topic of consideration. It is not for me, at least now and here, to obtrude an inventory of my favorite subjects, or favorite books: but the claims of a few subjects upon our regard are so overshadowing, as to make dissent scarcely possible, and their omission wholly unpardonable, in any extensive view of the connexion between _popular education_, and _popular government_.

Foremost of these, is the subject of Constitutional Law, and Political Right: something of which might be taught, even in childhood. If the children of Rome were obliged, at school, to lay up in memory the laws of the Twelve Tables, with all their ferocious absurdities; how much more should the children of our country learn those fundamental laws, which guarantee to them the noble inheritance of a rational and virtuous freedom! Even to very young minds, the structure and powers of our two governments may be rendered intelligible by familiar and impartial treatises, with clear oral explanations. The merit of impartiality in these political lessons, is illustrated by the odiousness of a departure from it, which startled me the other day, in reading the THIRTY-FIFTH EDITION of a popular and in other respects an excellent History of the United States,[9] {21} designed for schools; where that section[10] of the Federal Constitution which declares the powers of Congress, is presented thus: "The Congress of the United States shall have power to make and enforce _all laws which are necessary to_ THE GENERAL WELFARE--AS to lay and collect taxes," &c.--going on to enumerate the specified powers, as _mere examples_ of Congressional omnipotence! And the myriads of tender minds, which probably already owe all their knowledge of the Constitution to the abstract where this precious morsel of political doctrine occurs, can hardly fail to carry through life the impression, that the powers of Congress are virtually as unbounded as those of the British Parliament. Now, to make patriots, and not partisans--upholders of vital faith, not of sectarian doctrine--treatises for the political instruction of youth should quote the _letter_ of every such controverted passage, with a brief and fair statement of the opinions and reasonings on both sides. The course of political study would be very incomplete, without the Declaration of Independence, and Washington's Farewell Address: and occasion might readily be found to correct or guard against some fallacies, afloat among mankind, and often mischievously used as axioms. "That the majority should govern," is an instance of them: a saying, which, by being taken unqualifiedly as at all times placing _the majority_ above the Constitution and Laws, has repeatedly caused both to be outraged. Witness the "New Court Law" of Kentucky, in 1825; and a very similar act passed by Congress, in 1801. The prevalent opinions, that parties, and party spirit, are salutary in a republic; that every citizen is in duty bound to join one or the other party; and that he ought to _go with his party_, in all measures, whether they be intrinsically proper or otherwise; if not fallacies so monstrous as to make their currency wonderful, are at least propositions so questionable and so important, as to make them worthy of long and thorough investigation before they be adopted as truths.

[Footnote 9: By Charles A. Goodrich. The abstract of the Constitution is taken, he says, from "Webster's Elements of General Knowledge."]

[Footnote 10: Article 1 § 8.]

Without expending a word upon that trite theme, the _utility of history_ to all who have any concern in government, I may be allowed to remark, that works for historical instruction, instead of being filled with sieges and battles, should unfold, as much as possible, those occult and less imposing circumstances, which often so materially influence the destinies of nations: the well-timed flattery--the lap-dog saved--the favorite's intrigue--the priest's resentment or ambition--to which field marshals owe their rise, cabinets their dissolution, massacres their carnage, or empires their overthrow. Yet the reader need not be denied the glow he will experience at the story of Thermopylæ, Marathon, Leuctra, or Bunker Hill. All those incidents, too, whether grand or minute, which may serve as warnings or as encouragements to posterity, should be placed in bold relief, and their influence on the current of events, clearly displayed. Numberless opportunities will occur, for impressing upon the minds of young republicans, truths which deeply concern the responsibilities involved in that name: the artifices of demagogues--the danger, in a democracy, of _trusting_ implicitly to the honesty and skill of public agents--the worthlessness of popularity, unless it be "the popularity which _follows_, not that which is _run after_"[11]--the importance of learning to resist the erring impulses of a misguided multitude, not less than the unrighteous mandates of a frowning tyrant[12]--the ease, so often exemplified, with which a people may be duped by the _forms_ of freedom, long after the substance is gone--the incredible aptitude of _example_ to become _precedent_, and of _precedent_ to ripen into _law_, until usurpation is established upon the ruins of liberty--and the difference between _true_ and _false_ GREATNESS, so little appreciated by the mass of mankind. This last point could not be better illustrated, than by a fair comparison of Washington with Bonaparte: a task which Dr. Channing, of Boston, has executed, in an essay among the most elegant and powerful in the English or any other language.

[Footnote 11: Lord Mansfield.]

[Footnote 12: The "_ardor civium prava jubentium_," not less than the "_vultus instantis tyranni_."]

To render _Political Economy_ intelligible to a moderate capacity, dissertations sufficiently plain and full might easily be extracted from the writings of Smith and Say, and from the many luminous discussions, oral and written, which it has undergone in our own country. Miss Martineau has shewn how well its truths may be set forth in the captivating form of tales: and the writings of Mr. Condy Raguet teem with felicitous illustrations.

_Practical Morals_--I mean that department, which teaches, and _habituates_ us, to behave justly and kindly to our fellow creatures--will ever be poorly taught by dry precepts and formal essays. No vehicle of moral instruction is comparable to the striking narrative. How is it possible for any school-boy to rob an orchard, after having read Miss Edgeworth's "Tarlton?"--or to practise unfairness in any bargain, when he has glowed at the integrity of Francisco, in purposely shewing the _bruised side_ of his melon to a purchaser? or not to loathe party spirit, when he has been early imbued with the rational sentiments contained in the "Barring Out?" In short, to be familiar with the mass of that lady's incomparable writings for youth, and not have the principles and feelings of economy, industry, courage, honor, filial and fraternal love, engrained into his very soul? Or how can he fail to find, in "Sandford and Merton," for the daily occasions of life, the happiest lessons of duty and humanity, and for those great conjunctures which never occur in many a life time, the most resistless incentives to a more than Roman heroism?

Other branches of knowledge are desirable for the republican citizen, less from any peculiar appositeness to his character as such, than from their tendency to enlarge his mind; and especially because, by affording exhaustless stores of refined and innocent pleasure, they win him away from the haunts of sensuality. "I should not think the most exalted faculties a gift worthy of heaven," says Junius, "nor any assistance in their improvement a subject of gratitude to man, if I were not satisfied, that _to inform the understanding, corrects and enlarges the heart_." Felix Neff, the Alpine pastor, whose ardent, untiring benevolence, ten years ago, wrought what the indolent would deem miracles, in diffusing knowledge, and a love of knowledge, amongst an untutored peasantry, found their indifference towards _foreign missions_ immovable, until they had learned something of _geography_: but so soon as they had read the {22} description of distant countries, and seen them upon the map, they conceived an interest in the people who dwelt there; and entered warmly into the scheme of beneficence, which before had solicited their attention in vain. "Their new acquirements," observes Neff, "enlarged their spirit, and made new creatures of them; seeming to triple their very existence." Geometry, he remarked, also "produced a happy moral development:" doubtless by the beauty of its unerring march to truth. Arithmetic it is superfluous to recommend: but its adjunct, Algebra, deserves cultivation as an exercise to the analyzing faculties; as an implement, indispensable to the prosecution of several other studies; and as opening a unique and curious field of knowledge to the view.

The _physical sciences_, shewing the composition and defects of soils, and the modes of remedying those defects--the natures and properties of minerals and vegetables--the modes in which different bodies affect each other--the mechanical powers--the structure of man's own frame, and the causes which benefit or injure it--the utility of these cannot escape any mind.

For _books_, and _tracts_, and _oral lectures for the people_, there will be no want of materials or models, or even of the actual fabrics themselves. The publications of the British and American Societies for the Diffusion of Knowledge, are mines, in which selection, compilation, and imitation, may work with the richest results to this great cause. Many of these productions, and still more eminently, the scientific writings of Dr. Franklin, afford most happy specimens of the style, suited to treatises for popular use: no parade of learning; no long word, where a short will serve the turn; no Latin or Greek derivative, where an Anglo-Saxon is at hand; no technical term, where a popular one can be used. By presenting, in a form thus brief, simple, and attractive, subjects which in their accustomed guise of learned and costly quartos or octavos, frighten away the common gaze, as from a Gorgon upon which none might look, and live, you may insinuate them into every dwelling, and every mind: the school urchin may find them neither incomprehensible, nor wearisome; and the laboring man be detained from the tippling house, and even for an hour, after the day's toil is over, from his pillow, to snatch a few morsels from the banquet of instruction.

Many will cavil at the attempt to disseminate generally, so extended a round of knowledge: and if, to escape the charge of _impracticability_, we say, that our aim is to impart merely a slight and general acquaintance with the proposed subjects,--then, _sciolism_, and _smattering_, will be imputed to the plan; and Pope's clever lines, so often misapplied, about the _intoxicating effect of shallow draughts from the Pierian Spring_, will be quoted upon us. Come the objection in prose or in verse, it is entirely fallacious.