PHYSICAL AND MORAL EDUCATION.

SUFFOLK COUNTY.

BOSTON.

The subject of the moral education of our pupils has recently been brought most painfully before the public. All hearts have been terribly shocked by recent disclosures of depravity in one of our schools, which has exceeded the most fearful imagination. Parents are, with reason, alarmed, and are asking with an emphasis which a parent's heart alone can give, what is the moral training that is given in our schools? What attention is paid to the culture of those principles which govern the conduct and the life, which form and sustain a high and honorable character? They are asking whether, amidst all the labor that is spent to produce good scholars intellectually, any thing like a proportionate exertion is made to produce good children morally. It is a question which demands to be eagerly listened to. It is a vital question, and must be answered. It should be a lasting shame to any teacher who cannot answer it with honor and upon honor. There is reason to fear that this most important part of all education is neglected amid the throng of other cares and labors. Too much reliance is placed upon instruction given elsewhere, forgetting that it is by line upon line, and precept upon precept, given everywhere, under every condition in which the child is placed, in the changing circumstances amidst which it is thrown, in the house, in the school, in the playground, when alone, and with its companions, that the training of the child to righteousness and holiness must be carried forward. And with regard to the instruction itself, is not the instruction required by the statute, even when it is given at all, given coldly, formally, hurriedly, as a matter of necessity, and not of hearty interest, as if the soul of the teacher burned in him towards the children committed to his charge? Is it not given at a stated time,

and, when the dull exercise is over, the whole subject suffered to sleep? How quickly does a child see through and heartily despise such miserable mockery of his moral nature and its wants? How pitiable is such a hollow pretence! The Committee cannot answer the questions which have been put. They have only a directing power in this case. It is a matter which the teacher alone can answer on his conscience. There is one matter, however, which can and ought at once to be broken up; and that is the manner in which the commandments, those holy laws of the Most High God, are recited in some, at least, of our schools. They are repeated in concert, at the top of the voice, with no apparent understanding, and with evident carelessness of the meaning of the solemn words they are uttering. Far better would it be that they were not said at all, if this be the only way in which they can be repeated. Your Committee would urge with all their power, a more interested attention to this whole subject.

School Committee.-WARREN H. CUDWORTH, MOSES P. STICKNEY, SOLOMON J. GORDON, THOMAS DAWES, J. I. T. COOLIDGE, JOSEPH L. BATES, LYMAN B. HANAFORD.

ESSEX COUNTY.

BOXFORD.

In connection with this subject, we would beg leave to call the attention of parents to the importance of that early home training and careful parental discipline, which shall supersede the necessity of all severity in school. For although teachers may be thoroughly qualified for their office, may understand well its various duties and may be deeply interested in their work, their labors may be comparatively in vain because the materials with which they are to work are not well prepared to their hands; and the time which teachers would gladly spend in carrying forward the process of mental training and moral development must be devoted to a far different work. Much valuable time is often frittered away in remedying deficiencies, or in correcting habits which might have been and ought to have been prevented by right previous training at home. But why is there this great and general deficiency in

home preparation for schools. Is there not a tendency on the part of parents to throw off all responsibility from themselves upon the school, arising, perhaps, from wrong views of the relative position of the school? "God places children upon their entrance into life, not in schools, but in families; He has imposed the responsibility in regard to the training they may receive, not upon teachers, but upon parents. And this responsibility is one that cannot be escaped or thrown off. You may, as parents, avail yourselves of the assistance of others in the various departments of education. But it should ever be remembered that in giving you those children, in committing to you the care of those immortal spirits, God assigned to you the duty of training them aright, and that of you will He require an account in regard to them.

"The dispositions of children are in the daily process of formation, their habits are constantly becoming more and more fixed, and their feelings are hourly assuming a more and more determinate character, and exerting a more controlling influence over the conduct. If you neglect the cultivation of right dispositions, habits and feelings, that very neglect will minister to the rapid growth and early maturity of those which are wrong. If you cannot spend the time or take the pains to train your son to habits of ready obedience, he will, through your neglect, be daily forming habits of disobedience."

"If you are not careful to cultivate in your children a sacred regard for truth and a conscientious devotion to duty, they may through your neglect be gradually acquiring the very opposite characteristics. And these vicious habits, the result of neglect, will soon become as fixed and as inveterate as any which can be cultivated with care and painstaking. Your children, then, we would say to parents, must for a few years be under home influences. It is for you to determine whether those influences shall be good or bad. Your children will go from the family to the public school, precisely what they are made, in feeling and character, by the influences to which they have been subjected at home. They will carry with them either vicious habits and dispositions, which have been suffered to take root and gather strength through parental neglect, or virtuous habits and dispositions, which have been cultivated by judicious care and faithful discipline on the part of parents."

It is then for you to determine, whether you will permit your children to enter the school with habits formed through negligence, which will hinder their intellectual progress, or send them with those cultivated with care, which shall prepare them for the more successful pursuit of the studies to which the attention may there be directed.

Parents, who have the welfare of our schools at heart, should take heed that they do nothing which may injuriously affect the authority and influence of the teacher. If from their children or from any other source,

they hear reports unfavorable to their teachers, let them on no account make a remark or express an opinion to their prejudice. Parents are probably not aware how much they sometimes injure a teacher by dropping a censorious or disparaging remark respecting him in the hearing of their children. It degrades him in their estimation and tends directly to disarm him of his authority and influence. They should on all occasions then speak of him and treat him with much consideration and regard, as one who holds a high and responsible situation, and stands in a most interesting relation to their children, and at the same time should impress on their minds a profound respect for their teacher, and the duty of implicit obedience to his orders. The experience and observation of your Committee confirm them in the belief that almost all our school teachers are sadly deficient in imparting moral instruction. We would deprecate all sectarian influence; but without that species of moral training which the law very particularly demands, how shall the evil propensities of early life, which so frequently manifest themselves at school, be eradicated? Can it be that teachers, who have right moral feelings themselves, can hesitate to use the opportunity and influence which their station gives them, to do what the laws require all instructors of youth to do; "Exert their best endeavors to impress their (pupils) minds with the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of society, and the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded." Must not our teachers, then, instruct our children in something else besides reading, spelling, writing, grammar, arithmetic and geography, in order to answer the demands of the law.

School Committee.-WILLIAM R. COLE, ALBERT PERLey, George PERLEY, DANIEL RUSSELL, DANIEL F. HARRIMAN.

DANVERS.

Much has been done and is still being done for the intellectual training of the children. Nor have our schools been without much good moral influence. "In all the schools," says Dr. Sears, "which are worthy of the name, the pupils are trained to some kind of order. All teachers give directions in regard to the deportment of their pupils, exacting industry, allotting the time and prescribing the manner of their recreations, requiring submission to authority, respect and obedience to themselves, and freedom from violence and wrong to each other. So far

as this goes it is favorable to moral training." But the question which should engage our attention, and which is now seriously engaging the attention of many minds, is, whether the moral influence or discipline of the schools cannot be carried to a greater perfection. We must not expect too much from mere intellectual culture. Have not the public generally these years past erred in that direction? In the language of another: "Too much has often been promised and anticipated from the simple diffusion of knowledge. The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. It never has been so. Mental information and expansion cannot with certainty be reckoned upon as improving the heart and exalting the character. Its tendency is, no doubt, to refine the manners and emancipate the soul from the thraldom of the senses by introducing it to more elevated enjoyments; but this latter result does not follow with certainty. We see some of the most cultivated and polished left with corrupt desires that crave indulgence, and often demand it with a specious justification which education has taught them to employ." "What is the conclusion then?" asks the author from whom we have quoted, "Is general education to be repudiated?" "Are we to deny that knowledge is a blessing?" "Far from it," he adds, "it needs no proof that education deserves to be ranked amongst the primary necessities of man, and that the general diffusion of its benefits is indispensable to the existence of liberal institutions." But while mental education is essential it does not follow that something else is not also essential. We say that the heat of the sun is essential to vegetation, but something beside the sun's heat is also essential. The genial showers of rain must descend upon the growing grass and grain, or else the mere heat of the sun will but, in the end, scorch the fields into barrenness. Our merely intellectually trained youths, many of them, at least, are exhibiting an alarming moral degeneracy. Temptations abound. Parents are trembling, and have reason to tremble for their children. The town is, or should be, a fostering parent to the children within her borders. She should not only see that all places of vice and temptation that can be legally closed against the young, are closed, but she should not fear to have the moral discipline of her schools greatly increased. If the moral power and efficiency in our school were doubled, or even quadrupled, then even, the children would not be too well prepared to meet the various temptations to which they will be exposed. Wealth and luxury, such as were unknown to former generations, are followed in this generation, with their usual attendants, idleness and dissipation. We do not charge it upon the schools, as their fault that these things exist, nor will it be their fault, since these things do exist, if the rising generation shall be less virtuous than generations that have preceded it. But the schools should be made as efficient as possible in meeting and counteracting the