Semi-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1853-18??, 1857-08-05

common schools, by 1000, and as many children at
school as she has. The same is substantially true
in the comparison between Tennessee ana Nortn'
Carolina. >.
It must also be borne in mind that North Carolina
has no large Cities like Virginia. Tennessee, Georgia
and Kentucky, to build up and sustain colleges and
high schools
Upon calm review of the entire facts, is neither
mmodest nor unjust to assert, that North-Carolina
IS clearly ahead of all the other saveholding States
with her system of public instruction; while she
compares avorably in several respects with some OF
the New England and North Western States
But, though our educational condition and pros
poets are thus cheering, we have only made good
beginning in the great work. There are now from
ffty to sixty thousand children in the State, aoho
erer 90 to school, must reach these also, or the
most of them; for in ten years nearly all of them
who are males will be citizens, and will vote to make
laws to govern you, themselves, all of us. What if
they grow up in ignorance and vice. they will not
be the only sufferers! The intelligent the vrtuous
and the owners of property especially, are all deep
" concerned in this movement; and 1t behooves
them to do every thing that can be done, justly and
with reason, to prevent we'll as diminish vice and
crime. Ignorance creates injustice and crime In
Justice and crime create courts of law courts OF la"
create taxes; and men of substance have these taxes
to pay.
What we need now, is
lst .Nore and better teachers for our common
scAool.-We have now, it is true, many competent
and efficient teachers; but some means should be
nroyided to increase the number. To this end, if
we cannot have normal school or schools under
State patronage, we should organize and hold teach
ers institutes in every county; and if not in every
county, by all means in every congressional dis
trict
Cd. Uniformitv in our school6ooks ,-HoME-made
books if possible but at any rate, books that will
do Justice to our State and to the South not Sec
lional, but truthful and just We want also, COM
mon school libraries.
3d. an abiding interest in common schools By all
the people, and especially by parents; manifested
b. visiting the schools, by talking about them, by
laboring to improve them, and by encouraging and
holding up the hands of teachers, committeeman,
and the officers of the system generally The acad
emles and colleges take of themselves; but
common schools must be cared for or they will lam
guiSh, and langushing, perish. Our college conf
mcncements and the examinations at our academies
are crowded by the intellectual, the wealthy, the
fashionable and the gay. This is well, and are
all glad to see it; but, my friends, who attends a
common school examination Have we any And
if so, how many? The Good Book informs US that
there little city, and few men within it /;
and there came great king against it, and beseged
it, and built great bulwarks against it. Now, there
was found in it poor wise man, and he by his wis
dom delivered the city; yet no man remembered
that same poor man. Then said l, wisdom is better
than strength: nevertheless the poor mans wisdom
friends, such things ought not to be- This "poor
wise man "-CoMMoN SCHooLs-will delivers de-
lvcrng State from the clutches of ignorance,
and rescuing it and all its great interests from pre-
mature decline; let US neither despise his wisdom,
nor close our ears to his words, be unmindful Of
his worth and his services because his garb is plain
and his station humble. Let us rather cheer him,
and cooperate with him, and help him along
irg that as he is the beginning of all wisdom and
all improvement, and the motive power Of all pro-
gress it is who really dependent on him, and
not he
4th. Common cause, sohererer it can be made, be-
tueen the subscription schools and the common
schooh-Much good, l understand, has already been
accomplished in this way. By uniting the State
funds and the subscription funds the schools can be
kept up seven or eight months i'll the year; which
is long average as the schools of Massachu-
sets and New York are kept open.
The experience of the Northern States is that the
sdccess of common schools depends, not much
upon large State fund as upon the interest taken
in them by the people. There, they the schools
alike of the rich and the poor-comnaon schools, be-
attended by all; and we shall never fully sue
coed with our system till we have made them so
here 1t was Daniel Webster who said-speaking
of the New England common schools" it is re-
proach that public schools should not be superior to
private" ''If had" said he {" as many children
as old Priam, would send them all to the public
schools Our schools are called common, because
oSSouSS
ALL and because they attended by some of all !;
common as the waters, and the atmosphere, and the
blessed light of day are common
5th We need also State Polytechnic or Milita-
ri School-The dream of universal peace is pleas
ant fancy, destined never to be realized. The moral
improvement of the world has not kept pace with its
intellectually the most intellectual communities in
the United States the most unstable and agrees
sive, and the least disposed apparently to regard
their constitutional and moral obligations. We
must deal with human nature and with States and
nations as we find them. Possessed as we are of a
peculiar institution, so thoroughly interviewer with
our domestic peace and so essential to contin-
ued progress and prosperity, it especially becomes
us to cultivate martial spirit. We must prepare
our sons for all the duties that may lie before them,
whether in civil life in the paths Of aoar! Our
rights and the peace of our fre-sdes must be deen-
ded in the last resort by every drop of blood and
by every ounce of treasure that we have Virginia,
on the one hand expends fifty thousand dollars per
annum on her military schools, and South-Caroina
on the other, thirty thousand dollars; yet we have
no public military schoo, there are but eight or
ten volunteer companies in the State, and our militia
system is neglected, and entirely inefficient.
There is no cheering or triumphant future for
North Carolina for the South, but in constantly
improving systems of public instruction, and a con-
tinued and vigorous progress in schemes ofimprove-
ment both by land and water Public instruction is
the parent of enlightened improvement of all de-
scriptions Just as surely and truly as that ignor
is the parent of public torpor ofsocial debase-
ment, and Of general poverty and crime. 1t has
been we'll said, that If De Witt Clinton had never
been born, and the first conception of the whole
scheme of internal improvements of New York were
yet to be formed, they would certainly and newt:
ably result from her system of common schools. !"
And SO may say, if our system of common schools
had been in operation in 1920, and had been then
what it is now our State would have been among
the first, as it is the very last to pierce the Ale
ghany mountains and reach the great lines of rail-
way and of navigation connected with the Mississippi
valley The travel and the wealth Of that mighty
linn einco hav heon