President Caldwell, of the University of North Carolina, in a series of letters on popular education, addressed to the people of that state a few years ago, proposes a plan for the improvement of common education. The first and greatest existing evil which he specifies is the want of qualified teachers. Any one who "knows how to read, and write, and cipher," it is said, is regarded as fit to be a "schoolmaster."
"Is a man," remarks President Caldwell, "constitutionally and habitually indolent, a burden upon all from whom he can extract a support? Then there is one way of shaking him off; let us make him a schoolmaster! To teach a school is, in the opinion of many, little else than sitting still and doing nothing. Has any man wasted all his property, or ended in debt by indiscretion and misconduct? The business of school-keeping stands wide open for his reception; and here he sinks to the bottom, for want of capacity to support himself. Has any one ruined himself, and done all he could to corrupt others by dissipation, drinking, seduction, and a course of irregularities? Nay, has he returned from a prison, after an ignominious atonement for some violation of the laws? He is destitute of character, and can not be trusted; but presently he opens a school, and the children are seen flocking to it; for, if he is willing to act in that capacity—we shall all admit that he can read, write, and cipher to the square root—he will make an excellent schoolmaster. In short, it is no matter what the man is, or what his manners or principles; if he has escaped with his life from the penal code, we have the satisfaction to think that he can still have credit as a schoolmaster."
The Georgia convention of teachers, in a published address, after speaking of the importance of giving a more extended education to our youth as citizens, and giving an outline of a liberal system of popular education, go on to remark as follows: "Alas! how far should we be elevated above our present level if all of them were thus enlightened! But how many sons and daughters of free-born Americans are unable to read their native language! How many go to the polls who are unable to read the very charter of their liberties! How many, by their votes, elect men to legislate upon their dearest interests, while they themselves are unable to read even the proceedings of those legislators whom they have empowered to act for them!"
In accounting for this lamentable state of things, the committee of the Convention say, "We seem to forget that first principles are, in education, all-important principles; that primary schools are the places where these principles are to be established, and where such direction will, in all probability, be given to the minds of our children as will decide their future character in life. Hence the idle, and the profane, and the drunken, and the ignorant are employed to impart to our children the first elements of knowledge—are set before them as examples of what literature and science can accomplish! And hence the profession of schoolmaster, which should be the most honorable, is but too often a term of reproach."
That other most unwelcome and dread conclusion, that existing provisions for popular education in the United Slates are inadequate to the requirements of a free people, is, then, in view of all these facts, unavoidably forced upon us.
In the name of Christian philanthropy, in the name of patriotism, then, I inquire whether there is any ground for hope that our free institutions may be transmitted unimpaired to posterity. "With the heroes, and sages, and martyrs of the Revolution," to adopt the language of another, "I believe in the capability of man for self-government, my whole soul thereto most joyously assenting. Nay, if there be any heresy among men, or blasphemy against God, at which the philosopher might be allowed to forget his equanimity, and the Christian his charity, it is the heresy and the blasphemy of believing and avowing that the infinitely good and all-wise Author of the universe persists in creating and sustaining a race of beings who, by a law of their nature, are forever doomed to suffer all the atrocities and agonies of misgovernment, either from the hands of others or from their own. The doctrine of the inherent and necessary disability of mankind for self-government should be regarded not simply with denial, but with abhorrence; not with disproof only, but with execration. To sweep so foul a creed from the precincts of truth, and utterly to consume it, rhetoric should become a whirlwind, and logic fire. Indeed, I have never known a man who desired the establishment of monarchical and aristocratical institutions among us, who had not a mental reservation that, in such case, he and his family should belong to the privileged orders.
"Still, if asked the broad question whether man is capable of self-government, I must answer it conditionally. If by man, in the inquiry, is meant the Fejee Islanders; or the convicts at Botany Bay; or the people of Mexico and of some of the South American Republics, so called; or those as a class, in our own country, who can neither read nor write; or those who can read and write, and who possess talents and an education by force of which they get treasury, or post-office, or bank appointments, and then abscond with all the money they can steal, I answer unhesitatingly that man, or rather such men, are not fit for self-government.
"But if, on the other hand, the inquiry be whether mankind are not endowed with those germs of intelligence and those susceptibilities of goodness by which, under a perfectly practicable system of cultivation and training, they are able to avoid the evils of despotism and anarchy, and also of those frequent changes in national policy which are but one remove from anarchy, and to hold steadfastly on their way in an endless career of improvement, then, in the full rapture of that joy and triumph which springs from a belief in the goodness of God and the progressive happiness of man, I answer, they are able."