Parents would then have a measure, by which they could estimate the merit of a school; the master would have another motive for action, and there would be an emulation amongst the scholars. The business professed to be done, and undertaken, would then be performed. At present, at about three times the expense necessary, children learn about half what they are intended to be taught.
Interfering in this manner would be no infringement on private liberty; nothing would be done that could hurt, in any way, the individuals, but what must greatly benefit them. The evil habits that are contracted in early childhood, at home, would be counteracted, and the
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{85} As even those find it is necessary to make a strong impression on the minds of parents, (and as some wish their children to be treated with rigour,) there are teachers, who obtain a credit by overstraining the discipline, after having obtained a fair reputation, by carrying it only to a proper length.
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youth would be taught to know what it is that renders a man happy in himself, and respected and valued by society.
But the consideration of the system to be followed is not the least important part of the business. The useful should be preferred to the useless, and in this the example of the ancients might be followed with advantage. They had no dead languages to study, and the mind appears to have been in many cases expanded, far beyond its present compass.
Nothing, indeed, can equal the ignorance of the most part of boys, when they leave school; those who are considered as bad scholars, have lost the good opinion of themselves, that ought to be maintained throughout life; they think every thing difficult or impossible. Those, again, who have excelled, are something less ignorant, but become vain and conceited, owing perhaps to their having learnt some useless and superfluous pieces of knowledge.
Education, on the general principle, consists in learning what makes a man useful, respectable, and happy, in the line for which he is destined, whether for manual labour, or for study; for a high or a low occupation.