Chapter 9

The introduction of Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic was an epoch in the science. It wrought a radical change in the ability of the people to apply the power of numbers to the practical business of life. Its excellence does not consist in rules and illustrations by which examples and problems are easily solved, but in leading the mind of the pupil into natural and apparent processes of reasoning, by which he is enabled to comprehend a proposition as an independent fact. Herein is a mental discipline of great value, not only in the sciences, but in the daily affairs of men of all classes and conditions. It is to be feared that equally satisfactory results have not been attained in what is called written arithmetic. This partial failure deserves consideration. The first cause may be found in an erroneous opinion concerning the difference between mental and written arithmetic. Written arithmetic is mental arithmetic merely, with a record at given stages of the process of what at that point is accomplished. But, as written arithmetic tends to lessen the power of the pupil for the performance of those operations that are purely mental, he should be subjected, each day, to a searching and rapid drill in mental arithmetic also. This neglect on the part of teachers explains the singular fact that pupils, well trained in mental arithmetic, after attending to written arithmetic for three or six months, appear to have lost rather than gained in their knowledge of the science as a whole.

The second cause of failure may be found in the fact that rules, processes and simple methods of solution, contained in the books, are substituted for the power of comprehension by the pupil. He should be trained to seize an example mentally, whether the slate is to be used or not, and hold it until he can determine by what process the solution is to be wrought. Nor is it a serious objection that he may not at first avail himself of the easiest method. The difference between methods or ways is altogether a subordinate consideration. There may be many ways of reaching a truth, but no one of them is as important as the truth itself. The text-books should contain all the facts needed for the comprehension and the solution of the examples given; the teacher should furnish explanations and other aids, as they are needed; but the practice of adopting a process and following it to an apparently satisfactory conclusion, without comprehending the problem itself, is a serious educational evil, and it exerts a permanent pernicious influence.

The remarks I have now made upon methods of teaching, which may seem to have been offered in a spirit of severe criticism, should be qualified and relieved by the statement that our teachers are as well educated as any in the country, and that they are yearly making progress in their profession. Indeed, I am encouraged to suggest that better things are possible, by the consideration that many instances of distinguished success in teaching the alphabet, reading and grammar, are known to me; and that teachers are themselves aware that the work is, upon the whole, inadequately performed. If, as is generally conceded, the highest order of teaching talent is required in the primary schools, then that talent should be sought out by committees; the persons possessing it should enjoy the best means of preparation; they should receive the highest rewards, both in money and public consideration, and they should be induced to labor, without change or interruption, in the same schools and the same people.

THE RELATIVE MERITS OF PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS AND ENDOWED ACADEMIES.

[Remarks before the American Institute of Instruction, at Manchester, N. H.]

Indebted to my friend on the other side, and to you, sir, and this audience, for inviting me to take a position on this floor, I am still without any special preparation to discuss the subject. I have thought upon it, because any one, however humbly connected with free schools in this country, must have done so. And especially just now, when, in the educational journal of Massachusetts, a discussion has been conducted between one of its editors and Mr. Gulliver, the able originator of a school in Norwich, Ct., and the advocate of the system of school government established there. And, therefore, every one who has had his eyes open must have seen that here is a great contest, and that underlying it is a principle which is important to society.

The distinguishing difference between the advocates of endowed schools and of free schools is this: those who advocate the system of endowed academies go back in their arguments to one foundation, which is, that in education of the higher grades the great mass of the people are not to be trusted. And those who advocate a system of free education in high schools put the matter where we have put the rights of property and liberty, where we put the institutions of law and religion--upon the public judgment. And we will stand there. If the public will not maintain institutions of learning, then, I say, let institutions of learning go down. If I belong to a state which cannot be moved from its extremities to its centre, and from its centre to its extremities, for the maintenance of a system of public instruction, then, in that respect, I disown that state; and if there be one state in this Union whose people cannot be aroused to maintain a system of public instruction, then they are false to the great leading idea of American principles, and of civil, political, and religious liberty.

It is easy to enumerate the advantages of a system of public education, and the evils--I say evils--of endowed academies, whether free or charging payment for tuition. Endowed academies are not, in all respects, under all circumstances, and everywhere, to be condemned. In discussing this subject, it may be well for me to state the view that I have of the proper position of endowed academies. They have a place in the educational wants of this age. This is especially true of academies of the highest rank, which furnish an elevated and extended course of instruction. To such I make no objection, but I would honor and encourage them. Yet I regard private schools, which do the work usually done in public schools, as temporary, their necessity as ephemeral, and I think that under a proper public sentiment they will soon pass away. They cannot stand,--such has been the experience in Massachusetts,--they cannot stand by the side of a good system of public education. Yet where the population is sparse, where there is not property sufficient to enable the people to establish a high school, then an endowed school may properly come in to make up the deficiency, to supply the means of education to which the public wealth, at the present moment, is unequal. Endowed institutions very properly, also, give a professional education to the people. At this moment we cannot look to the public to give that education which is purely professional. But what we do look to the public for is this: to furnish the means of education to the children of the whole people, without any reference to social, pecuniary, political, or religious distinctions, so that every person may have a preliminary education sufficient for the ordinary business of life.

It is said that the means of education are better in an endowed academy, or in an endowed free school, than they can be in a public school. What is meant by _means_ of education? I understand that, first and chiefly, as extraneous means of education, we must look to a correct public sentiment, which shall animate and influence the teacher, which shall give direction to the school, which shall furnish the necessary public funds. An endowed free academy can have none of these things permanently. Take, for example, the free school established at Norwich by the liberality of thirty or forty gentlemen, who contributed ninety thousand dollars. What security is there that fifty years hence, when the educational wants of the people shall be changed, when the population of Norwich shall be double or treble what it is now, when science shall make greater demands, when these forty contributors shall have passed away, this institution will answer the wants of that generation? According to what we know of the history of this country, it will be entirely inadequate; and, though none of us may live to see the prediction fulfilled or falsified, I do not hesitate to say that the school will ultimately prove a failure, because it is founded in a mistake.

Then look and see what would have been the state of things if there had been public spirit invoked to establish a public high school, and if the means for its support had been raised by taxation of all the people, so that the system of education would have expanded according to the growth of the city, and year by year would have accommodated itself to the public wants and public zeal in the cause. Though these means seem now to be ample, they will by and by be found too limited. The school at Norwich is encumbered with regulations; and so every endowed institution is likely to be, because the right of a man to appropriate his property to a particular object carries with it, in the principles of common law, and in the administration of the law, in all free governments, the right to declare, to a certain extent, how that property shall be applied. Rules have been established--very proper and judicious rules for to-day. But who knows that a hundred years hence they will be proper or acceptable at all? They have also established a board of trustees, ultimately to be reduced to twenty-five. These trustees have power to perpetuate themselves. Who does not see that you have severed this institution from the public sentiment of the city of Norwich, and that ultimately that city will seek for itself what it needs; and that, a hundred years hence, it will not consent to live, in the civilization of that time, under the regulations which forty men have now established, however wise the regulations may at the present moment be?

One hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Hollis, of London, made a bequest to the university at Cambridge, with a provision that on every Thursday a professor should sit in his chair to answer questions in polemic theology. All well enough then; but the public sentiment of to-day will not carry it out.

So it may be with the school at Norwich a hundred years hence. The man or state that sacrifices the living public judgment to the opinion of a dead man, or a dead generation, makes a great mistake. We should never substitute, beyond the power of revisal, the opinion of a past generation for the opinion of a living generation. I trust to the living men of to-day as to what is necessary to meet our existing wants, rather than to the wisest men who lived in Greece or Rome. And, if I would not trust the wise men of Greece and Rome, I do not know why the people, a hundred years hence, should trust the wise men of our own time.

And then look further, and see how, under a system of public instruction, you can build up, from year to year, in the growth of the child, a system according to his wants. Private instruction cannot do this. What do we do where we have a correct system? A child goes into a primary school. He is not to go out when he attains a certain age. He might as well go out when he is of a certain height; there would be as much merit in one case as in the other. But he is advanced when he has made adequate attainments. Who does not see that the child is incited and encouraged and stimulated by every sentiment to which you should appeal? And, then, when he has gone up to the grammar school, we say to him, "You are to go into the high school when you have made certain attainments." And who is to judge of these attainments? A committee appointed by the people, over whom the people have some ultimate control. And in that control they have security for two things: first, that the committee shall not be suspected of partiality; and secondly, that they shall not be actually guilty of partiality. In the same manner, there is security for the proper connection between the high school and the schools below. But in the school at Norwich--of which I speak because it is now prominent--you have a board of twenty-five men, irresponsible to the people. They select a committee of nine; that committee determines what candidates shall be transferred from the grammar schools to the high school. May there not be suspicion of partiality? If a boy or girl is rejected, you look for some social, political, or religious influence which has caused the rejection, and the parent and child complain. Here is a great evil; for the real and apparent justice of the examination and decision by which pupils are transferred from one school to another is vital to the success of the system.

There is another advantage in the system of public high schools, which I imagine the people do not always at first appreciate. It is, that the private school, with the same teachers, the same apparatus, and the same means, cannot give the education which may be, and usually is, furnished in the public schools. This statement may seem to require some considerable support. We must look at facts as they are. Some people are poor; I am sorry for them. Some people are rich, and I congratulate them upon their good fortune. But it is not so much of a benefit, after all, as many think. It is worth something in this world, no doubt, to be rich; but what is the result of that condition upon the family first, the school afterwards, and society finally? It is, that some learn the lesson of life a little earlier than others; and that lesson is the lesson of self-reliance, which is worth more than--I will not say a knowledge of the English language--but worth more than Latin or Greek. If the great lesson of self-reliance is to be learned, who is more likely to acquire it early,--the child of the poor, or the child of the rich; the child who has most done for him, or the child who is under the necessity of doing most for himself? Plainly, the latter. Now, while a system of public instruction in itself cannot be magnified in its beneficial influences to the poor and to the children of the poor, it is equally beneficial to the rich in the facility it affords for the instruction of their children. Is it not worth something to the rich man, who cannot, from the circumstances of the case, teach self-reliance around the family hearth, to send his child to school to learn this lesson with other children, that he may be stimulated, that he may be provoked to exertions which he would not otherwise have made? For, be it remembered that in our schools public sentiment is as well marked as in a college, or a town, or a nation; that it moves forward in the same way. And the great object of a teacher should be to create a public sentiment in favor of virtue. There should be some pioneers in favor of forming a correct public sentiment; and when it is formed it moves on irresistibly. It is like the river made up of drops from the mountain side, moving on with more and more power, until everything in its waters is carried to the destined end.

So in a public school. And it is worth much to the man of wealth that there may be, near his own door, an institution to which he may send his children, and under the influence of which they may be carried forward. For, depend upon it, after all we say about schools and institutions of learning, it is nevertheless true of education, as a statesman has said of the government, that the people look to the school for too much. It is not, after all, a great deal that the child gets there; but, if he only gets the ability to acquire more than he has, the schools accomplish something. If you give a child a little knowledge of geography or arithmetic, and have not developed the power to accomplish something for himself, he comes to but little in the world. But put him into the school,--the primary, grammar, and high school, where he must learn for himself,--and he will be fitted for the world of life into which he is to enter.

You will see in this statement that, with the same parties, the same means of education, the same teachers, the public schools will accomplish more than private schools.

I find everywhere, and especially in the able address of Mr. Gulliver, to which I have referred, that the public schools are treated as of questionable morality, and it is implied that something would be gained by removing certain children from the influence of these schools. If I were speaking from another point of view, very likely I should feel bound to hold up the evils and defects which actually exist in public schools; but when I consider them in contrast with endowed and private schools, I do not hesitate to say that the public schools compare favorably; and, as the work of education goes on, the comparison will be more and more to their advantage. Why? I know something of the private institutions in Massachusetts; and there are boys in them who have left the public schools because they have fallen in their classes, and the public interest would not justify their continuance in the schools. It was always true that private schools did not represent the world exactly as it was. It is worth everything to a boy or girl, man or woman, to look the world in the face as it is.

Therefore, the public school, when it represents the world as it is, represents the facts of life. The private school never has done and never will do this; and as time goes on, it will be less and less a true representative of the world. From this point of view, it seems to be a mistake on the part of parents to exclude their children from the world. Is it not better that the child should learn something of society, even of its evils, when under your influence, and when you can control him by your counsel and example, than to permit him finally to go out, as you must when his majority comes, perhaps to be seduced in a moment, as it were, from his allegiance to virtue? Virtue is not exclusion from the presence of vice; but it is resistance to vice in its presence. And it is the duty of parents to provide safeguards for the support of their children against these temptations. When Cicero was called on to defend Muræna against the slander that, as he had lived in Asia, he had been guilty of certain crimes, and when the testimony failed to substantiate the charge, the orator said, "And if Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a praiseworthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived temperately in Asia." And we have yet higher authority. It is not the glory of Christ, or of Christianity, that its Divine Author was without temptation, but that, being tempted, he was without sin. This is the great lesson of the day.

The duty of the public is to provide means for the education of all. To do that, we need the political, social, and moral power of all, to sustain teachers and institutions of learning; and, endowed or free schools, depending upon the contributions of individuals, can never, in a free country, be raised to the character of a system. If you rob the public schools of the influence of our public-spirited men, if they take away a portion of their pupils from them, our system is impaired. It must stand as a whole, educating the entire people, and looking to all for support, or it cannot be permanently maintained.

THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM.

[An Address delivered at the Dedication of the Powers Institute, Bernardston.]

There cannot be a more gratifying spectacle than the universal homage offered to education and to the young. Childhood is attractive in itself; and it is peculiarly an object of solicitude for its promises concerning the future. Hence the labors of philanthropists, reformers, and Christians, as well as of teachers, are devoted to the culture and improvement of the rising generation, as the chief security possible for the prevalence of better ideas in the state and in the world.

Massachusetts has been peculiarly favored in the means of education; and we ought ever to recognize the divine influence in the wisdom which led our fathers to lay the foundations of a system that contemplated the education of the whole people. The power of this great idea, universal education, has not been limited to Massachusetts; the states of the West, the states of the South, receive it as the basis of a wise public policy; and had our ancestors contributed nothing else to the glory of the republic, they would yet be entitled to the distinguished consideration of every age and people. The vigor of our culture and the hardihood of our institutions are more manifest out of Massachusetts than in it. The immigrant in his new home in the great valley of prairies, on the northern shores of the American lakes, in Oregon, California, or the islands of the Pacific, invokes the spirit of New England in the establishment of a free church and a free school. And in the spirit and discipline of New England, the thoughts of her sons are turned homeward in adversity, seeking consolation at the sources of early, vigorous, and happy life; or, in prosperity, that they may offer, in gratitude to man and to God, some tribute, always noble, however humble, to the principles and institutions that first formed their characters, and then controlled their destiny; or, in old age, the wanderer, like Jacob in Egypt, with his blessing upon the tribes and families of men, says, "I am to be gathered unto my people; bury me with my fathers." This occasion and its honors are due to the memory of him whose name this institution bears; and his last will and testament is an illustration, or rather the cause, of these prefatory remarks. As the reasonably extended and eminently prosperous life of your wise benefactor approached its close, he, in the principles of Old England and of New England, ordered and directed the payment of all his just debts; and then, secondly, expressed the wish, "if practicable, to be buried by the side of his parents in the cemetery at Bernardston." First justice, and then affection for parents, kindred, and home, animated the vital, never-dying soul, as the life of the body ebbed and flowed, and flowed and ebbed, to flow no more. For every good the ancients imagined and named a divinity; and there is in every good something divine.

We do not deify the living nor the dead; yet such foundations and institutions as the Lawrence Scientific School, the Peabody Institute, the Powers Institute, will bear to a grateful posterity a knowledge of the virtues of their respective founders, and of the exactness, rectitude, and wisdom, of the public sentiment which religiously consecrates the means provided to the ends proposed.

But just eulogy of the dead is the appropriate duty of those who were the associates and friends of the founder of this school.--It will be my purpose, in the humble part I take in the services of this honored occasion, to point out, as I may be able, the connection between learning and wisdom, and then, by the aid of some general remarks upon education, to examine the fitness of this foundation, and the rules here established, to promote human progress and virtue.