Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774.Fithian, Philip Vickers
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Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774.
Fithian, Philip Vickers
Carter family; Virginia -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
You must also as much as you can, avoid visible partiality. At least
you must never suffer your fondness for one Scholar to grow so
manifest, as that all your School shall see you look over a fault in
him or her which same fault, if commited by another, you severely
chastise. This will certainly produce in the others hatred & contempt.
A fourth difficulty, and the last I shall mention, consists in knowing
when, & in what measure to give the Boys Liberty to go from Home. The
two younger Boys are wholly under your inspection; so that not only
the progress they make in learning, but their moral Conduct (for both
of these are critically observed & examined) either justifies or
condemns your management to the World. If you keep them much at home,
& close to business, they themselves will call you unfeeling and
cruel; & refuse to be industrious; if you suffer them to go much
abroad they are certainly out of the way of improvement by Study,
probably, by discovering their gross Ignorance, they will expose to
ridicule both themselves & all their former instructors, & possibly
they may commit actual Crimes so as very much to injure themselves; &
scandalize their family; but in each of these you will have a large
share of blame, perhaps more than the parents, or even the Boys
themselves--It will be said that the parents gave them no licence
relying wholly on your judgment & prudence, this will in good measure
justify them to the world. And as to the Boys they are full of
youthful impetuosity & vigour, & these compel them, when they are free
of restraint, to commit actions which with proper management they had
surely avoided. I say, when you lay these things together, & view them
on every side you will find so many perplexities arising in your mind,
from a sense of ignorance of your duty, that you will proceed with
caution & moderation, & will be carefull to examine with some
precision into the circumstances of _time_, _company_, & _Business_
when you license them to go out entirely at the risk of your
Reputation--But the practice of three or four Weeks will give you a
more full notion of these & many other incidents than I am able now
either to recollect or express; I shall have gained my End if these
hints prevent you from setting off wrong, & doing inadvertantly at
first what your Scholars will assert to be precedents for your after
conduct. I go on, therefore, in the third place as I proposed,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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