Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1847-01-07
u omm o 5tbools.
Spirit Culture.

The Common School Convention which held
its sessions in this city the last week. has remn
ded US of the subject of schools and of their
wants. One prominent need we will mention
the radical and almost total lack of spirit
culture
The Boy is not merely patent calculator,
or spelling book and grammar he is withal a
Soul, and somewhere, whether in schools com
mon or uncommon, that fact needs to be rcnon-
bered. He is, too, new developenent fbeing
with some new aim in the world, or he would
have not been here-that also should not be forgot
ten, The Soul requires food, and the intellect
asks habit of independent thought. Now the
memory only is educated and the reason slight
y aroused by incidental circumstances but the
Soul has never a drop for its thirst, or a morsel
for its hunger IN our system Of education,
We do not ask for the recitation OF sage the
illogical dogmas, however true any amount Of
indigestibe catechism crammed into his moral
stomach, will not help the boy. His opening
hearts great wonder needs be filled with .knowl.
edge of the Unseen but not by telling him what
Others see, but more by training him to look
himself Life spreads around him, strange, I'M
accountable, miraculous, and he wonld know
somewhat of it, and not be put off with old hear
says, or summoned from his wondering inquiry
by cautions about forbidden ground He knows
that he is more than he can account for; do moi
mislead him by mere popular legends, but speak
solely what you have experienced, in directing
and awakening his vision. Before the child be-
comes man, he has lost all distinctions in bis
mind between what was told him, and what he
himself experienced His spirit never had the
habit of sefcuIture or of self reliance and there
fore is but the chained thraI ofeducation, bent
and crippled or erect and strong, as chance
has thrown him into this mould or that Hac
he been left to think and talk freely his thought.
and received hints aud truths and opinions or
all the unseen, from others, without dogmalc
forcing them upon him, he would surely have
been as true as now, and much stronger for his
selt-heping We do not want system of wor
ship or opinion imposed upon the child, but from
the first the element of worship should be draw
out, encouraged, not forced, and made insensi
bly, to grow, through the perpetual satisfying o
} his love and wonder. We do not desire to SCI
a soul moulded 10 any sec,oran creed, but rathe
to have fed the spirit of religion, the deep aw,
that is native to him-and leave the forms t,
take their shape from the maturer intellect,
1t is much easier to say what is not to b.
done than clearly to assert what should be-
Plainly enough we can affirm, that nothing whic
addresses only the intellect and memory, can b
= Of much service in educating the moral SENSE
Therefore, all dry affirmation of excellent rules
will not do the required thing. To ask chill
Y his own sense Of things is better than to asset
D yours. 1t throws him upon his munitions an
feelings, which are always wiser than the rel
: son, in moral questions, and he becomes habi
2 uFted to mark his experience, and shape it int