My countrywomen, what is before us? What awful forebodings arise! Intelligence and virtue our only safeguards, and yet all this mass of ignorance among us, and hundreds of thousands of ignorant foreigners being yearly added to augment our danger!
We are not even stationary. We are losing ground every day. Every hour the clouds are gathering blacker around us. Already it is found, that the number of voters who cannot read and write, and who yet decide every question of safety and interest, exceeds the great majority that brought in Harrison. Already the number of criminals and felons, who, on dismission from jails and penitentiaries, are allowed to vote, exceeds the majority that brought in our chief magistrate in 1836![1]
Nor is the picture of our situation less mournful, when we examine into the condition of young children in those states, which have done the most for education. Take New-York, for example, where, for forty years, the education of the people has been provided for by law, and where the very best school system in the world has recently gone into operation. It is the chief business of the Secretary of State, to take care of the common schools of the state, while, in every county, a deputy-superintendent, paid five hundred dollars each year for his services, devotes his whole time to the care of common schools. Every year these county superintendents report to the Secretary of State, in regard to the situation of the schools in the county under their care. It is from these reports of the superintendents of schools in New-York, that we are enabled to draw a picture of the condition of young children in common schools, that should send a chill of fear and alarm through our country. For if this is the condition of young children in that state which has excelled all others in a wise and liberal provision for the care of schools, what must be the condition of things in other states, where still less interest is felt in this great concern!
The Secretary of State, in presenting the reports of the county superintendents to the Legislature of New-York, remarks thus: “The nakedness and deformity of the great majority of schools in this state, the comfortless and dilapidated buildings, the unhung doors, broken sashes, absent panes, stilted benches, gaping walls, yawning roofs, and muddy and mouldering floors, are faithfully portrayed; and many of the self-styled teachers, who lash and dogmatize in these miserable tenements of humanity, are shown to be low, vulgar, obscene, intemperate, and utterly incompetent to teach anything good. Thousands of the young are repelled from improvement, and contract a durable horror for books, by ignorant, injudicious, and cruel modes of instruction. When the piteous moans and tears of the little pupils supplicate for exemption from the cold drudgery, or more pungent suffering of the school, let the humane parent be careful to ascertain the true cause of grief and lamentation.”
To exhibit, more fully, the sufferings of little children at school, the following is abridged from these reports:
Sufferings of Little Children from Bad Schoolhouses.
One of the county superintendents reports of the schoolhouses in his district: “One house in K. is literally unfit for a stable; the sashes of several windows are broken, twenty or thirty panes of glass are out, the door is off, and used for a writing-table. Yet the district is wealthy, but ‘they cannot get a vote to build a new schoolhouse.’” “Another schoolhouse in W. is nearly as bad; the gable ends falling out, the chimney down, and the windows nearly all boarded up.” Many of the schoolhouses are situated in the highway, so that, at play, the children are endangered by the passing horses and vehicles, and the traveller is also endangered by the rushing of boisterous boys, frightening his horses. Instances of this sort have repeatedly occurred.
Another writes, that in one of the largest landed districts, the worst log schoolhouse in the district is still retained, offering no security against winds and storms. One of the window sashes was “laid up overhead because it would not stay in its place.” To keep the door shut against the wind, one end of a bench was put against it, and a boy set to tend it, as one and another went out.