And thus is every professional teacher, through every day of his life constantly preparing, or rather composing,-some lofty anthem, or some low doggerel, which shall be pealed to his honor or shame, as long as his memory lasts.

How careful would every mechanician be, if each well or ill made wheel, in all his machines, instead of an industrious and business-like humming, or a distressful creaking, should boldly articulate the name of its maker, at every revolution. Who then shall set bounds, even to the rational solicitude which every teacher should feel in regard to those living and speaking products that pass from under his hand?

Another motive which should powerfully urge on a teacher to the full performance of his duty, is the desire to elevate the profession to which he belongs. "Every man," says Lord Bacon, "is a debtor to his profession;"which means, as I suppose, that every man, by the mere fact of membership, comes under an implied obligation to render that profession some valuable service. Surely it would be held dishonorable, not to say a dishonest act, if a man should join any partnership, corporation, or guild, appropriate to his own personal advantage, some portion of its general funds,-whether those funds might consist of money or of respectability, and should then, without requital, desert the company he has defrauded. Still worse would it be, if the interloper should bring general discredit upon his fellow-members, or degrade the character of their employment. Each of these offences the incompetent teacher commits. In the first place, does he not pocket more than his equitable share of the public money given for the support of schools; or if I may use a technical phrase, current among rogues, because it so well describes the quality of his conduct, does he not crib? In the second place, he degrades the standard of good school-keeping, and covers all his brethren with some degree of odium.

On the other hand, the accomplished teacher not only performs an invaluable service to all his pupils, but he sheds lustre upon all his fellow-laborers, and he elevates the common sentiments of mankind, in regard to the dignity of the employment. By making the profession honorable, he increases its attractive power, as a profession, and thus draws minds of a higher order to engage in it and adorn it. This aggrandizes it and irradiates it still more, and action and reaction hasten the grandest results. The employment itself is thus lifted more out of the sphere and reach of ignorance and incompetency. Nor is this all the good service which the accomplished teacher renders. He is perpetually improving old methods, and inventing new ones, for the instruction and government of children. These improvements enable all teachers to do their work better and easier, as well as to do more in the same time. It is the opinion of the best teachers that the art of teaching is yet in an exceedingly rude state, and that its instruments and appliances are yet to be as much improved, as navigation has been improved by steamboats, or land travel by railroads. It is only the incompetent teacher who mistakes the circumference of

his nutshell for the outside of the universe. Some great improvements have already been made, and doubtless in this, as in all the mechanic arts and in all the sciences, still greater ones are to follow. The black-board is to vivid and exact instruction, what the art of painting was to civilization; and yet the black-board does not perform one-fourth of the service which it will do, when the art of drawing becomes a common attainment. A black-board, to a teacher who can not draw, is, with the exception of arthmetic, very much like a library to a man who can not read. Now, all the losses incurred through deficiency, as well as all the advantares gained by skill, are daily illustrated in the practice of the accomplished teacher. His life is a lesson on the exhibitory plan. What Watt and Fulton were to the steam-engine; what Franklin was to electricity, Newton to astronomy, Bacon to philosophy, Columbus and Vasco de Gama to a true knowledge of the earth-all this are accomplished teachers, the Pestalozzis, the Wilderspins, and the Colburns, to their professions, and its profesThousands and tens of thousands,-a profession reaching to the end of time-will do homage to their memories.

sors.

Another motive which should operate strongly upon the mind of a teacher, is the desire to be master of his business. Here all selfish and all benevolent promptings coincide, and impel with united force in the same direction. Just so far as any one improves himself as a teacher, he improves himself as a man, and elevates his standing as a citizen. Consider, for a moment, upon what vantage ground a finished teacher stands, and the attainments which are indispensable in his daily business-if he has the good sense to cast away all pedantry-are available in his daily intercourse with men. Let us look at this

point a little in detail, for I think many teachers do not fully appreciate, in this particular, the advantages of their position. Even in the lowest and most mechanical departments of a teacher's duty, his attainments are hardly less serviceable, in his daily intercourse with the world, than they are in the schoolroom. Every teacher of respectable qualifications for the humblest class of our district schools, is a perfect speller of all the common words in our language, he is also a good penman and a good reader. As a grammarian, he can both speak and write the English language with propriety. As a geographer, he is acquainted with every city, mountain, river, and island of any note in the world, knows all the political divisions of the earth; and has the principal statistics of population, commerce, religion, education, and so forth, at the end of his tongue. And as an arithmetician, he can solve, with facility and correctness, at least all the questions that ever arise in the ordinary business transactions of life. Now into whatever circle or association such a teacher may be thrown, his information will come into frequent demand, and he will be always able to take a respectable, and often a conspicuous part in conversation. He will be better prepared than any others, excepting perhaps a few professional men, to write a letter, draft a circular, or make a report, which, in its orthography, grammar, style and arrangement, shall be substantially

faultless. If the news of the day, whether from armies, or from missionarles, suggest any geographical inquiry, he is ready to answer it. Being familiar with arithmetic, he will declare the answer to any question that may arise in this branch, while others are puzzling over the preliminaries; and he will be able to detect, at a glance, the thousand mistakes into which the half educated are constantly falling. I say then, that a competent teacher for a common district school enters any ordinary circle of men and women, or takes part in the business of any organized body,-whether it be a temperance meeting or a town meeting, under very considerable and very desirable advantages. He possesses all these important advantages, too, the first year he begins to teach, and however ordinary the school over which he presides. But suppose him to continue in the business of teaching for twenty or thirty years, what abundant and enviable opportunities does he possess for becoming a real master of his profession, as well as for obtaining great prominence and consideration in society. The permanent teacher will enlarge his knowledge in all directions. He will expand his grammar into philology, rhetoric, and logic. He will turn modern geography backward into the ancient. He will make geography, biography, and history mutually illustrate, diversify, and enrich each other. In connection with book-keeping, he will not only learn the common forms of business, but many of the leading points of the Law merehant. Through mechanical and natural philosophy, especially if to these he adds chemistry, he will become acquainted with that extensive and beautiful field of inquiry,the application of science to the arts of life. Through political and moral science, he will examine, as it were by a celestial light, the condition of individuals and nations and learn what conduct, what institutions, what form of government leads to their exaltation or abasement. Through astronomy, he will look outward into infinite space, and through geology backward into infinite time; and he will never enter his school-room, or thoughtfully survey the children before him, without thinking of heaven and an hereafter. Besides being a careful reader of every leading work and periodical pertaining to his profession, he will, through newspapers and reviews, at least keep up with the times, as we familiarly express it, and learn the progress which great principles and great causes are making throughout the world. Now it will not be questioned that a well bred person of spotless character, and possessing this variety and amplitude of information, will be a welcome inmate in any society or family, and will adorn whatever circle he may enter. His manners will please, his kindness will endear, his good humor, nurtured by his intercourse with children, will enliven, his knowledge will instruct, his dignity and worth will win spontaneous deference and respect, sometimes rising to reverence. It has been remarked a thousand times, that the profession of the law prepares a man for becoming a politician,-(I use this word here in a good sense,) -because a lawyer by his daily studies, is becoming familiar with most of the great principles on which the statesman proceeds. So the teacher, if he be

!

true to himself, is daily making acquisitions which assimilate him more and more to all the leading minds, in all the leading departments of life. He becomes a literary and classical critic, and he is consulted by scientific men. On the side of political economy, he approaches the statesman, and on the side of ethics he equals the moralist. As a physiologist, he is better than a physician and as a trainer of children in the way they should go, he will advance the cause of virtue and humanity, more than as many polemics as could stand within the orbit of Satarn. In himself alone, he is a temperance society and a peace society; he goes for the abolition, not of one evil only, but of all evils, and he is the most effective of Home Missions.

or

But suppose a teacher, on being asked to compute the value of a cord of wood, at five shillings and sixpence a foot, makes it come to between three and four hundred dollars; or finds, by slate and pencil, that the legal interest, on a note of hand for one year, is just six times as much as the principal; when inquired of, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, says it was the apostle Acts; or, when questioned as to what were once considered the four elements, says, earth, air, fire, and brimstone; or, to take example of men who have been through college, declares that he does not mean to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, till he can read in the oringinal Latin; or does not know what constitutes hearing evidence in law; nor the logical difference between a priori and a a posteriori reasoning in logic; or what is worse than any ignorance, however thick or black it may be, carries the manners of a haughty pedagogue into society, and demands that men shall say his creed after him, word for word, just as he demands of a child four years old, that he shall repeat his a, b, c, or of a boy in the Latin grammar, that he shall say hic, hæc, hoc; or decides all the momentous questions connected with Prison Discipline, by the rule of his own school-room;-that in all cases of transgression, corporal punishment is the first resort;-suppose these things, I say, and such as these, to be true, and what man of intelligence and moral culture will desire the company of such a teacher at his table or his fire-side. And yet these are not imagined cases; they are not borrowed from Irving or Dickens, but are veritable facts, and, I blush to say it, of Massachusetts origin.

Written for the Journal of Education.
III.

THE WORTH OF CLASSICAL EDUCATION.

BY EDWARD SEARING, A. M.

The writings of Herbert Spencer are beginning to attract a wide attention among thoughtful men in both hemispheres. To a mind singularly acute in metaphysical research, there is joined, in him, what is a rare accompaniment,— a power of expression remarkably clear, that seldom or never leaves the reader in doubt respecting his meaning, even in the abstrusest themes. The opinions

of such a man must always be entitled to respect, while they may, at the same time, easily lie open to objection, even with those not claiming to be metaphy sicians.

Mr. Spencer's educational writings having had a large circulation in this country, any discussion of the relative worth of classical studies would be necessarily imperfect without reference to his views and arguments.

It is the object of this article to exhibit some of what are conceived to be the fallacies in his defense of science as the true basis of educational training, and his opposition to to linguistic culture.

In the first place, Mr. Spencer committs the error of placing a higher value upon knowledge than upon discipline. This is seen in the very title of his first essay "What knowledge is of most worth?" As hinted in a former article, the question should not be as stated by him-"What things are really most worth learning?", but, "What things are really most worth studying?"—intellectual power being the main object of higher school culture, and not mere knowledge.

Our author classifies "the leading kinds of activity which constitute human life" viz: 1. Those activities which directly minister to self preservation; 2. Those activities which, by securing the necessaries of life, indirectly minister to self-preservation; 3. Those activities which have for their end the rearing and discipline of offspring; 4. Those activities which are involved in the maintenance of proper social and political relations; 5. Those miscellaneous activities which make up the leisure part of life, devoted to the gratification of the tastes and feelings."

In respect to the first of these divisions the author argues that the knowledge necessary to prevent one from falling into the fire, or from being run over in the street, or from receiving injury by the violation of any physiologic law, is more valuable than any other. This is not disputed.

In respect to the second he argues that the knowledge necessary to acquire the means of living comes next in importance. The value of this knowlege is illustrated in various ways; by referring to the practical uses of Mathematics in the arts of construction, navigation, &c.; to the uses of a knowledge of natural philosophy, of chemistry, of biology, of political economy, of geology. The importance of this knowledge is shown by such illustrations as the fol

lowing:

"The economical reduction from their ores of copper, tin, zinc, lead, silver, iron, are in a great measure questions of chemistry.",

"Researches in electricity and magnetism have saved incalculable life and property by the compass."

"The great ease with which cattle are fattened by keeping them warm is a debt which agriculture owes to biology."

"The remedy for the staggers in sheep is another similar debt."

"Here is a mine, in the sinking of which many shareholders ruined them