Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-06-11

cheat him Of this natural breadth of develop
ment. 1t is rather to improve upon ito
do better for him than mere haphazard ma
ture can do. And can this be done by the
two or three dry routines that happen to
have been handed down to US by the custom
of the ancient pedagogue?
1t is q shallow objection to wide and lib
eral course Of studies that they give Super
fetal views and smattering" of knowledge.
Is it dangerous smattering of optics the
child is getting when he watches the play Of
gorgeous color on a bubble? Is it q danger
Gus smattering of natural history when ma
ture gives him his first lessons with the birds
and butterflies? But the school does more
even than this. 1t lays the solid foundation
for his own lifelong building in every great
field of knowledge. As Sir john Lubbock
says: :" It is one thing to have 8 superficial
smattering in any subject, and quite another
thing to be well grounded in it. And it is
precisely this that our public education is
to-day accomplishing.
No, it takes all the good things that as yet
we know how to give our children, and more
if we can find them and be sure of their prac-
teal efficacy, to give the coming generation
the mastery over themselves and over the
life of these stirring times. 1t is not so much
the facts that we teach them-those, again,
are but the means; it is the result in intel
lSCtu1l pONSf anu Spiritual ASaAsh thSs We
are after.
John Stuart Mill, in his Essay on Civil
cation" says: 1.-The very corner stone of an
education intended TO form great minds must
be the recognition Of the principle that the
object is to call forth the greatest possible
quantity of intellectual power and to inspire
the intensest love of truth; and this without
particle of regard to the results to which
the exercise of that power may lead, even
A. L. &A, -.
ions Numerically opposite to those of his
teacher. We say this, not because we think
opinions unimportant, but because of the
immense Importance which we attach to
them for in proportion to the degree of in
tellectual power and love of truth, which we
| succeed in creating, is the certainty, that
whatever may happen in any one particular
instance) in the aggregate of instances true
opinions will be the result"
The true end Of education, then, is to give
men their liberty; not in the ordinary and
inadequate sense of removing the restraints
and restrictions that others put upon his
freedom but in the deeper sense Of remov.
ing those impediments to his freedom that
come from within. It is the limitation of
his own nature that is mans tyrant; it is to
himself and his lack of development that he
is slave. Men talk of this age as the free
age, and of this country as the home OF lib.
erty; but who is wholly free? The hand
and arm may be unshackled, but the mind
Bound and shut up-in most men-by a
thousand prejudices, liabilities, biases, blind
nesses We hear it said sometimes that
civilization brings men into bondage that
the savage alone is free. How totally the
opposite of truth is this The savage has no
true liberty. He is an abject slave to the
very forces of Nature. The cold and the
heat and the hunger, the wild beasts of the
forest, the poisonous germs of the swamp,
disease. and the dread Of his savage foe, his
| own fierce and uncontrolled passions these
are his masters. 1t is only as men come
together and build around them civilization
that, little by little, they wrest away from
Nature some beginnings of freedom.
| The child born free? No; it is born a
helpless slave. Nor can anything but educa-
ton bring him up to the birthright of his
| liberty, Left to Nature. left to the savagery
of an illiterate condition, he grows up
slave, and every year of life puts new
| shackles on his mind; passions that grow
| fercer with his growth, the bad customs OF
| his class that knit themselves upon him, the
| sway of evil leaders that lie in wait to make
their victims of the mob.
There is but one free man upon the planet !;
it is the intelligent and self-controlled man.
And this intelligence and self-control it is
the province of public education to bestow-
not upon privileged few, not upon class,
an aristocracy, but upon every child, even OF
the lowest and most ignorant people that
can be set free from the grip of parental
prejudice or greed and brought in to partake
of it. To them and to sill our benefcent
system of education comes and says: " Ye
shall know the truth, and the truth shall set
you Free"