Free
schools and general education are the natural results of the principles
of human equality, which distinguish the people and political systems of
America.
The purposes of a people are changeable and changing, but institutions
are inflexible; therefore these latter often outlast the ideas in which
they originated, or the ideas may be acting in other bodies or forms.
Institutions are the visible forms of ideas, but they are useful only
while those ideas are living in the minds of men. If an institution is
suffered to remain after the idea has passed away, it embarrasses rather
than aids an advancing people. Such are monastic establishments in
Protestant countries; such is the Church of England, as an institution
of religion and government, to all classes of dissenters; such are many
seminaries of learning in Europe, and some in America.
Massachusetts has had one living idea, from the first,--that general
intelligence is necessary to popular virtue and liberty. This idea she
has expressed in various ways; the end it promises she has sought by
various means. In obedience to this idea, she has established colleges,
common schools, grammar schools, academies, and at last the Normal
School.
The _institution_ only of the Normal School is new; the _idea_ is old.
The Normal system is but a better expression of an idea partially
concealed, but nevertheless to be found in the college, grammar school
and academy of our fathers.
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