ducation, it is incumbent upon
us to caution parents from expecting that the moral character, the
understandings, or the tempers of their children, should be improved
at large schools; there the learned languages, we acknowledge, are
successfully taught. Many satisfy themselves with the assertion, that
public education is the least troublesome, that a boy once sent to
school is settled for several years of life, and will require only
short returns of parental care twice a year at the holydays. It is
hardly to be supposed, that those who think in this manner, should
have paid any anxious, or at least any judicious attention to the
education of their children, previously to sending them to school. It
is not likely that they should be very solicitous about the
commencement of an education which they never meant to finish: they
would think, that what could be done during the first few years of
life, is of little consequence; that children from four to seven years
old are too young to be taught; and that a school would speedily
supply all deficiencies, and correct all those faults which begin at
that age to be troublesome at home. Thus to a public school, as to a
general infirmary for mental disease, all desperate subjects are sent,
as the last resource. They take with them the contagion of their
vices, which quickly runs through the whole tribe of their companions,
especially amongst those who happen to be nearly of their own age,
whose sympathy peculiarly exposes them to the danger of infection. We
are often told, that as young people have the strongest sympathy with
each other, they will learn most effectually from each other's
example. They do learn quickly from example, and this is one of the
dangers of a public school: a danger which is not necessary, but
incidental; a danger against which no school-master can possibly
guard, but which parents can, by the previous education of the pupils,
prevent. Boys are led, driven, or carried to school; and in a
school-room they first meet with those who are to be their fellow
prisoners. They do not come with fresh unprejudiced minds to commence
their course of social education; they bring with them all the ideas
and habits which they have already learned at their respective homes.
It is highly unreasonable to expect, that all these habits should be
reformed by a public preceptor. If he had patience, how could he have
time for such an undertaking? Those who have never attempted to b