Their industrial habits are of incalculable benefit to them. They all learn some trade, and acquire the habits and the skill requisite to constitute them producers, and thus practically conform to this fundamental law, "that if any man would not work, neither should he eat." The other conditions that have been stated as essential to success are also complied with, the scholars being kept under the influence of good teachers, and of the same teachers from year to year, during their continuance in the institution.
The well-qualified and eminently successful teacher who has long been connected with the Refuge in New York, in a late report says, "The habits of industry which the children here acquire will be of incalculable benefit to them through life. Yet we look upon the School Department as the greatest of all the means employed to save our youthful charge from ignorance and vice. As it is the mind and the heart that are mostly depraved, so we must act mostly upon the mind and the heart to eradicate this depravity.
"The education here is a moral education. We do endeavor, it is true, by all the powers we possess, to impress upon the mind the great importance of a good education; and not only to impress it upon the mind, but to assist the mind to act, that it may obtain it. But our principal aim is to fan into life the almost dying spark of virtue, and kindle anew the moral feelings, that they may glow with fresh ardor, and shine forth again in the beauty of innocence. Our object is not to store the memory with facts, but to elevate the soul; not to think for the children, but to teach them to think for themselves; to describe the road, and put them in the way; never to hint what they have been, nor what they are, but to point them continually to what they may be.
"We feel assured that our labor will not be lost. Judging the future from the past, we are sanguine in our belief that our toils have left an impress upon the mind which time can not efface. Scarcely a week passes but our hearts are cheered and animated, and our eyes are gladdened at the sight of those whom we taught in by-gone years, who bid no fairer then to cheer us than those with whom we labor now. Yet they are saved—saved to themselves; saved to society; saved to their friends—who, but for this Refuge, would have poisoned the moral atmosphere of our land, and breathed around them more deadly effluvia than that of the fabled Upas."
The success which has attended well-directed efforts for the reformation of juvenile delinquents, and evening free schools for the education of adults of all ages whose early education has been neglected, ought to inspire the friends of human improvement with increased confidence in the redeeming power of a correct early education, such as every state in this Union may provide for all her children. When this confidence is begotten, and when a good common education comes to be generally regarded as the birth-right of every child in the community, then may the friends of free institutions and of indefinite human advancement look for the more speedy realization of their long-cherished hopes. For one generation the community must be doubly taxed—once in the reformation of juvenile delinquents, and in the education of ignorant adults in evening schools, and again in the correct training of all our children in improved schools. This done, each succeeding generation will come upon the stage under more favorable circumstances than the preceding, and each present generation will be better prepared to educate that which is to follow, to the end of time.
THE REDEEMING POWER OF COMMON SCHOOLS.
If all our schools were under the charge of teachers possessing what I regard as the right intellectual and moral qualifications, and if all the children of the community were brought under the influence of these schools for ten months in the year, I think that the work of training up the whole community to intelligence and virtue would soon be accomplished, as completely as any human end can be obtained by human means.—Rev. Jacob Abbott.
I might here introduce a vast amount of incontrovertible evidence to show that, if the attendance of all the children in any commonwealth could be secured at such improved common schools as we have been contemplating for ten months during the year, from the age of four to that of sixteen years, they would prove competent to the removal of ninety-nine one hundredths of the evils with which society is now infested in one generation, and that they would ultimately redeem the state from social vices and crimes.
The Hon. Horace Mann, late Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, issued a circular in 1847, in which he raised the question now under consideration. This circular was sent out to a large number of the most experienced and reputable teachers in the Northern and Middle States, all of whom were pleased to reply to it. Each reply corroborates the position here stated; and, taken together as a whole, they are entitled to implicit credence. The whole correspondence is too voluminous to be here exhibited; I can not, however, forbear introducing a few illustrative passages.