Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions | Page 2

especially in this country, upon the broad definition laid down, whether there is more learning in the schools, or out of them. This remark, if true, is no reflection upon the schools, but much in favor of the world. Those were dark ages when learning was confined to the schools; and, though we can never be too grateful for their existence, and the fidelity with which they preserved the knowledge of other days, that is surely a higher attainment in the life of the race, when the learning of the world exceeds the learning of the cloister, the school, and the college.
In a private conversation, Professor Guyot made a remark which seems to have a public value. "You give to your schools," said he, "credit that is really due to the world. Looking at America with the eye of an European, it appears to me that your world is doing more and your schools are doing less, in the cause of education, than you are inclined to believe." For one, though I ought, as much as any, to stand for the schools, I give a qualified assent to the truth of this observation. There is much learning among us which we cannot trace directly to the schools; but the schools have introduced and fostered a spirit which has given to the world the power to make itself learned. It is much easier to disseminate what is called the spirit of education, than it was to create that spirit, and preserve it when there were few to do it homage. For this we are indebted to the schools. Unobserved in the process of change, but happy in its results, the business of education is not now confined to professional teachers.
The greatest change of all has been wrought by the attention given to female education, so that the mother of this generation is not compelled to rely exclusively upon the school and the paid teacher, public or private, but can herself, as the teacher ordained by nature, aid her children in the preparatory studies of life. This power does not often manifest itself in a regular system of domestic school studies and discipline, but its influence is felt in a higher home preparation, and in the exhibition of better ideas of what a school should be. And we may assume, with all due respect to our maternal ancestry, that this fact is a modern feature, comparatively, in American civilization. Female education has given rise to some excesses of opinion and conduct; but the world is entirely safe, especially the self-styled lords of creation, and may wisely advocate a system of general education without regard to sex, and leave the effect to those laws of nature and revelation which are to all and in all, and cannot permanently be avoided or disobeyed.
The number of educators has strangely increased, and they often appear where they might least be expected. We speak of the revival of education, and think only of the change that has taken place in the last twenty years in the appropriations of money, the style of school-houses, and the fitness of professional teachers for the work in which they are engaged; but these changes, though great, are scarcely more noteworthy than those that have occurred in the management of our shops, mills, and farms. When we write the sign or utter the sound which symbolizes Teacher, what figure, being, or qualities, are brought before us? We should see a person who, in the pursuit of knowledge, is self-moving, and, in the exercise of the influence which knowledge gives, is able to appreciate the qualities of others; and who, moreover, possesses enough of inventive power to devise means by which he can lead pupils, students, or hearers, in the way they ought to go. We naturally look for such persons in the lecture-room, the school, and the pulpit. And we find them there; but they are also to be found in other places. There are thousands of such men in America, engaged in the active pursuits of the day. They are farmers, mechanics, merchants, operatives. They do not often follow text-books, and therefor are none the worse, but much the better teachers. Insensibly they have taken on the spirit of the teacher and the school, and, apparently ignorant of the fact, are, in the quiet pursuits of daily life, leaders of classes following some great thought, or devoted to some practical investigation. And in one respect these teachers are of a higher order than some--not all, nor most--of our professional teachers. They never cease to be students. When a man or woman puts on the garb of the teacher, and throws off the garb of the student, you will soon find that person so dwindled and dwarfed, that neither will hang upon