454 



EDUCATION. 



EDMONTON; a parish in the county of Mid 

 dlesex, seven miles north from London. The vil- 

 lage is situated on the high road from London to 

 Ware and Hertford, and is adorned with many ele- 

 gant mansions and villas. An extensive trade in 

 timber is carried on here by means of the Lea river 

 navigation. Population in 1841, 9027. The 'Bell 

 of Edmonton' is celebrated in John Gilpin. 



EDUCATION. It was stated in the public 

 prints, some years since, on the authority of a 

 French writer, whose name, however, is not given, 

 that " the departments in France which are the 

 most enlightened and send the greatest number of 

 children to the schools, do yet produce the greatest 

 number of criminals; and that the most moral of 

 the departments are those which send the fewest 

 children to the schools." In order to judge fairly 

 of these results, provided they are truly stated, it 

 would be necessary to know more than is told us 

 of the precise local condition, population, wealth 

 and moral exposures, of these contrasted depart- 

 ments. But, leaving the questions which these 

 circumstances are so necessary fairly to settle, we 

 have introduced the statement, for the sake of 

 distinctly admitting that mere education, considered 

 without reference to the sort of education, is not 

 enough. We are far from saying, that the social 

 safety and prosperity of any people is to be mea- 

 sured by the number of schools alone. We look 

 with equal solicitude to the character of these 

 schools. Knowledge, simply considered, is nothing 

 but power. And knowledge that is crude and im- 

 perfect ; that is mechanical, being rather an imple- 

 ment in the hands of the mind, than the culture of 

 the mind itself; or that is speculative, being blend- 

 ed with no moral influences, such knowledge is a 

 dangerous power. The idea too much prevails, 

 that schools have a kind of talismanic virtue to pro- 

 mote and preserve free institutions. We are every 

 wayplacingtoo implicit a reliance upon schools. We 

 should not regret it, if the experiment in this point 

 had met with temporary failure in France, pro- 

 vided the lesson were thereby taught, that some- 

 thing more than bare education is necessary to train 

 up a people to that free and happy condition, for 

 which all enlightened nations are seeking. 



Popular education, to answer its purpose, must 

 possess a certain, definite character. And the re- 

 quisites which make up this character of useful and 

 safe popular education, must, as we conceive, be 

 these. It must be thorough ; it must be practical ; 

 and it must be moral or religious. 



Thorough, we say, in the first place. We would 

 meet the alarmist, on this subject, in the very out- 

 set. We would touch, with a decided hand, the 

 very point of his apprehension. Thorough educa- 

 tion, we say, is the only safe education. 



Regard the diffusion of knowledge as we will, 

 whether with fear or with favour, this is the only 

 reasonable conclusion to which either way of view- 

 ing it can lead us. If the light could have been 

 shut out entirely, the world might have walked in 

 its dark way, with such dangers only as belong to 

 darkness. But the light has broken through all 

 the barriers, whether of jealous power, or of scho- 

 lastic monopolies ; the eyes of men are opened to 

 behold it; and we might as well undertake to bar 

 the gates of the morning, as to keep it out, or to 

 shut again the eyes that have once seen it. Instead, 

 therefore, of setting up temporary and local de- 

 fences, frail screens, to resist this spread of know- 

 ledge, it is better thoroughly to study its laws, 



fully to understand its nature and its requisitions, 

 and as fast as possible to adjust the relations of so- 

 ciety and the principles of government to this new 

 condition. A new element has entered into the 

 process of civilization, and mankind must be taught, 

 by the most thorough instruction possible, how to 

 use it. This, we repeat, is the only sound policy 

 on any hypothesis. If popular education be a good 

 thing, if it be the great instrument of human im- 

 provement, if the more knowledge we have the 

 more safety there is, then let its aid be welcomed 

 and employed, to the utmost extent. But, even if 

 we regarded it as a wild beast that had broken into 

 the pale of Christendom, and which could neither 

 be driven out nor destroyed, we should think the 

 only policy would be, to tame and to train it to use- 

 ful purposes. 



Whatever opinion, therefore, a man may enter- 

 tain concerning the tendencies of modern civiliza- 

 tion, we cannot think that he properly understands 

 the age in which he lives, if he find nothing to do 

 but to rail against and ridicule it. Grant that there 

 are things enough around us on which to exercise the 

 weapons of wit and sarcasm, such weapons can no 

 more avail to resist the progress of knowledge than 

 would arrows to stop the sun in his course. The 

 cause of education must take its trial; and it re- 

 quires all the sober judgment there is in every 

 country to bring the trial to a safe and happy issue. 



But what we wish especially to maintain is, that 

 this trial is safest, in being thorough. The danger, 

 in fact, lies not in a thorough, but in a superficial 

 education. The alarm, we are aware, of many 

 theorists is, lest the people should know too much ; 

 but the just fear, in our apprehension, is that they 

 will know too little. Whether as applied to the 

 social or political relations of man, this seems to 

 us to be true, and the true answer to the common 

 objections against a general system of popular edu- 

 cation. 



It is objected, for instance, against carrying the 

 education of the poor and labouring classes beyond 

 the simplest rudiments of knowledge, that such a 

 course will make them discontented with their 

 sphere, will unfit them for their situation, will till 

 their heads with erroneous ideas of their place and 

 duty, will puff them up with pride and arrogance. 

 If increased facilities for improvement should 

 awaken in some a reasonable desire to improve their 

 condition, and should lead a few from the humbler 

 walks of life to its highest stations, these are re- 

 sults to which no generous mind, surely, will object. 

 But the bad effects alleged, do not arise, as we con- 

 tend, from thorough, but from superficial education. 

 It is not because men are too much educated, but 

 because they are not enough or not rightly edu- 

 cated, that they become too proud for their em- 

 ployments. Who has not observed f hat this sort 

 of sensitiveness and discontent, this fear of being 

 degraded by what are called menial toils, this nar- 

 row-minded jealousy of their superiors, is ex- 

 tremely apt to manifest itself in the most ignorant 

 persons? The very thing which such persons want 

 is more knowledge. It is not to be made more 

 ignorant, but to be made more intelligent. Be- 

 sides, we must again remind the objector, that it is 

 not a question about theory, but a matter of fact, 

 that is presented to us. What the people have 

 learned cannot be unlearned. The case of partial 

 knowledge is the case in hand, and we must make 

 the best we can of it. And most clearly and un- 

 doubtedly, the best that we can make of partial 



