The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1889-07-09
TEACHERS IN COUNCIL.
Meeting of the Institute of Instruc-
tion at Bethlehem.

BETHLEHEM, N. H., July .S.-The sixtieth
annual meeting of the American Institute of
Instruction was called to order in the Grand
Casino at MapleWood this evening, Presi-
dent G. A. Littlefeld of Rhode Island in the
chair. There was representative gather
ing of teachers and educators from all parts
of New England. The sessions were opened
with prayer by Rev. Forrest f. Emerson of
Rhode Island. After the singing of patriotic
songs and other selections by the Temple
Quartette of Boston, the assembled teachers
were welcomed to the town of Bethlehem by
Gen. George 7. Cruft, and to the State by
Hon. James w. Patterson. State Superin-
tendent of Instruction. In the course of his
remarks, which were most cordially received
Mr.. Patterson said:
1t is the duty of scholars in their associa-
ted organizations sternly to rebuke this revl-
val of dark age hereses. They who would
crush the schools, or transform them into an
organ of sectarianism, are foes to social pro-
gress and personal liberty, for they would
make 1t impossible for the people to come
into the full possession and enjoyment of
that great inheritance which We designate
the civilization of the age, and would hold
the masses in social and spiritual vassalage
to the intellectual and official masters of the
world.
We may allow that the first fruit of popu-
lar enlightenment will be rebellion against
can0nized authorities, but even doubt and
agnosticism, bad as they are, have as much
spiritual value as the credulity Of universal
ignorance.
In the papers and searching debates of our
annual gatherings upon different phases of
the great cause In which we are all engaged
the accidental and fanciful will fall before
what is sound and essential; eccentricities
and exaggerations, false theories and unsuc-
cessful experiments will be eliminated, and
the educational work of our day be reduced
to an Ineligible working system. The
growth and future history Of American edu-
cation will be traced along the line of our
published proceedings
But another, and, perhaps, the highest
functions of the institute, is to kindle and
concentrate national sentiment upon the
transcendent importance of the interests at
stake in the.publiclschools.
Let us have solemn affirmation by public
utteIance, from the teachers of the youth Of
the nation, that an ignorant ballot is men
of mechanical labor. the genius of invention
and discovery the deftness and beauty Of
artistic industries, the lucrativeneSS of trade
by sea and land; the extent and variety of
the products of agriculture and manufac-
lures; that popular enterprise and national
character all have their springs in the schools
of the republic. Let it be iterated and reit-
Grated that social advancement, political
equality and domestic happiness would all
die in the styes of barbarism but for the in
tellectual and moral schooling OF the peo-
pie.
Let the evident truth that the right Of self
government is born Of intelligence and must
perish with the loss Of power to administer
1t; that it is but step from plut0cracy to
anarchy, and from anarchy to despotism, be
pressed home upon the people with startling
emphasis, that the public may be revived to
a generous and enthusiastic support of the
schools of learning of every degree, and in
the religious spirit in which they were plant.
ed by the fathers.
To such exalted and imperative work we
welcome the association not less than to the
feasts of reason and the nectar of the hills.
President G. A. Littlefeld of Rhode Island
appropriately responded for the Institute. In
the evening President E. 3. Andrews of
Brown University delivered an intensely in
teresting address upon "The Indispensable
ness of Historical Studies to the Teacher"