The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1898-11-05
ON HAMPTON WAY
A Careful Study Of Methods Of
the Institute.
RESULTS FROM The SCHOOL
Application OF Practical Iteas-Education
Urged for New National Conditions.
Hard Work.
RESULTS FROM THE SCHOOL

tRev. \. ID. Mayo, NJ \. LII. D.
The Republic now seems on the eve
Of momentous new departure. in the
adoption of a colonial policy that will
perhaps involve several millions of
people who, through four hundred
years, have been lying under the most
intQlerable combination Of civil and
religious despotism in Christendom. In
this emergency, our American system
OF Universal Education comes TO the
front as the supreme agency in the
formation of the new Republican Am
erican, as distinguished from the old
European imperial, colonial policy. The
supreme and final test OF any system
OF education is what it can DO to lift
up the lower orders of mankind: the
savage, barbarous and oppressed pop
ulation of the world, in range of the
blessings of a Christian civilization.
1t IS an amazing fact that in the dis
cussiOn now going on, regarding this
great providential movement. its op-
ponents seem absolutely insensible TO
the possibility of any colonial policy
save what they style imperialism
meaning, we suppose, this, that the
only possible way to govern col
OnieS inhabited by population
only partially introduced to civiliza-
ton is the old European, which is still
largely the pagan Roman, system. One
would think that they mad never
heard of the fact that, within the past
century the United States has been at
work on a wholesale departure in hu-
man affairs In the public manage
ment of Religion, of Education, OF
Labor, of Society and Government, it
has broken every European precedent,
and in defiance of the pessimis,ic pro-
phesies of the high authorities, built
up a nation, today richer. in many
ways more powerful, and in the words
of Abraham Lincoln, according to the
cOnsiderate Judgment OF mankind"
the most prosperous and hopeful in
the world.
The secret of this marvellous success
is found in the fact that the Republic
is Education. The Republic governs
men to develop their own capacity to
govern. The American Common School
is the soul of the Republic; because it
is the first great experiment of peO-'
pie schooling itself. Indeed all Amer
lean Education, whether public or pri-
in every case it is established, support
ed and supervised by the people, act
ing in their various private corporate
and public capacity. Every one who
will, must know that, without the
great system of common schooling in
augurated by the South, in cO-opera-
ton with the North and the nation, at
the close of the war, comforting of full
American citizenship upon the five mill
lions of freedmen would have been, not
only the most stupendOuS blunder, but
a crime imperilling the very social eX-
istence of the South and the Nation
1t was the New England colonial COM
mon school that educated the major
ity of WashingtOn's army which won
American independence: and the sew
enty-five years of education Cf the
North that saved the Union in 1S60-65.
and during the past thirty years
type of American school has tsen
growing up which, today, offers to the
nation the most complete ST umen-
tally ever fashioned by man for the
training of the classes of people that,
under various names, are still the ma
jority of the worlds population.
The one man of great genius in ed
ucation developed by the Civil War
was Gen S. c. Armstrong, who will be
named in history with Lincoln and
Grant and scores of the fathers Of the
new reconstructed Republic. He was
born in Hawaii educated in Massachu-
sets and served as Il soldier and edu-
cational worker during the war. At
its close, he established at Hampton,
Virginia, in sight of-the beach strick-
en- by the prov of the first Dutch Slave
ship, the Hampton Industrial and Nor
NAL College. which is the last and most
characteristic new departure in Amer
lean education and in the true method
of Christian missionary work for the
lower orders of men. who are even
now the majority of the worlds pop
ulatiOn. AS the son of missionary.
in these Islands he had noted the prac-
tical failure of the Oid-time method Of
converting pagan savageS to civilized
Christians. The nominal change Of
opinion was largely superficial. Their
heathenism was never reasoned in
and could never be reasoned out"
Their school education. though il went
somewhat deeper, did not reach down
TO the hard pan" of character. So,
while enthusiastic Christians IN their
support Of churches and attendance on
religious services, they still huddled
together in one-rOOm cabins and have
reduced their own numbers from four
hundred thousand to thirty thousand;
the annexation Of the Islands to the
United States being probably their only |
chance against self determination.
Gen. Armstrong proposed to civilize.
school and Christianize the children OF
the freedmen, by beginning at the prac-
teal end. He saw that a civilized and .
community OF today is the
best result of the eighteen centuries of
Every department of
work; every superior feature of its
home. social and industrial life is a
product OF Christianity and in Itself.
a teacher of everything in which a
Christian differs from a pagan nation.
SO he established a great school; es-
sentially moral and practically relig
iOus. but unsec-arian and unecclesias-
teal. He placed the discipline Of the