ASSOCIATE EDITORIAL.

EXTRACTS FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE CUYAHOGA COUNTY TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION, ON "THE CULTURE AND TEACHER OF THE COMMON SCHOOL."

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On this point I aver, first, that every child should be taught to think—to think earnestly—to think correctly. Nothing short of this can be termed culture. The process of inserting a few facts in a scholar's memory-like specimens in a museum, or samples of goods in a show case,-is not education.

To educate the mind, all its faculties must be vigorously exercised. The memory should not only be stored with facts and principles, but the judgment should be clarified, the understanding quickened, the reason sharpened, the attention barbed, and the will-the mind's executive-confirmed and strengthened, so that all the faculties of the mind shall be as "apples of gold in pictures of silver."

This is educating mind-this is intellectual culture. And yet, how very few children are sent to school for any such purpose! How few parents look upon schools as a means of mental growth for their sons and daughters! The highest good to be obtained at school, in the minds of many, is an absence from mischief, and an initiation into the secrets of "the three Rs-Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic;" the last being considered the ultimatum of the common school. Now the mere fact that a person is able to read—that is, to repeat printed words readily, and write, is no certain evidence that he is educated. These are but the implements of education-important, but still only a means to an end. And yet how few of the scholars of our schools go much beyond this. Indeed, so general has been this impression upon the public mind, that in making out statistics on the comparative standing of different communities, morally, socially, and intellectually, the ability to read and write has been long regarded as a sort of Mason and Dixon's line—running between ignorance and intelligence—the very crossing of which, by an inherent virtue, would strike the manacles from the bondaged soul, and, what is very strange at the present day, without the possibility of a rendition to mental servitude. In addition to reading and writing, a slight knowledge of figures would be an ample "underground Railroad" running to the very Canada of intelligence.

I would not wish to be understood as undervaluing the importance of reading and writing, or spelling, as branches of elementary training.

I would by no means abridge the time spent upon these studies. I should, on the contrary, have the time now devoted to them more thoroughly improved, until every youth should not only be a reader, but a good reader, and a reader of good books. But I do protest against this low idea of common school culture; and the fact that so large a portion of our American farmers entertain it, but adds earnestness to my remonstrance. Regard it as we may, the thorough education of the laboring classes in this country, is the only means of preserving their political rights. The common school is our real DemocAlready our cities and commercial and manufacturing towns have taken an important step towards the ascendency. To their free. schools they have turned with a will and with hope. Advantages, not only for a common school education, (as the term is generally understood,) but for an extensive acquaintance with the higher branches of the Academies, are proffered freely to all. The son or daughter of the poorest mechanic can here, at least, claim equal advantages, and can compete with the wealthiest for a preeminence in that true aristocracy -the mind.

But the idea that a farmer's son or daughter needs anything but common sense, and the ability to read and write, is considered utopian. If, perchance, an ambitious lad-enthusiastic with a thirst to know— hazards the advanced step of studying algebra, or philosophy, the neighborhood is all agog, and Madame Gossip is filled with anxious wonder to know whether the son of farmer A is to be a lawyer, doctor, or minister !

The truth is, the farmer, equally with other classes, needs, and is susceptible of thorough culture. He needs it, because the greatest problems of the age are in his hands for practical solution. His ignorance is a universal calamity. He is susceptible of culture, from the very fact that he can think undisturbed. His faculties are not weak. ened and dissipated by a constant round of novelties. The little he hears constitutes the much of his thinking. The hot-bed and greenhouse may paint with beauty the petals of a flower, but if you wish the sturdy, graceful elm, you must seek it standing alone, upon the river meadow, where the nurture of the dew and the tempest has crowned it with the grace of a Thalia and the strength of a Titan. The Prussians have a wise maxim, that "whatever you would have appear in your national life, you must put into your schools." If we wish our nation to be a brotherhood of enlightened freemen, we must educate our youth, not as farmers or mechanics, but as men, as citizens.

The greatest error of the school culture of the present day, as it seems to me, is its superficial tendency. Under the plea of making the ascent of the hill of learning practical, we are practically leveling the hill. Instead of assisting the climber, we are removing the necessity of climbing. Instead of the scholar's going up, science comes down. Every subject is being canvassed for its practical knowledge, and even this is diluted homeopathically to suit the strength of the recipient. As the result of such a system, we shall have a great many men who will know a little of a great many things, but unable to think vigorously on anything. Our schools will turn out a host of precocious children, but very few men and women.

Unhappily, however, the very mention of moral instruction in schools, fills the minds of certain persons with phantoms of sectarianism, and hobgoblins of bigotry. I have no patience with such men. As though it were possible for a child to attend school a day without receiving moral instruction! The question is not, however, whether moral instruction shall be given in schools, but shall not immoral be prevented? For, whether the teacher is doing his duty or not, the work goes on. A child does not enter the school-room without receiving impressions which shall be for good or ill in the formation of his future character. A thousand moral, or immoral, teachers surround him on every side. His seat-mate, his fellow in the class, a word, a reproof, a smile, a profane word, a false action, the obscenity exhibited upon his desk or the school room door, are influences, the impressions of which, his moral nature will wear through all eternity! A school, without a pervading, all-controlling moral presence, is an influence for evil of immense potency.

* * * Moral culture does not consist alone in communicating a knowledge of what is right and wrong, but the doing of the right, and the not-doing of the wrong. Every attribute of our moral, as well as intellectual nature, is strengthened by exercise. He who wishes a strong right arm, must educate that arm by exercise. He who would have a strong love for the right, must do right.

The school-room should be a sort of moral gymnasium, where the attributes of kindness, good will, courtesy, gentleness, truthfulness, purity, love of the right, obedience, love to God and man, are strengthened by daily and constant exercise. The atmosphere of the schoolroom should be so pure that profanity, falsehood, impurity, selfishness, and their kindred vices, shall wither from lack of sustenance.

CLEVELAND, April, 1856.

E. E. WHITE.

IRREGULARITY IN ATTENDING SCHOOL.

NUMBER II.

It is a mistaken idea to suppose that children can be benefited in proportion to the time of their attendance at school, provided that attendance is not regular and punctual. If the school were a green cheese or a barrel of cider, and every pupil permitted to nibble at or draw from it, then each one's share might be in proportion to his time; but there is nothing more absurd than to suppose that, in a classified school, an irregular or periodical attendance will result in any thing but mischief to the pupil. Some parents seem to regard their children as so many empty bottles, and the school and its exercises as a vast reservoir, from which they are to be filled; and that they will be filled just in proportion to their time of attendance, i. e., if they are there onehalf the time, they will get half full, if one-fourth of the time, onefourth full, etc., whether that time be so many consecutive days or hours, or be every other day or hour, not taking into consideration that if the connection between such reservoir and the scholar be interrupted or broken off, it requires time and labor, more than can be spared, to make the connection complete again. Neither do they consider the fact that others are interrupted in a similar manner, and that when these interruptions are frequent, as they usually are in our common schools, no connection at all can be kept up. The whole school, therefore, is made to suffer-is kept in an unsettled state, perhaps from one end of the term to the other.

Now, is it right and just that every member of the school should be made to suffer in consequence of the faults of the few? Should one scholar be permitted thus to destroy the real benefits of the school, and to rob, yes, rob directly his fellows of their legitimate rights? No more right than it would be for him to put his hand clandestinely into your pocket and abstract money therefrom.

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Time is money," and

under these circumstances it is peculiarly so; therefore, he who thus unnecessarily takes it, is guilty of robbery.

"I was not

This flimsy

The parent or pupil may plead, "I did it ignorantly." aware of the extent, or the turpitude of the crime." excuse offers no mitigation. Is a man any the less dead because I kill him with my eyes shut, or accidentally? Is he any the less poisoned if, through accident or ignorance, I give him arsenic instead of ashes?

And yet some are weak enough to excuse themselves on the ground of ignorance.

Now, where a school is thus interrupted in its exercises, every pupil feels it, and thus far becomes demoralized, disheartened, discouraged, and thus the way is paved for a future course of idleness and crime. In this case, the poor teacher is too often made the "scape-goat" to bear the sins of a whole neighborhood. He is blamed for the poor success of the school, when, in fact, if an angel had taught the same school, no better success would have attended. Nothing, therefore, is farther from the truth than to suppose that a scholar can keep pace with his classes when he is habitually late or irregular in his attendance. If the school is at all classified, (and every school should be,) his whole class is compelled to fall back to accommodate him, or to proceed without him. In the former case, the interest and progress of the class are interrupted; in the latter, the scholar is degraded both in his own estimation and that of his fellows.

Now, there is no more reason why the pupils of a school should thus be compelled to wait on the tardy movements of one of their number, or to retrace their steps to accommodate him, than that one neighbor should be compelled to wait for another in commencing his spring plowing or sowing, or gathering the harvest of his toil, or that he should be compelled to unplow or unsow that which he had already accomplished, because, forsooth, he had arisen with the morn and prepared his labor in due season.

The analogy is not a forced one; and the results are similar, savé that, in the latter, the injury sustained is not to be compared with that in the former.

We hope that parents and communities will soon awake to their interests in this respect; and that our schools, thus burdened and retarded in their efficiency, will soon wash themselves from this iniquity. Then shall they be what they were designed to be, nurseries of intelligence and purity.

HOPEDALE, May 3, 1856.

J. OGDEN.

TASTE.-There are men with eyes in their heads, shrewd and selfloving withal, who are yet blind to half the pleasure of existence. The many tinted sky, the sparkling firmament, the varied earth, the boundless ocean, are not for them; they see them, indeed, and so does a horse.