HARMONY OF SECTARIES IN AMERICA. tached; but, in public schools, to attempt the inculcation of sectarian opinions, would be equally injurious to the interests of religion and the cause of universal education. This was attempted by the Church of England, in the enactments contained in Brougham's "Education Bill," and the same principle led the dignitaries of that church to oppose the Lancasterian system of education, and to patronize that of Dr. Bell, in which the peculiar tenets of the Episcopal church were to be exclusively inculcated. That Christians of different denominations may cordially co-operate in the arrangements of education, appears from various existing facts. In the Northern States of America, as already noticed, education is far more general than in this country, and conducted on more rational and enlightened plans; and persons of all denominations in religion co-operate in its superintendence. In the 24th "Annual Report of the Trustees of the Public School Society of New York, for 1829," it is stated, among many other interesting facts, that "The Board of Education consists of members of eight or ten religious denominations, all act ing with entire harmony"—that "they discharge the important duties of their trust, with a single eye to the public good"-and that they received the sanction of "an independent set of examiners, who have repeatedly inspected the schools, and are acquainted with the operations of the Board"-who express in their Report "their full confidence that the literary, moral, and religious instruction, calculated to fit the young for the duties of life, and to prepare them for the happiness of futurity, is properly attended to, and the school monies strictly and most beneficially applied to their legitimate purposes." This board has the superintendence of "21 schools, with 21 principal and 24 assistant teachers, and 6007 children," the expense of which amounted to 62,000 dollars: besides which there were above 450 private, charity, and other schools in the city of New York.-We know, too, that the "British and Foreign School Society" is conducted on similar principles-its Directors consisting of persons belonging to the established church and the various denominations of dissenters; and the same is the case with the institutions for infant education which have been lately established in many of our populous towns. The hand-bill, announcing the objects of the Model Infant School, Glasgow, which was framed by the Rev. Dr. Welsh, then of St. David's church, states, as one of the objects of this institution, that it is "for the reception of children from the age of two to that of six years, with the view of imbuing their minds with the knowledge of religious truths," and that "the 183 plan of communicating religious truths is by the narratives, the precepts, and the plainest announcements of Scripture." In short, the liberal plan now suggested has been adopted in all its extent in the kingdom of Prussia, where a national system of education has been established in which all classes of religionists, whether Protestants or Catholics, have an equal interest, and which, for more than half a century, has been conducted with the greatest regularity and harmony. So that there is no impossibility in persons belonging to different religious persuasions co-operating in the business of education, where there is a sincere desire to promote the improvement of the young, and the best interests of general society. But should it be found impossible to induce the dominant sect in any country to co-ope rate with dissenters in the arrangements of education, perhaps the following might be the most eligible plan of procedure:-Let the government allot a sum adequate to the erection and endowment of all the schools requisite for an enlightened and efficient system of education-let this sum be divided between churchmen and dissenters, in a fair proportion, according to their respective numbers→ and let the application of this sum, and the details respecting the patronage of the schools, the qualifications of teachers, and the mode of instruction, be left to the respective parties, to be arranged as their judgment and circum stances may direct-specifying, however, some of the grand and leading principles on which the schools must be established. A plan of this kind would, indeed, still preserve the invidious distinction between churchmen and dissenters; but it would be infinitely preferable to bestowing the whole patronage and superintendence of education on any one sectary or class of men whatever.-Should government refuse to grant any pecuniary assistance to such an object, dissenters and all others have it in their power, by coming forward, in one grand combination, with voluntary contributions, to accomplish this noble design, independently of aid from any power under heaven; provided they are willing to make some of those small sacrifices formerly suggested. (See page 177.) And if they will not stand forward as bold champions, with their purses in their hands, ready to be delivered up for the support of this good cause, they will declare themselves to be unworthy of the name of Christians, or of lovers of their species, and will deservedly be deprived of all the advantages, in time and eternity, which might result from the accom plishment of this object, to themselves and to their offspring, both in the present and future generations. CHAPTER XIV. Maxims, or First Principles in Education. I. THE idea should go before the word which expresses it-or, in other words, A clear and distinct conception of an object should be impressed upon the mind, before the name or terms which express it be committed to memory. This may be considered as the first and fundamental principle of intellectual instruction; and, if admitted, the following rule should be strictly adhered to in the business of education:-Let no passages of any book be committed to memory before the leading ideas they contain be clearly understood. If this principle were universally introduced into education, it would overturn almost every system of instruction which has hitherto prevailed both in secular and religious tuition. An opposite principle has almost uniformly been acted upon; and hence, catechisms, psalms, hymns, grammar rules, chapters of the Bible, and speeches in the Roman senate, have been prescribed as memorial tasks, before any of the ideas contained in them could be appreciated. We may ask, in the name of all that is wise and rational, Of what use is it to stock and overburden the memories of children with a medley of words to which no correct ideas are attached? Although a child could commit twenty catechisms to memory, or could even repeat the whole of the Old and New Testaments, what purpose would it serve, if he did not enter into the spirit and meaning of the truths therein recorded? I have conversed with an individual who could repeat the whole Bible from beginning to end, and yet was entirely ignorant of the meaning of almost every proposition it contained, and its most interesting truths appeared to have made no impression upon his heart. As in the original formation of language, the objects of nature must first have been observed and known before words or signs were fixed upon to distinguish them; so, in communicating the elements of thought, the objects of thought must first be recognized and described before the terms and epithets which express their natures and qualities be committed to memory. Instead of obtruding a medley of words before they are understood, upon the memories of the young, they should be made to feel a desire for terms to express their ideas; and, in this case, the ideas and the words which express them will afterwards be inseparably con nected. II. In the process of instruction, Nothing (if possible) should be assigned to the young merely as tasks. Every thing prescribed for the exercise of the faculties, should be represented both as a duty and as a pleasure; and if the young understand the nature and objects of their scholastic exercises, and the manner in which they should be prosecuted, they will find a pleasure in endeavouring to surmount every apparent difficulty. I once knew a gentleman, the Rector of a grammar school, who, on his admission to his office, boasted that he would conduct his school without inflicting any corporal punishment-instead of which he prescribed from twenty to sixty or eighty lines of Virgil or Horace, as memorial tasksand, when not accurately repeated, increased their number. But this practice had no other tendency than to excite revengeful feelings, and to produce disgust at the process of learning. III. Every thing that is cheerful and exhilarating to the young should be associated with the business of education. Hence, school-rooms should be spacious, light, and airy-comfortably heated during winter, and erected in delightful and commanding situations. The school-books should be neatly printed, and enlivened with pictures and engravings coloured from nature-amusing and instructive experiments should frequently be exhibited-and the pupils should be occasionally gratified with excursions into interesting parts of the country, to view the beauties of nature and enjoy the bounties of Providence; so that all their scholastic exercises may be connected with delightful associations. IV. In the practice of teaching, the principle of Emulation should be discarded. By a principle of emulation I mean, the exciting of the young to exertion from the hope of reward when they excel their companions in intellectual excellence, or from the fear of punishment or degradation when they fall beneath them in industry and acquirements. Many teachers have asserted that they could not conduct education with any effect without the aid of this principle. But, whatever effect it may have in an intellectual point of view, it almost uniformly produces an injurious effect on the moral temperament of the young, on their companions whom they excel, and on their parents and guardians, who are led to form false estimates of their progress and acquirements by the prizes they MAXIMS IN EDUCATION. 185 V. Corporal punishments should be seldom or never inflicted-and when they are determined upon as the last resort, they should be inflicted with calmness and affection. receive and the places they occupy in their accomplishing the desired object; it is founded respective classes. One grand end of instruc- on injustice, inasmuch as it heaps honours tion, which has been too much overlooked, is and emoluments on those to whom nature has to cultivate and regulate the moral powers- already been most bountiful, and whose ento produce love, affection, concord, humility, joyments are multiplied and increasing in a self-denial, and other Christian graces. But greater ratio than others by the more easy the principle of emulation has a tendency to acquisition of knowledge." "Praise, and inproduce jealousy, envy, ambition, hatred, and vidious comparisons, are only other forms of other malignant passions, and to exhibit intel- the same principle, alike fruitful in envy, lectual acquisitions as of far greater importance pride, scorn, and bitter neglect. In the curiothan moral excellence. Besides, it is only a sity of children, there is a sufficient and a very few in every class that can be stimulated natural stimulant of the appetite for knowto exertion by this principle, and these few are ledge, and we live in a world abounding in generally of such a temperament as to require the means of useful and pleasurable gratificatheir ambitious dispositions to be restrained tions. All that is required of preceptors is to rather than excited. In the "American An- aid the development of the faculties with afnals of Education," for January, 1833, there fection and judgment." A certificate of diliis an excellent paper on this subject by Miss gence and good conduct seems to be all that C. E. Beecher, of Newport, Rhode Island, a is necessary to distinguish from the vicious, lady well known as an efficient teacher. the idle, and slothful, those who have employed After enumerating the evils which uniformly their time and talents in a proper manner. flow from the principle of emulation, she states the following motives, as those which she has found "not only equal, but much more efficient, in reference to all the objects to be gained in education:"-1. Personal influen ce-endeavouring to gain the esteem, the affection, and the confidence of the pupils," &c. In this connection she justly remarks, "that commendation for improvement needs to be practised much more frequently than reproof for deficiency. 2. By habitual appeals to the Bible as the rule of rectitude, and to conscience as the judge. 3. By cultivating a love of knowledge for its own sake, that is, for the pleasure it imparts; and also for the sake of the increased good it will enable us to do for our fellow-beings. 4. By efforts to form a correct public sentiment in school, so that it shall be unpopular to do wrong. 5. By appeals to parental influence, and that of other friends. This is accomplished by transmitting frequent accounts both of deficiency and improvement to the friends of the pupils. 6. By cultivating in the pupils a sense of obligation to God, of his constant inspection, and of his interest in all their concerns." These principies, (which are more particularly explained and amplified in the paper referred to,) she adds, "I have chiefly depended upon during the last three or four years my experience as a teacher. Every year has added to my conviction of their efficacy, and every year has increased my satisfaction that the principle of emulation has been banished with no consequent evil, and much increase of good." of Mr. Morgan, in his late "Address to the Proprietors of the University of London," expresses sentiments in accordance with the above. Speaking on the subject of prizes, he says, "A prize is the least effectual mode of 24 There is something revolting and degrading in corporal punishments, and the necessity of resorting to them generally indicates, that there had been a want of proper training in the earlier stages of life. It is vain to imagine, that children can be whipped either into learning or religion; and, if an enlightened and judicious mode of tuition were universally adopted, there would seldom be any necessity for resorting to such a stimulus. But in the modes of teaching which have most generally prevailed, corporal punishments are almost indispensable. In the German "Pedagogic Magazine," for 1833, we are told that "there died lately in Swabia, a schoolmaster, who, for 51 years, had superintended an institution with old-fashioned severity. From an average inferred from recorded observations, one of the ushers calculated, that, in the course of his exertions, he had given 911,500 canings, 124,000 floggings, 209,000 custodes, 136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, and 22,700 tasks to get by heart. It was farther calculated, that he had made 700 boys stand on peas, 600 kneel on a sharp edge of wood, 5000 wear the fool's cap, and 1708 hold the rod,"-amounting in all to 1,421,208 punishments, which, allowing five days for every week, would average above a hundred punishments every day. There is something extremely revolting in the idea of such a series of punishments being connected with learning; and we may justly infer, that, however much classical learning may have been advanced, very little useful knowledge or moral principle was communicated in that seminary. For, a system of moral and intellectual inQ 2 (185) struction, calculated to allure the minds of the young, is altogether incompatible with such Gothic rudeness and severity.* VI. Children should not be long confined in School-and never longer than they are actively employed in it.-A school ought never to serve the purpose of a prison. If the junior classes are incapable of preparing their lessons by themselves, they should either be provided with some amusing toys or picture books, or be turned out to romp about in the open air, or under a covered shed in rainy weather, and called in when their lessons are to be explained. VII. Young people should always be treated as rational creatures, and their opinions occasionally solicited as to certain points and scholastic arrangements. The reasons of the treatment they receive, and of the exercises prescribed, in so far as they are able to appreciate them, should occasionally be stated, and explained and illustrated. VIII. Reproofs should always be tendered with the utmost calmness and mildness.When they are uttered in passion, and with looks of fury, they seldom produce any good effect, and not unfrequently excite a spirit of revenge against the reprover. IX. One great object of education should be to fix the attention on the subjects we wish to explain and elucidate.-On the proper exercise of the faculty of attention depends almost all our improvement in knowledge and virtue. Even the senses are improved by the exercise of this faculty. Hence the peculiar delicacy of touch observable in the blind, and the quick-sightedness of the deaf; hence the distinct perception of distant objects acquired by sailors, and of delicate and minute objects by watchmakers and jewellers,-in all which cases the attention has been specially directed to particular objects. It was by fixing his attention on the subject, or "continually thinking about it,” that Newton, as he himself declared, discovered the laws of the planetary motions, and was enabled to unfold the true system of the world. Hence the propriety of presenting sensible objects to the view of children-of exhibiting before them interesting experiments, and of having their books adorned with lively and accurate engravings. Hence too the propriety of teaching them to notice every object within the reach of their vision, and to mark every minute change that takes in the form, colour, and situation, of the objects around them, and to give an account of what they may have seen or heard in any of their excursions: all which circumstances have a tendency to induce a habit of attention, without which there can be no solid improvement in any department of instruction. 1 CHAPTER XV. Mechanics' Institutions. Os these institutions I intended to offer a few particular remarks, and to suggest some arrangements by which they might be rendered more extensively useful than they have hitherto been, both in a moral and intellectual point of view, but as this volume has already swelled to a considerable size, I shall confine myself to a very few general observations. It is now more than twenty years since I had an opportunity of suggesting the establishment of such institutions, under the designation of "Literary and Philosophical Societies, adapted to the middling and lower ranks of the community." The details in relation to this subject, consisting of a series of five successive papers, were published in the London "Monthly Magazine" for the *Corporal punishments have generally a hardening effect on the minds both of young and old. A blacksmith brought up his son, to whom he was very severe, to his own trade. The urchin was, nevertheless, an audacious dog. One day the old vulcan was attempting to harden a cold chisel which he had made of foreign steel, but could not succeed. "Horsewhip it, father," exclaimed the youth, "if that will not harden it, nothing will." year 1814-more than eight years before any mechanics' institutions were organized in this country. Although these papers have seldom been referred to, in the history of mechanics' institutions, yet the author is aware that they were the means of suggesting, to certain individuals, the idea of establishing such societies; and, not above a year or two after their publication, a society was organized in the vicinity of London, on the plan and principles suggested in these papers, of which the author was elected an honorary member. Instead of inserting, in this place, the substance of these papers, as was originally intended, I shall merely give a short sketch of their contents. In the first communication, after a few in + See "Monthly Magazine," vol. xxxvii. fo April and July, 1814, pp. 219, 507, and volume xxxviii. for August and September, 1814, pp. 23, 121, and for January, 1815. p. 503. These commu nications occupy more than 22 closely printed columns, and contain several minute details in relation to what should be the leading objects of such institutions, and the means by which they might be established. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES. troductory observations in reference to existing associations, and other particulars connected with the dissemination of knowledge, the following, among many other advantages, were pointed out as likely to flow from the extensive establishment of such institutions: -1. They would serve to unite and concentrate the scattered rays of genius, which might otherwise be dissipated, and enable them to act with combined vigour and energy in the discovery and the propagation of useful knowledge. 2. They would tend to promote the rapid advancement of general science; for if the labours of those societies which already exist have produced a powerful effect on the progress of science, much more might be expected were their number increased to eighty or a hundred fold. 3. They would have a tendency to produce an extensive diffusion of rational information among the general mass of society, particularly among those in the inferior walks of life, by which the narrow conceptions, superstitious notions, and vain fears, which so generally prevail, might be gradually removed, and a variety of useful hints and rational views suggested, which would tend to elevate and ennoble the mind, and promote domestic convenience and comfort. 4. They would induce a taste for intellectual pleasures and rational enjoyment, in which those hours generally spent in listlessness, foolish amusements, and the pursuits of dissipation, might be profitably employed, and, consequently, the sum of general happiness augmented. 5. If properly conducted, they could not fail of producing a benign influence on the state of morals and of general society. As vice is the natural offspring of ignorance, so true virtue can only flow from elevated and enlightened principles; and where such principles exist, their operation, in a greater or less degree, will always appear. The habits of order, punctuality, and politeness, which would prevail in such associations, would naturally be carried into the other departments of life, and produce their corresponding effects. The frequent intercourse of men of different parties and professions, associated for the purpose of promoting one common object, would gradually vanquish those mutual prejudices and jealousies which too frequently exist even in cultivated minds, and a liberal, candid, and humane spirit, would be cherished and promoted. Society would thus acquire a new polish, and wear a different aspect from what it now exhibits in the inferior ranks of life; more especially, if the means now suggested be combined with the operation of Christian principles. The other communications illustrated the arrangements and regulations requisite in the operation of such institutions, particularly in relation to the following circumstances. 187 I. The Admission of Members.-In regard to this circumstance, the two following extremes should be guarded against-the indiscriminate admission of all who may wish to become members, whatever may be their literary or moral characters-and the giving an undue preference to certain individuals on account of their rank, who have not a corresponding share of common sense and literary acquirements. In a literary society, the distinctions of rank ought to be, in a great measure, if not altogether, overlooked; while, at the same time, the utmost decorum and politeness ought always to prevail. It is now high time that human characters were estimated according to their real and intrinsic worth, independent of those external and adventitious circumstances with which they may be accompanied; and it will be highly becoming in rational associations to set an example of estimating the characters of men on principles purely of a moral and intellectual nature. Although money is a useful article in all societies, yet it would be inexpedient to solicit any individuals, not otherwise qualified to become members, chiefly with a view of their contributing to the pecuniary interests of the association. Such persons would not only be a dead weight upon the society, but, by the undue influence they would have, might tend to impede its progress, and prevent its chief design from being accomplished. Besides their literary acquirements, the moral qualifications of those who desire admission, ought not to be altogether overlooked. Knowledge is chiefly desirable in proportion as it is useful. If it does not lead its possessor to propriety of moral conduct, its utility, at least to him, may be much questioned. In all rational institutions, the melioration of the moral characters and dispositions of mankind ought to form as prominent an object as the illumination of their understandings. II. The Subjects of Discussion, and the mode of conducting it.-Every subject which has a tendency to induce a habit of rational thinking, to elevate and ennoble the mind, and to present sublime and interesting objects of contemplation-every subject which tends to unfold the wise arrangements of nature, and the laws by which the economy of the universe is regulated, which displays the attributes of the Divinity, and leads the mind upwards "from Nature to Nature's God ;”— every subject which tends to promote the progress of science, the advancement of the liberal and mechanical arts, and the moral improvement of mankind, might occasionally become topics of discussion in a society constituted on the principles to which I have alluded. These subjects would embrace the prominent parts of natural history, geography, astronomy, |