50 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or colleges. The teacher, it is true, exercises his influence among the 

 rest. Men and women of all sorts, from university professors to village 

 dames, have stamped some part of their own character upon a large 

 proportion of their disciples. But this is a power that must grow 

 feebler as the number of scholars is increased. In the enormous 

 schools and classes in which the public instruction of the greater part 

 of the children of the people is given, the influence on character of the 

 individual teacher is reduced to a minimum. The old village dame 

 might teach her half-dozen children to be kind and brave and to speak 

 the truth, even if she failed to teach them to read and write. The 

 headmaster of a school of 2,000 or the teacher of a class of eighty may 

 be an incomparably better intellectual instructor, but it is impossible 

 for him to exercise much individual influence over the great mass of 

 his scholars. 



There are, however, certain children for the formation of whose 

 characters the nation is directly responsible — deserted children, desti- 

 tute orphans and children whose parents are criminals or paupers. It 

 is the duty and interest of the nation to provide for the moral education 

 of such children and to supply artificially the influences of individual 

 care and love. The neglect of this obligation is as injurious to the pub- 

 lic as to the children. Homes and schools are cheaper than prisons 

 and workhouses. Such a practice as that of permitting dissolute pauper 

 parents to remove their children from public control to spend the sum- 

 mer in vice and beggary at races and fairs, to be returned in the 

 autumn, corrupt in body and mind, to spread disease and vice amongst 

 other children of the State, would not be tolerated in a co m munity 

 intelligently alive to its own interest. 



A profound, though indirect and untraceable, influence upon the 

 moral education of a people is exercised by all national administration 

 and legislation. Everything which tends to make the existing genera- 

 tion wiser, happier or better has an indirect influence on the children. 

 Better dwellings, unadulterated food, recreation grounds, temperance, 

 sanitation, will all affect the character of the rising generation. Eegula- 

 tions for public instruction also influence character. A military spirit 

 may be evoked by the kind of physical instruction given. Brutality 

 may be developed by the sort of punishments enjoined or permitted. 

 But all such causes have a comparatively slight effect upon national 

 character, which is in the main the product for good or evil of more 

 powerful causes which operate, not in the school, but in the home. 



For the physical and mental development of children it is now 

 admitted to be the interest and duty of a nation in its collective capac- 

 itv to see that proper schools are provided in which a certain minimum 

 of primary instruction should be free and compulsory for all, and, 

 further, secondary instruction should be available for those fitted to 



