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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.
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Untitled Article
nr improvement . For all the good that is to be hoped for from he Whigs or the Tories , the people may well say , * Laissez-nous ( hire , and content yourselves with collecting taxes and keeping ( own actual violence amongst the small fry of thieves . Laisseziovsfaire , for you spoil every thing with which you intermeddle . ' There can be no doubt that it should be held a compulsory duty
If citizenship to provide for the education of all the children Jf the community ; but assuredly the present government are not mfficiently wise or sufficiently responsible to be intrusted with the organization of a system . Mrs . Austin has quoted an authority' to show that compulsory fducation is not a new thing , but that it is of ancient usage amongst < everal of the German states , as well as in the United States of America . This was almost unnecessary . The question amongst he mass of the community—to whom her work must be supposed irincipally addressed—is not whether a thing has been done before , ) ut whether it be an useful thing to do now . The rule fast obtainng amongst them is the pure and wholesome doctrine of general jtility , to which all other rules and all antique prejudices will gradually be made to bow . Speak to the logic , to the sound understanding of the people , and they will comprehend ; but they will take nothing for granted let it be god-fathered as it may .
It seems to me , too , that we are guilty of great inconsistency as to he ends and objects of education . How industriously have not its nost able and zealous champions been continually instilling into the mind of the people , that education is the way to advancement , that * knowledge is precious , " that a man cannot " better himself / ' without some learning ! and then we complain , in the fear , that education will let them above their station , disgust them with labour , make them ambitious , envious , dissatisfied ! We must reap as we sow : we set > efore their eyes objects the most tempting to the desires of uncultivated nen ; we urge them on to the acquirement of knowledge , by holding wit the hope that knowledge will enable them to grasp these objects : — f their minds are corrupted by the nature of the end , and embittered by the failure which must be the lot of the mass , who is to blame V The champions of education are herein dealt rather too hardly by . They have had to address themselves to a mass of people ,
the ordinary concomitant of whose lives has been the constant galling sense of painful physical privations ; such people cannot be naade to comprehend the luxurious enjoyment arising from a cultivated mind ; because mind cannot enjoy , until the owner of the wind can cease to be conscious that he is the possessor of a body s ubject to painful action , through the want of necessary food , or clothing , or warmth , or cleanliness , which mainly conduce to form e ^ grcgate called health . People in this condition are
contantl y intensely alive to all which holds out to them a chance of ^ ape , either temporary or permanent , from the misery they endure ; and to this fact , more than to any other , roust bo attri-
Untitled Article
On the Objects of Popular Education . ' 721
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1834, page 721, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2638/page/47/
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