The Potter journal and news item. [volume] (Coudersport, Pa.) 1872-1874, 1873-10-08
where?
People here seem to have no inter
est in politics this fall. E. S. NJ.
HECTOR, October 4th, 1873.
where?

In THE Peoria, Illinois, Normal
school commencement held last June,
there were some very interesting ex-
ercises-One, the address of Prof. j.
B. Turner on the Conservation of
Forces on our Schools" is so good
and so suggestive that we are sorry
it is too long for the JOURNAL. The
following extracts are from his adj
dress, furnished us by friend:
What shall we do with and for the
brain-force that lies dormant and
slumbering here? How use, eXpend
and develop or call it out, to the
best advantage to its owner and all
around him? Siumbering, did say?
But the brain of true child never
slumbers nor sleeps in all its waking
hours, except when we approach it
with some of our poppy nostrums,
stiiie it with our dead conservatisms,
paralayze it with some unnatural
task. or repulse and destroy it with
some exhausting passion. And yet
it often happens under what we are
pleased to call our care for them, (by
very extravagant figure Of speech,
to make the best of it) the poor little
things are cursed with SO much toll
and duty and drudgery out of school,
and so much drill and discipline in
it, and so much indiscreet and way
ward criticism. impatience and pas
sion on all sides, that almost their
whole brain-fOrce is consumed and
wasted on what is of little or no real
use to themselves or, in fact. to any
one else. Hence it happens that
boys who grow up in the street Who'll
" without care. 50 often surpass in
real capacity of thought and manly
energy, many who grow up under all
the care Of the schools and shops and
farms. | say, $50 often" not imply
ing that this is universal or even
general; but that if our schemes of
education and labor were what they
ought to be it never would or could
occur in a single case where anything
like equal gifts by nature have been
received. Our appliances Of either
education or Of industry, or of self
government and self,control. so often
fail to produce results in accordance
with their labor and their costs, only
because both their labor and their
costs are misdirected and misapplied.
They do not conform at some point
with natures inexorable laws of alb
sOlute fate, or with Gods still higher
laws of q still more absolute free
will.
| would not disparage our Ameri-
can system of free schools. | know
that it is justly the hope and the
pride Of the great republic; | know
its moral and social influence already
the globe from Boston to
Japan and from Japan 10 San Fran
cisco; | know its acnievments, its
power, its glory, its hope for the ma
tion and for all nations; | therefore
criticise its administration, not to
dishearten its friends and administra-
tors, but to hasten it onward and up
ward to its final millenial glory.
The vast majority Of our children
are in school only from five to ten
years of their lives; probably the
avrage attendance Of all the children
of our fifty millions of people would
not be seven and a half years, even
in the most favored states and in
other states not the one half of that.
What precious years? What a seed
time of life. What mighty destinies
of the republic, and of the race of
man, lie bound up in those few brief
years, Of our American childhood?
With all this stupendous outside
and care and self sacrifice
and cost how shall it 90 on in the
inner temple in the school room
where all this cost is applied and ex-
pended? We are in a shop got up
for the purpose of manufacturing
brain-1orce and directing it to the
highest and best ends of human duty
and human destiny. The amount Of
it on hand at any given moment is
as absolutely fixed as the amount of
steam or water power in an iron fac
tory. You can increase it only by
calling it INTO activity either for good
or for evil. Its nature is like all
other living things, to grow or in
crease only by its own action. How
will you direct it? how excite it ?
how manage it? toward what ends
and results, high or low, good or
evil, true or false, useful or useless? &?
1t takes some skill and practice even
to roll a wheelbarrow; more to man
age carpet factory, a locomotive or
a steamship. Does it require more
to best direct and develop and con-
troll the forces of that most wonder
full of all mechanisms for which alone
all else moves and was made-the
human brain and-the immortal soul
that sits next to it, and evermore, at
least On earth, must use it as its
chief, if not its only instrument of
of thought, of high en-
deavor, high duty, high manhood
and high destiny both here and here
after. Our taxes, our loss Of our
time, their bills for board,
clothes, ETC., we have got to meet
o,1,hox- Nhall if op,Dunf 70 onr