Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
We would say, follow out the Church scheme fearlessly and boldly, but
without intolerance--follow it out consistently and honestly, and you
will obtain more numerous and more worthy followers, you will produce
more permanent and more beneficial results, than by truckling to this
sect or to that, or by the vain endeavour to curry favour with all. At
the same time we think, with the commissioners, that to make the Bible
the sole book of education, as is the case in most schools, is a bad
plan; it brings the sacred volume itself into contempt and dislike,
and it limits the field of instruction in an undue degree. We would
introduce more of secular subjects even into the common schools, and
certainly not less of real religion; and to that end we would
endeavour to fit the teachers for their duties, and suit the
extensiveness of the schools to the amount of work to be done.
Religious education being maintained daily as a part, not as the
whole, of education, it should be made the exclusive topic of Sunday
education; and the amount of information on religious topics thus
gained would be found to be greater, in a given time, than when the
child's mind is bent to that one subject alone--the hardest, the
sublimest of all subjects--and when all his thoughts, all his ideas,
are concentrated on the Bible, the Prayer-Book, and the Catechism. In
this matter, however, the heads of the Church are the authorities with
whom the move for improvement ought to originate; and, would they but
act with energy and unanimity, there is no doubt that they would carry
the weight and influence of the nation along with them.
The third observation we have to offer refers to the lamentably
inadequate provision made, in a pecuniary point of view, for the
education of the people. Not only are the teachers totally unprepared
by previous education, but, even let their talents and acquirements be
what they may, their brightest prospect is that of earning less than
at any trade to which they may be take themselves--without any
prospect of ever, by some turn of fortune's wheel, amassing for
themselves a store for their declining years. Work, to be done well,
no matter what its nature may be, must be properly recompensed; no
system that is not adequately supported with funds can be expected to
continue in a state of efficiency--it will speedily degenerate,
decline, and ultimately perish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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