Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-09-08
EDUCA rION FROM A POLITICAL
POINT OF VIEW.
NO. u1-Tho YeOmanry

the late war, being in charge of
general hospital, to make out the
pay-rolls of soldiers from several
States, and it was astounding to him
to find what an immense proportion
of the men were unable to sign their
names. The regiments represented
were from Eastern and Middle Ten
nessee, from Western Virginia and
North Carolina, and from various
parts of Alabama and Georgia, and
we can well remember the despOnd-
ent chill which accompanied our
first fOrebOding of the result of the
war as we contemplated the columns
of crosses which followed one anoth-
er line after line where the sigma
lures should have been. For in a
struggle between two nations or
communities their relative intelli-
gence is an immense make weight.
Almost all the men were from agri-
cultural districts, and not one in
lIlANN COuAu Sign AlAS lidtAICs
How far this state of things has
been remedied during the fifteen
years that have interviewed, or rath-
er during the twelve years which
have elapsed since the close of the
war, we are unable to say, but we
were satisfied that, for many years
TO come, the mental culture of the
agricultural classes will be the great
educational problem for the South
ern States. We know that, since
some of these States have recovered
the right of local self-government,
most creditable efforts have been
made to abate the evil, but we also
know that what has been so far
achieved is as nothing compared
with infinitely more that demands
our exertiOns we know too, alas,
that those districts in which the
most is needed are those in which
the need is least realised, for it takes
some amount of culture to appre-
ciate the need of culture. Many
men are awake, however, in Ten
nessee to the necessity of this effort
and their number is increasing
every day, and we have at least
satisfaction in the conviction that
however slowly the work may go on
it can never go back; there are too
many interested in it already for
that, and this number is bound to
grow, for in proportion as education
is spread the desire for more of ii
will spread too.
Taking for granted then that Wig
OrOus efforts will be made for addi-
tiOnal educational advantages, we
will devote the present paper not to
urging the necessity of education,
but to practical suggestions of the
methods of education applicable to
the classes designated, believing
that some misconceptions are prev
alent on this topic, and believ-
ing moreover that an ill-cOnsidered
and useless method of education
will do more to cherish mems pre-
judices against education than let
ting the matter alone altogether
would. A man originally Obtuse to
the benefit of schools who finds his
son rather more useless and good for
nothing after his school training
than he was before, will not have
his zeal for education stimulated by
the process.
Our problem then is, what is the
best educational course for the sons
of farmers who expect to be farmers
themselves, who don't expect to go
to college and whose education is to
terminate at fifteen or sixteen.
And here we for the first time run
against what we deem Il serious mis-
conception. An immense number
of people think that the instruction
given in our common schools should
be preparation for a college course,
and that the teaching in them is
best tested by the position taken in
colleges and universities by such few
rs go from the common school to
the higher institutions of learning.
A more fatal error we hardly
think could be made. Much as we
value a first class college education,
where it has been thorough, where
1t has been intelligently received,
we hardly think a more worthless
thing could be imagined than a
scholastic education which stops
just at the point where its pursuit
begins to exercise taste and the ra-
tiOnal faculties rather than those OF
mere memory and imitation.
y boy who has advanced i'm Latin
just far enough to blunder through
dozen lines of Virgil or half a
page of Caesar without the faintest
conception of what he has been read
ing about, who has imperfectly mas
tered few Greek declensiOns and
conjugatiOns, who has gone through
book of Geometry with the vaguest
conception what he means by an
angle-and then stops short and
goes to plOughing and rail-splitting,
would be much better off intellectu-
ally if he had never touched book
on Greek, Latin or Geometry. His
mind has been stupefied rather than
enlightened by the process, and he
has wasted time during which he
might have been acquiring things
he could understand and see the use
of. Granted that if he is to go on
and get classical and mathemati-
cal education this training is an es-
sential preliminary; but we are
considering now the case of those
bows who are not so destined, and
for them this fragment of collegi-
ate education is both a frightful
waste of time and cruel infliction
of labor for no purpOse-such a boy
Is worse than not educated at all ;
ne has gone through an unmeaning