The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-02-14
NATIONAL EDUCATION.


when they arrive at an age to labor
effectively in the performance of their
several duties2 The country demands
their services as soldiers, or seamen, mer-
chants, mechanics, laborers, farmers,
Legislators, lawyers, doctors, statesmen,
public officers, and in every branch of
industry, and in all the arts and sciences /;
and why net educate them that they may be
qualified. Aud as the duties Of citizen
ship-tho duty of fighting for the coup-
try, voting for the country, acting as jurors
and conservators of the peace for the
country-require the highest intelligence
and morality, ought not the country to
carefully provide for the proper training
and instruction of all, that each may bring
the greatest possible knowledge to the
fulfllment of the part allotted to him in
his proper sphere I? and is it not high
measure Of economy, as well as morality
and public police Will it not be a
great saving even in the matter OF the ex-
penses of schooling in the near future, If we
enter into it literally now, and give
every child in the land good educa-
ton Let the parents who come upon the
stage of active life in the next ten years,
be properly trained and instructed in good
schools, and each will be made teacher
to his or her children, and in very short
time we can do away with public schools
altogether, and save that expense. There
no good reason why they should not be,
if they have the intelligence. Once let it
become domestic duty for the mother to
teach her children, and the public school
will no longer be any moro necessary
than the public dress-maker or the public
bread baker. Let the fathers be fully edu-
Gated and take the training of their sons
in their own hands, and our colleges will
become useless institutions. In these days
of the universal diffusion of universal
knowledge, we have little else to do but to
SOW the seed of information in every field, 4
and it will take such firm root in the soil,
that each generation will be the educator
of its successor, even as tits its procreator.
1t is only the first step that costs, is a very
true proverb, and it will vindicate itself
equally as well in the matter Of education
as in all other great undertakings. We
are such slaves to custom, that any depar-
ture from the beaten track, from the rut of
the circle, frightens us almost out of our
senses.
We have made no Improvement in the
system Of education, from time immemorial;
but still 80 on as it was in the beginning ;
and the result has been that only when
States have taken hold of the matter and
compelled parents, as measure Of public
policy, to educate. their children under
heavy penalties for neglect, have we
realized the highest results from educa-
ton /; and who will not admit that in
Prussia or New England now, there
is less need of public schools or
colleges than in England, France, Spain
or even Virginia And why can they
better afford to dispense with these public
institutions of learning in States where
education in the past has been general ?
Simply because the parents and guardians
of the children are enabled by the educa-
ton they have received at the expense of
the State to impart knowledge to their |
children just as they perform any other
duty for them at home, without sending
them to school. A mother can teach her |
daughter to sew, and draw and play |
music, embroider, and wash and iron,
and cook beef-steak, and make palatable
gravy,-and why, therefore, may she not
instruct her in the equally simple accom-
plishments of reading, writing, arithmetic
and grammar. The father, too, can
teach his son good manners, and
instruct him in all the duties of the
farm, the countiDg-house, the factory,
the shop, OF the Office, and why not be able
to lead him through the whole course he
himself has been instructed in at school or
college? We do not pretend to say that
domestic or homo instruction will take the
place of the public schools and other sys-
TENS of education, but, certainly if our
progress in this respect is to keep pace with
the advances we have made in other di-
rectious, we see no good reason why every
family should not very shortly become their
own tutor as we'll as their own cook, and
teach their children reading and writing at
the same time they instruct them in tho
Lords prayer. Once taught how to pre-
pare it, what mother would send her child
out to dinner, when she could furnish it
a better meal at home and what mother
now, merely for fashions sake, employs
wet nurse, when her own bursting bosom
appeals to her with natures voice In
behalf of her child and yet there was
time when fashion made the wet nurse as
Indispensable for the children of good
society as the schoolmaster now is for all
conditions of people. But before we
IAN rid the State of this burden
Of education, and shift it upon other