Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 2 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
I now purposely name them in this order, though I shall presently refer
to them several times, and in a different succession. These forces act
on the people, making us such men as we are; they act indirectly on the
child before he comes to consciousness; directly, afterwards, but most
powerfully on the man. What is commonly and technically called
education--the development and instruction of the faculties of children,
is only preparatory; the scholastic education of the boy is but
introductory to the practical education of the man. It is only this
preparatory education of the children of the people that is the work of
the school-masters. Their business is to give the child such a
development of his faculties, and such furniture of preliminary
knowledge, that he can secure the influence of all these educational
forces, appreciating and enhancing the good, withstanding,
counteracting, and at last ending the evil thereof, and so continue his
education; and at the same time that he can work in one or more of those
modes of activity, serving himself and mankind, politically by the
state, ecclesiastically by the church, literarily by the press, or at
any rate, industrially by his business. To give children the preparatory
education necessary for this fourfold receptivity, or activity, we need
three classes of public institutions:
I. Free common schools;
II. Free high schools;
III. Free colleges.
Of these I will presently speak in detail, but now, for the sake of
shortness, let me call them all collectively by their generic name--the
School. It is plain the teachers who work by this instrument ought to
understand the good and evil of the four educational forces which work
on men grown, in order to prepare their pupils to receive the good
thereof, and withstand the evil. So then let us look a moment at the
character of these educational forces, and see what they offer us, and
what men they are likely to make of their unconscious pupils. Let us
look at the good qualities first, and next at the evil.
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