At The Period When The Enumeration Was Made There Were 80,958 Public
Schools, With 91,966 Teachers, And 2,890,507 Scholars; 119 Colleges, With
11,903 Students; 44 Schools Of Theology; 36 Schools Of Medicine; And 16
Schools Of Law.
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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 445 of 478
Words from 120704 to 120995
of 129941
