The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1868-04-27
Education.

There has been great deal spoken and
written lately upon the subject of what con-
stitutes practical and liberal education,
and in England, especially, a reaction seems
very generally setting in against the uni
versity and public school systems which
have been so long in vogue. Men are be-
ginning to apply the crucial test of utility
to many forms and modes of action with
which their ancestors had long rested con-
tent, and to demand that the growing child
of popular thought and activity shall no
longer be cramped and confined by the swad-
ding clothes of infancy. The reform move
ment which has made itself so deeply felt
in Church and State, was not likely TO leave
unmolested questions which have perhaps
even more practical bearing upon ma
tion's character than the precise form Of
their government, or the width of the ortho-
do1 door to heaven. The problem of edu-
cation, lying rs it does at the very root of
the matter of popular progress, was sure
to excite the attention Of those who, believ-
ing that q new era of national life had
dawned upon the world, ore naturally led
to examine with interest matter involving
80 nearly the character of people.
1t is, however, proyerbially more easy to
point out deficiencies than to suggest RENE
dies. To find fault with the modes of edu-
cation in common use is one thing-to show
practically how those modes may be effec-
tually superseded, requires something more
than that icc1oclastic diletantseism which
generally prompts the critic of venerable
institutions. 1t is very easy to cry out de-
struction to the classics, and not difficult to
suggest with some plausibility substitu-
tion therefor of liberal education in the
practical necessities of life, but to the eye
of the careful observer the proposed
changes seem somewhat vague and unde-
fined, and hardly vested with that system
attic unity which one naturally looks for in
scheme which proposes to overturn so much
that has, apparently at least, been of large
effect in mans past history
When Professor HUXLEY describes his
views on the subject Of education to consist
in "the instruction of the intellect in the
claws of nature, under which name is in
escluded not merely things and their forces,
"but men and their ways: and the fashion
sing of the affections and Of the will into
Gan earnest and loving desire to move in
"harmony with those laws" we first adj
mire, then hesitate, and end by being
slightly perplexed. And while we are
bound to admit that in celebrating his
scheme he points out many grave errors in
the present methods of popular instruction,
and makes many useful suggestions as to
the general drift of the Improvements to be
desired, we are nevertheless haunted by q
sense of impractica bility which may, of
course, be the result Of prejudice, but which
is a serious drawback TO the satisfactory
contemplation of the change.
That there are faults in the present
system of public education, few will deny.
But we are inclined TO believe that the
error underlying all others is simply
q lack of elasticity. Mems wants and
necessities vary widely, and s. scheme of
education which admits of only one method
of Intellectual training must be defective
There is no doubt OF the fact that man
who expects TO spend his future existence
in some particular pursui; ought, Ill per-
feet educational system, TO be provided as
far as possible with the apparatus and the
mental training especially fitted for that
purpose; and, as time is SO short, encum
bered with the least practicable amounl of
superHuous matter. Men are divided into the
two classes of those who wish to know ho,c q
thing is done, and those who desire to know
,chy it is done,-and the mental discipline
and educat. on of these two classes require,
it is evident, very different treatment The
world could not get on without theoretical
men, without scholars, without poets,-nay,