Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1847-02-25


and choice. The weeds, you see, have la
ken the liberty to grow; and | thought it
unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards
roses and Strawberries
Not altogether an unapt illustration this,
of the idea generally prevalent. Education,
instead of beginning at the commencement
of life, is omitted, until the mind, having
been suffered to grow without training, has
begun to train itself Like the vine that
grows without the trellis, it catches and
clings to what is nearest, till, in the after
effort to give it another direction, the ten
drills are broken; it refuses control persists
in its hayward course is never iruit-bear-
ing, and lives, only to mock the effort at
right direction, and grows only to the NOR
tiicaton of its anxious but tardy guardian
Many seem to forget, or rather seem never
to have learned, that education begins with
life,-that, in the early and misty period of
infancy, the training of the mind and the
man begins that there and then should
instruction and guiding be the great thing
of life that the end should be ever in view,
of making the child what we want him to
be, when his powers and strength are COM
pletely developed CHOW this culture, this
training" it has been truly said "ought to
commence at a far earlier period than most
people are aware of In husbandry, our
care begins long before the process of veg
citation is at all apparent. We water the
ground before the first shoot appears, and
from the moment it does appear, our care
fitness knows no intermission. And so it
ought to be in Gods husbandry. The in
FAINT mind puts forth its first shoots with the
first dawnings of sensation and at this pc
Rod it is, that the most lasting impressions
may be made. The animal and sensitive
parts of our nature are then in full vigor ;
and as these are then treated, will to an in
calculable extent, the future character of
the human being be determined"
We may, under God, make of human
being almost what we WILL The physical
as well as intellectual man is to be carved
QUITO be formed. And the power to do
this-to guide, to DIRECTS given to all to
whom the training of an infant mind is en-
trusted. But there is heedlessness, or
an inattention upon this point, altogether in
excusable. Education is made to mean the
mere teaching of the rudiments of science
The going to school, the drilling of the child
in the matter of reading, spelling, &c, con-
stitutes the whole of education: instead of
going back to the beginning of life and re-
garding every day and every thing, as they
really are, the teachers. The influence of
this sentiment is too plainly seen in the Sc
rious evils connected with the modern sys-
tenn of education. Hence it is that the land
is groaning under these sad influences, not
so much of ignorance as of bad instruction.
10 &c ho;
taught, but rather suffering evil teachers
such as untoward circumstances, ill-chosen
times and places, 90 give direction to the
mind
There is, in truth, lamentable deficiency
in the early culture of our day, For here,
usually, is no direction at all given
to the mind the child is left to itself to
grow up to a certain period when education
is to begin, and then taken in hand to be
made something of. But, alas the child
is found to be already made, and made Just
what he should not be- Like certain do
nestle animals, the child is suffered to roam
at will for given time, before any attempt
at culture is begun, the parent, in the mean
while, waiting for him to be old enough to
begin to educate. During this " mednWhile''
the infant germ grows on, grows every way,
but the right the passions unchecked are
acquiring force the habits of evil are get
ting fast hold idleness is bringing body
and mind under its control, till, at length,
when restraint is imposed, and right in
struction offered, it cannot and will not,
readily, submit to the one nor give heed to
the other. The result is to raise up young
men, who never have done, and who give
too fearful promise that they never will do
anything in the way of commendable labor
Instead of having been taught the value o
time, the necessity of some sort of labor
the Importance of doing something, they
have not so much as learned the first princi
pies of physical labor, and bid fair to %
on, as they have begun, in profound ignor
ance. Crime follows next, and courts o
justice are busted and prisons filled, t.
say nothing of the mutitudes that escape
detection. This early physical training i
shamefully undervalued, Men forget tina
it not only prevents vice, but that it is il
fact the real basis of all intellectual culture
If we would have race of firm, robus
and well-traned scholars, more careful at
tention must be paid to this part of educa
ton
But let us look at some of the defects O
the moral and intellectual training of on
time.
As general thing, our scholars are to
superficial, too much inclined to skip owe
the more difficult and abstruse studies--hav
too much of outside, fashionable learning, t
the neglect of what ShOuid, and what does
make up the real and substantial man. Tn
growth of mind nowadays is, at best, to
puny and sckly,-there is too much of
going Over instead of going into study
The surface of learning is thoroughly skin
med for there are always enough to tax
off what rises upon the top while only her
; and there one is found going down to tn
depths and bringing up the pearl that lie
on the bottom. Now instead of an occi
: sional diver into the great depths of know
edge, we ought to have, and we might have
the body of our scholars thorough students
and they would be such, if they were onl
taught, and that early, to think, indeper
4 IDENTITY and for themselves. But the fault il
thinking, like printing, is all done up for U
-, by others, and the smoothest, easiest way
the fashion, and yet the fault is not so muc
: with those who learn as with those VIII
: teaCh We learn as we are taught. tn