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To JOHN DUER, Esq.

SIR,

New-York, Oct. 1st, 1834.

Permit me to submit to your consideration the printed sheets of a work, which contains the results of some personal examination into our elementary schools. Should the work meet your approbation, suffer me to request you to confer a favour on the cause of general education, by contributing to the "District School" a short preface. Yours with high regard,

J. ORVILLE TAYLOR.

SIR,-I have read your book with great pleasure; if the enclosed remarks will meet your views, they are at your service.

Yours with esteem,

JOHN DUER.

PREFACE.

Ir is to parents and teachers, and in a measure to legislators, that this work is addressed; and on the minds of those who will read it with the necessary attention it cannot fail to make a most salutary impression. The title is modest and unpretending; the style, though eminently clear and forcible, plain and unlaboured; but the subjects of which it treats, and well and ably treats, are of the very highest importance,-far more important than the topics which are usually discussed in our halls of legislation, and which, dignified by the Α

eloquence of statesmen, and exaggerated by the arts of popular declaimers, have sometimes fixed the attention, and agitated the passions, of the whole community. The reflections of the author are evidently the combined result of experience and extensive and accurate observation; and he writes with that earnest simplicity which is the never-failing proof of sincerity, and which, it may be hoped, will transfer to the minds of his readers a portion of his own generous and disinterested zeal,-his zeal in the cause of public improvement and general happiness,-the cause to which he has consecrated his talents, his attainments, and his future life.

Entertaining this sense of the value of his work, I have felt it a duty to comply with the request of the author by contributing this brief preface; nor have I been unwilling, I confess, to connect my name with a publication which, should its circulation be as extensive as it may, and ought to be, will perhaps mark an era in the history of public instruction.

To enforce the duty and necessity of extending to all the benefits of education, in the full and true sense of the term,--to expose the defects of the system of primary instruction which now prevails, -and to suggest some of the appropriate remedies, is the design of the work. On some of the subordinate topics of discussion differences of opinion may and will exist; but all who are competent to judge, and will give their due attention to the

facts which this book discloses, must unite in the conclusion, that our present system of popular education is radically defective. It is on this point chiefly that the public mind requires to be disabused; it is in relation to this that there exists-I speak especially of this State-a very general delusion. We are told that under the fostering patronage of the government, more than half a million of children are taught in our common schools,― our pride, as citizens of the Empire State, is gratified, and we content ourselves with the general statement, omitting to inquire into the character and value of the instruction which is thus imparted; we know not, for we care not to know, that it is in truth so imperfect and scanty as hardly to deserve the name even of elementary-that it is unconnected with any thing resembling moral discipline or the formation of character,--that the teachers, inexperienced, transitory, snatched up for the occasion, are paid by salaries which hardly exceed the wages of the menial servant or the common labourer,--and that, as a necessary consequence, ignorant and disqualified, they are perhaps even overpaid by the pittance which they receive. Yet it is in such schools and by such instructers that thirty-eight out of forty of the children of the nation are, as we phrase it, educated. We have lived in a pleasing delusion; but it is time we should awake. It is time that we should cease to boast of the superior intelligence of the American people, as compared with that of the population of the Old

World; we must no longer refer to our common schools as furnishing at once the evidence and explanation of the asserted fact; it cannot be concealed, and ought not to be denied, that under one of the most arbitrary governments of Europe (despotic in its form, but in its present administration most enlightened and paternal), the children of all, even of the meanest peasant in the kingdom, are receiving, in their village and parish schools, more varied and solid, and in every sense valuable, instruction, than any of our schools, I had almost said academies, are accustomed or competent to furnish! The fact is certain: what reflections must it suggest to the minds of Americans who truly honour and love their country and its institutions !*

It is to parents and teachers, as already stated, that the exhortations of the author are principally directed, and it is from their voluntary exertions that he seems to expect that reform, the necessity of which he has so clearly established. He admits that the school systems in active operation in many of the States are wisely organized; and that in many (meaning to include our own) "all

* The admirable report of M. Cousin to the French government, "On the State of Public Instruction in Prussia," the publication of which has excited so lively an interest in Europe as well as in France, has been lately translated by Mrs. Austin, the authoress of the very best translation in the English language,— that of "The Tour of a German Prince." This report, together with the admirable preface of Mrs. Austin, ought without delay to be republished in this country.

that legislation can do has already been done." From this last opinion I am compelled to state my entire dissent. Looking to the models of Germany and France, no "system of public instruction" has yet been organized in any of the States, and in none has the appropriate work of legislation been more than commenced. I do not hesitate to avow the belief, that without regulations far more extensive than have yet been introduced,—a control far more enlightened and constant than has yet been exercised,—and fiscal aid far more ample than has yet been afforded, it is vain to expect that the character of our common schools can be truly and permanently improved. It is conceded by all that nothing can be done without competent teachers, and such teachers, in the number and of the qualifications required, we can never have, unless they are properly trained, and properly examined, and watched, and controlled, and, above all, properly rewarded.

Neither the districts, nor the towns, generally speaking, are willing or even able to select or reward such teachers, and still less to prepare them for their functions, and direct them in their labours. If good is to be done, we must bring our minds as soon as possible to the confession of the truth, that the education of the people, to be effectual, must here as elsewhere, to a great extent, be the work of the State; and that an expense, of which all should feel the necessity, and all will share the benefit, must, in a just proportion, be borne by all.

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