OF EDUCATION 85 



Within the memory of some of our citizens we have 

 given up many of the methods of our ancestors. Old 

 ways are tedious and too expensive. We no longer 

 occupy the stage-coach for the better part of a week, 

 when we have a few hours' business to transact fifty 

 or a hundred miles away. A modern idea, expressed 

 in the locomotive, saves us one-half the fare and two 

 or three days' time, to say nothing of personal com- 

 fort. 



We can hardly realize the magnitude and import- 

 ance of modern discoveries and inventions. Almost 

 every art has been transformed within the last forty 

 years, and our manufacturers and business men would 

 become bankrupt if they should ignore modern ideas 

 and methods in their business as they are ignored in 

 education. 



We have made wonderful progress in material 

 prosperity, but very little improvement in the means 

 we employ for our emancipation from the thraldom 

 of ignorance and immorality. You saw quite as 

 good instruction in the old brick house by the bridge 

 twenty-five years ago, as we have seen in most of our 

 schools the past few years. We have better school- 

 houses, more studies and longer schools, but the 

 same primitive method of teaching. 



Educators from foreign countries have justly criti- 

 cised our school polity, as lavishing money upon 



