INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 
From an Address on “ Special Educational Needs of the American People,” delivered before 
the National Teachers’ Association, at Buffalo, New York, August 10th, 1860. 
BY J. W. HOYT, MADISON. 
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
There is a certain rudimentary education which must be 
common to all, whether American or Italian, President or sim¬ 
ple citizen — that knowledge of the instruments wherewith a 
further knowdedge and discipline may be acquired. Nay, I 
have already admitted that this common necessity extends still 
further—that the science of language, of numbers, of natural 
phenomena and of man are universally essential. Still, since 
a knowledge of these in their present condition is but a part 
of the education of a people, it is evident that that education,, 
even in its lowest grades, must be subject to modifications 
growing out of national peculiarities. 
There never was a country favored like ours ! What a his¬ 
tory ! bespangled all over w T ith the brightest names e’er writ 
upon the page of time. A history so fresh and modern, too, 
that some of the heroes of its brightest period still linger among 
us—thus joining hands with the dark, tempestuous past, and 
the mighty, working present. Yea, we are ourselves wit¬ 
nesses of a most marvellous national growth—of cities founded, 
grown populous, and filled with the countless monuments of 
almost perfected art—of mighty States, sprung up, as by magic, 
upon the virgin soil our fathers, nay, ourselves, were the first 
to cultivate, and numbering their citizens by millions—of a 
vast Republic,"wider than the ambitious Alexander ever dreamed 
of, and provided with unequaled elements of growth and 
power. 
