DISTRICT SCHOOL JOURNAL. ALBANY, JULY. 1814. DEATH OF JAMES WADSWORTH. fine model for imitation-a noble specimen of intellectual and moral qualities of the highest order, exerted exclusively for the benefit of his race-for the present advancement-the future welfare, and the permanent advantage of huWE discharge a most melancholy duty in anmanity-an encouraging pattern of unobtrusive nouncing the decease of the venerable JAMES benevolence, kindly affections, enlightened and WADSWORTH, at his residence in Geneseo. comprehensive philanthropy, and practical WADSWORTH was eminently a great and good christian philosophy. "Like a shock of corn man. During a long and eventful life his enerfully ripe," this great and good man has been gies, mental and physical, his wealth and his in-gathered to his fathers," but over him and fluence were uniformly exerted for the promotion of the great interests of humanity-for the ad MR. vancement of civilization-the diffusion of know. MR. FOWLE'S LECTURE. such as him, death itself has no power; and while we shall no longer be permitted to look upon his countenance beaming with benignity, ledge and the amelioration of the civil and so- and venerable from the reflection of all the vircial system in all its departments. His philan- tues which can adorn humanity, we and our thropy comprehended within its expanded circle, children and children's children shall long enjoy all of every faith, every grade, every nation, the priceless treasures of intellect and wisdom who needed the aid, assistance or encourage and knowledge, which his exertions and his inment which were at his command. His efforts fluence have bequeathed us. So long as our ad. for the extension, the elevation and improve- mirable system of CoMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION ment of popular education, and especially of our noble institution of SCHOOL DISTRICT LIthe common schools, were unremitted and sys- BRARIES-and our thousands of TEMPLES OF tematic. To his exertions, his influence, and KNOWLEDGE AND VIRTUE, remain as monuhis efficient aid, are we mainly indebted for the ments of a superior and progressive civilization establishment and organization of our invalua--so long will the name and memory of JAMES ble district libraries: and each successive mea- WADSWORTH, be" familiar as household words "* sure undertaken or proposed for the advance to every citizen of our commonwealth. ment of our elementary institutions of learning, found in him an able and earnest coadjutor-a liberal supporter-and an enlightened advocate. Deeming the improvement of the means of popular education as the greatest blessing which can be conferred upon an enlightened community, he, at an early period, concentrated his energies upon this great object. But in this, as in every other channel where "the wilderness and the solitary places" of ignorance, of error, or of destitution, mental or physical, were made to bud and blossom as the rose," through his timely and judicious beneficence, the noiseless course of the current was indicated only by the verdure and Juxuriance of the surrounding soil. His benefactions were studiously and systematically averted from the public gaze and nothing pain. ed him more than their exposure, however THE JOURNAL will continue, as hereto-honorable to himself, or grateful to the objects fore, to be sent gratuitously, to the several of his bounty. His alms were in secret;" Town Superintendents of Common Schoolsand He who seeth in secret" will "reward him openly." : LET no reader be deterred by the length of this excellent lecture. Once begun it will not be voluntarily laid aside unfinished. It may be, that some will agree with us, in dissenting from Mr. Fowle's opinions on the best method of teaching the alphabet, but all will unite in commending his admirable exposure of the absurdities of the rote system," in the various branches of education, and the sad perversion by its professors, who are legion, of that noble faculty, memory. TO TOWN SUPERINTENDENTS AND eight hundred and forty in number-although no provision exists in the law for defraying the heavy additional charge thus incurred—the State subscription including only a number sufficient to supply one copy to each school district. The enlargement of the paper and the consequent in To particularize instances of his unwearied and discriminating benevolence, in every department of social life, would be to write his biography and that, however grateful the task, we are compelled to leave to abler hands. Increased expenses incident to its publication, ne-all the relations of life his example afforded a cessarily throws the entire burthen of this addi : lies, but who conceive themselves unable to incur the expense of subscription. But if this is expecting too much, may we not confidently call upon every Town Superintendent to obtain at least FOUR SUBSCRIBERS, for if even this is done, the Journal can be maintained in its present form, and its pages enriched by contributions from the best writers of our country. tional charge, upon the editor and proprietor.ing it for their own benefit or that of their fami Appreciating as he does, in common with the Department, the value and importance of the services which the Town Superintendents are rendering to the great cause of popular educa. tion, he does not hesitate cheerfully to encounter the risk, whatever it may be, involved in the adoption of this course, on his part; confidently relying upon the ability and the disposition of these officers to promote and extend the circulation of the Journal, if in their judgment it is worthy of a more general diffusion. It is earnestly to be hoped that in this reasonable expectation he will not be disappointed. If the work is in any degree worthy of the high confidence which has been reposed in it by the State, its circulation ought not to be limited to one or two individuals in each school district, who are required to keep it principally in their own possession, in order that it may be safely preserved for binding at the end of the year. It should be in the possession of every family in the district. : We should not make this urgent appeal, were not an effort absolutely necessary to prevent a heavy loss consequent upon our undertaking to supply the districts with nearly double the amount of information heretofore diffused through the columns of the Journal. DISTRICT LIBRARIES. guine anticipations of its friends, and its continuance will, beyond all doubt, infuse new life and animation in the moral and intellectual pursuits of our youth. The presence of these libraries, and the facilities which are afforded for access to them at all times, not only gratifies but creates a lively relish and taste for the cultivation of the mind, which as it expands and matures, will open the way to the most extended development of the higher faculties of thought and reason. It is of the utmost importance that this refined taste should receive an early and efficient encouragement. The innate activity of the mental powers will not be satisfied, unless constantly furnished with subjects upon which their energies can be exerted; and the readiness with which every first impression for good or for evil is received and adopted, inculcates strongly the necessity of affording a proper direction to those powers, and of guiding them by an alluring path, to the attainment of right views. THE institution of district libraries is one of the most valuable improvements which the friends of the common school system have engrafted upon it. That a scheme so beneficial in its naA very little exertion on the part of each Town ture, and so admirably calculated for permanent Superintendent to procure subscribers in each usefulness should so long have been neglected, district, would enable its conductors to furnish an is matter of surprise and astonishment. Its sucamount and a quality of reading matter unequal-cess thus far has corresponded to the most sanled in interest and value by any periodical in the Union and this they, on their part, unhesitatingly engage to do, provided their exertions are in any degree properly seconded by those for whom they labor. May we not appeal, not merely to Town and County Superintendents, but to the trustees and other officers, and to the inhabitants of districts generally, for substantial aid and encouragement to enable us to the best talents of the country-to procure the greatest possible amount of valuable and useful information-to avail ourselves of the richest fruits of literature, science and the arts-to call forth native genius and latent talent-to diffuse far and wide throughout the land, a knowledge of the most sound and successful methods of de. veloping the mental and moral faculties of our youth and to supply the domestic and social circle with ample materials for thought, for reflection, for information and practical usefulness? As an additional inducement to the exertions of our friends and the friends of education to coIn connection, however, with the innumeraoperate with us in this undertaking, and with ble benefits which may reasonably be anticipatthe view of a more general diffusion of our ed, from bringing within the reach of the young work, we will engage to forward fifteen copies constant supply of reading materials, it is easy of the Journal to the order of any district or per- to perceive, that most serious evils may spring son transmitting to us five dollars. In this way up, unless a judicious supervision is uniformly five copies of the Journal may be distributed maintained over the details of the system. The among such of the inhabitants of each district proper selection of a library, adapted to the readopting this plan, as may be desirous of perus-spective ages, and probable destination and pur a suits of those for whom it is intended, is, in the first instance, an object which cannot receive too much attention. Devolving, as it too often must, upon those who are not possessed of the requisite qualifications to discharge this responsible duty in the best manner, an irreparable injury may unconsciously be inflicted on the tender and susceptible minds of youth. The kind and quality of reading or study, too, which might be proper and beneficial at one age, or to one person, will be found entirely unsuited to the wants and capacities of another; and an early repugnance, or a wrong bias, may thus insensibly be communicated. The only practicable remedy for this evil, where it may be apprehended to exist, would it is believed be, for the trustees to commit the selection and arrangement of the library, to such individuals, whether offeially connected with the schools or otherwise, as from their education, judgment and pursuits, would be best adapted to execute the trust with fidelity and ability. most remote parts of our country towns, and some central village or settlement; and each inhabitant or family being provided with a printed catalogue of the library, books may be sent for, and returned with little more difficulty or embarrassment than is experienced under the present system. By a judicious and discriminating investment of the funds thus united, a sufficient number of volumes would soon be procured to meet all the exigencies of the population; and so exhaustless and abundant would the supply soon become, that no questions need arise respecting the proportion of the fund annually contributed by the respective districts. Each district would, moreover, retain the library it now has, thereby providing a source of constant supply whenever for any reason resort could not be had to the town library. There may be objections to the plan here suggested, which have failed to present themselves to our notice, and if so, we should be happy to be reminded of them from any source. But it has seemed to us, that such a combination and concentration of our library fund, as we have briefly attempted to sketch, would have the ef fect of removing many of the impediments which arise from the necessarily meagre stock of books, which a large proportion of our country district libraries present; and that, instead of ten, fifteen or twenty adjoining libraries, with substantially the same collection of books, often frivo secure for each of our eight hundred and forty towns, a noble, extensive and valuable library, to which all classes of community might resort with the certainty of a high degree of intellectual and moral gratification and instruction. It has been suggested, and the suggestion strikes us as well worthy of consideration and discussion, that the several school districts of the respective towns, unite the library funds which they may hereafter receive and which they may determine to apply to the purchase of books, and place the same in the hands of the town superintendent or some other competent and responsible person, to be expended in the purchase and annual augmentation of a Towx SCHOOL LI-lous, common-place and uninteresting, we might BRARY, to be centrally and conveniently located and placed under the supervision of a librarian, to be appointed by the trustees of the several districts, or designated by the town superinten dent. The adoption of some such plan as this would, it is evident, add very materially to the value of our libraries; would place from ten to twenty, and in some instances, thirty times the present amount and variety of reading matter, within the reach of the inhabitants of the several districts, and would ensure to each town, within the compass of a few years, a library fully equal, if not superior, to the best now in the state. There may be some towns, where from the great extent of surface which they oc cupy, or from the absence of the necessary thoroughfares connecting together different portions of the territory, such an arrangement might be objectionable; but in these, two or more li braries might be established, and as near an approximation as practicable made to the principle in view. Ordinarily, it is believed, facilities for communication at least as often as once in each month, will be found to exist between the If due attention is given to the advantages which such libraries are capable, under proper management, of affording, and judicious and seasonable efforts made to divest them of an unfavorable and injurious influence, they may be come a more effectual instrument for creating a sound and wholesome literary taste, than has yet been devised in our systems of popular education. They will be found to minister not only to the intellectual, but to the moral requirements of those within the sphere of their benefits; and while they assist in rendering the course of early instruction interesting and pleasant, they will insensibly divert the mind from improper and pernicious aspirations, strengthen and keep in constant and healthy exercise its reflecting powers, and prepare it for those nobler and more daring flights, to which its high ambition points, The hill of science is, indeed. but a barren CUBBERLEY LIBRARY heath, until it is adorned with the perennial fruits WESTERN CIVILIZATION R. LECTUAL AND MORAL EDU- e the following beautiful extract from Clifford A. Coon istruction; most Mailing 1965 Mankathon! SUL & REV'63 ws of educational philosophy. ectual and moral education may rank querors-call them philosophers-call them patriots-put on what golden seeming you may-when the mask falls off, as it always does in due season, we see behind it the worst combination which can disgust or afflict humanity. Such men-deliverers and enlighteners, as their sycophants hail them-such men are the true master workers of the vices and calamities of their age and country. But who made them? They who taught them. Education left out its very essence. It gave them knowledge, but it left them immorality. "What is true of individuals is still truer of societies. A reading and writing community may be a very vicious community, if morality -not merely its theory, but its practice-be not made as much a portion of education as reading and writing. Knowledge is only a branch of education, but it has too often been taken for the whole. Hence the innumerable contests on the advantages and disadvantages of Education. If the terms of the proposition had been clearly stated at the beginning, these differences could not have arisen. The advocates of education_appeal for proofs of its advantages to the effects resulting from the extension of reading and favorable as it is assumed. The opponents of education, taking advantage of this circumstance, maintain that education in general is injurious. If both parties had determined that by education should be understood, not only knowledge, but morality, there could not have been a question between them of the advantages of its diffusion. Both, therefore, to a certain degree are right, and both are wrong. That the extension of true education-of complete education-is a blessing, cannot be doubted; but that the extension of intellectual education, without moral-the extension of the half-education, or the false education now in use--is such, is a very different question. "But is moral education possible, without intellectual? There are those who think they can and ought to separate them. But they judge erroneously, and, thank God, attempt impossibilities. Half of our being cannot thus be torn from the other. They are intertwisted: it is difficult to say where one begins and the other ends " "The education which confines to the desk or chapel is a very partial education; it is only a chapter in the system. It is pernicious; it is a portion only of the blessings of education. If such be the result of separating physical and intellectual education, how much more so of dividing intellectual and moral! It is laboriously! providing for the community dangers and crimes. It entrusts power with the perfect certainty of its being abused. It brings into the very heart of our social existence the two hostile principles of Manicheism; it sets up the glory and Beauty of civilization, to be dashed to pieces by the 'evil spirit' to whom it gives authority over it. It "Intellectual education teaches disciplines the bad passions of our nature against first to observe and enquire, and then to conthe good, making men wicked by rule, render- clude. Just conclusions lead to just actions— ing vice system, intrusting to the clever head, just actions are virtue. A community so formed the strong hand, and setting both loose by the will not fall into those national prejudices which impulse of the bad heart below. The omission not only strike with astonishment other times of physical education renders the other two in- and nations, but, when the fit is over, surprise effective or precarious; but the neglect of moral and humble themselves. The wise king asked education converts physical and intellectual into for understanding, above all treasures. positive evils. The pestilence of a high-taught him it was morality-virtue-religion. He was but corrupt mind blowing where it listeth'-right. Without it morality is mere passionscathes and sears the soul of men it is felt for virtue an accident or a name-religion gropes miles and years almost interminable. By the blindly into fanaticism, or floats off from disappress, (the steam of the intellectual world,) it pointment into incredulity. A faith which is touches distant ages and other hemispheres. It merely the echo of an echo-which is thought, corrupts the species in mass. It is not only in but not believed-which is custom, but not conthe actual generation, but in the rickety offspring viction-rests passively, but not firmly in the which follow late and long, that its deep-cating mind of the professor. It is not thrown off, poison-its Mephistophiles breath-is strongly neither is it kept. It remains there, if no storm detected. Late ages wonder at the waste of threaten: but the first blast which disturbs, desgreat means, at the perversion of high oppor- troys. No one would willingly trust the charactunities and noble powers, at the dereliction of ter of a child to the decision of such chances-solemn duties, which every where characterize much less the character of a community. How these strong, but evil beings. Call them con- much wiser to build upon the base which God : Το in the right exercise of his judgment and discrimination, to arrive at just conclusions upon the various questions of individual, social, or public concernment, in relation to which he may be called to act. In his researches into the history of the past, as well as in his investigations of the varying phenomena and results of science and the arts; in his study of the universe, as well of matter as of mind,-he should be enabled to proceed upon enlarged and comprehensive principles, to separate the essential and the permanent from the transitory and the accidental. and to deduce those conclusions which alone can strengthen and invigorate the intellectual powers, and carry forward the whole mind in its pursuit of truth. has given; to build upon that which may sus of conscience; to carry forward its civilization, tain, and in the order in which the removal of promote its welfare and prosperity, and contrino one stone may endanger the entire structure.bute to the happiness and well-being of its citiThat base is intellectual education. zens. His intellectual and moral faculties must "When I speak of moral education, I imply be so cultivated and developed as to enable him, religion; and when I speak of religion, I speak of christianity. It is morality-it is conscience par excellence. Even in the most worldly sense, it could easily be shown that no other morality so truly binds, no other education so effectually secures even the coarse and material interests of society. The economist himself would find his gain in such a system. It works his most sanguine speculations of good into far surer and more rapid conclusions, than any system he could attempt to set up in its place. No system of philosophy has better consulted the mechanism of society, or jointed it together with a closer adaptation of all its parts, than christianity. No legislator who is truly wise-no christian-will for a moment think-for the interests of society and religion, which indeed are one-of separating christianity from moral education. It would be quite as absurd as to separate moral education from intellectual. But this is very different from sectarianism." EDUCATION. WE take the following extracts from a work on "Mental and Moral Culture and Popular Education," by S. S. RANDALL, recently published by C. S. Francis & Co. New-York, and J. H. Francis, Boston. HARMONIOUS CULTURE. Let the teacher, then, ponder well the deep responsibilities which his office involves. Let him reflect that to him is committed the direction, in a great degree, of the future destines of immortal beings, fresh from the hands of their Creator, and entering upon a career of existence which is to know no termination. Above all, let him be deeply and seriously impressed with the reflection that, during the rapidly fleeting years of childhood, the great work of education is going on with an impulse which cannot be re. strained; that, while the body is progressing to maturity, the intellectual and moral faculties are constantly participating in all the influences daily and hourly presented by the external world; that "The great end and aim of all education the wonderful elements of mind are incessantly should be to confer upon the pupil an enligh engaged in the solution of the great problem of tened knowledge of the fundamental laws and existence: and that, with or without the instrucconstitution of his nature, and a clear perception which it is his duty to communicate, results tion of his duties and obligations as an intelli- of infinite moment to the future welfare and gent, moral, and social being. He should be prosperity of the beings confided to his care wil made to comprehend, so far as it is possible for be attained. him to do so, his wonderful and mysterious existence; the great purposes for which he was created; the high duties and responsibilities devolved upon him; the various physical and mental faculties which he possesses; their adaptation to each other, and to the external world of matter as well as mind; their limitations and restrictions; their capacities for action and enjoyment; the consequences resulting from their proper and harmonious action, in the elevation, expansion, and happiness of his nature; and the inevitable retributions and sufferings flowing from the discordant play of the passions and the violation of the laws of his being. He should early be taught to recognize the supremacy of the moral sentiments, the dictates of duty, the voice of God within his soul; and that he may rightly understand and intelligently interpret the will of his Creator, his intellect must be stored with the rich treasures of knowledge; his perceptions of truth rendered clear and undisturbed; his faculties of analysis, discrimination, comparason, and reason, kept in constant, regular, and healthy exercise; and every admixture of error carefully removed. He must be taught to regard himself as a portion of the community in which he resides, bound to consuit its paramount interests, to obey cheerfully all its laws, and conform to its institutions, in so far as they do not clearly subvert the obligations of duty and PROPORTION-Symmetry-are the first great rules of all education. No single chord of our complicated being should be left untouched or unstrung. They are placed in us in order to be sounded; sounded separately, they produce monotony-sounded without a knowledge of their combinations, discord. The very wants which we experience are permitted by a wise Providence to rouse and stimulate us to action. There would be no gradation—no activity—no constant tending to perfection, without them. They are calculated with the nicest wisdom not only to rouse but to expand. This feeling of unity of keeping in the intellectual and moral man, as well as in the physical, was the beau ideal of ancient education. Plato, Cicero, Quinctilian, under one form or another, exhibit this model— inimitable perhaps, but not unapproachable-as the visible and tangible of their philosophy. But already in their day the "division of labor " system had crept into education. There was a master for virtue, and a master for knowledge, a teacher of arguments and a teacher of persuasion. In like manner, we not only have different drillers for different portions of the same man, but what is a great deal worse, we often omit, |