INTRODUCTION CONTENTS. II. Present State of Common Schools.—1. Schoolhouses. III. Same Subject continued. —4. Intellectual Instruction. IV. How can Common Schools be improved ?-1. Discussion. 2. Female Teachers. 3. Union or High Schools. V. The Improvement of Common Schools (continued). Or- INTRODUCTION. "Were the benefits of civilization to be partial, not universal, it would be only a bitter mockery and cruel injustice."-DUCHATEL. A LATE writer (Lamartine) has spoken of the cross and the press as the instruments of the two greatest movements ever made in behalf of human civilization. To these may be added two other agents of mighty power: the steamengine and the common school. The moral nature of man can be permanently raised and transformed by nothing short of the benignant influence of Christianity. His intellectual powers can be duly developed and wisely applied only under the guidance of knowledge; and of knowledge the press is now the grand expositor and representative. To promote his physical well-being, we need industry; and of that industry which subdues the earth, vanquishes time and space, and makes all things tributary to man's convenience, the steam-engine is unquestionably the most proper symbol. It is worthy of remark, that as each of these great powers is necessary to the improvement of mankind, so each of them becomes more efficient in proportion as it co-operates with the rest. Christianity needs the press, the press needs the steam-engine; and these, in their turn, are safe and beneficent agents only when they who wield them are animated and controlled by Christian principle. It is still more to our purpose, however, to observe, that no one of them can exert its appropriate influence, or dispense its proper benefits without the aid of the school. Minds, for instance, besotted by ignorance and unaccustomed to thought, A can hardly be reached by the more lofty and spiritual appeals which are sent forth from the cross of Christ. The press must speak in vain to those who cannot read, or who, to the mechanical art of interpreting its mysterious symbols, have never added habits of inquiry, or a desire for knowl edge. And even industry, although it always brings some blessings to those whom it employs, can still do comparatively little for men who alienate their higher natures when they labour, or who waste its fruits in sensual indulgence, or in mental vacancy. It is only in proportion as minds are awakened by early education, that they can share in the fruits of an improved civilization. To shut them out from the school, is to deny them access to a large proportion of the best and noblest influences, which are supplied by Christianity, and by science and the arts. But if the school is an essential agent of civilization, it is the Common School, that forms the appropriate agent of modern and democratic civilization-of that civilization which aims at the greatest good of the greatest number. As this end is peculiar to the social movements of modern times, so is the instrument which it employs. Schools have always been found in the train of civilization, as the only means by which her blessings could be preserved and perpetuated; but the idea of schools which should secure to every human being, by improving his mind, a substantial share in the triumphs of Learning, Liberty, and Religion, this, it is believed, was an idea unknown to the wisest of ancient sages and states. They wrote and speculated much about education; but it was an education denied to more than four fifths of the people, who, being barbarians, were born, according to Aristotle, to be slaves, and who, as slaves, were denied all spiritual as well as civil rights. It was an education, too, by which the citizen was to be moulded for the exclusive service of the commonwealth, rather than one which was to unfold in due proportion all his powers, and prepare him for a course of free and generous self-culture. In the Middle Ages, when education was dispensed in monastic establishments, and enjoyed, for the most part, only by the clergy, we are not to wonder that the people were in ignorance. Even after the revival of letters, and when the art of Printing had awakened the slumbering intellect of Europe, little progress was made in popular education until the Bible had been translated into living languages, and the privilege of reading it had come to be reckoned as one of the most precious, among the rights of the Christian and the man. The rule which was then extensively adopted in the Continental churches, of admitting no one to his first communion who could not read the Scriptures, coupled with another rule, which made this first communion necessary in order to qualify him for marriage or any civil employment-these regulations naturally served to make a certain degree of instruction universal throughout the north of Europe. The same religious and enlightened spirit presided over the legislation of the early settlers of New-England. Both in Massachusetts and Connecticut, it was ordained by law, almost immediately after their settlement,* that the selectmen of the towns should see that "every parent or master instructed the young members of his family (whether children, apprentices, or servants) in so much learning as would enable them perfectly to read the English tongue and have a knowledge of the capital laws; that once a week he should catechise them in the grounds and principles of religion; and that every young person should be carefully bred and brought up to some honest, lawful calling, labour, or employment." It will be observed that these regulations are, in * In Massachusetts in 1642, in Connecticut in 1650. |