If This Be So, An American Citizen, Let Him Be Ever So Arrogant, Ever So Impudent If You Will, Is At Any Rate A Civilized Being, And On The Road To That Cultivation Which Will Sooner Or Later Divest Him Of His Arrogance.

Emollit mores.

We quote here our old friend the colonel again. If a gentleman be compelled to confine his classical allusions to one quotation, he cannot do better than hang by that.

But has education been so general, and has it had the desired result? In the City of Boston, as I have said, I found that in 1857 about one-eighth of the whole population were then on the books of the free public schools as pupils, and that about one- ninth of the population formed the average daily attendance. To these numbers of course must be added all pupils of the richer classes - those for whose education their parents chose to pay. As nearly as I can learn, the average duration of each pupil's schooling is six years, and if this be figured out statistically, I think it will show that education in Boston reaches a very large majority - I might almost say the whole - of the population. That the education given in other towns of Massachusetts is not so good as that given in Boston I do not doubt, but I have reason to believe that it is quite as general.

I have spoken of one of the schools of New York. In that city the public schools are apportioned to the wards, and are so arranged that in each ward of the city there are public schools of different standing for the gratuitous use of the children. The population of the City of New York in 1857 was about 650,000, and in that year it is stated that there were 135,000 pupils in the schools. By this it would appear that one person in five throughout the city was then under process of education - which statement, however, I cannot receive with implicit credence. It is, however, also stated that the daily attendances averaged something less than 50,000 a day, and this latter statement probably implies some mistake in the former one. Taking the two together for what they are worth, they show, I think, that school teaching is not only brought within the reach of the population generally, but is used by almost all classes. At New York there are separate free schools for colored children. At Philadelphia I did not see the schools, but I was assured that the arrangements there were equal to those at New York and Boston. Indeed I was told that they were infinitely better; but then I was so told by a Philadelphian. In the State of Connecticut the public schools are certainly equal to those in any part of the union. As far as I could learn education - what we should call advanced education - is brought within the reach of all classes in the Northern and Western States of America - and, I would wish to add here, to those of the Canadas also.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 249 of 277
Words from 128406 to 128925 of 143277