cannot let this number of our Journal go forth, without yielding the full measure of all the encouragement, which it is in our power to give, to the plan that Mr Carter has laid before us. We say the plan, for it is to the projected Institution for the instruction of Teachers, an outline of which is given in the last Essay, that we shall principally direct our observations. All the previous Essays, indeed, are designed to prepare the way for the consideration of this project; and we undertake to say, that all the reflection, which any man may employ on the subject of popular education, all the faults he laments, all the improvement he desires, will lead him to the same result.

We mean,

The course of argument, by which we ourselves have been led to this result, may be set forth in few words. In the first place, better schools are wanted. that the Free Schools, or what are usually called, the Common, and in the country, District Schools, need to be made better, and more efficient organs of instruction and influence. Whoever does not believe this, will, of course, dismiss our argument as deficient in the first particular; and we must dismiss him, which we would gladly do, to the pages of Mr Carter, or to his own reflections; or we would rather, for the sake of a practical demonstration, send him into the midst of one of our Common Schools; a place, we are sorry to say, where very few of the body of our people, very few parents or guardians, ever go. We would ask our easy and unsuspicious advocate of the present systems, to look about him, and to mark the restlessness, or reluctance, or stupidity, that pervades all these schools. He will find some pupils reading, what every tone of their voices tells him, they do but half understand; some, poring over the pages of a grammar, or hunting out the parts of speech in a dictionary, a work altogether mechanical, of the principles of which they understand literally nothing, and of which there are thirtyfive chances out of forty, that their master understands as little; others, he will find studying geography, in such a way, that they comprehend it as vaguely as we do the geography of the moon, and care about it a great deal less, than some of us do about that luminary, who see in it volcanoes, and city walls, and the shadow of towers; and others still, scowling over a perplexing sum in arithmetic, to which they apply no other logic, than that of the multiplication table.

Let our inquirer meet with these children at home, and talk with them about their schools; let him enter a little into their

minds, for they have minds, though our common systems of instruction seem scarcely to recognise them; let him endeavor to ascertain what is the impulse, which carries these children daily to the schoolroom; and he will find, that when the novelty is worn off, the new master, the new acquaintances and objects. have grown old; when the chance of being the best scholar, and the certificate of merit, and the fine present, are all out of the question; when, in short, he divests this matter of all extraneous influences, and of all that is barely mechanical, he will find, we say, that the impulse, which carries these children to school, is necessity; that it is (we can scarcely qualify what we are going to say) never the love of knowledge. How should it be? They learn nothing, or, what amounts very much to the same thing, nothing that they care to know. Let us be understood. They learn to read. Very well. They have taken hold of the great instrument of knowledge; but how is it applied? Let any one look over the books, which they read and study, and he will find a full half, which they absolutely cannot understand; and the other half, their own countenances will tell him, they do not wish to understand.

They learn to read; and it is our boast, that of the whole mass of our population, it is rare to find an individual, who has not made this acquisition. But what evidence beyond this, we ask, does the mass of our population give, of having spent from three to eight years of life at school? What do they know of grammar, or geography, or of arithmetic, excepting two or three simple rules, which would not at any time require more than a week's practice to make them familiar? Of the sciences, even in their simplest elements, they confessedly know nothing; and if they make no intellectual acquisition, beyond the art of reading, we believe it will as little be contended, that they accomplish anything of that better object of education, the forming of right mental habits, the culture of the mind for future acquisitions.

We are not now accusing the people of gross ignorance; though we apprehend, that their intelligence is overrated, and that some of our boasting on this point were better spared. The truth is, we forget that our language on this subject is only comparative. When we speak of our intelligent population, we mean, that it is more intelligent than that of Europe generally; but we are apt to transfer this comparative sense of what we say, into an absolute estimate. Be it admitted, however, that the yeomanry of this country is distinguished for intelligence, and as much

distinguished as any one desires to maintain, still we say, that nothing of this intelligence, but the instrument, is obtained at our Common Schools, that is, at the generality of them, for there are, it is true, a few honorable exceptions. Our citizens, as they come into life, gain, indeed, some general acquaintance with the state of the world, and with the politics of their own country; but this they gain, not from school books, but from newspapers. Of all that they actually know in the world, of all the habits of right reflection and conduct, by which they are guided in the pursuits of life, the schools, we say again, have furnished nothing.

We have spoken now and formerly of the dulness of our schools. We consider this feature of indifference, which pervades the mass of them, as bearing strongly on the argument we are pursuing. It is certain, that children are not learning anything, or anything that can turn to much account for them, when this heavy lethargy of school dulness has settled upon them. Words may fall upon the ear, and even ideas may be crowded into the memory; but to the listless slave of his task, there will be none of those relations manifest, which constitute valuable knowledge. Nor is this listlessness inexcusable. Human nature will always be true to itself. When a book will not sell, it is shrewdly guessed, that it is not worth buying. When the people fall asleep, it is too likely that the preacher is dull. When that most formidable assembly, the Congress, is addressed, and you perceive that nine tenths of its members are each one talking with his neighbor, or writing his letters, or rattling his newspaper, you are apt to think, that it is a great hardship to the speaker, who is delivering himself of the fruits perhaps of a whole session of study; till you find that his speech was pronounced, not for the benefit of the honorable gentlemen around him, but for the benefit of his own reputation among his constituents; that it was spoken not to be heard, but to be printed. And last, not least, when those, who shall yet rise to be electors, or themselves members of Congress, wear away the lingering hours in school, as if it were in a prison, and bend a deprecating or vacant eye upon the dull lesson, there is too much reason to suspect, that the lesson is not adapted to their comprehension, or certainly not to their benefit. But if there is no cause for wonder on one account, there is, at least, on another. It is truly a most extraordinary state of things. Man is, if anything, a learning animal, a creature, destined, as the very

end, or at least as the very process of his intellectual being, to improvement; and yet there is no business in the world so proverbially dull, there is none among us half so reluctantly pursued, as the business of learning.

We hope that our observations thus far have some tendency to produce the conviction, that something needs to be done for our Common Schools. We have dwelt longer upon these views, because they are essential, not only to our argument, but to every hope of improvement in the prevailing system of education.

And we proceed now to say, in the next place, that in order to have better schools, we must have better teachers.

There are a few schools for children, which form exceptions to the foregoing representation; and if we direct our attention to these schools, we shall discover, at once, the secret of their superiority. It is found in the superiority of the teachers. This is the sole cause; a cause indispensable, and, where it is put in operation, sufficient, and always sufficient. Materials there are for good schools in every city, village, and neighborhood, throughout the country. But it is only where a man, not only of superior intelligence, but of superior talent and tact in giving instruction, fixes himself, that such a school actually exists. And this is just what we might expect. It requires no deep reasoning to perceive, that it is not a schoolhouse, nor a fund, nor an appropriation, nor a legislative enactment, that makes a good school. Nor will good books do it, valuable as they are. Nor will just speculations on the subject, nor a correct judgment in the minds of a few, or even of the body of the community. All this will be to no purpose; all that we can say, and think, and do, and give, will avail nothing, with-out good teachers. They will be but so many means, wasted for the want of application. How, then, shall this application be made? Or, in other words, how shall well qualified teachers be obtained?

This brings us, in the third place, to consider the remedy, which Mr Carter proposes.

It may be taken for granted, we suppose, that there is such a deficiency to be supplied. The especial and grand reason for the faults of our schools, is the want of proper qualifications in the teachers. If any one doubts this, let him inquire of our intelligent school committees, who really discharge their duty, and he will find them with one voice, testifying to this deficiency. They accredit the applicants for the situation of instructers, in

most cases, not because they are satisfied with them, but because they can get no better.

Now we expect to be reminded, that our colleges are full of young men, who are passing through the course of education, and many of whom will be engaged for a greater or less time in the business of instruction. But it is forgotten in this suggestion, that all this affords no help to the Common Schools. The graduates from our colleges, almost without exception, are employed in private schools; and it is a sufficient evidence, we may remark in passing, of the low estimation into which the systems of free instruction have fallen, that all, or almost all, who are able to afford it, send their children to these schools ; and yet how common is it for our educated scholars, however learned and accomplished, to fail of doing anything in the business of instruction, that is at all adequate to their talents and acquisitions.

Nor is this strange. To know is one thing; to teach is another. The distinction is obvious enough; and yet we agree with Mr Carter in thinking, that it has not often been 'practically made.'

'When we are looking for a teacher,' says he, 'we inquire how much he knows, not how much he can communicate; as if the latter qualification were of no consequence to us. Now it seems to me, that parents and children, to say the least, are as much interested in the latter qualification of their instructer as in the former.

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Though a teacher cannot communicate more knowledge than he possesses; yet he may possess much, and still be able to impart but little. And the knowledge of Sir Isaac Newton could be of but trifling use to a school, while it was locked up safely in the head of a country schoolmaster. So far as the object of a school or of instruction, therefore, is the acquisition of knowledge, novel as the opinion may seem, it does appear to me, that both parents and pupils are even more interested in the part of their teacher's knowledge, which they will be likely to get, than in the part which they certainly cannot get.

'One great object in the education of teachers, which it is so desirable on every account to attain, is, to establish an intelligible language of communication between the instructer and his pupil, and enable the former to open his head and his heart, and infuse into the other some of the thoughts and feelings, which lie hid there. Instructers and pupils do not understand each other. They do not speak the same language. They may use the same words; VOL. XXIV.No. 54.

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