Page images
PDF
EPUB

and children are sent to him expressly to learn them. The compensation that is afforded him, also, is in most cases so low, that he is compelled to receive more scholars than he can well teach; and, from the same cause, he is unable to procure the proper means and apparatus for instructing youth. The remedy for all these evils, therefore, can be applied only by the community. And to the community, we beg leave earnestly to commend this subject. It is a subject nearly touching the duties and the interests of society, and therefore worthy to be urged at all times, and through every medium of communication. The press of an intelligent and improving community ought to be considered as pledged to this cause.

The third thing to be desired in a system of popular education, is, that it should be more practical. This step will naturally follow the two preceding; for if education is more intelligible, and more interesting, we may presume it will be more practical; that is to say, it will be directed to purposes of more obvious and real utility.

It will be directed, in the first place, more to the culture of the mind, to the improvement of the character. It will be less an exercise of memory, and more of reasoning. For a child or youth to load his mind with thousands of rules, principles, and facts, will be judged to be of less consequence, than for him to reason on a few of them. The studies of the school and the college, instead of being looked upon as the ultimate point of attainment, will be regarded as the preparation, the furnishing and sharpening of the mind, for further discoveries and acquisitions. How quickly the books and studies of the school are laid aside, when the school is left, we all very well know; and this shows, that they never had any strong hold on the understanding, nor any obvious connexion with improvement.

The other respect in which education should be more practical, is, that it should more directly fit men for the actual business of life; or, to say more exactly what we mean, it should give to the business of life a more intellectual character; mingling thought and reasoning with it; guiding its labors, not by artificial rules, but by intelligent principles. Thus, a man may pursue the business of a mechanic, and may, without doubt, safely enough guide himself by certain rules, though he does not understand the reasons of them; or he may be a farmer without understanding anything of the nature and combination of different soils, or the chemical principles that are concerned in their improvement; or a man may traverse the ocean by the help of instruments and calculations, about the philosophy of which he knows nothing; and, certainly, with this blind adherence to rules, a man may be a good mechanic, or farmer, or navigator. But how much would it raise him in the intellectual scale; how much thought and reflection would it mingle with all his pursuits, if he did enter into this philosophy and reason of things. His daily labors would involve a constant exercise of intellect; and he would be, on all subjects, a more intelligent man. He would acquire a habit of looking into the reason of things, and this habit would extend to everything.

Nor let it be thought, that the acquisition of the necessary knowledge would be a Herculean task. The requisite study of nature, and of the laws of nature, may easily be simplified, so as to be brought within the comprehension of youth, and within the time ordinarily allotted to a common education among us. The application of science to the business of life is an object, which has already interested some intelligent and patriotic individuals, and two or three schools have recently been founded in this country for this specific purpose; and it cannot be doubted, that more of the same kind will soon be established. To some projects of this kind, that have been recently brought before the legislature of Massachusetts, we cannot help taking this opportunity to give our most hearty wishes for their success. Labor need not be a mere mechanical or corporeal drudgery. It may be accompanied with a perpetual exercise and improvement of the intellect. It may be accompanied with the study and love of nature, and with increasing discoveries of the wisdom of its laws, and the wonders of its operations; while, with these, every domestic affection, too, and every religious aim may mingle, to relieve, to exalt, and to hallow the toils of life.

Nor would those only, who are engaged in laborious employments, feel the benefit of an improving education, but the men of more leisurely and sedentary pursuits. It has been, we can hardly say to the reproach, but certainly to the disadvantage, of our merchants, and men of the learned professions, that they have been too much mere men of business. This is rapidly changing; and it will yet more change. Not that they will be less men of business, but more men of reading and study. Trade will be more and more understood, not only as an affair of barter, but as a subject of science. Its relations to society, to government, to national improvement; its connexion with the interests and institutions of foreign countries, and with the laws and political economy of our own, are subjects, which, if our merchants do not want the inclination, they will not want the leisure to pursue.

We expect much more, too, from the liberal professions. Trained in childhood to the love of knowledge, animated in later years with the love of learning, the lawyer, physician, and divine, not indolently content with what they must know, will push their inquiries into the fields of liberal investigation and elegant literature. There have been but too many quacks among us, not only in medicine, but in law and in divinity; too many mechanical drudges even in what are called the learned professions. We confidently expect the time when these professions shall better deserve the name of learned.

But it will be thought, that we have forgotten the pamphlet, whose title we have placed at the head of this article, and have only taken occasion from it to make a pamphlet ourselves; and we will not deny, that we have been more concerned to follow out the spirit of it, than to quote its details. We remarked, at the commencement of our observations, that there is a department of popular education distinct from the schools; we referred to the education of adults. It is to this, that Mr Brougham's observations chiefly relate.

There are now springing up in various parts of England, associations of mechanics and apprentices, by whom not only libraries are collected, but lectures are established; and bodies of intelligent artisans are found in a considerable number of towns and villages, spending one or two evenings in the week together, conversing on the principles of their respective arts, or listening to the illustration of them from an able lecturer, and he, too, in many instances, one who has risen up from among themselves. This example is beginning to be followed by some of our own cities; and we see not why it might not be extended to our villages, and even to very small villages of a considerably dense population, and why our farmers and manufacturers, as well as mechanics, might not unite to form similar institutions.

The utility of such institutions will not be doubted; we would ask, why their practicability is any more questionable ? Let ten or twenty mechanics or farmers in any of our villages unite, and consent to appropriate six cents a week from their income, and they will soon have a valuable collection of books; others will join them, and their collection will swell into a library. With a little increased exertion, they may, during three or four of the most leisure months of the year, have a course of lectures. The expense, in such a country as this, ought not to be any serious objection. If it is made such, with any, let that objection be put to shame by the example of their English brethren. Nay, let it be put to still greater shame, by a survey of the actual and superfluous expenditures of the community. We will name but a single item. We ask but for what the show man carries off from our villages yearly, to establish libraries and lectureships.

We cannot leave this general subject of popular education, without saying something, in fine, of its bearings on the spirit of the age, and the situation and prospects of our country.

There is at this day an unprecedented developement of mind, and most of all unprecedented in its extension to all classes of the people. We cannot say, that we look without apprehension upon this excited mass of public sentiment, that is rising from the lethargy of centuries, like the sea from that deep, long, and unnatural calm, which precedes its most violent convulsions. From the free and inquisitive spirit of the age, we believe, that there is much to hope. We believe, that politics, religion, and the wisdom and welfare of life have much to hope; but we seriously apprehend, too, that they have something to fear; and the only chance of that glorious issue of the present state of things, to which the quickened and enthusiastic spirit of the age is looking, depends on the sound culture, and wise direction of the public mind.

The question,' says Mr Brougham, 'no longer is, whether or not the people shall be instructed;' whether or not, we might add, in this country, they shall think and inquire with freedom and boldness; ' for that has been determined long ago, and the decision is irreversible; but whether they shall be well or ill taught; half informed, or as thoroughly as their circumstances permit, and their wants require. Let no one be afraid of the bulk of the community becoming too accomplished for their superiors. Well educated, and even well versed in the most elevated sciences they assuredly may become; and the worst consequence, that can follow to their superiors, will be, that, to deserve being called their betters, they too must devote themselves more to the pursuit of solid and refined learned.' p. 32.

But the subject of popular education is one of greater moment to us in this country, than to any other people. Education, and the education of the people, too, is the hope, not of our improvement only, but of our existence. It stands, with us, in the place of everything that makes other governments strong. It stands in the place of the Establishment, of the army, and the sacred throne; it is the order, and defence, and power of the nation.

We look upon this nation as making a momentous and perilous experiment on free and popular institutions; nor is it to be thought, that the experiment has yet gone beyond the point of danger. It is certain, and it cannot be too often repeated, that such institutions as ours can have no permanent standing, but on the basis of knowledge and virtue. The charter of our privileges is our national character. It was this, that bought them when our strength was not in sinews, but in brave hearts; in the spirit of men, that were resolved to 'do, or die.' If other nations cannot attain to the same privileges; if Spain, and Portugal, and Italy cannot be free, it will be because the spirit of intelligent, virtuous, and courageous freedom is not in them. Let our people swerve from this, and it matters little whether, in name and in form, they are freemen or slaves. Let our national character fail in the great trial, which it is passing through; let luxury and excess grow in our cities; let vice stalk abroad fearlessly in our villages; let our hardy yeomanry become indolent, inefficient, bankrupt in property, and more bankrupt in spirit; let our noble youth lose the principles of a virtuous education, and vie with each other in extravagance and revelling; and farewell to the dignity and the joy of freedom. Though the semblance remain awhile, the spirit will have fled forever.

Now, that our national character is improving, we wish it were easier to maintain than it is. No sober citizen certainly can look without concern, on the increase of luxury, and the fearful inroads of intemperance among us; nor ask, without solicitude, what is to stay their desolating progress? To say, that we want more virtue, is only saying, that we have too much vice; and is therefore only to descant upon the evil, which we wish to correct.

Of the means of correction for our grand national vice, but two things occur to us as at all likely to have any success. One is, to lay a tax on spirituous liquors, such as must exclude them from that common use, which now brings temptation to every man's door every day and hour of his life. But to this the community VOL. XXIII. NO. 52.

9

« PreviousContinue »