Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1889-01-16
Education VS.. Morals.

The Advance has uniformly maintained
that education by itself does not make OF
improve the morals or virtue of a people
or nation. 1t has also ulaint,ined that
while pubic schools, and 10 fact all educa-
tional schools, are very important and
necessary element in society, and go very
far to make the man and woman, they
nevertheless ara not tbs fountain head
from which our children are to be taught
either refinement, religion, or the practical
duties of life All of these must be taught
and learned at home, and the schools can
only help parents i'll the good work of prop
erly fitting thesr children for the duties
and realities of life.
Some people think, and especially the
northern people, that it Ia only necessary
to give the negro a good education to make
him the equal in race and progress of the
white man, and put him on the right road
to prosperity and emineEce. But the facts
of all history at home and abroad, teach
that even the white man or Ayrian race,
much less the negro, cannot be made ma
ton of virtne and good morals by simply
ding-dcnging book learning into their
heads at our schools and Colleges.
We have frequently cited indisputable
evidence of this fact, but here is another
right in point, and all tho way from the
pious city of Boston, where it may be sup
posed that if mere education aud learning
make the morals and virtues Of a people,
henest evidence of it would be presented
and taught in that city. But what are the
facts in the case2 The Springfield Repubh
can, which cannot be credited with any
hostility to public schools or Catholic lean
ing as to education, writes up the matter
as follows in recent issue:
eff map of Europe was placed before,
us, shaded in proportion to the returns of
known vice and crime, the darkest shadow
would seem to rest exactly where the boast
of intellectual light is greatest, in Saxony;
the very shrine of modern culture, the for
tress of free thought. Says DIR. Hayman,
in the Fortnightly Reuie,o: This garden of
the muses. radiates moral pestilence at q
rate that ancient Rome and Corinth at
their worst could hardly suIpass,' For
proficiency in tue collective depravity
evinced by divorce, illegitimacy, suicide,
general crime, murderous assaults, child
rape and child criminality, it may chal-
lenge any spot of equal area and population
in the whole world, CT 1ilized or savage
In France, two per cent, of the whole
population are highly educated, but nearly
five per cent. are criminals. Of the Ger
man people ten per cent. can read, Of the
German criminals are twenty-five per cent.
In Massachusetts,, with her high
rate of literacy, and system of education
which is her pride and boast, we have the
humiliating fact that in the year 1886 the
number com mitted to the country prisons
was the largest ever known, eighty-three
per cent. of all the commitments being for
offences against public order and decency.
This great increase in crime is not to be
charged to the foreign element in our pop
ulation, as some wonld have US think. =
Let us remember that this decadence of
public virtue is contemporaneous with a
great increase in our public schools.
Let us bear in mind the warning words
of Hodge:
Those therefore who seek to exalt men
by mere cultivation of intellect are striving
make Satans of them. "-Lynebbarg Id
eBfs.