Οιον ο τω Πολλωνος επεισατο δαφνίδος ορπιξ! I am afraid some considerable time will elapse before Apollo will deign to descend, and visit the temple of American inspiration, in the same manner, and to the same extent, that he has visited Greece, Rome, and England. Upon the first introduction of the Greek language into the English universities, it met with very decided opposition: the combatants divided into two companies, the one favourable to the study of the "new tongue," as it was called, being denominated Greeks; that against it, Trojans, which last, whenever they saw any thing they did not understand, cried out "Græcun est, et non potest legi." For a long time, in England, the Trojans triumphed; at last they united their forces with their opponents, and both have, ever since, contributed to augment the strength, and brighten the splendour of their country's literature. In the United States, at present, the Trojans are a fearful majority. The power, wealth, and influence of every nation depends more upon the aggregate of disposable intelligence afloat in the community than upon its extent of territory and number of inhabitants. The progress of all nations in wealth and strength, in internal security and external influence, has been proportioned to their activity of mind and advancement in knowledge. The art of navigation, the resources of commerce, the ascendency in war, the discoveries of science, the duration of dominion, can never take up their abode permanently, excepting in countries where the paths of knowledge are incessantly explored by the various but combined efforts of numerous minds. And a general activity of intellect can only be called forth in a nation by allowing full freedom of inquiry on all religious, political, and moral subjects. A due proportion of this general activity will always be directed to the cultivation of those arts and sciences which subserve the purposes of practical life, the increase of individual convenience, and the augmentation of national power. The triumphant IMPORTANCE OF UNIVERSAL EDUCATION. 321 issue of civilized warfare is indissolubly connected with the active cultivation of mind, the wide diffusion of knowledge, the free exercise of reason, among the home population of every country. No precarious supply, no importation of talent from abroad, no partial attention to any one branch of improvement to the exclusion of the rest, can compensate for the want of general cultivation in the mind of the native inhabitants. Of what immense benefit was the general education of their people to the United States, during their revolutionary struggle and their recent conflict with Britain, in multiplying their resources, energy, and skill! And how prodigiously has it forwarded their national career in all the arts and occupations of peace! 邀 But although elementary instruction is generally diffused throughout the Union, liberal education is not sufficiently encouraged; the causes of which are rooted in the very condition of our social fabric. Some of these it may be useful to enumerate. Owing to the peculiar circumstances of America, and her great commercial capacities, a large proportion of her active talent is devoted to trade. But although trade, when considered in the aggregate, is a great engine of civilization, and very beneficial to mankind, by connecting different nations, by opening a wider field for the exertions of productive industry, and by enlarging the sphere of inquiry, yet its effect upon the understanding of the individual employed in it is not so beneficial. For the trader, whether a wholesale merchant, or a retail dealer, must employ his mind chiefly in detail, in attending to minute particulars and petty circumstances, which is apt to generate a habit adverse to expansion of the intellect. He, whose head is filled with commercial calculations and speculations from morning to night, will not be often inclined to peruse the pages of the historian, the philosopher, or the moralist. Under such circumstances, wealth alone will be the object of desire; and, as literature opens no such shining path to its votaries, it will become rather an object of contempt that of cultivation. Y In consequence of the general predominance of the trading spirit, there is a great dearth of liberal education throughout the United States. For no man can know the value of what he himself has never possessed; and consequently an illiterate father can never appreciate the importance of his son's being liberally educated, nor know what progress his boy makes in learning; and will be apt to imagine that it is not necessary to consume much time, or expend much money, in giving the child an opportunity of acquiring general information. Accordingly, our grammar schools are, for the most part, deplorably defective. The schoolmasters consist generally of unlettered foreign adventurers and native boys, who are themselves studying law, or physic, or divinity, and propose to teach others, that they may be able to defray the expense of their own professional probation, and then quit the trade of teaching altogether. Such schoolmasters swarm in every lane and alley of our towns and cities, and vie with each other in bold assertions, that they can carry a boy through a course of liberal education in a few months, and at a small expense. This delectable promise is swallowed by the ignorant and credulous parent, who applauds his own and the preceptor's sagacity for contriving and executing a system of instruction, which, by the expenditure of a few dollars, shall be able to counteract all the accustomed laws of human nature, falsify all human experience, operate impossibilities, and manufacture a scholar by teaching him nothing. The use of the grammar is either exploded altogether, or very superficially taught, or translated into English, as some profound scholars have done with More's Greek grammar, in order to lessen the labour of education. But the basis of all valuable instruction must be laid in the necessity of intellectual toil; no mental acquisition worth possessing can be obtained without previous mental exertion. What is not known accurately is not known at all; and nothing can be known accurately without previous labour of the understanding. The only use of education is to unfold 1 GRAMMAR, DECRIED IN THE UNITED STATES. 323 the faculties of the mind, and teach the people to think; but the superficial smattering of a few assemblages of words and phrases, badly understood, and worse deli vered, can never develope any power of the mind, nor render man an animal capable of reasoning. Nevertheless, some grown-up men, who pass for scholars in the United States, profess to condemn the mode of teaching Latin and Greek by the aid of grammar, which they say is too abstract for the comprehension of boys; wherefore they recommend those languages to be taught "by reading a great deal, and committing the Dictionary and Lexicon to memory." This, although a fashionable, appears to be a strange method of teaching any, especially the dead languages. Why strive to encumber a child's memory with the numberless words and phrases of a whole Dictionary, when it would be so much easier to learn and retain the comparatively few and simple rules of grammar? Besides, it is not in the nature of things that children shall read a great deal; it is necessary that their tasks be short and simple, and that they be allowed to promote their health and growth by spending a great proportion of their time in bodily exercise and amusement. Nor is it easy to perceive how the mind can be much improved by committing to memory a vast number of words and phrases to which they attach no definite meaning. Words are merely arbitrary signs to designate certain things; language is made up of words, and grammar the reduction of language into general and fixed rules. And the universal voice of the wise and learned in all ages has required that well educated persons should speak and write with grammatical accuracy, in order to distinguish their effusions from those of the untaught multitude. is At first, children learn by single words, which is only endurable, while they are so young as to be only capable of receiving a few simple ideas: it would be endless to endeavour to teach a whole language by single words. The science of grammar, therefore, steps in, and by teaching the child a few general rules, together with their application, enables it to understand all the particulars of that language, so reduced to general rules and principles. Indeed, all sciences rest upon general rules and principles as their basis; and thus, not only render knowledge more ready at our call, and more easy of application, but also enable us continually to increase its limits. Savages teach their children by single words; and how scanty and imperfect are their languages! Infants can only be taught in detail, by single words; but as soon as the mind begins to open, and is able to rise from details to general rules, grammar is taught them, in order to facilitate, and render sure and permanent the acquisition of language. Teaching language without the help of grammar was a favourite scheme of Mr. Locke, who, in his book on education, says, "that languages learned by rote serve well enough for the common affairs of life, and ordinary commerce." Now, allowing this to be the fact, is it such a knowledge of language as to enable a person to speak and write it correctly? If not, why discard the use of grammar? The truth is, Mr. Locke's book is a very meagre performance, not calculated to give the student enlarged and comprehensive views, but intended merely for the use of country gentlemen; and all the world knows what sort of philosophers the English country squires were a hundred years since. His remarks upon poetry and language are peculiarly frigid and unsatisfactory. The treatises on Education, by Dr. Knox and Dr. Barrow, contain ample refutations of all Mr. Locke's anti-classical heresies. Nay, but these very men, who explode the use of grammar in teaching boys, admit that when these boys grow up, they must study grammar, to obtain a more critical knowledge of the language. The whole of this boasted method then, at last, resolves itself into this, that grammar is of no use in teaching a language, but a boy must learn a dictionary by heart, and read a great deal, and after several years so spent, he must then learn the grammar, in order to understand the language. |
