overheated. Then the teacher throws open the door, and a current of
cold air pours on to the children. The reeking perspiration is suddenly
stopped, and “a cold” is the result, which is often the precursor of
fevers and consumption. When no such results follow, the parents say,
“It is _only a cold_;” when diseases and death follow, it is called _a
dispensation of Providence_! A physician of extensive practice stated
to this superintendent, that a large part of his consumptive cases
originated from colds taken at school.
Another describes one of the schoolhouses in his county as too small, too
low, the seats too high, half the plastering fallen off and piled in one
corner, and the house warmed by a cook-stove unfit for use. Six sevenths
of the panes of glass were gone, and two windows boarded up. Going to
attend the annual school meeting at this house, he met two citizens
coming with a candle and firebrands, and picking up sticks along the road
for a fire, because there was no wood provided at the schoolhouse.
Another thus describes some of the schoolhouses in his county. It is
very common to see cracked and broken stoves, the door without hinges or
latch, and a rusty pipe of various sizes. Green wood, and that which is
old and partially decayed, either drenched with rain, or covered with
snow, is much more frequently used than sound, seasoned wood. Thus it is
difficult to kindle a fire, and the room is filled with smoke much of the
time, especially in stormy weather. Sometimes the school is interrupted
two or three times a day to fasten up the stovepipe.
The extent of these evils may be perceived from the report, which says of
one county about as well supplied as any, out of _eighty-seven_ districts
only _twenty_ schoolhouses have provided means for keeping their wood dry.
Another says, “At the commencement of the winter term of our schools,
some one of the trustees generally furnishes a load of green wood,
perhaps his own proportion. The teacher proceeds till this is exhausted,
and he is compelled to notify his patrons of the entire destitution of
wood. After meeting his school, and shivering over expiring embers till
the hope of a supply is exhausted, he dismisses the school for one, two,
or three days, and sometimes for a week, before any inhabitant finds
time to get another load of green wood. With such wood it is impossible
to keep the schoolroom at a proper temperature. The scholars, at first,
crowd around the stove, suffering extremely with cold, and then are
driven as far off as they can get, in a high state of perspiration, and
almost suffocated with heat. Our schools in this country suffer much from
such methods of procuring fuel. The time which is lost in school hours by
the use of green wood, I think will include near one fourth of the whole
time.”
Another says, “The teacher found abundant employment in stuffing the old
stove with green birch and elm, cut as occasion required by the teacher
and the boys. A continual coughing was kept up by nearly seven-eighths
of the children, and the teacher apologised for want of order by saying,
‘they could not usually do much in stormy weather till afternoon, when
the fire would get a going.’ On this occasion, one trustee and two of the
inhabitants of the district were present an hour, when, getting frozen
out, they asked to be excused, and left the children to suffer, saying,
‘We did not think our house was so uncomfortable. Some glass must be got,
and a load of dry wood’” Some of the statements of these superintendents,
as to the order and neatness of their schoolhouses, are no less
lamentable. One remarks, that “some of them, as to neatness, resemble
the domicil for swine.” Another describes one schoolhouse as “having the
clapboards torn off, the door just ready to fall, an aperture in the roof
where the chimney once was, slabs with a pair of clubs at each end for
legs, and so high no child could touch foot to the floor, rickety desks
falling to ruin, the plaster torn off, and the whole covered with dirt,
and as filthy as the street itself.” But this is not all. “This house is
situated in a district of wealthy farmers.”
Another says, “It is a startling truth, that very many of our
schoolhouses furnish no private retreat whatever for teacher or scholar.
Thus is one side of the schoolhouse, and, in some instances, the
doorstep, rendered a scene more disgusting than the filth of a pig-sty.”
Another says, “Schoolhouses, generally, are not furnished with suitable
conveniences for disposing the outer garments of the children, their
dinner-baskets, and other articles. Sometimes there are a few nails in
an outer entry where clothes and dinners may be put, but in such cases
the door is left open for rain and snow to beat in; the scholars, in
their haste to get their own clothes, pull down many more, which are
trampled on. Moreover, the dinners are often frozen, or eaten by dogs,
and sometimes even by hogs.”
_Sufferings of Little Children from Cruel and Improper Punishments._
In reporting on this subject, the county superintendents mention these
as inflictions not uncommon. Standing on one foot for a long time;
“sitting on nothing,” that is, obliging the child to hold himself in a
sitting posture without any support; holding out the arm horizontally
with a weight on it; tying a finger so high as to oblige the child to
stand on tiptoe; holding the head downward, sometimes causing dangerous
hemorrhages from the nose, or injuring the brain; frightening little
children by threats. Many cases are declared to have occurred in which
permanent injuries have been inflicted by thus straining the muscles, and
torturing the body and mind of little children.
The following is a description of a scene witnessed at school by one
of the county superintendents in his periodical visitation: two girls,
about twelve years of age, were out of order, and the teacher, without
any warning, sprang across the room and severely flogged both. A little
boy, tired of sitting on his hard seat, leaned over on his elbow; he was
caught by the head, dragged over the desk to the floor, and ordered to
study. A little girl of seven, after one or two admonitions to “tend her
book,” was caught by the arm, dragged on to the floor, rudely shaken,
cuffed on both sides of her head, and then whipped. “I looked around,”
says the superintendent, “to learn the effect upon the other scholars.
I saw no happy faces. There seemed to settle upon the countenances of
nearly all, a cloud of gloom and terror. The school closed soon after,
and the teacher remarked to me, that _he did not punish near as much now
as he formerly did_.”
_Moral Injuries inflicted on Children at School._
One teacher writes thus: “Where the plastering remains, it is covered
with coal marks, and numerous holes are cut through the writing desks,
while vulgarities and obscenities are not only written, but deeply
cut in the desks and doors.” Of another house he says, “Within and
without are manifest evidences of a polluted imagination. Several lewd
representations are deep cut in the clapboards in front of the house, in
the entry, and even on the girls’ desks, so as to be constantly before
their eyes.” “These things,” he adds, “are but _specimens_ selected from
_scores_.”
Another writes thus: “I have alluded to the representations of vulgarity
and obscenity that meet the eye in every direction. I am constrained
to add that, during intermissions, ‘certain lewd fellows of the baser
sort’ sometimes lecture boys and girls, large and small, illustrating
their subject by these vile delineations. Many of our schoolhouses are
nurseries of disorder, vulgarity, profanity, and obscenity--nay, more, in
some cases, they are the very hothouses of licentiousness.”
One single statement, made up from these reports of the county
superintendents, and presented by the head superintendent in his report,
speaks volumes on the neglect of modesty, decency, neatness, and purity.
In the whole state there are six thousand schoolhouses destitute of any
kind of woodhouse or privy; and of the whole number, only about one
thousand have privies provided with separate accommodations for children
of different sexes.
It appears, also, that though the schools and teachers are fast rising in
character, and that many now are of uncommon excellence, yet that many of
the teachers are notoriously depraved, while intellectual training, in
the majority of cases, is deplorably low, and the moral training still
more defective.
One superintendent remarks, “Gloomy, indeed, are the impressions made by
our schoolhouses. The lessons of immorality and indecency often taught
there would cause a shudder to thrill every sensitive mind.” Another
says, “There are, I regret to say, many teachers whose morals, manners,
and daily example wholly unfit them for their duties.” Another says, “In
some instances, moral qualifications have been wholly disregarded, and
teachers notoriously intemperate employed.” Says another, “I have found
a number whose language was low, obscene, and sensual, still employed in
teaching.”
Says another, “If the tastes, associations, and moral sentiments of the
teacher lack elevation and dignity, what literary progress will atone for
examples so pernicious? And yet such are the moral influences shed about
them by many licensed to teach.”
After presenting all these shocking details, the chief superintendent, in
1844, thus remarks:
“No subject connected with elementary instruction affords a source for
such mortifying and humiliating reflection as that of the condition of a
large portion of the schoolhouses as presented in the above enumeration.
Only _one third_ of the whole number visited were found in good repair;
another third in only comfortable condition; while _three thousand three
hundred and nineteen_ were unfit for the reception of man or beast.
Seven thousand were found destitute of any play-ground, nearly six
thousand destitute of convenient seats and desks, nearly eight thousand
destitute of any proper facilities for ventilation, and upward of six
thousand destitute of a privy of any sort. And it is in these miserable
abodes of filth and dirt, deprived of wholesome air, or exposed to the
assaults of the elements, with no facilities for exercise or relaxation,
with no conveniences for prosecuting their studies, crowded together on
benches not admitting of a moment’s rest, and debarred the possibility
of yielding to the ordinary calls of nature without violent inroads
upon modesty and shame, that upward of two hundred thousand children
of this state are compelled to spend an average period of eight months
each year of their pupilage. Here the first lessons of human life, the
incipient principles of morality, and the rules of social intercourse
are to be impressed on the plastic mind. The boy is here to receive the
model of his permanent character, and imbibe the elements of his future
career. Here the instinctive delicacy of the young female, one of the
characteristic ornaments of her sex, is to be expanded into maturity by
precept and example. Such are the temples of science, such the ministers
under whose care susceptible childhood is to receive its earliest
impressions. Great God! shall man dare to charge to thy dispensations
the vices, the crimes, the sickness, the sorrows, the miseries, and the
brevity of human life, who sends his little children to a pesthouse,
fraught with the deadly malaria of both moral and physical disease?
Instead of impious murmurs, let him lay his hand on his mouth, and his
mouth in the dust, and cry ‘Unclean!’”
Let it not be imagined that this picture is peculiar to New-York. The
superintendents of the common schools in Ohio, and even in Massachusetts
and Connecticut, have reported similar evils as existing, to a greater
or less extent, in the schools in their respective states; and if such
things exist in the states where most has been done for education, what
can be hoped for the neglected and abused little ones where even less
is done by law for their comfort and improvement? In view of such utter
destitution of schools in the greater part of our country, and of the
sufferings and neglect endured by little children in other portions,
the inquiry must be earnestly pressed, “What can be the reason of this
deplorable state of things?”
The grand reason is, the _selfish apathy_ of the educated classes, and
the _stupid apathy_ of those who are too ignorant to appreciate an
education for their children. In those states where no school system is
established by law, the intelligent and wealthy content themselves with
securing a good education for their own children, and care nothing for
the rest. When any project, therefore, is presented for obtaining a good
school system, the rich and intelligent do not wish to be taxed for the
children of others, and the rest do not care whether their children are
educated or not, or else are too poor to pay the expense.
In those states where a school system is established, parents of
intelligence and moral worth, seeing the neglected state of the common
school, withdraw their children to private schools. And feeling no
interest in schools which they do not patronise, they pass them with
utter neglect. And thus, neither rich, nor poor care enough to be willing
to be taxed for their elevation and improvement.
Thus, too, it has come to pass, that while every intelligent man in the
Union is reading, and hearing, and saying, every day of his life, that
unless our children are trained to virtue and intelligence, the nation
is ruined, yet there is nothing else for which so little interest is
felt, or so little done. Look, now, to that great body of intelligent
and benevolent persons, who are interesting themselves for patriotic
and religious enterprises. We see them sustaining great organizations,
and supporting men to devote their whole time to promote these several
enterprises, which draw thousands and hundreds of thousands from the
public for their support. There is one organization, to send missionaries
to the heathen and to educate heathen children, with its six or eight
paid officers, devoting their whole time to the object. Then there is
another to furnish the Bible, and another to distribute tracts, and
another to educate young men to become ministers, and another to send
out home missionaries, and another to sustain Western colleges, and
another to promote temperance, and another to promote the observance of
the Sabbath. Then we have an association to take care of sailors, and
another to promote the comfort and improvement of convicts in prisons and
penitentiaries, and another to relieve and ransom the slave, and another
to colonize the free coloured race. All these objects are promoted by
having men sustained by voluntary contributions, who spend their whole
time in urging the claims of these various objects on the public mind,
while almost all have a regular periodical to advocate their cause. But
our two millions of little children, who are growing up in heathenish
darkness, enchained in ignorance, and in many cases, where the cold law
professes to provide for them, enduring distress of body and mind even
greater than is inflicted on criminals in our prisons, where is the
benevolent association for their relief? where is there a periodical
supported by the charitable to tell the tale of their wrongs? where is
there a single man sustained by Christian benevolence to operate for
their relief?
Let it not be claimed that Sunday-schools meet this emergency. A
Sunday-school cannot, in its one or two short hours, educate a child, or
undo all the fatal influences of six days of idle vagrancy, with their
pernicious lessons of vice and sin. Besides, the Sabbath-school is of
little avail, except where there is a large class of intelligent and
benevolent persons to labour, and such are thinly sprinkled in those
portions of the land where no schools exist.
The vast proportion of neglected children in our land are never reached,
even by the feeble influence of the Sunday-school.
And this fatal neglect cannot be palliated by the plea, that the means
employed to sustain other objects cannot be directed to this cause. Why
cannot the press be employed for _popular education_ as efficiently as
for the promotion of temperance, or the support of the Sabbath? Why
cannot men of talents be supported to write and to labour for this cause
as well as for any other? The only thing that can save us is, to arouse
this people from the _fatal apathy_ which is luring them to destruction.
Ministers must preach, agents must lecture, conventions must be called,
discussions must be urged, tracts must be written and circulated, the
political press must be enlisted, and every possible mode of arousing
public attention must be adopted. It must be shown that teachers are
needed as much as ministers, that teachers’ institutions are as important
as colleges, that it is as necessary to educate and send forth “poor
and pious young women” to teach, as it is “poor and pious young men”
to preach. And when the same influence and efforts are directed to
educate our two millions of American children, as are now directed to
establishing missions among the heathen, our country may escape the
yawning abyss now gaping to destroy.
The American people are sanguine and hasty, careless of peril, and
thoughtless of risk, but, when brought by danger to reflection, they have
first-rate common sense, surpassing energy, and endless resources. And if
they can but be convinced of their danger _in season_, all is safe; but
the work to be done is prodigious, the time is short, and the question
all turns on whether the work will be undertaken soon enough, and with
sufficient energy.
Look, then, at the work to be done. Two millions of destitute children
to be supplied with schools! To meet this demand, _sixty thousand_
teachers and _fifty thousand_ schoolhouses are required. Or, if we can
afford to leave half of them to grow up in ignorance, and aim only
to educate the other half, thirty thousand teachers and twenty-five
thousand schoolhouses must be provided, and that, too, _within twelve
years_. The census calculates the children between four and sixteen,
and in twelve years most of these children will be beyond the reach of
school instruction, while other millions, treading on their heels, will
demand still greater supplies. _Sixty thousand teachers_ now needed for
present wants, and thousands, to be added every year for the increase of
population!
Where are we to raise such an army of teachers? Not from the sex which
finds it so much more honourable, easy, and lucrative to enter the
many roads to wealth and honour open in this land. But a few will turn
from these, to the humble, unhonoured toils of the schoolroom and its
penurious reward.
It is _woman_ who is to come in at this emergency, and meet the demand;
woman, whom experience and testimony has shown to be the best, as well as
the cheapest guardian and teacher of childhood, in the school as well as
the nursery. Already, in those parts of our country where education is
most prosperous, the larger part of the teachers of common schools are
women. In Massachusetts, three out of five of all the teachers are women.
In the State of New-York and in Philadelphia similar results are seen.
Women, then, are to be educated for teachers, and sent to the destitute
children of this nation by hundreds and by thousands. This is the
way in which _a profession_ is to be created for woman--a profession
as honourable and as lucrative for her as the legal, medical, and
theological are for men. This is the way in which thousands of
intelligent and respectable women, who toil for a pittance scarcely
sufficient to sustain life, are to be relieved and elevated. This is the
way, and _the only way_, in which our nation can be saved from impending
perils. Though we are now in such a condition that many have given over
our case in despair, as too far gone for remedy--though the peril is
immense, and the work to be done enormous, yet _it is in the power of
American women to save their country_. There is benevolence enough, there
are means enough at their command. All that is needed is a knowledge of
the danger, and a faithful use of the means within their reach.
And who else, in such an emergency as this, can so appropriately be
invoked to aid? It is woman who is the natural and appropriate guardian
of childhood. It is woman who has those tender sympathies which can most
readily feel for the wants and sufferings of the young. It is woman,
who is especially interested in all efforts which tend to elevate and
dignify her own sex. It is woman, too, who has that conscientiousness and
religious devotion, which, in any worthy cause, are the surest pledges of
success.
And it is the pride and honour of our country, that woman holds a
commanding influence in the domestic and social circle, which is
accorded to the sex in no other nation, and such as will make her wishes
and efforts, if united for a benevolent and patriotic object, almost
omnipotent.
To you, then, American women, are brought these two millions of suffering
and destitute children; these “despised little ones,” of whom is written,
“their angels do always behold the face of our Father in heaven;” who are
loved and cared for by the good Shepherd above, so that it were better
for any of us, that we were thrown with a millstone about our necks into
the sea, than that, through our guilty neglect, even one of these little
ones should perish.
To you, my countrywomen, these little children call, with voices soft as
the young ravens’ cry, yet multitudinous as the murmuring ocean waves.
To you they complain of the filth, and the weariness, and the aching
muscles, and the throbbing head, and the tortured eyes. To you they
lament the degrading scenes and fatal influences, that wither all that
is pure, and sweet, and lovely in childhood and youth. Of you they ask
relief from suffering, and all those blessed ministries that will lead
their young feet to usefulness and happiness on earth, and to glory,
honour, and immortality on high. Ah, surely their supplications will be
heard, and speedy relief will be found!
_How_, then, can American women act for these children, and thus for the
salvation of their country, in an emergency like this?