Part 10 (2/2)
The Bible has built all our churches, and colleges, and school-houses; it has built our hospitals and retreats for the insane, the deaf, and the blind; it has built the House of Refuge, the Sailors' Home, and the Home for the Friendless To it we are indebted for our houards of our domestic relations and happiness It is under its broad shi+eld that we lie down in safety, without bolts or bars to protect us It has given us our free constitutions of civil governreat and independent people, whose territory extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific It is the industry, sobriety, and enterprise, which nothing but the Bible could ever inspire and sustain, that have dug our canals, and built our thousand factories, and ”clothed the hills with flocks, and covered over the valleys with corn;” that have laid down our railways and established telegraph lines, bringing the East into the neighborhood of the West, and enabling the North to hold converse with the South The Bible has directly and indirectly done all this for us, and infinitely iven to us sweet homes, and happy families, and systereat and prosperous people--the book which diives to those who obey its precepts a ”hope big with immortality”--let not this book be excluded from the common schools of our country In the name of patriotism, of philanthropy, and of our common Christianity, let me, in behalf of the norant of it, ask that, whatever else be excluded from our schools, there be retained in them this Book of books, the BIBLE
CHAPTER VIII
THE IMPORTANCE OF POPULAR EDUCATION
Education, as thethe mural and intellectual faculties, is, under all circu consideration To rescue radation to which he is doomed unless redeemed by education; to unfold his physical, intellectual, and h destinies which his Creator has prepared for him, can not fail to excite the most ardent sensibility of the philosopher and philanthropist A coh the forest with the enlightened inhabitant of a civilized country would be a brief but impressive representation of the momentous importance of education--_Report of School Commissioners, New York_, 1812
He who has carefully perused the preceding chapters of this work is already aware that we regard the subject of popular education as one of para a chapter to the special consideration of this subject at this ti doubts in relation to it The reader will bear inreference to the _whole man_--the body, the htly directed, its effect, is to make hiive vigor, activity, and beauty; to his intellect, power and thoughtfulness; and to his heart, virtue and felicity
We shall be the better prepared to appreciate the i and instruction if we consider that, in its absence, every individual will be educated by circumstances Let it be borne in mind, then, that all the children in every community will be educated somewhere and somehow; and that it devolves upon citizens and parents to detereneration shall receive their training in the _school-house_ or in the _streets_; and if in the fore of my official duties in this state, I had occasion to visit two counties in 1846 in which there were no organized common schools[30] They were not, however, without places of instruction, for in the shi+re town of each of those counties there were a billiard-roo-alleys I was forcibly i in one of those counties As he was passing along the streets one day, he discovered a second bowling-alley in process of erection He paused, and, surveying it attentively, remarked to those at work upon it as follows: ”You have here another long building going up rapidly; and,” he added, ”_is this the place where our children are to be educated?_” Such keen and well--alleys, with their bars--indispensable appendages--were thronged froht, six days in the week They were, moreover, the very places wheretheir education And ere their teachers? Idlers, tipplers, gamblers, profane persons, Sabbath-breakers Mark well this truth: _as is the teacher, so will be the school_ Those pupils will graduate, it may be, at our poor-houses, at our county jails, or at the state penitentiary These debasing and corrupting appendages of civilization spent not all their influence upon the whitesatire of the chief They were at once working the ruin of the red hbor
[30] Coanized in both of those counties
The rudest nations or individuals can not be said to be wholly without education Even the wildest savage is taught by his superiors not only the bestfood and shelter known to his race, but also thehis eneher, broader, andreference to the whole ht be filled in stating and illustrating the advantages of education We have only space to state and elucidate a few propositions
We remark, then, first, that
EDUCATION DISSIPATES THE EVILS OF IGNORANCE
Ignorance is one principal cause of the want of virtue, and of the immoralities which abound in the world Were we to take a survey of the moral state of the world as delineated in the history of nations, or as depicted by ers and travelers, we should find abundant illustration of the truth of this renorance of the character of the true God, and false conceptions of the nature of the worshi+p and service he requires, have led, not only to the most obscene practices and immoral abominations, but to the perpetration of the norance are not few in nunitude The whole history of the world justifies the statenorant and uncultivated mind is prone to sensuality and cruelty In what countries, let iven to the lowest forardless of the lives and happiness of others?
Is it not in pagan lands, over which moral and intellectual darkness broods, and where men are vile without shaan we pass to Christian countries, we shall find that those in which education is least prevalent are the very ones in which there is the reatest indifference to the sufferings of anis Spain--in which, until recently, there was but one newspaper printed, and in which only about one in thirty five of the people are instructed in schools--has a population about equal to that of England and Wales Popular education in the latter countries, although reatly in advance of what it is in Spain, and there is an equally marked difference in the state of land and Wales the whole nuhteen hundred and twenty-six was _thirteen_, and the nu, etc, with intent to kill, was _fourteen_; while in Spain, the nu the same year was, forwith intent to kill, _seventeen hundred and seventy-three_! or a reater number than in the former countries
Facts like these speak volu influences of popular education, while they show raded condition to which people will sink in countries in which education is neglected
Spain affords an apt illustration of the truth of the statenorant and uncultivated people are prone to sensuality and cruelty Scenes of cruelty and blood constitute the favorite a in bull-fights An eye-witness describes thescenes in the following language ”The intense interest which they feel in this gahout, and often loudly expressed An astounding shout always accompanies a critical er, their joy is excessive; but their greatest syiven to the feats of the BULL! If the picador receives the bull gallantly and forces hieously faces and wounds the bull, they applaud these acts of science and valor; but if the bull overthrow the horse and his rider, or if the ore hiht knows no bounds And it is certainly a fine spectacle to see thousands of spectators rise simultaneously, as they always do when the interest is intense The greatest andhalf so i as this But how barbarous, how brutal is the whole exhibition! Could an English audience witness the scenes that are repeated every week in Madrid, a universal burst of '_sha, and actually treading upon his own entrails while he gallops round the arena Even the appearance of the goaded bull could not be borne, panting, covered ounds and blood, lacerated by darts, and yet brave and resolute to the end
”The spectacle continued two hours and a half, and during that time there were seven bulls killed and six horses When the last bull was dispatched, the people ied out a shouts”--_Spain in 1830_, vol i, p 191
The saht, in which one bull had killed three horses and one man, and remained master of the arena, remarks, that ”this was a time to observe the character of the people
When the unfortunate picador was killed, in place of a general exclamation of horror and loud expressions of pity, the universal cry was 'Que es bravo ese toro! ('Ah, the admirable bull!') The whole scene produced the reater was the shouting, and the more vehement the expressions of satisfaction
I did not perceive a single fehtest sy”--Vol i, p 195
A correct system of public instruction develops a character widely different froht Instead of a love for vicious excitement, it cultivates a taste for siives to its subjects a command over their passions, and a disposition habitually to control them It acquaints thehest pleasure in its discharge They order their pursuits and choose their ee, it is true; but still, a higher, and the controlling ood of the community in which they live In short, their supreme desire is to co-operate with the beneficent Creator in advancing the permanent interests of the whole hu others to obey, all the lahich God has ordained for the govern of his creatures
Education, we said, dissipates the evils of ignorance But in this country we hardly knohat popular ignorance is Theus have derived es from our syste us who can neither read nor write But even such persons insensibly imbibe ideas and moral influences from the more cultivated society about them which, in countries less favored, are denied to es for learning, who have never even entered a school-house, but have grown up aent population, trained by the institutions established by our fathers, have in many instances acquired a mental character and influence which, but for these fortuitous circumstances, they could not have attained The very excellence of our systems of education ininfluence of the schools upon the publiceven those that renorant of letters, do not allow us to see the full extent of our obligation to them This reeneral education are adopted, but perhaps not to so great an extent in any other country as in our own
The evils which flow froh in the case of individuals, although, as we have seen, the disastrous consequences are lient coe nu influence of the educated, acting under the unchastened stimulus of the passions, and excited by the various causes of discontent which are constantly occurring in the progress of human affairs, is not unfrequently productive of scenes, the conte extract fron journal affords a pertinent illustration of the evils which flow froes coary in consequence of the ravages of the cholera in that region