AMERICAN

must be instilled into the the potent agency of its scl The strength of every

FEBRUARY, 1864.

its sons and daughters. It object of primary importan ments of stability should

UNITY.

HE most effective way of preserv

"THE

to

ing a State," says Aristotle, "is to bring up its citizens in the spirit of the government; to fashion, and, as it were, 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.

Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain,

Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant, while they rend the chain. These constitute a State."

A nation, then, is the aggregate of the individuals that compose it. The character of the individual is determined by the influences which are brought to bear upon him in early life-in childhood. The character of a nation is in like manner dependent mainly upon the training which its individual citizens receive. Whatever of intelligence, virtue, wisdom, knowledge, patriotism, heroism you would have reflected in the life of the man, you must provide for in and through the education of the boy. Whatever of these manly

vidual, self-preservation is

nature. Hence, the relati

tional education and nation is but another name for na -are at once obvious.

But what is national ed totle has answered this que the Prussians. It is not th favored few by individual o but it is rather the lifting by the united moral and ma the whole. National educa cation through which the breathes. It is not restrict row confines of State influ boundaries; and hence, it erate in the minds of the pe ble absurdity that a part is whole, or that the rights of amount to those of the nati is an education which seek its citizens in the spirit of t to fashion, and, as it were, 1 the mould of the Constituti

It is manifest that to rea the nation itself must be sense of its great duty. It its appropriate agencies and sphere, address itself more ever has done to the migh elevation. That this will can be little doubt. In wh be done these columns will

time, venture to suggest. this subject receive the car tion of the thoughtful, the patriotic everywhere.

A DEARTH-ITS CAUSEST is not of food, not of

the fatness thereof? It is not of raiit, not of the wherewithal shall we be hed; for is not this the age of shoes shoddy? It is not of lucre, not of the t of all evil; for are not greenbacks ving into the purses of our people in nteous profusion? It is not of soldiers; are not the ranks of our war-scarred erans filling up to the point of repletion? No; the dearth is of another sort. The nine is in another field. The cry of want mes up from a different direction. The rvest truly is great and ripe, but the borers are few.

From nearly every part of the country ere is an urgent demand for teachers who e "able masters, and worthy of the high ocation of instructing the people." Never ithin the limits of our observation, peraps never in the history of the country, was this demand so palpable and so pressg. Multitudes of our schools are seriously mbarrassed from this cause. Nor is the ifficulty confined to any particular class. nstitutions 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

51

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 dif ferent 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 Sta what every other State has don ing in this glorious work of se We are anxious that each com each commonwealth should en efit of the experience and the every other community and wealth, to the end that they m each other, profiting each by and labor of the other.

And we want our nation, t what other nations have accom are accomplishing, that the lands may shine upon us who j be conscious of our influence, and the splendid destiny that This journal is ambitious to willing organ of such a policy as in the execution of it, we feel t challenge the co-operation friends of intelligence and of moral progress among the there can be no selfishness an sanship in such a work as this.

We are making arrangemen out these suggestions as a part by securing correspondents in and in foreign lands, wherever recognized as the motive power civilization. Is not this object highest aspirations of an hono tion? Is it not worthy of t which we live?

, and not four, as has been erroneously ced. She had been sick with the meas, had been absent from school for some e, had recovered, and had again ataded school about two months. On the y of her death she went home at noon eerful and happy as usual, so far as was served, returned in the afternoon, missed er spelling lesson, and was detained after ree o'clock. The invariable rule in this ard, the sixteenth, for years, has been to etain pupils no longer than fifteen minutes fter three o'clock.

The teacher of this little girl, a young ady of amiable disposition, sat down by her side to hear her lesson. The child was endeavoring to spell the word Hedge, when mer 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

53

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

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

onward and upward to a higher standpoint of liberty. What though it comes to us amid the storm of battle and the shock of contending armies!

'Not as we hoped-but what are we!

Above our feeble arms and plans,
God lays with mightier hands than man's
The corner-stones of Liberty.'

"The Anglo-Saxon race, even in its ruder years, always possessed an inherent power of independence and self-government. Tell me not that now, when this stubborn vitality and surplus energy, expended so long in overrunning the world, are guided by intelligence and refined by Christianity, this same race is to be stricken with the palsy, because of a two years' war.

"The two millions of boys now in the Public Schools constitute a great Union League,' electrified by intelligence, cemented by the ties of one blood, one language, one course of instruction-strong in its power to perpetuate the Union as the great 'Union League' which the citizens of the nation are now organizing for its defence. Long before the completion of the Pacific Railroad, these new recruits, drilled in the Public Schools, will push their way across the continent, as the Saxons sent out from their northern hives, a vast army of occupation, cultivating the National Homestead,' and fortifying the whole line of communication by a cordon of school-houses that shall hold it forever as the heritage of free labor, free men, and a free nation. 'So shall the Northern pioneer go joyful on his

way,

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's

Bay,

To make the rugged places smooth, to sow the vales with grain,

And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his train;

The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,

And mountain unto mountain call, PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE!'"

PHONETIO LAUGHTER-In Prof. WATSON's admirable work, just issued from the press, entitled the "Hand-book of Calisthenics and Gymnastics," under the head of "Vocal Gymnastics," he thoroughly analyzes Laughter, virtually reducing it to one of the fine arts. Teachers and parents who have a practical knowledge of the elemen

tary sounds of the English la make this an unfailing source amusement in the school and He says:

"LAUGHTER, by the aid of easily taught, as an art. It most interesting and healthy exercises. It may be either piratory. There are thirtyfined varieties of laughter in language, eighteen of which a

in connection with the tonics

the subtonics of l, m, n, ng, r, and five, with the atonics of f sh. Commencing with vocal instructor will first utter a tom prefixing the oral element of h panied by the class, he will syllable continuously, subject interruptions that are incident tions and bursts of laughter; ha, ha, hã, &c.,—ă, hă, hă, The attention of the students v to the most agreeable kinds and they will be taught to p= and easily from one variety to

THE New Jersey State Teach tion held its Eleventh Annua New Brunswick, on the 28th 30th of December.

This meeting was one of and most spirited ever held i Among the subjects discussed True Objects of Education;" parative Merits of Male and Fe ers in the various departments mon Schools;" "The Influence of Natural History upon Intel cation;" "The Teacher's Wo Relations of our Common Sch Perpetuity of the Government tion, a Growth; and National I

Reports of committees were on the course of study best su Common Schools; and on the formed by the teachers of the suppression of the Great Rebell

From the above, it will be se teachers of New Jersey are de vital and practical questions, the of which can not fail to contri onward progress of Popular The debates were characterize