Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-02-28
INDUsrRTAL EDUCATIoN.

priating 100000 acres of the public lands
to each of the several colleges organized in
any form to teach agricultural and me-
chanic arts, has become law. This is 8
liberal endowment when taken with the
former appropriation, and the people win
lave no one but themselves to blame If
they do not place the study of productive
industry on sound and satisfactory basis.
In the first place the public should under
stand that these are new departments of
learning and science, which have never
been taught nor studied in any of our col
leges, academies or universities, and there
fore we are seeking to give exist
ence to learned professions in
agriculture, manufacture and mining
without either textbooks or teach
ers of educated experience. This state of
things opens wide the door for pretension,
and perhaps successful quackery. But all
arts and sciences start from microscopic
germs. They obey the law of growth and
evolution, as much as an acorn, q young
bird in the shell, or an infant at the breast.
With living beings, transition never ceases
and never can. II gravitation were annihi
lated, and all motion and life become ex-
tinct, there could be no advancement in
dead matter, and of course no educational
evolution. Humanity, it is plain, is COZ
structed on an entirely different plan, COM
bining in one person, mental, moral ard
muscular activities, working in
perfect harmony to subserVe
a great common purpose. With all the
light of long cultivated and advanced
science, if We find it impossible to obtain a
clear and reliable understanding of this
common purpose of all our functions, how
could Greek and Roman authors writing
two thousand or more years ago, know any
better than we do, or any more than we do,
about the elements of nature, and the true
principles of human industry? The truth
is, they knew much less; and their classics
never inform school boy reading Virgil or
Cicero, why baked potato is better than
raw one for his breakfast or dinner. 1t is
the hopeless unfruitfulness Of the old
college system of education that
renders something new, and something bet
ter, both desirable and inevitable. But
should men welded to the past, bound
hand and foot by the cords of its traditions,
be chosen to lesd in an enterprise which is
a rebellion against their most cherished
ideas and authority? Who called for in
dustrial schools in the United States ? Not,
certainly, the presidents and professors in
old colleges. The earnest thinking which
has so far given birth to industrial educa-
ton is not their thinking. At best they
are only step-fatheTs; and neither their
sympRthies, nor their ideas are in
the work before them in this matter.
conservatism and learning have our respect;
but they should not act the parasite, and
blight costly and nutritious fruits which
they have never planted nor watered. Any
thing short of an honest combination of
manual labor to clothe youth comforta-
bly, with intellectual and moral culture, is
false representation of education and pro-
ductive industry. Free teaching and free
schools, TO a poor people who cannot pay
for the board, clothes and books Of their |
sons and daughters, are little better than
a mockery. Make education free so far as
tuition is concerned, in the Agricultural |
College near Knoxville, and the cost of |
board and other expenses will forever deny
its advantages to ninety-Dine families in
one hundred in the State. Such en- offer Of
free education is little short OF an insult to
every poor man in Tennessee.
There is nothing in society that is so
bampered by the iron letters Of tradition as
education. Brutality that antedates both
Christianity ard civilization, has come down
to US, and denies the right and the duty of
the State to look on children as God has
made them, and assist auLhori5atively in
bringing them up in the way they should
go. Every child should have chance to
work for an honest living, and have fair
education in the bargain. Too much par
entail authority is qualified slavery, which is
unfriendly to high industrial education.
Too many fathers and mothers are sadly
by intemperance, many vices,
and some crimes, to bring up their children
properly. This results, unavoldably, in the
steady Generalization of society, Of the
State, and the nation as whole. Our sys-
tenn of education is wrong alike in theory
and practice. Instead of improving the
habits and morals of mankind, it intensifes
and multiplies all vicious indulgeDcies.
Nothing but true, scientific development
Of our species can ever cure this growing
evil. Civilization being the offspring Of
productive industry, must place its learn
ing, science and all public bonors on the
same industrial basis. Every vice that
makes war on human elevation must en-
counter an eXterminating war in return.
No farmer destroys bad weeds in his
garden by neglecting them. Our children,
rightly educated and started in the
world, are worth to-day about a thousand
lines more for all useful purposes than they
would have been three hundred years ago.
Honest men and woman are worse under
in value than any thing else
whatever. They greatly underestimate
themselves, their children and neighbors,
and thus magnify our poverty. Schools
where boys and girls can work for their
board and books and have tuition free, /
would soon develop great wealth in Ten
leSsee mind and muscle, and pay 1000 {
per cent profit on the expense Of such insti-
,utions. Give boys fair chance to turn
abor into bread, and bread into chemistry
and mathematics.
4 REMARKABLE DISAPPEARAN CE.