Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1859-04-02
OUGHT OUR ACADEMIES TO BE SUS


Time was when good service was rendered by
our Academical Institutions. Without them It
was impossible to educate large class Of our
| young men. The Common Schools taught the
primary branches,--the Academies taught the
higher English, and the rudiments of Latin and
Greek and the Colleges received those who
wished to obtaine liberal education. For
the last fifty years this has been the programme.
But is this arrangement essential?
Prof. Boardman of Middlebury College, in
his lecture before the Teachers Association, at
Bellows Falls, said, in substance, THAT the
-rvuyivtfrfvs fra'V Divaiiy itSuv ,,,.--r,
men who are intending to fit for College" This
claim was based upon the hypothesis that our
Academies cannot be well sustained without
them. 1t was assumed that those institutions
were to be sustained, or that our Colleges will
presently be wanting of students. We dissent
from this whole scheme. In olden time clergy
men used to receive young men into their fam
lies and fit them for College. There was then
no better way. The academies were designed
to relieve them of that burden. The academies
have done noble work. Besides fitting many
for College, they have educated a large and no
BILE class of Teachers, of both sexes, for the
Common School. The result is, that all our
children equally need the advantages Of thor
ough academical education.
who proposed to enter the ordinary walks of
business life, found themselves on an equal
footing with their fellows if they could avail
themselves of the advantages of the common
school. Those days are now passed, and the
scene is now changed. Wise men clearly fore
see that whoever are to be the business men, in
the next quarter of century, will need to pos
sess much more extended education than the
same class of men have been able to obtain the
past quarter of century They are therefore
wisely extending the advantages of their chill
dren, that they may be ready TO meet the ext
gencies of the coming age.
Butwith the present grade of common schools,
the advantages needed cannot be obtained there,
and the cost of educating whole family at a
distant boarding school or academy is utterly
impractcable. What, then, can be done p
Either a man must send one of his sons to Col
lege, and content himself with very limited
common school education for all the rest, or he
must endeavor to persuade his townsmen to
grade their schools, and employ teacher at
home that can fit all the scholars to enter Col
lege, or even conduct them, when desirable, in
some branches beyond that point. The major
part of our scholars in the Academy cannot be
spared from home long enough to acquire a
practical use of Algebra, and they never will
acquire it so long as it is only taught there
And yet it is high time that our mechanics and
tradesmen, and farmers even, were prepared to
transact their business mostly, if not wholly, by
| Algebra. 1t is more brief, and when as well
understood as Arithmetic, is vastly the most
convenient; because, being brief it is less like
ly to admit Of errors in calculation. A glance
Of the eye instantly detects any mistake in a
short process, whereas, in long one, it might
| escape notice.
| 1t is time the mechanical powers, the strength
of materials, surveying, and civil engineering,
were better understood. These are branches
which l should suppose every taxpayer would
be concerned to understand. But they need to
be taught in our common schools before the
masses can acquire them. We also very much
need something in the line of History, Botany,
Geology, Ornithology, Entomology, if no more
of the natural sciences, together with some
method of Logic, and Rhetoric, as the intro
duction to further cultivation of literature
among the masses. Something in these branch
es might be done for the present, by the way of
familiar lectures. But they must be introduced
into the common schools.
am aware that many who read these sug-
gestions will sneeringly call them Utopian
Schemes. But the day is not yet forgotten
when even the common school, to educate every
child to read, was called Utopian. Let me now
ask in candor, does not every business man, and
every intelligent woman, need a knowledge of
these branchesp How much more will they be
needed in an age to come, when all the arts and
sciences shall have been carried, in the popular
mind to a much greater degree of perfectionp
Now to answer the inquiry with which we
began, let me say that our academies, which
have wrought so nobly for the passing age,
must be abandoned. They are too expensive
! for the use of the masses, and yet they are at