Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

are absolutely essential to a symmetrical character, which are in greatest danger of being annihilated, and by which alone the idiosyncrasy can be made available. For the parent to surrender the right to corporal punishment to another is as disgraceful, as for the civil authorities to permit individuals in private brawls to settle their own differences. Between the parent and child an identity exists, which it is the duty of the parent to remember. An indignity inflicted on the child should be regarded by the parent as personal. The inviolability of the person cannot be too highly valued, since on it depends to an inestimable degree the intellectual and moral progress of the man. To it also he is indebted for the consideration and esteem of society and his fellows. Corporal punishment is the inviolable possession of parents and governments, nor can it be invaded with impunity.

Under the topic of Inequality of the Means of Education, we find that the average of money appropriated to each child in the State, between the ages of four and sixteen, has been 2.7T dollars. Some towns compared with others have appropriated as seven to one. Five towns appropriated more than five dollars to each scholar, and eleven more than four dollars, while one hundred and thirty-nine towns appropriated but one dollar.

Coupled with the observations under this head we find the following remark.

"As a general fact, the great work of enlightening the intellect, and cultivating the manners and morals of the rising generation, is going forward most rapidly and successfully in those towns, whose appropriations are most generous; while, on the other hand, a non-compliance with the requisitions of the law in employing unapproved teachers, &c., have most commonly been found in those towns, whose appropriations look rather to the question, how little money will suffice to escape from penalty or forfeiture, than how much, through the alchemy of this institution, can be transmuted into knowledge and wisdom and virtue."

The Report closes with an argument, showing the effect of education upon the worldly fortunes or estates of men. In the course of this argument testimony is brought from high authority in mercantile and manufacturing life, to prove that the more intelligent the laborer, the more certain are his means of procuring a comfortable support, and of rendering himself valued

and respected. In further prosecuting the subject the following valuable remarks occur.

"Now it is easy to show from reasoning, from history, and from experience, that an early awakening of the mind is the prerequisite to success in the useful arts. It must be an awakening not to feeling merely, but to thought. In the first place, a clearness of perception must be acquired, or the power of taking a correct mental transcript, copy, or image of whatever is seen. This, however, though indispensable, is by no means sufficient. It may answer for mere automatic movements, for the servile copying of the productions of others. . . . But the talent of improving upon the labors of others requires, not only the capability of receiving an exact mental copy, or imprint of all the objects of sense or reasoning, it also requires the power of reviving, or reproducing at will, all the impressions or ideas before obtained, and also the power of changing their collocations, of re-arranging them into new forms, and of adding something to, or removing something from the original perceptions, in order to make a more perfect plan or model. . . . An awakened mind will see and seize the critical juncture; the perceptions of a sluggish one will come too late, if they come at all. A general culture of the faculties gives versatility of talent, so that if the customary business of the laborer is superseded by improvements, he can readily betake himself to another kind of employment; but an uncultivated mind is like an automaton, which can do only the one thing for which its wheels or springs were made."

In concluding our notice of this Report, we cannot refrain from reminding the friends of education, that however well this system now works, and however much of good it may promise, it is still incomplete as an educational system, so long as it remains theoretic. Education will never do its whole work for man, until it combines theory and practice. Literature, we have said, is but an aid in acquiring knowledge, as knowledge is but an aid in discovering truth. To render knowledge available in the discovery of truth, the exercise of the physical organs is no less essential than the culture of the mental faculties. To this, literature is auxiliary; to that, practice in the use of tools, and actual observation and discrimination in converting material substances into use, are auxiliaries. Knowledge nourishes the mind and prepares it for the discovery of truth; exercise invigorates the body, strengthens it for the

endurance of mental labor, and imprints more deeply on it sensible impressions. Truth, the vital principle of mind, is only to be obtained by the conjoined energy of mind and body. Whatever in practice or theory will unfold truth, or give action to the mind, is a part of education; and so far as literature is instrumental in this, it is valuable.

[ocr errors]

Indeed literature to a certain extent is indispensable. To acquire knowledge by whatever means, and the more systematic the better, is the business of the pupil; to discover truth, the business of the master. All educational systems, which do not tend, by the training of every faculty of mind and body at an early period of life, to make masters of men, not all of one description or occupation, but masters according to talent and capacity, are imperfect. The legitimate tendency of education is to bring men to a level, not to reduce to a low grade true worth, but by bringing out latent energy to elevate the low. The consequence of this will be to throw open, to the use of all, those secrets by which a few have arrived at distinction.

Hence the nobility of occupation will be more clearly perceptible, since in some of its forms all must resort to it for a livelihood, contentment, and happiness.

Hence too we perceive, that the present common-school system being as yet imperfect is transient, and must give place by modification or revolution to something more in conformity to the wants of man and society. Activity of mind is its most hopeful state, and the more rapid the changes, so that they be not feverish and fitful, the more certain are the indications of progress. Of revolution, with the present efficient officers of the Board, and the present vigilant Secretary, by whom, through its well disciplined district committees and teachers, as through a vital system, every pulsation throughout its entire corporeity is felt, noted, sympathetically heeded, and frankly laid before the public, there is no danger. That all salutary modification will be carefully engrafted upon the system, which will perfect its operation, may be confidently relied upon. The old is constantly giving place to the new or better, and ere long we shall see the work of education, by a due simultaneous cultivation of the physical and mental powers, by a copartnership of the schoolroom and the workshop, the laboratory, and the kitchen, performing for mankind its high and legitimate office.

The Board has upon it weighty responsibilities and arduous

labors, not the least of which are to be found in exciting the attention of parents generally in the public school, of enlightening their minds on the subject of education, so that they will neither shun book-knowledge, lest it should unfit the child for ordinary occupations, nor estimate it by a standard, which will make it the all-engrossing good, to the exclusion of all practical experience; and in imposing such duties upon the Town committees, as will secure districts from the evils of incompetent, indolent, or self-interested Prudential committee men.

Hitherto the branch of the labors of the Board, connected with the Normal Schools, has been least of all satisfactory.

a

The public will expect from the Board an impartial opinion of the operation of the Normal School system in their next annual Report. The system has now been a sufficiently long time at work, to give proof of its energy and vitality. The State has been liberal in its grants of money, and patient in its attendance on the experiment. If it appears to the Board, that schools are now supplied with better teachers, that the standard of qualification is more elevated, and that the teachers coming from these institutions meet with greater success, success creating for them a constant and an exhausting demand, it will be expected of them that they lay the facts before the public. If, on the contrary, it appears that the institutions, instead of supporting themselves, require an annual grant to bolster their languishing and feeble existence; if it appears that many of those, who flock there with the professed desire to become teachers, do so under the blind impulse of a popular enthusiasm, or with the hope of thus escaping the severer requisitions of a more laborious calling, and gifted with little of ability and less of stability, at the close of the course relinquish their original design; if it appears by the unerring test of utility, selfsupport, that the system will require ample endowments at regular intervals, in order to its continuance; then it will be fatally hazardous to the Board and its high aims, not to speak out frankly, and condemn with undisguised impartiality. Can there not be issued a diploma, which shall be awarded to such as, having been thoroughly tried under a rigid system of practice, are found to be well qualified, and which shall be withheld from all others? To this there may be some objections; but in any event the sole alternative to the stigma of empiricism, and the fate of the impostor, is to be found in adopting some measures, by which the public can confidently

depend on obtaining what is wanted, and what is recommended, when an application is made to the Normal Schools for a good teacher. It is thus only that the schools can acquire such a character, as shall render their continuance desirable.

E. P. H.

WRITINGS OF REV. WILLIAM BRADFORD HOMER, WITH A MEMOIR BY PROFESSOR PARK.

A VOLUME has lately been published, containing Literary Addresses, and fourteen Pulpit Discourses, besides Abstracts and Notes on the classics, the work of quite a remarkable young clergyman, whose great promise was suddenly blighted by an early death. The Memoir prefixed to the volume by Professor Park presents a very full and interesting account of Mr. Homer's brief course. It is written in a good style, in the warm tone of affectionate friendship, and yet free from all extravagant and indiscriminate eulogy. We like particularly the absence from it, as well as from the writings of the subject of the Memoir, of all cant. It is serious, and at the same time lively. It is full of religion, and yet avoids the set phrases in which it has been usual to talk and write about religion. It gives a very engaging picture of a young man of no ordinary powers of mind, who had made very considerable attainments in literature, who inspired an unusual degree of enthusiasm during his brief ministry, and who died amidst the regrets of numerous warm friends. 'The volume is an offering laid upon his tomb, and is a memorial of his genius, refinement, purity, devotedness, sanctity. It adds another to the many affecting instances, which the world has had, of genius consuming itself in the blaze of its own intense flame; of a mind too fervid and too active for the body, within which it burns and struggles.

"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

« НазадПродовжити »