Fifty Millions Of Dollars Were Annually Spent For
Education, And The Proportion Of Scholars To The Community Was As 1 To 5.
But it is to the common-school system that the attention should be
particularly directed.
I may premise that it has one unavoidable defect,
namely, the absence of religious instruction. It would be neither possible
nor right to educate the children in any denominational creed, or to
instruct them in any particular doctrinal system, but would it not, to
take the lowest ground, be both prudent and politic to give them a
knowledge of the Bible, as the only undeviating rule and standard of truth
and right? May not the obliquity of moral vision, which is allowed to
exist among a large class of Americans, be in some degree chargeable to
those who have the care of their education - who do not place before them,
as a part of their instruction, those principles of truth and morality,
which, as revealed in Holy Scripture, lay the whole universe under
obligations to obedience? History and observation alike show the little
influence practically possessed by principles destitute of superior
authority, how small the restraint exercised by conscience is, and how far
those may wander into error who once desert "Life's polar star, the fear
of God." In regretting the exclusion of religious instruction from the
common-school system, the difficulties which beset the subject must not be
forgotten, the multiplicity of the sects, and the very large number of
Roman Catholics. In schools supported by a rate levied indiscriminately on
all, to form a course of instruction which could bear the name of a
religious one, and yet meet the views of all, and clash with the
consciences and prejudices of none, was manifestly impossible. The
religious public in the United States has felt that there was no tenable
ground between thorough religious instruction and the broadest toleration.
Driven by the circumstances of their country to accept the latter course,
they have exerted themselves to meet this omission in the public schools
by a most comprehensive Sabbath-school system. But only a portion of the
children under secular instruction in the week attend these schools; and
it must be admitted that to bestow intellectual culture upon the pupils,
without giving them religious instruction, is to draw forth and add to the
powers of the mind, without giving it any helm to guide it; in other
words, it is to increase the capacity, without diminishing the propensity,
to do evil.
Apart from this important consideration, the educational system pursued in
the States is worthy of the highest praise, and of an enlightened people
in the nineteenth century. The education is conducted at the public
expense, and the pupils consequently pay no fees. Parents feel that a free
education is as much a part of the birthright of their children as the
protection which the law affords to their life and property.
The schools called common schools are supported by an education rate, and
in each State are under the administration of a general board of
education, with local boards, elected by all who pay the rate.
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