Another most extensively pernicious fault in parents, is the incompatible expectations formed of what teachers can do, with the practice of treating them, and speaking of them, as scarcely above the menial class of society. The expectations of many fathers and mothers would appear to be something not very far from a belief, that instructers are masters of some wonder-working process which can inspire genius where it never existed; give talents that nature has withheld; correct in a few weeks or months every bad habit, however long indulged; and force knowledge into heads, pertinaciously determined to reject, or so constructed as to be incapable of receiving it. The general conduct towards such intellectual magicians, where consistency is at all regarded, should {441} certainly be, at least, to place them on a footing of perfect equality with the members of the most esteemed professions in society. But what is the fact? Why, that schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are viewed by multitudes of those who arrogate the right to decide, as a class of persons, essentially vulgar and awkward in their manners; ignorant of the world; of low, grovelling, selfish principles, and nearly incapable of any of those feelings and high sense of honor which are claimed, as a kind of inalienable property by all who believe, (and there are thousands of such individuals,) that wealth and worldly distinctions authorize them to be proud, arrogant, and contemptuous towards all who are deficient in the gifts of fortune. It is not easy to trace this opinion respecting teachers to its source, because one would think that the least pittance of common sense would teach parents the impossibility of their children ever being well taught by any persons for whom they felt no respect, and the equal impossibility of respecting those whom their parents evidently despised. Two causes probably may have produced this mischievous variance between the conduct of parents towards instructers, and the momentous duties which these last are expected to fulfil. First, that many who have taken upon themselves the profession of teachers, have neither the talents, the knowledge, the temper, nor the manners necessary to discharge its numerous and arduous duties; and secondly, that the pride of wealth, which generally indulges itself in an exemption from bodily and mental labor, naturally seeks to dignify its idleness by assuming a superiority over all who work either with their hands or their head. But be the origin what it may, the cause of education is most injuriously affected by it.