[56] From "an Oration delivered before the Authorities of the City of Boston, July 4th, 1842, by Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education."
[57] Joseph Story, before the American Institute of Instruction.
[58] The census for 1850 is now being taken. Whether its results will tell more favorably upon the general interests of education in the United States than those of the last census, remains to be seen. Some of the states during the last ten years have done nobly; others have evidently retrograded. We have also a tide of foreign immigration pouring in upon us hitherto unprecedented, averaging a thousand a day for the past year, all of whom need to be Americanized.
[59] According to the last census, there were twenty states below Michigan, and only five above her. But even this estimate, favorable as it is in the scale of states, does not allow Michigan an opportunity to appear in her true light, for it is well known that a great proportion of the illiterate population of this state is confined to a few counties. In Mackinaw and Chippewa counties there is one white person over twenty years of age to every five of the entire population that is unable to read and write. In Ottawa, one in fourteen; in Cass, one in twenty-two; in Wayne and Saginaw, each, one in thirty-six. On the other hand, there were eight organized counties in the state in which, according to the census referred to, there was not a single white inhabitant over twenty years of age that was unable to read and write. It is an interesting fact, at least to persons residing in the Northwest, that in Ohio also (on the Western Reserve) there were seven such counties, making fifteen in these two states, while in all New England there were but two—Franklin in Massachusetts, and Essex in Vermont.
[60] In Massachusetts, according to a statement made by the Secretary of the Board of Education, the whole number of scholars who were in all the public schools any part of the school year 1840-41 was but 155,041, and the average attendance was, in the winter, 116,398, and in the summer, 96,802; while the number given in the census is 158,351, which is greater by 3310 than the entire number that attended school any part of the year, according to the returns, and 55,751 more than the average attendance for half of the year.
[61] In determining the proportion for this state, the census for 1845 and the school returns for that year were the data used. In the other states I have been obliged to use the census returns of 1840.
[62] My information is derived from the "Southern Journal of Education" for May, 1850—a monthly for the promotion of popular intelligence, published from Knoxville, Tenn.—Samuel A. Jewett, Editor and Publisher. This journal is ably conducted, and has now reached its third volume. This certainly is a very encouraging omen, especially when we consider that it has so long survived in a state where, according to the last census, only one in thirty-three of the entire population attended school. May it long continue to do good service in this important cause.
[63] This improvement well illustrates the advantages resulting to the state from the able and faithful supervision of her public schools. A correspondent of the Baltimore American speaks of the Annual Report of Dr. Robert Breckenridge, Superintendent of Public Instruction, to the General Assembly of Kentucky, as follows: "It is the most important document which has been submitted to that body during the present session, and reflects great credit upon the energy, fidelity, and comprehensive aims of the superintendent in the discharge of his high duties. It is now but two years since Dr. Breckenridge was appointed to the office, and the great service he has rendered to the cause of popular education in the state is strikingly exhibited in the contrast between the present condition of the common schools, and that in which he found them when he received his appointment from the Board of Education."
[64] Even in Massachusetts the average length of time the schools of the state continue is less than eight months, and the average continuance in several of the counties is only five months. The average attendance upon the schools for the time they are kept open is sixty-two per cent. of the number between the ages of four and sixteen years; but in some instances only twenty-six per cent. of the children in a town—about one fourth of the number within the school ages—attend school.
[65] Bishop Butler is here answering the objections of some "people who speak of charity schools as a new-invented scheme, and therefore to be looked upon with suspicion; whereas it is no otherwise new than as the occasion for it is so."