APPLETON'S

AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA,

NEW REVISED EDITION.

Entirely rewritten by the ablest writers on every subject. Printed from new type, and illustrated with Several Thousand Engravings and Maps.

The work originally published under the title of THE NEW AMERICVN CYCLOPÆ DIA was completed in 1863, since which time the wide circulation which it has attained in all parts of the United States, and the signal developments which have taken place in every branch of science, literature, and art, have induced the editors and publishers to submit it to an exact and thorough revision, and to issue a new edi tion entitled THE AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA.

Within the last ten years the progress of discovery in every department of knowledge has made a new work of reference an imperative want.

The movement of political affairs has kept pace with the discoveries of science, and their fruitful application to the industrial and useful arts and the convenience and refinement of social life. Great wars and consequent revolutions have occurred, involving national changes of peculiar moment. The civil war of our own country, which was at its height when the last volume of the old work appeared, has happily ended, and a new course of commercial and industrial activity has been commenced. Large accessions to our geographical knowledge have been made by the indefatigable explorers of Africa.

The great polictial revolutions of the last decade, with the natural result of the lapse of time, have brought into public view a multitude of new men, whose names are in every one's mouth, and of whose lives every one is curious to know the particulars. Great battles have been fought and important sieges maintained, of which the details are as yet preserved only in the newspapers or in the transient publications of the day, but which onght now to take their place in permanent and authentic history.

In preparing the present edition for the press, it has accordingly been the aim of the editors to bring down the information to the latest possible dates, and to furnish an accurate account of the most recent discoveries in science, of every fresh production in literature, and of the newest inventions in the practical arts, as well as to give a succinct and original record of the progress of political and historical events. The work has been begun after long and careful preliminary labor, and with the most ample resources for carrying it on to a successful termination.

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WISCONSIN

JOURNAL OF EDUCATION.

VOL. IV.

MARCH, 1874.

No. III.

The Relation of the Different Educational Institutions of the State.

BY PROF. S. II. CARPENTER.

If anything beyond the merest rudiments of knowledge is to be given, the law of economy demands that this work should be thoroughly systematized, and here as elsewhere in science, perfection of system is revealed by simplicity of plan. A plan that is defective or cumbersome indicates a failure to comprehend the working of all the parts of the plan as a whole. We think that our present system of public instruction is open to this tion. It does not do well all it attempts charge of incompleteness and imperfecto do, because it does not comprehend in We one system all that is to be done. would lay down the following propositions in regard to the scope of public ed

That the work of education should be undertaken by the State, has become almost an axiom. This right of the State is usually referred to the principle of self. protection, as it is generally conceded that ignorance is the deadliest enemy of freedom. This question has thus been settled as all political questions must be adjusted, rather by the law of expediency than by any reference to an ultimate principle. The State as a body politic, not being possessed of a personal conscience, the question of abstract right does not enter this discussion. And it is by the same law of expediency that the only remaining question must be decided: that 1. The education furnished by the is, to what extent is the State authorized State must be fundamental or disciplinato carry the work of public instruction?ry, and not technical.

ucation:

instruction.

Shall we be satisfied with Reading, Writ- | 2. Provided it remain thus fundamening and Arithmetic, or shall we add other tal, the State may furnish any grade of common English branches? Shall we stop here, or shall we add the College The State must deal with its citizens 28 course, with its Languages and Sciences? a unit. It cannot recognize or admit The law of expediency must decide, and favored classes. All must stand equals has already decided that something more before the bar of education as before the than the common school is necessary, bar of law. Therefore the education furalthough just what is demanded has not nished by the State must be fundamental, been very accurately defined, and conse- because whatever benefits are conferred quently everything above mere rudimen- by the commonwealth must be open to tary instruction is in a chaotic state. It general enjoyment. The violation of this is time this chaos was reduced to system, principle would involve a people in all and the entire educational work of the the evils of special legislation. Public State brought into harmonious relation. | education can be defended only upon the

condition that the education furnished is the greatest public service?
necessary to the general welfare. Democ-
racy must be impartial, and give to none
what it does not offer to all; it must se-
cure the greatest good of the whole, rath-
er than the special good of a favored
class.

And ought

it not to go further and establish schools of theology, of music and painting? On class of citizens ought not to be furnished with a professor free, or at a reduced cost, which rednction comes from the pockets of others, while the rest are compelled to procure their professional knowledge at full cost, with a subsidy to the favored callings added.

An exception in this respect may be fairly made in the case of Normal Schools, as they may be considered a necessary

tion. Good teachers are an essential condition to good schools. They are the agents upon whose ability and fidelity the success of the work depends; and the expediency of universál education being granted, the agencies necessary to secure this end cannot be withheld. A grant of power necessarily carries with it the means to make the grant effective. Fur

than they are required to teach, if their teaching is to be really valuable, the course of instruction that fits them for this office must be superior to that fol lowed in the common schools. A teacher who teaches up to the full measure of his knowledge, is at best an inefficient teach er, and, like the man who has ceased to learn, ought to cease to teach. If ther the common schools are to be properly

But so long as this impartiality is maintained the State is not debarred from giving any grade of instruction, simply by the grade itself. Absolutely one grade is of as much public benefit as another. Whatever can be shared in equally by all is within the proper exercise of its author-means to the diffusion of general educa ity. This limitation is imposed not so much by the grade as by the manner in which the education is given or offered. The direct benefits of technical education must from its very nature be restricted to a part of the community. Any one trade or profession to be profitable must be in the hands of few, so that its benefits will be shared unequally by society, a small part being benefited directly, and the lar-thermore, as teachers must know more ger part only indirectly. Society is such an intimate partnership that no one can be benefited without conferring upon all a certain advantage; but to authorize the government to grant without cost any benefit, its advantages must be capable of being shared equally. If then technical instruction be given for the special behoof of any one class, the same, or an equivalent benefit must be conferred upon every other class. If the government es-taught, they must be supplied with teach tablishes and supports technical schools for farmers, which do anything more than teach the fundamental principles of science as they particularly affect agriculture,--although it is admitted that such schools would benefit a very large proportion of the community-it should, in fairness, do the same for miners and mechanics, and for each and every separate hand-cation and the peculiar discipline required icraft. If the State pays a professor of by the teacher is furnished by the State. farming, it should also employ a profess Every increase in positive knowledge or of blacksmithing or shoemaking, for aids the teacher in giving instruction in agriculture is as much a special calling the most elementary studies, so that no as any one of these. So again, if the State | limit can be arbitrarily set to the amount establish a school of law, for the benefit of lawyers, ought it not, in fairness, to es tablish a school of medicine, for the ben efit of doctors, whose knowledge is of

ers possessed of a superior education, who have learned not only how to teach but also how to learn. This training should be furnished by the State as a means to secure the ultimate end. Nor mal schools are not, then, mere technical schools where pædagogy is taught, but training schools where the superior edu

of instruction to be given by the State, provided it remain fundamental in its character. A man teaches Arithmetic al the better for knowing Algebra, and Al

n.

The Relation of the Different Educational Institutions of the State. 85

gebra better for knowing Geometry, and so on. We have then at one extreme the common school, and at the other the university, and between these there should be a series of schools properly graded, and increasing in number as we descend in grade, all bound together in an organic whole by the cohesion of a perfect sysFrom the simple fact that the numFor requiring elementary instruction is so largely in excess of the number requiring higher education, it follows that any method of public instruction entitled to the name of a system, will require careful organization—that is, a reduction into classes, each having a sort of individuality and a definite aim. Perfection of method can be reached only by perfection of system. In proportion as system is wanting, the good results possible are diminished, as system is necessary to secure the greatest economy in the expenditure of time, force and money. In accordance with this principle we state the following propositions:

1. Economy demands that our educational forces be so adjusted as to work in perfect harmony-no forces being necessarily duplicated, and no desirable results omitted.

2. Economy forbids the employment of any greater or more expensive force than just sufficient to accomplish the desired result.

education of a teacher is his capital, upon which he should receive a fair return for his investment. The highest scholar taught in the school will determine the grade of the teacher to be employed, and the same instructor that teaches him must be employed in teaching all below him. If one boy in the school studies Latin, the teacher must be able to teach him Latin one hour, and teach children the alphabet the next, in which case a large portion of his capital lies idle the most of the time, while he is paid for the use of it all the time. Economy, then, requires a careful grading of the school, so that cheap work may be done cheaply, and expensive forces kept at expensive work.

Hitherto the State has required no gra. dation in the work of public instruction. From the alphabet to the highest sciences have ranged the studies of the common schools, chiefly because no provision has been made for intermediate instruction. It would be the sheerest folly for the State to accept at the hands of the General Government a University to which it should provide no means of access. And so the University has attempted to do a part of this work which did not properly belong to it, and the common schools have attempted to do a part which even less belonged to them. This want of system works positive injury to the common school, if there be pupils much in advance of the majority of children, as, in the first place, an expensive teacher is required, and, in the second, a disproportionate share of the teacher's time is given to the favored few and taken from the needy many: and besides this, if there is too great a range of studies the teacher's interest will be unduly concentrated upon the higher classes.

Without this adjustment of means to ends there can be no proper system, nor will the results attained be in any manner commensurate with the force expended. Using too little force we meet with complete failure; using too much we lose all the power exerted by the unnecessary excess. The great diversity of the results desired, requires the employment of a corresponding diversity of forces. Hence the principle of division of labor finds If our system of public instruction is to here an imperative application. It would keep pace with the advance of our State, manifestly be bad economy to hire a col- this fault must be remedied, and the prinlege professor at a salary of $2,000 to teach ciple of gradation recognized and adopta district school, however admirably he ed. We must not rest satisfied with the might teach the alphabet. The cost of common school and the university, but education, like the cost of everything must make as adequate provision for inelse, will be determined by the value of termediate grades, as we have already the force employed in its production. The made for the lower, and as the General