Our public schools ought to be so good
that private schools for instruction in the ordinary branches would
disappear. Mr. Everett said, in reply to inquiries made by Mr.
Twistleton, "I send my boy to the public school, because I know of none
better." It should be the aim of the public to make their schools so
good that no citizen, in the education of his children, will pass them
by.
It is as great a privilege for the wealthy as for the poor to have an
opportunity to send their children to good public schools. It is a maxim
in education that the teacher must first comprehend the pupil mentally
and morally; and might not many of the errors of individual and public
life be avoided, if the citizen, from the first, were to have an
accurate idea of the world in which he is to live? The demand of labor
upon education, as they are connected with every material interest of
society, is, that no one shall be neglected. The mind of a nation is
its capital. We are accustomed to speak of money as capital; and
sometimes we enlarge the definition, and include machinery, tools,
flocks, herds, and lands. But for this moment let us do what we have a
right to do,--go behind the definitions of lexicographers and political
economists, and say, "_capital_ is the producing force of society, and
that force is mind." Without this force, money is nothing; machinery is
nothing; flocks, herds, lands, are nothing.
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