AMERICAN

EDUCATIONAL MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1864.

NATIONAL EDUCATION AND

"THE

UNITY.

NATIONAL

HE most effective way of preserving a State," says Aristotle, "is to bring up its citizens in the spirit of the government; to fashion, and, as it were, to cast them in the mould of the Constitution." And the Prussians affirm, that "whatever you would have appear in the life of a nation you must first put into its schools."

These propositions scarcely need proof. They ought to be self-evident to every mind. For,

"What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlements or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned,

Not bays and broad-armed ports, Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts, Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride-

No! MEN, high-minded MEN.

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must be instilled into the masses through the potent agency of its schools.

The strength of every nation is vested in the steadfast loyalty and patriotism of its sons and daughters. It is therefore an object of primary importance, that the elements of stability should universally prevail, for with the nation, as with the individual, self-preservation is the first law of nature. Hence, the relations between national education and national unity—which is but another name for national strength -are at once obvious.

Aris

But what is national education? totle has answered this question. So have the Prussians. It is not the culture of the favored few by individual or partial effort; but it is rather the lifting up of the many by the united moral and material power of the whole. National education is an education through which the national spirit breathes. It is not restricted to the narrow confines of State influence and State boundaries; and hence, it does not generate in the minds of the people the palpable absurdity that a part is superior to the whole, or that the rights of a State are paramount to those of the nation at large. It is an education which seeks "to bring up its citizens in the spirit of the government; to fashion, and, as it were, to cast them in the mould of the Constitution."

It is manifest that to realize this ideal, the nation itself must be aroused to a sense of its great duty. It must, through its appropriate agencies and in its proper sphere, address itself more directly than it ever has done to the mighty task of selfelevation. That this will be done there can be little doubt. In what way it may be done these columns will, from time to time, venture to suggest. Meanwhile, let this subject receive the candid consideration of the thoughtful, the loyal, and the patriotic everywhere.

A DEARTH-ITS CAUSES-ITS REMEDY. T is not of food, not of the meat that perisheth; for does not the land groan

with the fatness thereof? It is not of raiment, not of the wherewithal shall we be clothed; for is not this the age of shoes and shoddy? It is not of lucre, not of the root of all evil; for are not greenbacks flowing into the purses of our people in plenteous profusion? It is not of soldiers; for are not the ranks of our war-scarred veterans filling up to the point of repletion? No; the dearth is of another sort. The famine is in another field. The cry of want comes up from a different direction. The harvest truly is great and ripe, but the laborers are few.

From nearly every part of the country there is an urgent demand for teachers who are "able masters, and worthy of the high vocation of instructing the people." Never within the limits of our observation, perhaps never in the history of the country, was this demand so palpable and so pressing. Multitudes of our schools are seriously embarrassed from this cause. Nor is the difficulty confined to any particular class. Institutions of almost every grade, private and public, primary and higher, professional and non-professional, experience more or less the pressure of the great necessity.

It becomes us, therefore, to inquire into the causes of this state of facts. Why is it that in a land where a school-house forms the vertex of almost every street corner, and where an academy or one of the higher seminaries crowns the summit of every hill, the law of demand, in this particular, is not met by its appropriate supply?

Why is it, that while every other profession has within it men enough and to spare, that of the teacher is afflicted with an apparently hopeless depletion?

It is true there are candidates enough for almost every place. It is true that there are legions of masters and misses who are anxious to serve their country by keeping school. But it is of men and women of sterling qualities as teachers that we write; of men and women who rise to the full measure of the greatness of that noble calling which upholds States and which confers upon civilized society those

blessings whereby it is itself rendered possible.

The prime cause of this unnatural phenomenon must undoubtedly be found in the stinted and almost niggardly compensation paid to this important class of public functionaries. The salaries of teachers are ruinously low. A soldier enlisting in the ranks receives as bounty, setting aside his yearly allowance, a much larger sum than the majority of teachers are paid for a whole year's service. Indeed, we know of instances in which men receive as much for driving express-wagons as the principals of public schools in the same city, numbering twenty thousand inhabitants!

Another cause of this deficiency of competent teachers is, that the standard of qualification has been greatly elevated within a few years past. This has driven large numbers who were formerly employed, out of the field entirely, or into inferior positions. The community begins to perceive that in education, as in other interests of lesser magnitude, there is such a thing as value received; that, whereas a poor teacher is dear at any price, so, too, a good one is cheap at any price-is in fact beyond all price. This view of the case is rapidly spreading, and candidates for this important, this sacred office, will do well in the future to recognize the pregnant fact in the calculation of their chances of sucOther causes there are, which we shall consider hereafter, together with the remedy for the growing evil.

cess.

trial. If we can garner up these experiences and their multifarious results, if we can analyze, compare, and generalize them, we shall, in process of time, be enabled to deduce those immutable truths which are to become the guides of humanity from age to age through all the farcoming future, and which are destined to give form, direction, precision, and certainty to all practical measures for the development of a symmetrical and perfect manhood as appertaining alike to the individual and to the race at large.

And these experiments are now going on among the different communities, States, and nations of the civilized world. Some of them are wisely and some of them are unwisely conducted, as it would not be difficult to show. The educational systems of some nations seem to have brought them, as it were, to a positive halt in their march through the ages, and arresting their progress toward a higher Christian civilization for hundreds, perhaps for thousands of years. China and Japan may be summoned to the bar as witnesses to this truth.

But coming nearer home, and circumscribing our observation to narrower limits, both of time and space, we shall find different States, different communities, and different cities even, in which there is a remarkable coincidence between their educational movements and the intensity of their material, civil, and social life. And why not? A vigorous and just system of education stimulates, nay, creates intellectual activity and moral power; and these in turn, when rightly directed, are the prime source of progress, prosperity, and of civilization itself. We would like to particularize here. We would like to draw a few parallels between different States and between different cities within the sphere of our knowledge, by way of illustration. But we do not like to be deemed invidious or personal. And, moreover, we have a better object in view. We desire to make it possible for our readers to compare and to generalize for themselves. We wish to

put it in the power of each State to know what every other State has done and is doing in this glorious work of self-elevation. We are anxious that each community and each commonwealth should enjoy the benefit of the experience and the wisdom of every other community and commonwealth, to the end that they may thus help each other, profiting each by the thought and labor of the other.

And we want our nation, too, to know what other nations have accomplished and are accomplishing, that the light of all lands may shine upon us who just begin to be conscious of our influence, our power, and the splendid destiny that awaits us. This journal is ambitious to become the willing organ of such a policy as this. And in the execution of it, we feel that we may challenge the co-operation of all true friends of intelligence and of social and moral progress among the nations; for there can be no selfishness and no partisanship in such a work as this.

We are making arrangements to carry out these suggestions as a part of our plan, by securing correspondents in every State and in foreign lands, wherever education is recognized as the motive power of modern civilization. Is not this object worthy the highest aspirations of an honorable ambition? Is it not worthy of the hour in which we live?

THE FACTS OF THE CASE.

S considerable comment has been made in the newspaper press, not only in this city, but throughout the country, upon the recent case of the child which died suddenly in one of the New York Ward Schools, we have taken some pains to ascertain from a reliable source, the exact facts in reference to the matter. We give these facts to the public in justice to all parties, and with a view to correct the flagrant misrepresentations made by some journals, which have little regard for the truth when a sensation is to be created..

Louisa Snyder was a child nine years of

age, and not four, as has been erroneously stated. She had been sick with the measles, had been absent from school for some time, had recovered, and had again attended school about two months. On the day of her death she went home at noon cheerful and happy as usual, so far as was observed, returned in the afternoon, missed her spelling lesson, and was detained after three o'clock. The invariable rule in this ward, the sixteenth, for years, has been to detain pupils no longer than fifteen minutes after three o'clock.

The teacher of this little girl, a young lady of amiable disposition, sat down by her side to hear her lesson. The child was endeavoring to spell the word Hedge, when her head fell backward as if in a swoon, and she gasped. This occurred at ten minutes past three o'clock. Another teacher was immediately called in, and restoratives applied. Ladies in the vicinity were immediately on the spot, and soon two physicians were in attendance, one of whom was Dr. Rosenmiller, of 112 Eighth Avenue, but before this she was dead. The corpse was taken in a carriage to her home, arriving there at ten minutes before four o'clock.

The coroner's inquest exonerated all persons from blame, and pronounced it a case of syncope. These facts furnish the sole foundation for all the sensation paragraphs that have appeared, as well as for

the illustrations that purport to show "how children are murdered in Gotham."

Nevertheless, we are among those who believe and know that children are sent to school by scores and hundreds too young, and are pressed into the inhuman work of learning book-lessons, when every law of their natures is violated thereby, and common sense itself is defied.

If Cobbett deserves to live in the memory of future ages, it will be more for the important truths which he proclaimed in regard to the education of children, than for any of his other teachings. It was his maxim that the age of ten was early enough to send a child to school, as up to that time the whole care of the parents should be devoted to its physical development. The experience of all who have been engaged in educational pursuits bears out this theory. We have, besides, the fate of infant prodigies to sustain it. They never come to any thing in mature age, either mentally or physically, and in the majority of instances pay for their precocity by premature decay.

The idea of inflicting punishment of any kind upon infants of tender years is as absurd as it is barbarous. Not having arrived at the age of reason, it is not to be expected that it will have any effect upon their minds. One result it may be attended with, and what that is, we have a melancholy example of in the death of this poor child.

THE following eloquent paragraphs we find in a speech made by John Swett, Esq., State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Cal., before the State Teachers' Institute, lately held at San Francisco:

"When I consider the power of the Public Schools, how they have disseminated intelligence in every village, and hamlet, and log-house in the nation-how they are moulding the plastic elements of the

next generation into the symmetry of modern civilization, I can not think that our country is to be included in the long list "Of nations scattered like the chaff

Blown from the threshing-floor of God.' "I hold nothing in common with those faint-hearted patriots who are beginning to despair of the future of our country. The latent powers of the nation are just coming into healthful and energetic action, and, in spite of treason, are moving the Republic