UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00039136844 
 
 This book must i 
 be taken from t 
 Library building. 
 
 Form No. 471 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/addressofrevdrbaOOsear 
 
ti 
 
 ADDEESS 
 
 OP 
 
 REl 1. BARIS SEiRS, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 ON 
 
 ^HE pBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES 
 
 OF 
 
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 M^ c^ c^ cfa c^ c^ 
 
 DUEHAM, N. C: 
 
 W. T. BLACKWELL & CO.'S STEAM PRINTING HOUSE, 
 
 1878. 
 
POPULAR EDUCATION. 
 
 Tlifi Oicts ii Atotaps of Nomal Scliools. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF NOETH CAROLINA, ) 
 
 Chapel Hill, N. C, July 25tli, 1878. ) 
 
 To THE Members of the Unr^ersity Nok>ial School of 1878 : 
 
 The following letter and address of the Rev. Bariias Sears, D. 
 D., LL. D., the distinguished Agent of the Peabody Fund, reached 
 me so late that I could not comply with his suggestion to "read 
 one or two brief extracts to the School." There is no one in the 
 United States who has greater experience or authority in matters 
 relating to education than Dr. Sears. No one is more worthy to 
 be listened to with respect and deference by the teachers of the 
 land. This address so ably sets forth the imj)ortance of education 
 and the impossibility of promoting it wdthout previously training 
 the teachers, that the whole should be carefully read and thor- 
 oughly digested by you dU. I therefore take pleasure in forward- 
 ing to each of you a copy, hoping that its perusal will in some 
 measure compensate for the disappointment you felt in not hear- 
 ing it spoken by its eminent author. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 KEMP P. BATTLE, 
 President University of N. C. 
 
 Staunton, Va., July 22d, 1878. 
 President Kemp P. Battle, LL. D.: 
 
 My Dear Sir : At this late hour, I find that, owing to sickness in 
 my family, I cannot fulfil my engagement to deliver an address at 
 the close of your Normal School. The best I can do is to send 
 you the address I have prepared, the substance of which I had 
 already dehvered at the Normal College at Nash^oUe. Perhaps 
 you may have a few spare moments when you can read one or two 
 brief extracts to the School. At any rate, you can see what I had 
 intended to do. Yours very sincerelv, 
 
 B. SEARS. 
 
 
THE ADDRESS. 
 
 In all great public interests, there is a simple underhing prin- 
 ciple from which the whole may be developed. That principle in 
 regard to jiublic schools may -be stated thus: Man was made for 
 education as much as the earth was for cultivation. Both the ra- 
 tional and the material world lose most of their value when neglec- 
 ted. Not long ago I passed, on my way to Texas, through the 
 cultivated States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. I then passed 
 through the rich but uncultivated Indian Territory. The contrast 
 was painful. The bounties of natm-e seemed to be wasted for the 
 Avant of the hand of industry. I have seen a similar contrast be- 
 tween a cultivated and uncultivated peoj)le. Can it be that in one 
 case it is the same fertile earth, and in the other the same race of 
 rational beings ? Look at Britain as it was in the days of Julius Cte- 
 sar, and at England as it is to-day, and teU me what has made the 
 difference? It is culture. Compare the Geimany of Tacitus with 
 the Prussia of the present day, and you will see the same contrast. 
 What has China, India, Mongoha and Central Afi-ica, during so 
 many ages, done for the i:)rogress of mankind? Their history, like 
 that of the native tribes of America, is mostly worthless because 
 it lacks the essential element of a progressive civilization. 
 
 The difference between a totally uneducated and a highly educa- 
 ted man or peo2:)le is as great as between an ant and an elephant. 
 Look at a boor of Siberia, and then turn your thoughts to a Hum- 
 boldt, and you would think you had crossed a continent in the 
 animal kingdom. I agree with Huxley when he says that one such 
 man as Arkwright or Watt is, in a pecuniary point of view, worth 
 £200,000 to England alone. There is probably vastly more of un- 
 developed resources in the capacities of man, than in the unseen 
 mineral wealth of the world. If both individual man and nations 
 are worth to the world one hundred times more when highly cul- 
 tivated, as England and Prussia are now, than when sunken in the 
 ignorance of barbarism, education is a prime necessit}' to man as 
 it is his peculiar prerogative. Education, then, should be univer- 
 sal because the nature and necessities of man are universal. It is 
 the immense disparity between these two, the want and the supply 
 in the matter of education which is the cause of some of our great- 
 est troubles at this very day. With all the learning of individual 
 men, there is among us and around us a frightful mass of ignorant 
 and almost useless citizens, which the educated class cannot con- 
 trol. If you inquire into the cause of much of our domestic un- 
 happiness, you will find it is the want of culture and refinement. 
 The son goes out at night for pleasure because he finds so little at 
 home. The daughter seeks amusement abroad b}' day and by 
 night, for the same reason. The husband goes to the saloon and 
 other places of resort because his wife's stock of entertaining con- 
 versation is exhausted; and she herself sits solitary at home in the 
 wearisome and duU evenings, because the family finds more plea- 
 sure elsewhere. 
 
Now, if this be the history of many families in every community, 
 how much of intellectual elevation, of high-toned moral sentiment 
 and public spii'it will be found among them ? "VNTiat are their social 
 enjoj'ments — rational and imj)roving, or low aud degrading? ele- 
 vating and refining intercourse, or the sensual pleasures of eating 
 and drinking, and vulgar and commonplace conversation? 
 
 I need not ask what are the occupations of such families. They 
 will be of the plainest and coarsest kind. The arts will be of the 
 mdest sort. That skill, which in this age is an essential element 
 of prosperity, will be wanting. 
 
 The sad story to be told of this class is that individual life is 
 dull, monotonous and unthinking; home life, coarse, blunt and 
 uninviting; social life, low and unimproving; civil life, jealous, 
 selfish and cj^uarrelsome; and political life, narrow-minded, clan- 
 nish and semi-barbarous. It is as Boeotia compared to Attica; 
 Ireland compared to Scotland; Spain to England or Prussia; Spa- 
 nish America to the United States. 
 
 It was once, in the days of Rousseau, fashionable to admire at a 
 distance, savage life. Men talked and wrote much about the pure 
 and simple hfe of the children of nature. We have since learned 
 that there are more cannibals than saints among these supposed 
 innocents. We now hear a certain class of politicians prate about 
 the \irtue and purity of an untaught rural population, as if gross 
 ignorance were the only true basis of poHtical integrity aud public 
 morality. If this is not putting darkness for light and light for 
 darkness, we do not know what is. The absurdity is too gToss to 
 admit of serious argument. It is brain, not argument, that is 
 wanted. 
 
 And yet there are men who are indifferent, and others who are 
 ever hostile to the general diffusion of knowledge bj' means of pub- 
 lic schools. The former know not its value, because they have not 
 yet learned what all others have — that "knowledge is power." Of 
 its elevating influence, its broad day-light upon the soul, and its 
 life-giving energy, they are totally ignorant. Though the world is 
 full of examples, to them the page of history is a blank. 
 
 The other class appear to be more knowing than the wisest men, 
 and assume to be public teachers and guides. They are the apos- 
 tles of ignorance, as if divinely commissioned to keep the veil on 
 the human mind, which others are endeavoring to remove. They 
 forget that truth aud the soul are made for each other, as much as 
 light is made for the eye, and the eye for the light. They heed not 
 the proverbs of Solomon, nor the voice of the wise men of one hun- 
 dred generations in regard to seeking knowledge. In their view, 
 the man}' exist for the benefit of the few — the one to do the thinlc;- 
 ing of society, the others to do the work. Light is to shine upon 
 these few favored sons of fortune, while thick darkness is to cover 
 the people. 
 
There are men— I hope there are none in North CaroHna — who 
 if we may believe them, are not hostile to the pubhc schools; they 
 only wish to cut down unnecessary expenses. They want cheap 
 schools — the cheaper the better. They would graduate the pay of 
 teachers by the wages of the day laborer. "The poor," they say, 
 " do not need accomphshed teachers or expensive schools. Nothing 
 but the simplest elements of knowledge need be taught them. 
 They have no claim for anything better. Many of them are vicious. 
 Let them put their children to work. The lower classes will never 
 rise. Why trouble ourselves about them ? Education is to them 
 a doubtful boon ; it often injures the laborer by making him dis- 
 contented. It is all fanaticism and false philanthropv." They are 
 now prejDared to turn round and say that the public schools are 
 vulgar ; that it is no place for the children of good famihes. Of 
 course, the rich ought not to pay taxes for the schools that do not 
 benefit them. These men are not opposed to pvibhc schools. Oh, 
 no! They are the friends of a moderate, economical system of 
 ediication. Deliver vis from such friends. How came such fos- 
 sils to turn up in this age ? They are at least three centuries be- 
 hind the times. They were born and bred in Sleepy Hollow. The 
 wheel of time has been turning, and will not go back to accommo- 
 date them. The world has moved somewhat since such ideas were 
 entertained. Feudalism is dead and buried, and not even its ghost 
 will ever revisit the glimpses of the moon. The peasant of former 
 centuries has disappeared ; the citizen has taken his place. Now, 
 we have only to neglect this mass of the peoj^le, to suffer their off- 
 spring to grow up in ignorance, and we shall have as plentiful a 
 harvest of communists as France and chartists as England, has ever 
 had. Indeed, these untutored, impoi-ted citizens, bm-ied in our 
 coal mines as deeply as they are buried in ignorance, are foremost 
 in all disturbances. They come mostly from the Old World. They 
 are secluded from society, and breathe not the atmosphere of our 
 institutions. They suffer from want, and in their ignorance know 
 not the cause, and become the enemies of the property-holders. 
 Strikers are the natural outgrowth of ignorance. Education is the 
 only remedy. An ignorant populace can always be led by dema- 
 gogues. 
 
 Now which is the wiser, the nobler, to vulgarize and brutalize 
 the lower classes, or to humanize and civilize them? That is the 
 question for us to settle. Shall we or shall we not fasten the shack- 
 les of ignorance upon one-half or one-third of our fellow-citizens? 
 W^hat foUy it is in this Nineteenth century to repeat the blun- 
 ders of preceding centuries ! It was not the Hght of the Reforma- 
 tion, but the darkness which preceded it, and which still remain- 
 ed, that caused the Peasants' war in Germany. It was not Voltaire 
 and Rousseau and their compeers that produced the horrors of the 
 French Revolution, but Louis XIV and XV, by sinking the people 
 to the level of brutes. The wild beasts were only unchained by 
 new pohtical events. And we have terrible convulsions in store 
 
for us, if we do not tame and humanize the fierce and ferocious 
 elements of society bj^ a diHgent and careful training of a new 
 generation. We have signs and tokens enough of approaching 
 danger to give us timely warning. 
 
 This crusade against public schools is as unwise as it is perilous. 
 We live in a scientific age, and cannot get out of it. Henceforth 
 aU successful business will be conducted on scientific principles. 
 The muscles of the hand and arm have given Avay to machinexy. 
 The ways of our fathers, which answered for them, wiU not answer 
 for us. Improvements have infinitely varied and multiplied com- 
 petitions. In Virginia the carriage-maker, the cabinet-maker, the 
 manufacturer of the implements of husbandry and of household 
 articles, find that the material is carried fi-om our forests almost to 
 the Canada line, worked up by steam or water power, and return- 
 ed and sold here at lower rates than we can manufacture them. 
 Hand labor is of little account; brain work has the ascendancy 
 everywhere. Even in so simple a work as that of making boots and 
 shoes, not less than seventeen patented inventions are now used. 
 Crimping, stitching, sewing, pegging, eyeleting, riveting are done 
 in less time than it would require to describe the process. 
 
 One woman can make the eyelet-holes of 1,440 pairs of shoes in 
 a day. The consequence is that fewer hands are employed, al- 
 though more work is done. In Massachusetts 30,000 fewer men 
 in the shoe business alone are employed than there were in 1855. 
 And yet the manufacture is increased by $71,000,000 a year. In like 
 manner, the great inventions of recent times have revolytionized 
 nearly all branches of business. The New York Tribune, for its 30,- 
 000 readers, rolls ofi"from its revolving cylinder and folds up twenty- 
 foui- miles of printed matter for its columns every day, and not a 
 human hand touches the work, which is aU done by machinery. 
 But the ignorant cannot be trusted to work tliis machinery. The 
 people, or State, that is determined to do business in the primitive 
 way dooms itself to iiTetrievable inferiority and insignificance. 
 
 Business is no longer provincial. Those who are to prosper in 
 it must have a wider outlook than was formerly necessary. They 
 must take vastly more into their calculations than theii* fathers did. 
 Not only is the sphere of influences aftecting them wider, but the 
 relations of trade are more complicated. Business is in the hands 
 of experts, and a novice, though honest and industrious, is sure to 
 be outdone. Competition is sharper than it was, and the com- 
 petitors more numerous, and improved methods make it harder 
 to keep up with the times; the adaptation of means to ends is 
 more exact; and the study and forecast of coming changes in the 
 state of business have become more common by means of increased 
 knowledge. 
 
 In these disastrous times our men must go to work with cleai'er 
 heads as well as braver hearts. Those who take most advantage 
 of the facilities furnished by science will carry off the piizes. 
 While industry and economy will do much, skill will do more. 
 
The more mind there is applied to business the more prosperity 
 there will be. 
 
 General education, therefore, is the condition on which the suc- 
 cess of the indi^sddual, the hajipiness of families, the peace of so- 
 ciety and the prosperity of the State depend. How is this grand 
 object best to be obtained? Various methods have been tried du- 
 ring many centuries and in all civilized countries, and the result 
 of these experiments is the almost unanimous opinion that not 
 only the best but the only wa}^ is by a State system of public 
 schools. All other kinds of schools, whatever their merits in other 
 respects, have failed to accomplish this object. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 As soon as such a system is established by Ikw, and properly or- 
 ganized, there is at once a demand for an army of teachers. There 
 must be not only a much larger supjoly of teachers, but the worth- 
 less ones must be weeded out by strict examinations. 
 
 One of the chief dangers is that of emjDloying cheap teachers. 
 Landor represented Hanley as saying "the readiest made shoes 
 are boots cut down." So men think the readiest made teachers 
 are cut-down men of other emplo^'inents. We have hundreds of 
 such teachers, not one of whom has the slightest doubt of his fit- 
 ness for the office. 
 
 In the great demand for them, caused by the multiplication of 
 schools, many unsuitable persons will be likeh^ to be employed for 
 want of better. Students, sometimes, who have no aptitude nor 
 love for the occupation, wlU submit temporarily to the unwelcome 
 task for the sake of rei^lenishing their purses. Persons out of em- 
 jDloyment will offer to teach till they can find something better to 
 do. The young and inexperienced wiU always stand ready for the 
 service, which wiU prove a dead loss to the pupils. As none of 
 these classes of teachers will give satisfaction, a new teacher will 
 be sought every session, so that nothing but change and confusion 
 win be perpetual. The school boards, seeing the worthlessness of 
 teachers, will lower their wages. The more promising teachers 
 will retire from the field, which will be held by the incompetent. 
 No ambitious youth will think of preparing himself for an office so 
 httle respected and so little remunerative. The schools will sink 
 in character and reputation just in proportion as the teachers sink. 
 Good families wiU withdraw their children and place them in pri- 
 vate schools, and wiU be opposed to voting money when so httle 
 good is accomphshed. And with the great majority of children 
 the golden period for education will be idly passed away, never to 
 be recalled. 
 
 The great fault with untrained teachers is that they do little but 
 teach the words and formulas of books. A Normal graduate 
 teaches things, piinciples, thoughts. Every point is examined 
 orally; and subjects are sifted by the exercise of the judgment as 
 well as the memory. The pupil is made to see with his own eyes 
 
and to rely on his own observations. Books are a mere syllabus, 
 a skeleton, to be clothed with flesh by the teacher and pupil. 
 
 Practical knowledge of almost every kind is worked in continu- 
 ally with the subjects of study. All the common objects of sight, 
 such as flowers, plants, trees, rocks, birds, insects, tame and wild 
 animals; forms, colors and dimensions; manners, morals, laws of 
 health; gymnastic exercises, drawing, and the cultivation of the 
 voice, receive special attention. This common sense knowledge of 
 useful things is a vital part of poj)ular education. Instead of this, 
 how often are the poor children wearied with the endless repeti- 
 tion of mere words, the dry and stale lumber of the books. 
 
 The only way to prevent such disastrous results and to make the 
 schools the pride of the people, is for the State to make provision 
 for thoroughly training a large body of teachers. When schools 
 are established in every district, and a law is passed that none but 
 competent teachers sball be employed, a profession is established 
 and persons can afford to prepare themselves for it. It will thus 
 become a permanent and attractive occupation when the schools 
 become annual, and when graded schools open the way for promo- 
 tion from the lower to the higher grades. 
 
 To make a suitable provision among teachers certain, it is necssa- 
 ry to establish Normal Schools, which is the j^roper function of the 
 State. This will give dignity to the profession, and produce a ra- 
 dical change hi the schools. Can an}i;hing be more desu-able than 
 these two objects '? Is there any greater reproach resting u^Don our 
 system of education than the low character of many of the schools, 
 and the utter incompetency of many of the teachers? 
 
 I know it is said by those who do not beheve in progress that a 
 teacher is born, not made, which in its true sense only means that 
 he should have a natural aptitude for his calling, just as if this prin- 
 ciple were not aj)plicable to a lawyer, i^hysician or even of an artisan 
 of any kind. In addition to this aptitude, which only indicates 
 what or.e's occupation should be without fitting him for it, every 
 man should be bred to his jorofession. To be a great scholar, even 
 a genius must be a diligent student. To be a great General one 
 must be not only born to command, but educated to command. 
 
 There is nothing peculiar in the case of the school teacher. His 
 profession is like other professions, and requires sjiecial iDreparation 
 as all others do and precisely for the same reason. 
 
 The objection has been made to Normal Schools, that knowledge 
 is what the teacher needs, and that our Hterary institutions furnish 
 it best. This is only half of what the teacher needs, and much the 
 easier half. You will find twenty who have this qualification where 
 you find one who knows how to teach and govern. This assertion 
 is made not from a theoretical point of view, but fifom a large ex- 
 perience and observation. I was for soine years connected with 
 the pubhc schools of Massachusetts. School boards who had for- 
 merly employed coUege graduates, but more recently graduates of 
 the State Normal Schools, could not be induced to appoint as 
 
10 
 
 teacher a young man just from college witliout a normal training. 
 This is the more remarkable as the members of the boards were 
 themselves generally college graduates. It was found by trial that 
 a knowledge of what is commonly taught in learned schools is not 
 all that a teacher needs. He must know how to enter into the 
 hidden recesses of the youthful mind, and from that point work 
 outward and upward. The pupil is like a treasure in the sea, and 
 the teacher like a diver who goes to the bottom to bring it up. If 
 you do not descend and ascertain first exactly where the child's 
 mind is you wiU not bring him up where you are. The descent of 
 the teacher is essential to the ascent of the pupil. 
 
 The beginnings of knowledge are obscure and mysterious. This' 
 is especially true of written language, the first thing with which the i 
 primary teacher has to deal. The sound of long o, for example, ' 
 has seven different representations, and each of these has a differ-] 
 ent sovmd in other words. How does the ordinary teacher go to | 
 work ? He makes the child commit to memory the names, not the ■. 
 powers, of these letters. What would you think of the teacher of ; 
 chemistry who, instead of showing what oxygen, hydrogen and) 
 nitrogen are, should merely give out the names to be committed 
 to memory. There is but one thing more absurd, and that is, what i 
 an educated man once did who could teach Latin, Greek and ma- 
 thematics. He called up a child, and pointing to the middle of the 
 alphabet, said: " Go to your seat and get that lesson." 
 
 He ivho can begin with a child and skillfully carry him through the 
 first Jif teen years of fas life, does the greatest thing that is ever done for 
 him. 
 
 It is said by those ivho knoiv no better, that a Normal School is no- 
 thing after all but a State High School. They might just as well say 
 that the science of medicine is nothing but physiology, civil engi- 
 neering nothing but mathematics, and mining nothing but mine-"^ 
 ralogy, all of which are taught in our colleges. All professions are 
 based upon general science and literature, but are built up on a ; 
 structure of their own. There is a science of teaching and an art i 
 of teaching, A complete, theoretical and practical course, iUustra- ; 
 ted in aU the branches to be taught, with their environments, is ; 
 found nowhere out of the Normal School. To make this evident, 
 one needs only to learn what a Normal School actually is. 
 
 Besides reviewing elementary studies to see that there are no 
 chasms, no weak points, and piu'suing advanced studies to shed 
 their light on the former, both courses are peculiar in this, that 
 every step is taken with reference to the art of teaching. Then 
 there is the difficult but indispensable study of the juvenile mind: 
 its intuitions and instincts; its dominant faculties and the order of 
 their development; its dehcate organism, weaknesses and perils; 
 its active, but one-sided curiosity; its tastes and aversions; the 
 causes of its lethargy or apparent dullness; the kind and degree 
 of stimulus it needs; its social or unsocial tendencies; the play of 
 its various passions; its biases to good or evil; its condition, as