It is much easier
to disseminate what is called the spirit of education, than it was to
create that spirit, and preserve it when there were few to do it homage.
For this we are indebted to the schools. Unobserved in the process of
change, but happy in its results, the business of education is not now
confined to professional teachers.
The greatest change of all has been wrought by the attention given to
female education, so that the mother of this generation is not compelled
to rely exclusively upon the school and the paid teacher, public or
private, but can herself, as the teacher ordained by nature, aid her
children in the preparatory studies of life. This power does not often
manifest itself in a regular system of domestic school studies and
discipline, but its influence is felt in a higher home preparation, and
in the exhibition of better ideas of what a school should be. And we may
assume, with all due respect to our maternal ancestry, that this fact is
a modern feature, comparatively, in American civilization. Female
education has given rise to some excesses of opinion and conduct; but
the world is entirely safe, especially the self-styled lords of
creation, and may wisely advocate a system of general education without
regard to sex, and leave the effect to those laws of nature and
revelation which are to all and in all, and cannot permanently be
avoided or disobeyed.
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