We have in our country a very complete system of literary institutions, so far as external organization will go, and the prospect of success is far more favorable in efforts to carry these institutions into more complete and prosperous operation, than in plans for changing them, or substituting others in their stead. Were it not that such a course would be unjust to individuals, a long and melancholy catalogue might easily be made out, of abortive plans which have sprung up in the minds of young men, in the manner I have described, and which after perhaps temporary success, have resulted in partial or total failure. These failures are of every kind. Some are school-books on a new plan, which succeed in the inventor's hand, chiefly on account of the spirit which carried it into effect; but which in ordinary hands, and under ordinary circumstances, and especially after long continued use, have failed of exhibiting any superiority. Others are institutions, commenced with great zeal by the projectors, and which succeed just as long as that zeal continues. Zeal will make any thing succeed for a time. Others are new plans of instruction or government, generally founded on some good principle carried to an extreme, or made to grow into exaggerated and disproportionate importance. Examples almost innumerable, of these things might be particularized, if it were proper, and it would be found upon examination, that the amount of ingenuity and labor wasted upon such attempts, would have been sufficient, if properly expended, to have elevated very considerably the standard of education, and to have placed existing institutions in a far more prosperous and thriving state than they now exhibit.
The reader will perhaps ask, shall we make no efforts at improvement? Must every thing in education go on in a uniform and monotonous manner; and while all else is advancing, shall our cause alone stand still? By no means. It must advance; but let it advance mainly by the industry and fidelity of those who are employed in it; by changes slowly and cautiously made; not by great efforts to reach forward to brilliant discoveries, which will draw off the attention from essential duties, and after leading the projector through perplexities and difficulties without number, end in mortification and failure.
Were I to give a few concise and summary directions in regard to this subject to a young teacher, they would be the following:
1. Examine thoroughly the system of public and private schools as now constituted in New England, until you fully understand it, and appreciate its excellences and its completeness; see how fully it provides for the wants of the various classes of our population.
By this I mean to refer only to the completeness of the system, as a system of organization. I do not refer at all to the internal management of these institutions: this last is, of course, a field for immediate and universal effort at progress and improvement.
2. If after fully understanding this system as it now exists, you are of opinion that something more is necessary; if you think some classes of the community are not fully provided for, or that some of our institutions may be advantageously exchanged for others, whose plan you have in mind; consider whether your age, and experience, and standing, as an instructer are such as to enable you to place confidence in your opinion.
I do not mean by this, that a young man may not make a useful discovery; but only that he may be led away by the ardor of early life, to fancy that essential and important, which is really not so. It is important that each one should determine whether this is not the case with himself, if his mind is revolving some new plan.
3. Perhaps you are contemplating only a single new institution, which is to depend for its success, on yourself and some coadjutors whom you have in mind, and whom you well know. If this is the case, consider whether the establishment you are contemplating can be carried on, after you shall have left it, by such men as can ordinarily be obtained. If the plan is founded on some peculiar notions of your own, which would enable you to succeed in it, when others, also interested in such a scheme, would probably fail, consider whether there may not be danger that your plan may be imitated by others, who cannot carry it into successful operation, so that it may be the indirect means of doing injury. A man is, in some degree, responsible for his example, and for the consequences which may indirectly flow from his course, as well as for the immediate results which he produces. The Fellenberg school at Hofwyl has perhaps, by its direct results, been as successful for a given time, as perhaps any other institution in the world; but there is a great offset to the good which it has thus done, to be found in the history of the thousand wretched imitations of it, which have been started only to linger a little while and die, and in which a vast amount of time, and talent, and money have been wasted.
Consider the influence you may have upon the other institutions of our country, by attaching yourself to some one under the existing organization. If you take an academy or a private school, constituted and organized like other similar institutions, success in your own, will give you influence over others. A successful teacher of an academy, raises the standard of academic instruction. A college professor, if he brings extraordinary talents to bear upon the regular duties of that office, throws light, universally, upon the whole science of college discipline and instruction. By going, however, to some new field, establishing some new and fanciful institution, you take yourself from such a sphere;-you exert no influence over others, except upon feeble imitators, who fail in their attempts, and bring discredit upon your plans by the awkwardness with which they attempt to adopt them. How much more service to the cause of education, have Professors Cleaveland and Silliman rendered by falling in with the regularly organized institutions of the country, and elevating them, than if in early life, they had given themselves to some magnificent project of an establishment, to which their talents would unquestionably have given temporary success, but which would have taken them away from the community of teachers, and confined the results of their labors to the more immediate effects which their daily duties might produce.
5. Perhaps, however, your plan is not the establishment of some new institution, but the introduction of some new study or pursuit into the one with which you are connected. Before, however, you interrupt the regular plans of your school to make such a change, consider carefully what is the real and appropriate object of your institution. Every thing is not to be done in school. The principles of division of labor apply with peculiar force to this employment; so that you must not only consider whether the branch, which you are now disposed to introduce, is important, but whether it is really such an one as it is, on the whole, best to include among the objects to be pursued in such an institution. Many teachers seem to imagine, that if any thing is in itself important, and especially if it is an important branch of education, the question is settled of its being a proper object of attention in school. But this is very far from being the case. The whole work of education can never be intrusted to the teacher. Much must of course remain in the hands of the parent; it ought so to remain. The object of a school is not to take children out of the parental hands, substituting the watch and guardianship of a stranger, for the natural care of father and mother. Far from it. It is only the association of the children for those purposes which can be more successfully accomplished by association. It is an union for few, specific, and limited objects, for the accomplishment of that part, (and it is comparatively a small part of the general objects of education) which can be most successfully affected by public institutions, and in assemblies of the young.