Knoxville weekly chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1875, 1870-04-27
KNOXVILLE WEEKLY CHRONICLE, APRIL 81


| perceived.
Take Maine and Alabama. The former
had illiterate In 261; the latter-1 in IA of
the white native population.
Take Wisconsin and South Carolina.
The former had ! in 2S5 the latter in A..
Take Connecticut and Maryland. The
former had in 4S8 the latter in 8.
Take Massachusetts, and my own State
of Tennessee. The former had l in 600 !;
Tennessee ] in g. or Massachusetts had
only 1904, while Tennessee had $50, 1888
native adult alternatives.
THE SPECIAL HINDERA Noes
to a voluntary system of education i'm some
sections are: the absence of educational
sentiments in the South the repugnanee of
the wealthy classes to be taxed for the sup
port of a system of schools which includes
their former slaves the sparse population
in most of the agricultural regions. In the
New England aud Northern States, public
sentiment is such that the parent who
withholds education from his child becomes
a conspicuous object of contempt, and it is
thus as much matter of course that the
children should go to school, at least part
of the year. as il is i'm the South that they
should stay at home. A prominent and
well-nigh successful candidate for the
United States Senate IN one of the South
ern States, expressed the sentiments of
many of the politicians of the South when
he declared that "the masses ought not to
be educated, because no sooner does q man
learn his letters than he wants an office"
And in consequence of this lack of inter-
est in the question of education, such
schools and school systems as have been
established, while poorly attended, are on
an average little better than no schools.
The following, from recent number of the
Knoxville (Tenn.) Wing, scarcely exagger-
ata fhox n-f1 hi
of that State:
'sFor many years, the indifference of
Tennessee to the work of education has
been proverbial. She has manifested no
concern, or comparatively none, upon the
subject She has never had, as necessary
sequence, any system of any definite plan
of action. Before the war, there was plan
dignified with the appellation of free
schools 1t was a mere sham; it had nei-
ther system nor efficiency; it provided linn
tied means to compensate q few miserable
pedagogues without education and without
brains. They met in log cabins and snoozed
their precious time away, while the chill
dren amused themselves by tickling them
with straws. For three or four months in
the year. these schools served to contribute
to the mirthful pleasure of the youth, and
especially to their moral and intellectual
ruin"
Says Daniel Webster: The power over
education is one of the powers of public po-
lice belonging essentially to government.
1t is one of those powers the exercise of
which is indispensable to the preservation
of society, to its integrity and its healthy
action.n 1t is evil
dent, therefore, that popular cultivation,
as diffusive and general as the numbers
composing the Republic, is indispensable
to the preservation of our Republican
forms and henca arises the great cOnstitll-
tional duty of the Government. 1t is the
duty of self-preservation, according to its
actual mode of existence, for the sake of
the common good