The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 6, February, 1835Various
History
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 6, February, 1835
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
If any doubt it, let them
inquire as impartially as they can, what manner of men those are in
general who constitute the educated class? Are they in most instances
moral and religious persons, or _are they not?_ Do they seem better
qualified or more disposed to fulfil the various duties of life, than
those who have not been blessed with equal opportunities for
intellectual improvement? If they do not, we may be absolutely certain
that some radical errors have been committed in their education,--since
the great object of all that deserves the name, assuredly is to make
men, not merely more learned, but wiser and better--more intelligent
and more virtuous, than they could possibly be without it. That they
_would be so_ under a proper system of instruction--a system wherein
mere scholastic learning, in the common acceptation of the term, should
never be considered synonymous with education, none can possibly doubt
who have ever paid the least serious attention to the subject, or who
have any faith in the scripture declaration that, _if we train up a
child in the way he should go, he will never depart from it when he is
old_. Whenever, therefore, we witness any departure among such of our
young people as are said to be well educated, it amounts to a
demonstration that _they have not been thus trained_. If they had been,
such departures would be very rare, instead of being most fatally
common; nor should we find, even after making all due allowances for
the frailty and depravity of our nature, these educated youths, in so
many deplorable instances, despisers of religion, loose in their
morals, voluptuaries in practice as well as principle, ignorant or
regardless both of their public and private duties, and devoted
entirely to their own selfish, depraved gratifications. But the
lamentable truth is, that in a vast majority of our schools, whatever
promises may have been honestly promulgated to the contrary, the moral
and religious principles of the pupils are _not made_ paramount objects
of attention. On the contrary, it seems to be almost always presumed,
that the great work of forming these principles has been accomplished
under the parental roof, where alas! (to our shame be it spoken,) it is
in thousands of instances utterly neglected! Each pupil is consequently
left to form them for himself, after his last course of collegiate
instruction, during which these all essential guides to present and
future happiness are rarely put into requisition, farther than may be
deemed necessary to the peace and good order of the establishment, or
as a part of the mere compendious formulary of instruction. The fatal
and almost certain consequence is, that multitudes of college
graduates, after being emancipated from scholastic restraints, either
plunge at once into the destructive vortex of folly and vice, or devote
themselves so entirely to the pursuits of wealth, pride, vanity and
ambition, as effectually to exclude from their minds all thoughts of
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