education in this wise: "And, pray, what do you propose to rear your
youth for? Are you going to train them for statesmen? No. (A laugh.) The
honorable gentleman laughs at the notion, and so would I. But you are
going to fit them to be--what? Why, cotton-spinners and pin-makers, or,
if you like, blacksmiths, mere day laborers. These are the men whom you
are to teach foreign languages, mathematics, and the notation of music.
(Hear, hear.) Was there ever anything more absurd? It really seems as if
God had withdrawn common sense from this house." Now, what does this
language of Mr. Drummond mean? Does he not intend to say that it is
unwise to educate that class of society from which cotton-spinners,
pin-makers, blacksmiths, mere day laborers, are taken? Is it not his
opinion that the business of pin-making is to be perpetuated in some
families and classes, and the business of statesmanship is to be
perpetuated in others? And, if so, does he not believe that the best
condition of society is that which presents divisions based upon the
factitious distinctions of birth and fortune? Most certainly these
questions indicate his opinions, as they indicate the opinions of those
who cheered him, and as they also indicate the opinions of a few in this
country, who, through ignorance, false education, prejudice, or sympathy
with castes and races, fear to educate the laborer, lest he may forsake
his calling. With us these fears are infrequent, but they ought not to
exist at all. The question in a public sense is not, "From what family
or class shall the pin-maker or the statesman be taken?" There is no
question at all to be answered. Educate the whole people. Education will
develop every variety of talent, taste, and power. These qualities,
under the guidance of the necessities of life and the public judgment,
will direct each man to his proper place. If the son of a cotton-spinner
become a statesman, it is because statesmanship needs him, and he has
some power answering to its wants. And if Mr. Drummond's son become a
cotton-spinner, it is because that is his right place, and the world
will be the better and the richer that Mr. Drummond's son is a
cotton-spinner, and that he is a learned man too; but, if Mr. Drummond's
son occupy the place of a statesman because he is Mr. Drummond's son,
though he be no statesman at all himself, then the world is all the
worse for the mistake, and poor compensation is it that Mr. Drummond's
son is a learned man in something that he is never called to put in
practice.
When it is said that the statesmen, or those engaged in the business of
government, shall come from one-tenth of the population, is not the
state, according to the doctrine of chances, deprived of nine-tenths of
its governing force? And may not the same suggestion be made of every
other branch of business?
But I pass now to the last leading thought, and soon to the conclusion
of my address. The great contribution of learning to the laborer is its
power, under the lead of Christianity, to break down the unnatural
distinctions of society, and to render labor of every sort, among all
classes, acceptable and honorable. Ignorance is the degradation of
labor, and when laborers, as a class, are ignorant, their vocation is
necessarily shunned by some; and, being shunned by some, it is likely to
be despised by others. Wherever the laboring population is in a
condition of positive, or, by a broad distinction, of comparative
ignorance, society will always divide itself into two, and oftentimes
into three classes. We shall find the dominant class, the servient
class, and then, generally, the despised class; the dominant class,
comparatively intelligent, possessing the property, administering the
government, giving to social life its laws, and enjoying the fruits of
labor which they do not perform; the servient class, unwittingly in a
state of slavery, whether nominally bond or free, having little besides
physical force to promote their own comfort or to contribute to the
general prosperity, and furnishing security in their degradation for a
final submission to whatever may be required of them; and last, a
despised class, too poor to live without labor, and too proud to live by
labor, assuming a position not accorded to them, and finally yielding to
a social and political ostracism even more degrading, to a sensitive
mind, than the servient condition they with so much effort seek to shun.
All this is the fruit of ignorance; all this may be removed by general
learning. If all men are learned, the work of the world will be
performed by learned men; and why, under such circumstances, should not
every vocation that is honest be equally honorable? But if this, in a
broad view, seem utopian, can we not agree that learning is the only
means by which a poor man can escape from his poverty? And, if it
furnish certain means of escape for one man, will it not furnish equally
certain means of escape for many? And if so, is not learning a general
remedy for the inequalities among men?
EDUCATION AND CRIME.
[Extract from the Twenty-First Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Massachusetts Board of Education.]
The public schools, in their relations to the morals of the pupils and
to the morality of the community, are attracting a large share of
attention. In some sections of the country the system is boldly
denounced on account of its immoral tendencies. In states where free
schools exist there are persons who doubt their utility; and
occasionally partisan or religious leaders appear who deny the existence
of any public duty in regard to education, or who assert and maintain
the doctrine that free schools are a common danger. As the people of
this commonwealth are not followers of these prophets of evil, nor
believers in their predictions, there is but slight reason for
discussion among us. It is not probable that a large number of the
citizens of Massachusetts entertain doubts of the power and value of our
institutions of learning, of every grade, to resist evil and promote
virtue, through the influence they exert. But, as there is nothing in
our free-school system that shrinks from light, or investigation even,
I have selected from the annual reports everything which they contain
touching the morality of the institution. In so doing, I have had two
objects in view. First, to direct attention to the errors and wrongs
that exist; and, secondly, to state the opinion, and enforce it as I may
be able, that the admitted evils found in the schools are the evils of
domestic, social, municipal, and general life, which are sometimes
chastened, mitigated, or removed, but never produced, nor even
cherished, by our system of public instruction. In the extracts from the
school committees' reports there are passages which imply some doubt of
the moral value of the system; but it is our duty to bear in mind that
these reports were prepared and presented for the praiseworthy purpose
of arousing an interest in the removal of the evils that are pointed
out. The writers are contemplating the importance of making the schools
a better means of moral and intellectual culture; but there is no reason
to suppose that in any case a comparison is instituted, even mentally,
between the state of society as it appears at present and the condition
that would follow the abandonment of our system of public instruction.
There are general complaints that the manners of children and youth have
changed within thirty or fifty years; that age and station do not
command the respect which was formerly manifested, and that some
license in morals has followed this license in manners.
The change in manners cannot be denied; but the alleged change in morals
is not sustained by a great amount of positive evidence. The customs of
former generations were such that children often manifested in their
exterior deportment a deference which they did not feel, while at
present there may be more real respect for station, and deference for
age and virtue, than are exhibited in juvenile life. In this
explanation, if it be true, there is matter for serious thought; but I
should not deem it wise to encourage a mere outward show of the social
virtues, which have no springs of life in the affections.
And, notwithstanding the tone of the reports to which I have called
attention, and notwithstanding my firm conviction that many moral
defects are found in the schools, I am yet confident that their moral
progress is appreciable and considerable.
In the first place, teachers, as a class, have a higher idea of their
professional duties, in respect to moral and intellectual culture. Many
of them are permanently established in their schools. They are persons
of character in society, with positions to maintain, and they are
controlled by a strong sense of professional responsibility to parents
and to the public. It has been, to some extent, the purpose and result
of Teachers' Associations, Teachers' Institutes, and Normal Schools, to
create in the body of teachers a better opinion concerning their moral
obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the
changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue.
For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled
by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild
measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in
morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now
boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such
claims were common a quarter of a century ago. The change that has been
wrought is chiefly moral, and in its influence we find demonstrative
evidence of the moral superiority of the schools of the present over
those of any previous period of this century. Before we can comprehend
the moral work which the schools have done and are doing, we must
perceive and appreciate with some degree of truthfulness the changes
that have occurred in general life within a brief period of time. The
activity of business, by which fathers have been diverted from the
custody and training of their children; the claims of fashion and
society, which have led to some neglect of family government on the
part of mothers; the aggregation of large, populations in cities and
towns, always unfavorable to the physical and moral welfare of children;
the comparative neglect of agriculture, and the consequent loss of moral
strength in the people, are all facts to be considered when we estimate
the power of the public school to resist evil and to promote good. If,
in addition to these unfavorable facts and tendencies, our educational
system is prejudicial to good morals, we may well inquire for the human
agency powerful enough to resist the downward course of New England and
American civilization. To be sure, Christianity remains; but it must, to
some extent, use human institutions as means of good; and the assertion
that the schools are immoral is equivalent to a declaration that our
divine religion is practically excluded from them. This declaration is
not in any just sense true. The duty of daily devotional exercises is
always inculcated upon teachers, and the leading truths and virtues of
Christianity are made, as far as possible, the daily guides of teachers
and pupils. The tenets of particular sects are not taught; but the great
truths of Christianity, which are received by Christians generally, are
accepted and taught by a large majority of committees and teachers. It
is not claimed that the public schools are religious institutions; but
they recognize and inculcate those fundamental truths which are the
basis of individual character, and the best support of social,
religious, and political life. The statement that the public schools are
demoralizing must be true, if true at all, for one of three reasons.
Either because all education is demoralizing; or, secondly, because the
particular education given in the public schools is so; or, thirdly,
because the public-school system is corrupting, and consequently taints
all the streams of knowledge that flow through or emanate from it. For,
if the public system is unobjectionable as a system, and education is
not in itself demoralizing, then, of course, no ground remains for the
charge that I am now considering.
I. _Is all education demoralizing?_ An affirmative answer to this
question implies so much that no rational man can accept it. It is
equivalent to the assertion that barbarism is a better condition than
civilization, and that the progress of modern times has proceeded upon a
misconception of the true ideal perfection of the human race. As no one
can be found who will admit that his happiness has been marred, his
powers limited, or his life degraded, by education, so there is no
process of logic that can commend to the human understanding the
doctrine that bodies of men are either less happy or virtuous for the
culture of the intellect. I am not aware of any human experience that
conflicts with this view; for individual cases of criminals who have
been well educated prove nothing in themselves, but are to be considered
as facts in great classes of facts which indicate the principles and
conduct of bodies of men who are subject to similar influences. In fact,
the statistics to which I have had access tend to show that crime
diminishes as intelligence increases. On this point the experience of
Great Britain is probably more definite, and, of course, more valuable,
than our own. The Aberdeen Feeding Schools were established in 1841, and
during the ten years succeeding the commitments to the jails of children
under twelve years of age were as follows:[1]
In 1842, 30 In 1847, 27
1843, 63 1848, 19
1844, 41 1849, 16
1845, 49 1850, 22
1846, 28 1851, 8
___ ___
211 92
In the work of Mr. Hill it is also stated that "the number of children
under twelve committed for crime to the Aberdeen prisons, during the
last six years, was as follows:
Males. Females. Total.
1849-50, 11 5 16
1850-51, 14 8 22
1851-52, 6 2 8
1852-53, 23 1 24
1853-54, 24 1 25
1854-55, 47 2 49
"It will be observed that in the last three years there has been a great
increase of boy crime, contemporaneously with an almost total absence of
girl crime, though formerly the amount of the latter was considerable.
Now, since this extraordinary difference coïncides in point of time with
the fact of full girls' schools and half empty boys' schools, the
inference can hardly be avoided that the two facts bear the relation of
cause and effect, and that, so far from the late increase of youthful
crime in Aberdeen any-wise impairing the soundness of the principle on
which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirmation. In moral
as in physical science, when the objections to a theory are, upon
further investigation, explained by the theory itself, they become the
best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is proved, by the experience, not
only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, of every
town in Scotland in which industrial schools have been established,
that the number of children in the schools and the number in the jail
are like the two ends of a scale-beam; as the one rises the other falls,
and _vice versa_.
"The following list of imprisonments of children attending the schools
of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows considerable progress in the
right direction:
____________________________________________________________________
|1847.|1848.|1849.|1850.|1851.|1852.|1853.|1854.|1855.|
_____________|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
Imprisoned, | 12 | 19 | 26 | 9 | 1 | 1 | - | 1 | - |
_____________|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
Imprisonments in } 66, averaging 16.5 per year on number of 417
the first four years} children.
In subsequent five } 3, averaging 0.6 per year on number of 728
years, } children.
____
Difference, 15.9
16.5 : 15.9 :: 100 : 96.36.
"Thus," says Mr. Thornton, "it appears that the diminution of the
average annual number of children attending our schools imprisoned in
the latter period of five years, as compared with the annual average of
the previous four years, is ninety-six per cent.--a striking fact, which
is, I think, a manifest proof of the benefit conferred on them by the
religious and secular instruction they receive in our schools, or, at
the very least, of the advantages of rescuing them from the temptations
of idleness, and from evil companionship and example."
I also copy, from the work already referred to, an extract from a paper
on the Reformatory Institutions in and near Bristol, by Mary Carpenter:
"In numberless instances children may be seen growing up decently, who
owe their only training and instruction to the school. Young persons are
noticed in regular work, who, before they attended the Ragged Schools,
were vagrants, or even thieves. Not unfrequently a visit is paid at the
school by a respectable young man, who proves to have been a wild and
troublesome scholar of former times."
Mr. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, in a charge to the grand jury, made in
1839, speaking of the means of repressing crime, says: "It is to
education, in the large and true meaning of the word, that we must all
look as the means of striking at the root of the evil. Indeed, of the
close connection between ignorance and crime the calendar which I hold
in my hand furnishes a striking example. Each prisoner has been examined
as to the state of his education, and the result is set down opposite
his name. It appears, then, that of forty-three prisoners only one can
read and write well. The majority can neither read nor write at all; and
the remainder, with the solitary exception which I have noted down, are
said to read and write imperfectly; which necessarily implies that they
have not the power of using those great elements of knowledge for any
practical object. Of forty-three prisoners, forty-two, then, are
destitute of instruction."
These authorities are not cited because they refer to schools that
answer in character to the public schools of Massachusetts, for the
latter are far superior in the quality of their pupils, and in the
opportunities given for intellectual and moral education; but these
cases and opinions are presented for the purpose of showing what has
been done for the improvement of children and the repression of crime
under the most unfavorable circumstances that exist in a civilized
community. If such benign results have followed the establishment of
schools of an inferior character, is it unreasonable to claim that
education and the processes of education, however imperfect they may be,
are calculated to increase the sum of human progress, virtue, and
happiness?
II. _Is the particular education given in the public schools unfavorable
to the morals of the pupils, and, consequently, to the morality of the
community?_ I have already presented a view of the moral and religious
education given in the schools, and it only remains to consider the
culture that is in its leading features intellectual. It may be said,
speaking generally, that education is a training and development of the
faculties, so as to make them harmonize in power, and in their relations
to each other. Among other things, the ability to read is acquired in
the public schools. In the individual, this is a power for good. It
opens to the mind and heart the teachings of the sacred Scriptures; it
secures the companionship of the great, the wise, and the good, of every
age; and it is a possession that, in all cases, must be the foundation
of those scientific acquisitions, intellectual, moral, and natural,
which show the beneficence and power of the Creator, and indicate the
fact and the law of human responsibility. The natural and general effect
of the sciences taught in the schools is an illustration of the last
statement. Moreover, the mere presence of a child, though he took no
part in the studies of the school, is to him a moral lesson. He feels
the force of government, he acquires the habit of obedience, and, in
time, he comprehends the reason of the rules that are established. This
discipline is essentially moral, and furnishes some basis, though
partial and unsatisfactory, for the proper discharge of the duties of
life. But it is to be remembered that the power of the school is but in
its beginning when the presence of a pupil is recognized. The constancy
and punctuality of attendance required by all judicious parents and
faithful teachers are important moral lessons, whose influence can never
be destroyed. The fixedness of purpose that is required, and is
essential in school, remains as though it were a part of the nature of
the child and the man. School-life strengthens habits of industry when
they exist, and creates them when they do not. It is, indeed, the only
means, of universal application, that is competent to train children in
habits of industry. Private schools can never furnish this training; for
large numbers of children, by the force of circumstances, are deprived
of the tuition of such schools. Business life cannot furnish this
training; for the habits of the child are usually moulded, if not
hardened, before he arrives at an age when he can be constantly employed
in any industrial vocation. The public school is no doubt justly
chargeable with neglects and omissions; but its power for good, measured
by the character of the education now furnished, is certainly very
great. It inculcates habits of regularity, punctuality, constancy, and
industry, in the pursuits of business; through literature and the
sciences in their elements, and, under some circumstances, by an
advanced course of study, it leads the pupil towards the fountain of
life and wisdom; and, by the moral and religious instruction daily
given, some preparation is made for the duties of life and the
temptations of the world.
III. _Is the public school system, as a system, in itself necessarily
corrupting?_ As preliminary to the answer to be given to this question,
it is well to consider what the public-school system is.
1. Every inhabitant is required to contribute to its support.
2. It contemplates the education of every child, regardless of any
distinction of society or nature.
3. The system is subject in many respects to the popular will; and
ultimately its existence and character are dependent upon the public
judgment.
4. In the Massachusetts schools, the daily reading of the Scriptures is
required.
The consideration of these topics will conclude my remarks upon the
general subject of the moral influence of the American system of public
instruction. In New England it is very unusual to hear the right of the
state to provide for the support of schools by general taxation called
in question; but I am satisfied, from private conversations, and from
occasional public statements, that there are leading minds in some
sections of the country that are yet unconvinced of the moral soundness
of the basis on which a system of public instruction necessarily rests.
Taxation is simply an exercise of the right of the whole to take the
property of an individual; and this right can be exercised justly in
those cases only where the application of the property so taken is,
morally speaking, to a public use. The judgment of the public determines
the legality of the proceeding; but it is possible that in some cases a
public judgment might be secured which could not be supported by a
process of moral reasoning. On what moral grounds, then, does the right
of taxation for educational objects rest? I answer, first, education
diminishes crime. The evidence in support of this statement has already
been presented. It is a manifest individual duty to make sacrifices for
this object; and, as every crime is an injury, not only to him who is
the subject of it, but to every member of society, the prevention of
crime becomes a public as well as an individual duty.