On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    pupil . Long , very long , did we l educate not at all : ' we have now got the length of ' educate very bad ; ' and of us , alas ! as of the fiddler ' s pupil , it is not to be conjectured when we shall reach the final stage . An uneasy fermentation has long pervaded the mass ; thick vapid scum has bubbled up and coated the whole surface ; and the dark , fat , and noxious dregs have unwillingl y and but partially subsided . When , oh ! when shall we drink freely of the pure and generous stream , unstifled by mephitic vapours , unchoked and unsickened by the filthy dreg .

    National education is beginning to attract the attention of the community . The ancient dame schools ., with a slight sprinkling of free and boarding schools , have long ceased to satisfy us . The Bell , Lancaster , and Sunday schools followed , with loud acclamation , but still we are dissatisfied : we are beginning to suspect that in most instances they are mere mockeries ; clumsy machines for giving the worst education to the greatest numberan education cleverly divested of intellectual or moral culture .

    and often proving worse than useless . The infant schools , too , have turned aside from the rational plans with which they started ; and here again we are dissatisfied . Dissatisfied with the empty aristocratic arrogance of the public school , and the inflated ignorance of the trading pedagogue , we try joint stock schools and subscription schools , and wonder that masters , selected because they are thoroughly imbued with old errors , will not discover new truths : we quarrel about religion being ( professedly ) taught or not taught , and about respectability and vulgarity . In time we niay discover that it is worth while

    to inquire , not whether the master is an M . A . but whether he knows his business ; and call upon him to prove that he has penetrated the husk of learning . We may even get the length of discovering that the management of a school is not a faculty inhering in every A . M ., or indeed in every unsuccessful speculator who can persuade parents that he can read and write . Then , and not till then , shall we insist upon our instructors giving

    instruction ; and then we shall take measures for discovering if they have acquired those statesman-like qualities that are indispensable towards enabling them to rule their little world with proper effect . In the mean time schemes of all kinds crowd upon us—like bubbles they arise , and like bubbles they burst—as in the sample we have given above , —leaving much ink impressed on much paper , and nothing besides .

    Untitled Article

    National Immorality Cured . 423

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 423, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/41/