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would dare to conjecture . We believe this to be true of all ranks , and all branches of education alike . The youths who attend the London University , must be at least a fair selection from the grammar schools , public and private , in the country ; [ and we have heard from teachers in that institution , things which have
perfectly amazed us of the ignorance in which the great majority come to them , of all things which are professed to be taught in the schools at which they have been brought up . The elementary schools for the children of the working classes , are still worse They scarcely even profess to aim at any thing more than teaching words ; and words out of a book . No attempt is made to communicate ideas , or call forth the mental faculties . The mind of
the teacher is never once brought into contact with the mind of the child . An automaton could do all that is done by such teachers , and all that they are qualified to do . Among the enthusiastic promoters of education who direct the two great , School Societies , there are doubtless many who are more or less sensible of the deficiencies of their system ,, and would gladly amend them ; but the material is wanting : teachers , who even know what it is to
teach ,, are not to be had . School-houses may be had , or money to build them ; all the ' properties , the mere instruments of teaching , may be complete ; even books , though of them there is a sad deficiency , may be provided : if one good book is written , copies may be multiplied without limit . But it is not brick walls , nor instruments , nor books , nor dead matter that is wanting ; mind must be taught by mind . Most true i 3 the maxim of the Prussian system , ' what the teacher is , that will the school be . ' Even if
we were to think with the vulgar , that any one who knows a thine can teach it—even so the bulk of the existing schoolmasters could teach nothing , for they know nothing ; no thing , no words even , except the very words set down in their books . They cannot make
their scholars , what they themselves are not . Ask them any question , in geography or history for instance , out of the narrow round of questions they are accustomed to put , and you will find them as ignorant as the most untaught of their scholars . Is this doubted ? Put it to the proof .
Is it not extraordinary that Lord Brougham , in his speech of yesterday , and in that other speech which he delivered last session against a National Education , should have built up what seemed to him a conclusive argument , out of a mere numerical statement of the increase of schools , and proved to us the sufficiency of individual and undirected exertions , by mere arithmetic ?
Are all schools alike , then ? Is it enough that there are places called schools , that there is something called teaching ? Is it of no consequence what is taught , and how ? We know not why education should be so hi ghly lauded if this be education . What , in itself , is it , to be merely able to read ? But t he children do not at present even learn to read . What proportion of those who have been taught
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National Education . 357
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 357, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/45/
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