GTIjc Jfarmcr's ittontljto ilisitor. 



95 



Gazette for Granite Common Schools. 



CONDUCTED BY PROFESSOR RUST. 



Introductory. 



The friends of education in different pnrts of 

 the Stnte have long felt the importance of u spe- 

 cific medium of communication with the public, 

 in regard to the improvement of the Common 



Schools. Sufficient encouragement has not heen 

 offered to induce any competent individual 10 

 embark ill the enterprise. The brief existence 

 and untimely death of numerous papers devoted 

 specifically to the cause of education in other 

 States, have deterred many, friendly to this 

 movement, from so hazardous an experiment. 

 The willingness of the press generally to insert 

 well-written articles on this suhjeel has ohviated 

 the necessity of making any great personal sac- 

 rifice in establishing a paper to be devoted ex- 

 clusively to the interests of this cause. Every 

 family paper should devote several of its columns 

 to this controlling instrumentality of civilization. 

 The (people can have no higher interest than the 

 intelligence and morality of the youth, both o( 

 which may he secured by good schools. It is 

 our true policy, then, to furnish interesting com- 

 munications on the snhject of education for the 

 papers in our respective neighborhoods, and we 

 may thus gain access to n larger circle of readers 

 than we could by a single paper devoted exclu- 

 sively to Common Schools. The generous offer, 

 to allow a few pages in each number of the Vis- 

 itor for the cause of education, furnishes no 

 equivocal evidence of the editor's deep inter- 

 est ill the cause, anil I trust that the example of 

 an offer horn an individual of so great influence 

 may he extensively followed by the press in dif- 

 ferent parts of the Slate. 



There are no antagonistic elements between 

 agriculture and education. The common school 

 is the most potent auxiliary within the farmer's 

 retich — it is scarcely less necessary than the im- 

 plements of husbandry, for mere tools are worth- 

 less without intelligence appropriately to use 

 them. The yeomanry of New Hampshire have 

 been educated in the common school, and they 

 are greatly indebted to thin instrumentality. To 

 it they owe a generous support, and the interest 

 exhibited by them in this movement is clear 

 proof that they cherish a lively sense of their 

 obligation. We appeal to intelligent farmers for 

 aid, with the fullest assurance of success. Ac- 

 customed as they are to watch the siirns of the 

 times, and deduce the elements of national pros- 

 perity, they know full well that it is fatal policy 

 to allow the best system of education in exist- 

 ence to languish for the want of sympathy and 

 co-operation. We repeal it, the Common School 

 has no truer friends than the intelligent yeoman- 

 ry of New Hampshire; and to them must we 

 look for assistance in carrying forward this mag- 

 nificent enterprise of educating every child in 

 the Stale. 



Educated Labor. 



The most abundant proof exists, derived from 

 all departments of human industry, that unedu- 

 cated labor is comparatively unprofitable labor. 

 1 have •before me the statements of a number of 

 the most intelligent gentlemen in Massachusetts, 

 affirming this tact as the result of an experience 

 extending over many years. In Massachusetts 

 we have no native-born child wholly without 

 school instruction ; Inn the degrees of attainment, 

 of mental development, are various. Haifa doznii 

 years ago, the Massachusetts Board ol Education 

 obtained statements from large numbers of our 

 master manufacturers, authenticated from the 



hooks of their respective establishments, and cov- 

 ering a series of years, the result of which was, 

 that increased wages were found in connection 

 with increased intelligence, just as certainly as 

 increased heat raises the mercury in the ther- 

 mometer. Foreigners, and those coming from 

 other Stales, who made their marks when they re- 

 ceipted their hills, earned the least; those who 

 had a moderate or limited education occupied a 

 middle ground on the pay-roll ; while the intelli- 

 gent young women who worked in the mills in 

 winter, and taught schools in summer, crowned 

 the list. The larger Capital in the form of intel- 

 ligence yielded the larger interest in the form ol 

 wages. This inquiry was not confined to manu- 

 factures, hut was extended to other departments 

 of business, where the results of labor could he 

 made the snhject of exact measurement. 



This is universally so. The mechanic sees it, 

 when he compares the work of a stupid with 

 lhat of an awakened mind. The traveller sees 

 it, when he passes from tin educated into an un- 

 educated nation. Sir, there are countries in Eu- 

 rope, lying side by side, where, without compass 

 or chart, without hound or land-marks, I could 

 run the line of demarcation between the two, 

 by the broad, legihle characters which igno- 

 rance has written on roads, fields, houses, and 

 the persons of men, women and children on one 

 side, and which knowledge has inscribed on the 

 other. 



This difference is most striking in the me- 

 chanic ails; but is clearly visible also in hus- 

 bandry. Not tiie most fertile soil, not mines of 

 silver and gold, can make a nation rich without 

 intelligence. Who ever hail a more fertile soil 

 than the Egyptians? Who have handled more 

 silver and gold than the Spaniards ? The uni- 

 versal cultivation of the mind and heart is the 

 only true source of opulence; — ilie cultivation ol' 

 the mind, by which to lay hold on t lie treasures 

 of nature; the cultivation of the heart, by which 

 to devote those treasures to helieficelit uses. 

 Where this cultivation exists, no matter how 

 barren the soil or ungenial the clime, there com- 

 Ibit and competence will abound ; lor ii is the 

 intellectual and moral condition of the cultivator 

 that impoverishes ilie soil, or makes it teem wiih 

 abundance. He who disobeys the law of Cod 

 in regard to the culture of the intellectual and 

 spiritual nature, may live in the valley of the 

 Nile, hut he can rear only the " lean kiue"of 

 Pharaoh ; hut he who oheys the highest law, 

 may dwell in the cold and inhospitable regions 

 of Scotland or of New England, and " well- 

 formed and fat-fleshed kine" shall feed on all 

 his meadows. — Speech of Horare Mann. 



Normal Schools. 



The idea has heen advanced, and let it he re- 

 iterated till it is seen and tell by every one who 

 has entrusted to him a soul to train, that everv 

 reason will hold good for a specific training of 

 teachers, for the purposes of giving instruction, 

 which can he lound for the specific training of 

 persons lor any oilier profession, and lor any 

 other department of business. So plain, reason- 

 able, common sense a principle is disregarded 

 no where else. What ! Expect a person to 

 preach or plead efficiently who has taken no 

 pains specially to fit himself lor the pulpit or 

 the bar? Expect a young man to administer 

 medicines skilfully who has only been doctored? 

 What! The city belle employ a men: seam- 

 stress to make her saluon attire? The man 

 of taste to have the parlor of his splendid house 

 finished by one who will di> it because he can 

 make more money during the winter in this way 

 than by chopping wood? What! Have your 

 portrait painted by one who has only practised 

 upon barns and door-yard fences? Or your 

 dress coat cut by a man who never knew how to 

 take a measure ? True, almost every one can 

 do almost every thing — "alter a sort," as Robin- 

 son Crusoe abundantly shows. I knew a minis- 

 ter who wanted a wheel-harrow, and being in a 

 hurry and choice of his funds made one himself. 

 He called it a wheel-harrow ; his neighbors 

 laughingly called it a wheel-harrow ; he actually 

 made it serve his purpose of wheeling wood. 

 Bui to mv certain ki owleil; •• up to this time ' e 

 has ii i rows from 



any of his neighbors. Almost anj person can 

 teach u child some things ; almost any one can 



with the hook open, bear a scholar say his les- 

 son ; most adults uie stronger than children and 

 can give them a sound drubbing by way ol gov- 

 erning them ; and this can be, this ts, called 

 school-keeping! This is no caricature upon the 

 thing called school-keeping in more than half of 

 the fifteen thousand districts of New England. 

 The teachers never think of doing any thing 

 more than hearing the scholar say the given 

 quantity of lessons; the teachers are incompe- 

 tent in do any thing more ; they never had any 

 thing more done for them. From the child 

 learning ihe alphabet to ihe youth beginning and 

 ending the grammar, it is one continual ques- 

 tion—" What's thai ?" No intelligible, explana- 

 tory answer to whulisit? The scholar rarely 

 ever learns what it is; any more than Crusoe's 

 parrot knew what Robinson Crusoe was. I do 

 not charge the parrot with being as ignorant and 

 as thoughtless in all respects us though it had 

 never entered " Poor Robin's " school. By no 

 means. That parrot had thoughts— a kind of 

 knowledge which ihe other parrots of Juan Fer- 

 nandez lhat received no education did not have. 

 I am not certain that it did not really think it 

 had learned, in the dialect of the Island, "to 

 speak Ihe English language v ill) propriety " — 

 (writing was not required.) Now where human 

 intellect is the subject lor discipline, I maintain 

 that more enters into n right education than a 

 repetition of sounds. Instruction is to he com- 

 municated. There should he light 10 dissipate 

 darkness, knowledge to supply the place ol igno- 

 rance; all the various faculties of the mind are 

 to be roused, strengthened, developed, expanded. 

 Every recitation should he attended with a short 

 lecture familiarly illustrating the subject of ihe 

 lesson. The scholar should he made to know 

 the thing, and he made to know thai he knows 

 it! The scholar in arithmetic is receiving no 

 mathematical training any farther than his mind 

 clearly sees the reason of every step iu the pro- 

 cess. He may work out a problem iu interest, 

 or any number of problems, and if he never un- 

 derstands that he lakes such portions of the i:iv- 

 en time in order to have his multiplier money 

 instead of months and days, he is learning no- 

 thini! to the purpose of educating his mind. He 

 strikes his decimal point by guess unless he is 

 made to see the nature of decimals. And I tell 

 no news to most teachers when I say, that, with 

 most scholars, it is a hazardous step to point off 

 their figures. Many a teacher has crimsoned, 

 and the scholars grinned intelligence the entire 

 breadth of their faces at the " Whys " ol the vis- 

 iting committee.— Rev. Merrill Richurdson. 



Education of the Young. 



It were far belter, that ihe atheist and Ihe 

 blasphemer, and he who since the last setting 

 sun has died u parricide, or sunk his soul into 

 sacrilege, should challenge equal political power 

 with the wisest and best, [bun the great lesson 

 which Heaven, fur six thousand years, has heen 

 teaching the world, should he lost upon it — ihe 

 lesson lhat the intellectual and moral nature of 

 man is the one thing precious in the sight of 

 God, and therelore, that unless lhis nature is en- 

 lightened and refined, and purified, neither opu- 

 lence, nor power, nor learning, nor genius, nor 

 domestic sanctity, nor the holiness of God's altar 

 can he safe. Until the immortal and god like 

 capacities of every human being lhat comes in- 

 to the world are deemed more worthy, are 

 watched more tenderly than any other thing, 

 no dynasty of men, no form of government, 

 shall stand on the liice of the earth, and ihe 

 force id' fraud that would ask to uphold them, 

 shall he hut letters of flax to hind ihe flame. 

 Lit those who are jeopardized or lost by fraud 

 or iiiisgovernnient— let those who quake with 

 apprehension for nil they hold dear ; let those 

 who behold and lament the desecration of all 

 that is holy — let rulers who are perplexed, whose 

 laws are violated or evaded — let [hem all know 

 that whatsoever of ill they tear or feel are but 

 jual retributions of righteous Heaven for neg- 

 lected childhood. Remember then, the child 

 whose voice first lisps to-day, before that voice 

 shall whisper I reason, or thunder sedition al the 

 he d of an arn ' : ' ' child 



■ 



shall scattei fire-brands and arrows of 

 death. Remember those sporting groups of 



